Grisly Quotes

Leave it to the Alderaanians to slap a cheery end on a nice little grisly children's morality tale. ~ Timothy Zahn

The dead are on their way to work, grey limbs rubbing together in an open grave, stack on stack in the metal containers of car, tube and train. The grisly carriages are painted bright colors, guillotine colors of tumbril and blade, execution-bright. Each man and woman goes to their particular scaffold, kneels, and is killed day after day. Each collects their severed head and catches the train home. Some say that they enjoy their work. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Lady Esmeralda's background was no less interesting than herself; it was a colourful picture of luxury and squalor. Armies of servants thronged the great houses; coaches rumbled up to the doors. Huge meals were eaten at tables laden with silver and lit by candles; there was drinking and gambling and duelling. Highwaymen frequented lonely roads and footpads lurked in the streets. Thieves were hanged and crowds gathered to see the grisly entertainment. The picture of life in those far-off days became so real and clear that I felt as if I had lived in them myself. It was almost as if I remembered them. Sometimes I returned to them in my dreams (which was not always enjoyable) and occasionally I found myself ~ D.E. Stevenson

As he dropped the last grisly fragment of the dismembered and mutilated body into the small vat of nitric acid that was to devour every trace of the horrid evidence which might easily send him to the gallows, the man sank weakly into a chair and throwing his body forward upon his great, teak desk buried his face in his arms, breaking into dry, moaning sobs. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

None of us moved for a moment, and I knew why. The possibility of finding Aisha like that was too much, too grisly. ~ Anya Allyn

Generals were early to bed, early to rise, always brushing their teeth after every meal, never skipping a morning shave. All they had to do was sit back in Nagano drawing up their battle plans. One order from them and us mortals on the front lines would move like pawns across a chessboard to our grisly fates. I'd like to see just one of them here with us in the mud. We had our own rules down here. Which is probably why they stayed away. If one of them showed, I'd see to it a stray bullet put them on the Killed In Action list. ~ Hiroshi Sakurazaka

Sons of suicides seldom do well. Characteristically, they find life lacking a certain zing. They tend to feel more rootless than most, even in a notoriously rootless nation. They are squeamishly incurious about the past and numbly certain about the future to this grisly extent: they suspect that they, too, will kill themselves. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile, albeit a grisly and pained one.
"That's what I was supposed to say ... " he gasped out.
Those were his last words. ~ Richelle Mead

I think we love watching rich people behave badly. It has a sort of grisly fascination for us. ~ Laura Wade

Maybe he was as mad as he said he was, but she could see only a species of miserable fright. Suddenly, like the thud of a boxing glove on her mouth, she saw how close to the edge of everything he was. The agency was tottering, that was bad enough, and now, on top of that, like a grisly dessert following a putrid main course, his marriage was tottering too. She felt a rush of warmth for him, for this man she had sometimes hated and had, for the last three hours at least, feared. A kind of epiphany filled her. Most of all, she hoped he would always think he had been as mad as hell, and not ... not the way his face said he felt. ~ Stephen King

Came the visions of icy beauty,
from the land of death where they dwell.
Pursuing their prize and grisly duty,
came the thieves of the charm and spell.
The bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.

Alluring of shape though seldom seen,
they traveled the breeze on a spark.
some fed twigs to their newborn queen,
while others invaded the dark.
the bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.

some they called and others they kissed
as they traveled on river and wave.
with resolve they came and did insist:
every one touched to a grave.
the bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.

roving to hunt and gathering to dance,
they practiced their dark desires
by casting a hex and a beautiful trance,
before feeding the queen's new fires.
the bells chimed thrice, and death came a-calling.

till he parted the falls
and the bells chimed thrice,
till he issued the calls
and demanded the price.
the bells chimed thrice and death met the mountain.

they charmed and embraced
and they tried to extoll
but he bade them in grace
and demanded a soul.
the bells fell silent and the mountain slew them all.
and the mountain entombed them all. ~ Terry Goodkind

The cemetery watchman left the room and returned with a tray holding three small skulls and a large one. I could feel the short hairs on the back of my neck standing up of their own accord. None of them were real though; they were wood or celluloid imitations. They all had flaps that opened at the top; one was a jug and the other three steins.

The man behind the desk named the toast. 'To our Friend!' I thought he meant myself at first; he meant that shadowy enemy of all mankind, the Grim Reaper.

