In Cold Blood Quotes

For the first time in a very long time, he yearned to see tomorrow. Tomorrow and the day after that and the year after that. There was a possibility that with Megs he might have a life to look forward to. And because of that, tonight he was going to hunt down a man and assassinate him in cold blood. This act would damn his very soul but for Megs it was worth it.
For Meggie he would walk the fires of hell. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

We wouldn't believe that the Germans, known as the enlightened world as 'bearers of culture,' were capable of planning and carrying out, in cold blood, without pity, the mass destruction of human beings by industrial means, as if they were bedbugs, flies, or other pests to be exterminated. ~ Joseph Bau

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood? ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

They came up with a civil rights bill in 1964, supposedly to solve our problem, and after the bill was signed, three civil rights workers were murdered in cold blood. And the FBI head, Hoover, admits that they know who did it, they've known ever since it happened, and they've done nothing about it. Civil rights bill down the drain. ~ Malcolm X

I think, actually I know that it's overwhelmingly possible for men to conduct such atrocities as to kill a man in cold blood, to burn towns and to parade with the the dead on the tips of their swords. People who think they are doing something for the good of all are the most dangerous and stirs their intent deeper. There might have been a time when I thought differently and I would have answered with a quick no but that time had long passed. Do I think it's in human nature to be violent and to succumb to it? Sure I do. It's to justify it, that I think is inhuman. ~ Celia Mcmahon

Abel was also the first of the human family to experience physical death- and it was through murder! He suffered death because of another's sin, the transgression of his elder brother Cain, who, in a fit of rage, killed him in cold blood. At the same time, thanks to faith in the sin-offering, he overcame death. The first man to descend into the Valley of the Shadow of Death was the first one to triumphantly march straight through it into the Paradise of Glory. He stepped from the excruciating pain of mortal manslaughter's hate into the exquisite land of eternal delights prepared by the Father's love! He led the way, like a pioneer, for all subsequent generations of men and women of faith throughout human history. ~ Robert L. Sumner

The slaves destroyed tirelessly. Like the peasants in the Jacquerie or the Luddite wreckers, they were seeking their salvation in the most obvious way, the destruction of what they knew was the cause of their sufferings; and if they destroyed much it was because they had suffered much. [...] Now that they held power they did as they had been taught. In the frenzy of the first encounters they killed all. Yet they spared the priests whom they feared and the surgeons who had been kind to them. They, whose women had undergone countless violations, violated all the women who fell into their hands, often on the bodies of their still bleeding husbands, fathers and brothers. "Vengeance ! Vengeance" was their war-cry, and one of them carried a white child on a pike as a standard.
And yet they were surprisingly moderate, then and afterwards, far more humane than their masters had been or would ever be to them. [...] Compared with what their masters had done to them in cold blood, what they did was negligible, and they were spurred on by the ferocity with which the whites in Le Cap treated all slave prisoners who fell into their hands. ~ C.L.R. James

Critics have said I write without spontaneity, in cold blood. I don't. I write in hot blood. ~ Billy Joel

Passionate subjects must be dealt with in cold blood. ~ Hector Berlioz

Darian murdered them in cold blood. That's a crime punishable with life in the Terrorscape, where you experience the worst nightmares imaginable. ~ Shannon Duffy

You don't think I'm ... some kind of monster? That I'm not much better than him to have killed him like I did, in cold blood?"
"Never." Dante lifted her chin on the edge of his hand. "I think you're courageous, Tess. An avenging angel, that's what I think."
"I'm a freak."
"No, Tess, no." He kissed her tenderly. "You're amazing."
"I'm a coward. Just like you said, I always ran away. It's true. I've been afraid and running for so long, I'm not sure I can ever stop."
"Then run to me." Dante's eyes were fierce as he held her gaze. ~ Lara Adrian

We need only in cold blood ACT as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. ~ William James

How could she, a girl who could love someone so unconditionally, be just as capable of killing in cold blood? ~ Dekka Nye

I was brought up to look upon falling in love as something natural...something that was pleasant and natural and amusing. I've been in love before, casually, the way young Frenchmen are...but in earnest, too, because a Frenchman can't help surrounding a thing like that with sentiment and romance. He can't help it. If it were just...just something shameful and nasty, he couldn't endure it. They don't have affairs in cold blood the way I've heard men talk about such things since I've come here. It makes a difference, Mrs. Pentland, if you look at things in the light they do. I've learned now, and it is a thing which needs learning, the most important thing in all life. The French are right about it. They make a fine, wonderful thing of love. ~ Louis Bromfield

In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year. It's the story of a serial killer's crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath. Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places and gives us hope in our humanity. ~ Stephen King

Kaden's and Griz's hands were firmly tied behind their backs.
"Would you really have killed them in cold blood?" I asked.
"It's no less than what he ordered for me."
"Tit for tat? Is that how this soldiering stuff works?"
An annoyed hiss escaped through Rafe's teeth. "No, I wouldn't have killed them on the spot. I probably would have waited for Kaden to do something stupid in the heat of the moment - which he surely will - and then I would have killed him. Oh, wait, excuse me! I forgot. We're all in good hands. Griz promised to fall on him if he got out of line. Do I have that right?"
I returned his sarcasm with a steely glare. "Next I'm going to order him to fall on you. Save your cynicism. All I needed to know was that you wouldn't kill them in cold blood. ~ Mary E. Pearson

...those who deny or oppose these so pleasant delights (of virtue), do so only from jealousy, you may be sure, from the barbarous pleasure of making others as guilty and unhappy as they are. They are blind and would like everyone to be the same, they are mistaken, and would like everyone else to be mistaken; but if you could see into the depths of their hearts you would find only sorrow and repentance; all these apostles of crime are only evil and desperate people; you would not find a sincere person among them who would not admit, if he were truthful, that their poisonous words or dangerous writings had not been guided only by their passions. And what man in fact can say in cold blood that the bases of morality can be shaken without risk? What being would dare maintain that doing good and desiring good are not essentially the aim of mankind? And how can a man who will do only evil expect to be happy in a society whose strongest concern is the perpetual increase of good? But will not this apologist of crime not shudder himself when he had uprooted from all hearts the only thing which could lead to his conversion? What will stop his servants ruining him, if they have ceased to be virtuous? ~ Marquis De Sade

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded. ~ Robert Kennedy

I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer's morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all men. I shall die innocent, and it shall be said of me-He was murdered in cold blood ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

Tiff like in Breakfast at Tiffany's,' he says. 'Right?'
I couldn't be more shocked. 'Um ... yes, that's right - it's an old movie.'
'Is it? Don't watch that much TV. I've only heard of the book - got it at home. I bought it 'cause Truman Capote wrote it. I was stoked by In Cold Blood. He wrote that, too. You read it?'
'No.'
'Aw, you gotta. It rocks.'
I look away as if I've been suddenly distracted by something out the window. It's my version of the pause button. There's a lot of information to process. Here's a boy my own age; he shakes my hand, he talks to me - not just to ask directions to the toilet - and he reads books.
Heathcliff? ~ Bill Condon

He'd never killed a woman in cold blood before, but now was as good a time as any. ~ Ronie Kendig

You make faces when you read, you know. I can always tell when you're reading something happy or suspenseful, or upsetting. Your face shows everything ... whenever you read, it's all reflected there in your face. Like that time you came over, and Andrew was busy studying