'We are called The Friends of Death,' he explained to me when the grisly containers had been emptied. 'To outline our creed and purpose briefly, it is this: That death is life, and life is death. We have mastered death, and no member of the Friends of Death need ever fear it. They 'die,' it is true, but after death they are buried in special graves in our private cemetery - graves having air vents, such as you discovered. Also, our graves are equipped with electric signals, so that after the bodies of our buried members begin to respond to the secret treatment our scientists have given them before internment, we are warned. Then we come and release them - and they live again. Moreover, they are released, freed of their thralldom; from then on death is an old familiar friend instead of an enemy. They no longer fear it. Do you not see what a wonderful boon this would be in your case, Brother Bud; you who have suffered so from that fear?' ("Graves For The Living") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Let this grisly beginning be none other to you than is to wayfarers a rugged and steep mountain. ~ Giovanni Boccaccio

I think a lot of things are at play when children enjoy a grisly old fairytale. I don't think many children take it literally, or rather it's quite clear to them that it's only a story, only make believe. ~ Robert Paul Weston

Why?" I asked softly. The word was carried away on the wind, but he heard.
"Because I want you."
I gave him a sad smile, wondering if we'd meet again in the land of the dead. "Wrong answer," I told him.
I let go.
[ ... ]
I looked him in the eye. "I will always love you."
Then I plunged the stake into his chest.
It wasn't as precise a blow as I would have liked, not with the skilled way he was dodging. I struggled to get the stake in deep enough to his heart, unsure if I could do it from this angle. Then, his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me, stunned, and his lips parted, almost into a smile, albeit a grisly and pained one.
"That's what I was supposed to say ... " he gasped out. ~ Richelle Mead

He lived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled Missouri.And as Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan of the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the winter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab's soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom! ~ Herman Melville

But death, even as grisly a death as his, could not lay Blackbeard to rest. Reports have put his restless spirit on Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, scene of some of his rowdiest bacchanals where his favorite anchorage is known to this day as Teach's Hole. ~ Nicholas Jeffries

By December 1975, a year had passed since Mr. Harvey had packed his bags, but there was still no sign of him. For a while, until the tape dirtied or the paper tore, store owners kept a scratchy sketch of him taped to their windows. Lindsey and Samuel walked in the neighboorhood or hung out at Hal's bike shop. She wouldn't go to the diner where the other kids went. The owner of the diner was a law and order man. He had blown up the sketch of George Harvey to twice its size and taped it to the front door. He willingly gave the grisly details to any customer who asked- young girl, cornfield, found only an elbow.
Finallly Lindsey asked Hal to give her a ride to the police station. She wanted to know what exactly they were doing.
They bid farewell to Samuel at the bike shop and Hal gave Lindsey a ride through a wet December snow.
From the start, Lindsey's youth and purpose had caught the police off guard. As more and more of them realized who she was, they gave her a wider and wider berth. Here was this girl, focused, mad, fifteen...
When Lindsey and Hal waited outside the captain's office on a wooden bench, she thought she saw something across the room that she recognized. It was on Detective Fenerman's desk and it stood out in the room because of its color. What her mother had always distinguished as Chinese red, a harsher red than rose red, it was the red of classic red lipsticks, rarely found in nature. Our mother was proud of her ability fo wear Chinese re ~ Alice Sebold

The discipline is based on one grisly fact: a corpse makes a good lunch. ~ Val McDermid

Our struggle is
isn't it?
to achieve and retain faith on a lower level. To believe that there is a Listener at all. For as the situation grows more and more desperate, the grisly fears intrude. Are we only talking to ourselves in an empty universe? The silence is often so emphatic. And we have prayed so much already ~ C.S. Lewis

Suicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense and unpalliated. There is no morphine equivalent to ease the acute pain, and death, not uncommonly, is violent and grisly. The suffering of a suicidal is private and inexpressible, leaving family members, friends and colleagues to deal with an almost unfathomable kind of loss, as well as guilt. Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

It's rather grisly, isnt it, how soon a living man becomes nothing more than a collection of stocks and bonds and debts and real estate? ~ John Dos Passos

Monkshood was a good hour's walk from the town proper. The very narrow lanes meant that occasionally you had to throw yourself in the ditch to avoid a car, and once they had to throw themselves in the ditch to avoid a farmer coming by in a blue cart.

"The Americans have these inventions called sidewalks," Jared noted.

"We call them pavements," Kami said. "And we see them as luxuries that you just can't have with every road."

"You know what goes faster than us? Or even pretty, pretty ponies?" Jared asked.

"Your head, spinning through the air when detached from your shoulders after a grisly motorcycle crash ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

For the lady's husband to become actively jealous was considered both doltish and dishonorable, a breach of the spirit of courtesy. Yet the record suggests that this was a fairly common occurrence and one of the occupational hazards of being a troubadour. The most famous crime passionnel of the epoch was the murder of Guilhem de Cabestanh, a troubadour knight whose love for the Lady Seremonda aroused the jealousy of her husband, Raimon de Castel-Roussillon. The story goes that Raimon killed Guilhem while he was out hunting, removed the heart from the body, and had it served to his wife for dinner, cooked and seasoned with pepper. Then comes the great confrontation:
"And when the lady had eaten of it, RAimon de Castel-Roussillon said unto her: "Know you of what you have eaten?' And she said, 'I know not, save that the taste thereof is good and savoury.' Then he said to her that that she had eaten of was in very truth the head of SIr Guilhem of Cabestanh, and caused the head to be brought before her, that she might the more readily believe it. And when the lady had seen and heard this, she straightway fell into a swoon, and when she was recovered of it, she spake and said: "Of a truth, my Lord, such good meat have you given me that never more will I eat of other."
THen he, hearing this, ran upon her with his sword and would have struck at her head, but the lady ran to a balcony, and cast herself down, and so died."
...the story is probably apocryphal… grisly deta ~ Horizon Magazine, Summer 1970

No mortal man could frighten him, no more than the darkness could, nor the bones of his soul, the grey and grisly bones of his soul. ~ George R R Martin

Since 1933, New Deal farm policy has continued and expanded, pursuing its grisly logic at the expense of the nation's consumers, year in and year out, in Democrat or Republican regimes, in good times and in bad. ~ Murray Rothbard

I´ve blown it, the whole grisly charade. ~ Suzanne Finnamore

The index finger was never found. Hodges thought that a seagull – one of the big boys that patrolled the lakeshore – might have seized it and carried it away. He preferred that idea to the grisly alternative: that an unhurt City Centre survivor had taken it as a souvenir. ~ Stephen King

Other humans can die a grisly death, as Jesus did. They cannot be born, as he was, as God incarnate. ~ Garry Wills

Presidia, you fool," Dee shouted at the nun, dragging the arrow backward with her high heel. Luce leaned down to pick it up and slipped it inside the satchel. "You know that won't hurt me! Now you've annoyed my friends." She gestured broadly at the angels darting forward to disarm the costumed Elders.
"Stand down, defector!" Presidia replied. "We require the girl! Surrender her and we will-"
But Presidia never finished. Arriane was at the Elder's back in a flash, brushing the veil from her head, taking her white hair in her fists.
"Because I respect my Elders," Arriane hissed through her clenched teeth, "I feel I must prevent them from embarrassing themselves." Then she lifted off the ground, still holding Presidia by the air. The Elder kicked the air as if pedaling an invisible bicycle. Arriane pivoted and slammed the old woman's body into the cornice of the church's façade with such force it left an indention when she collapsed in a twisted heap, hands and legs sticking out at grisly angles. ~ Lauren Kate

Even under more ingratiating conditions than rocket travel, this new conquest has already disclosed drawbacks quite as remarkable as its advantages. On a transcontinental flight by a jet plane approaching super-sonic speed, the actual trip is so cramped, so dull, so vacuous, that the only attraction the air lines dare to offer are those vulgar experiences one can have by walking to the nearest cabaret, restaurant, or cinema: liquor, food, motion pictures, luscious stewardesses. Only a lurking sense of fear and the possibility of a grisly death help restore the sense of reality. ~ Lewis Mumford

If something was worth writing down, it was worth writing down in full. And she had a horror of lists
grocery lists, Christmas card lists, and most grisly of all, to-do lists. Lists, like appointment books, were nails driven into the future. She knew this was an odd objection to be raised by a person whose daily life was utterly predictable, who never threw caution, or anything else, to the winds, who never packed light, because she never packed at all. Still, the future was a sleeping monster, not to be poked. ~ Jincy Willett

When you first approached me, all I could think was that life didn't work that way. The most beautiful boy in the universe doesn't come knocking on the grisly recluse's door. If I wrote that plot, I'd be laughed off Goodreads. ~ Eli Easton

Now obviously, in peacetime a one-legged catcher, like a one-armed outfielder (such as the Mundys had roaming right), would have been at the most a curiosity somewhere down in the dingiest town in the minors - precisely where Hot had played during the many years that the nations of the world lived in harmony. But it is one of life's grisly ironies that what is catastrophe for most of mankind, invariably works to the advantage of a few who live on the fringes of the human community. On the other hand, it is a grisly irony to live on the fringes of the human community. ~ Philip Roth

Crouched on the altar-steps, a grisly band
Of women slumbers - not like women they,
But Gorgons rather; nay, that word is weak,
Nor may I match the Gorgons' shape with theirs!
Such have I seen in painted semblance erst -
Winged Harpies, snatching food from Phineus' board, -
But these are wingless, black, and all their shape
The eye's abomination to behold.
Fell is the breath - let none draw nigh to it -
Wherewith they snort in slumber; from their eyes
Exude the damnèd drops of poisonous ire:
And such their garb as none should dare to bring
To statues of the gods or homes of men. ~ Aeschylus

A new, rather grisly lesson in Daevabad's history." Nahri made a face. "Just once, I'd like to learn of an event that was nothing but our ancestors conjuring rainbows and dancing in the street together. ~ S.A. Chakraborty

Loading your brain with subliminal messages ... How loathsome to turn a sadistic murder into entertainment [in the newspaper]
and yet how hard not to read about it. What dark comedy to realize that you are scanning for descriptions of torture as you disapprove. Which of course only makes it more entertaining. "But naturally I was hoping they'd report something grisly," you say to your friends, who chuckle lighthearted acknowledgment of hypocrisy. ~ Mary Gaitskill

It's possible to make one's own grape pest disease culture by looking for sick or dead caterpillars. If sick, they will lose color and move slowly, if at all. At death, they often hang limp and darkened from a leaf by a spot of "glue." Several of these are all you need to treat an acre of vines. Whiz them in a blender with a quart of water, strain, and dilute to spray your vines. Use right away, as this mixture will start to putrefy after just twelve hours. It's a bit grisly, but very cheap and very effective. Just don't forget to clean the blender ~ Jeff Cox

A grisly story, but one whose notoriety Malorie attributes to the seemingly senseless way the Internet has of making random occurrences famous. ~ Josh Malerman

As Roran watched, the man's arms, neck, and chest shriveled, and his bones appeared in sharp relief-from the bowlike curve of his collarbones to the hollow saddle of his hips, where his stomach hung like an empty waterskin. His lips puckered and drew back farther than they were intended to over his yellow teeth, baring them in a grisly snarl, while his eyeballs deflated as if they were engorged ticks being squished empty of blood, and the surrounding flesh sank inward. ~ Christopher Paolini

In South America euphemism appears to be the grisly preserve of violent power. 'Liberty' was the name of the biggest prison in Uruguay under the military dictatorship, while in Chile one of the concentration camps was called 'Dignity.' It was the self-styled 'Peace and Justice' paramilitary group in Chiapas [Mexico] that in 1997 shot 45 peasants in the back, nearly all of them women and children, as they prayed in a church. What have the souls of the south done over the past few decades to deserve quite so much liberty and dignity and peace and justice? ~ Isabel Fonseca

Did we not aid the grisly Taliban to achieve and hold power? Yes indeed 'we' did. Well, does that not double or triple our responsibility to remove them from power? ~ Christopher Hitchens

The skin of the coward changes color all the time, he can't get a grip on himself, he can't sit still, he squats and rocks, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his heart racing, pounding inside the fellow's ribs, his teeth chattering. He dreads some grisly death. But the skin of a brave soldier never blanches. He's all control. Tense but no great fear. ~ Homer

The only time I ever went hunting I remembered it as a grisly experience. ~ Gloria Swanson

ISCARIOT"

"A box of doves
I placed beside your chest
Liar
A stork of silk
With rubies in it's nest
Fire
Of my love
Will burn thee to a wizened word
For ere to go unheard.

A mare of wood
Elder, elm and oak
Liar
Will keep you fair
If you jest me no joke
Fire
Of my love
Will burn thee to a wizened word
For ere to go unheard.

I'm old and bruised
But my fate is that of youth
Liar
Trickster you
Be a grisly dragon's tooth
Fire
Of my love
Will burn thee to a wizened word
For ere to go unheard.

You gashed the heart of my heart
Like a Portuguese
Witch,
I'd planned for you this land
But you devoured my hand. ~ Marc Bolan

It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And I was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,
Without a chance or spar,--
Or even a report of land
To justify despair. ~ Emily Dickinson

Mistress of the grisly and the glutinous ~ Graham Masterton

This is American two-one-three to the cockpit voice recorder. Now we know what it's like. It is worse than we'd ever imagined. They didn't prepare us for this at the death simulator in Denver. Our fear is pure, so totally stripped of distractions and pressures as to be a form of transcendental meditation. In less than three minutes we will touch down, so to speak. They will find our bodies in some smoking field, strewn about in the grisly attitudes of death. I love you, Lance." This time there was a brief pause before the mass wailing recommenced. Lance? ~ Don DeLillo

In the purifying sweep of atheism human beings lost all special value. The numb misery of the horse was matched by that of the farmer; the once-green ferny lives crushed into coal's fossiliferous strata were no more anonymous and obliterated than Clarence's own life would soon be, in a wink of earth's tremendous time. Without Biblical blessing the physical universe became sherry horrible and disgusting. All fleshy acts became vile, rather than merely some. The reality of men slaying lambs and cattle, fish and fowl to sustain their own bodies took on an aspect of grisly comedy
the blood-soaked selfishness of a cosmic mayhem. ~ John Updike

He became almost speechless for a minute, and then went on, Do you know what the place is? Have you seen that awful den of hellish infamy, with the very moonlight alive with grisly shapes, and ever speck of dust that whirls in the wind a devouring monster in embryo? Have you felt the Vampire's lips upon your throat? ~ Bram Stoker

Why do I feel this response makes Kartik much like governesses who tell their charges grisly fairy tales before bed and then expect them to sleep peacefully through the night? ~ Libba Bray

Twenty-eight men were on trial. If found guilty, they faced death by the grisly form of torture known as hanging, drawing and quartering. The most important of these were twenty-four who had sat as judges at the king's trial. Most of them had played other key roles in bringing the king to trial. ~ Don Jordan

After Death nothing is, and nothing, death,
The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
Let slavish souls lay by their fear
Nor be concerned which way nor where
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall be swept
Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Devouring time swallows us whole.
Impartial death confounds body and soul.
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
God's everlasting fiery jails
(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more. ~ John Wilmot

The story ends. It was written for several reasons. Nine of them are secrets. The tenth is that one should never cease considering human love, which remains as grisly and golden as ever, no matter what is tattooed upon the warm tympanic page. ~ Donald Barthelme

Elodin looked at me. "What a remarkably honest threat," he said. "Normally they're much more growlish and gristly than that."
"Gristly?" I asked, emphasizing the 't.' "Don't you mean grisly?"
"Both," he said. "Usually there's a lot of, 'I'll break your knees. I'll break your neck.'" He shrugged. "Makes me think of gristle, like when you're boning a chicken. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

WEST SALEM ~ October 2011
A sudden vision, fraught with malevolence and darkness, obscured her sight. The face of a menacing figure turned from the shadows of his grisly handiwork and stared at Sorcha.
Her muscles tensed. By the Goddess, could he see her?
Please! No!
She wanted to scream, to run, but the vision ensnared her into the horrific moment like a fly in a spider's web. ~ Cherie De Sues

Under bright scarlet hair, teachers' favorite pigmentation of ink, the awful cast splashed and dripped down his face, a grisly reminder of mistakes bruising that had bruised. ~ Jazz Feylynn

An intelligent man or woman willing to make a career of reviewing fiction is hard to come by ... And the temporaries do the work cheaply. Moreover, continuity may be got at the expense of intellectual arthritis; a reviewer who has been at his grisly task for half a lifetime may stiffen into prejudices of every sort, and become too anchylosed to do better than turn his back to a new wave when it rushes down on him. ~ Storm Jameson

Bulletproof is about the fact that I was shot in the face and survived. Nah I'm joking that'd be grisly and awful. ~ Thom Yorke

Ever and again, our mind may become befuddled when we have to find out what is heads or tails. Ever and again, bewilderment may strike our brain when we have to interpret the contrasts between the dark and the bright sides of things when we have got to read complex cases and assess the divergences between the iridescent outward appearances and the grisly undercurrents of particular characters. ('"Côté cour…Côté jardin" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

When everything that ticked has stopped, and space stares, all around, or grisly frosts, first autumn morns, repeal the beating ground. ~ Emily Dickinson

She had died in her sleep, painlessly and calmly, and on her face was a smile- as if, after all, death had come as a kindly friend to lead her over the threshold, instead of the grisly phantom she had dreaded...Anne, looking down through a mist of tears, at her old playfellow, thought she saw the face of God had meant Ruby to have, and remembered it so always. ~ L.M. Montgomery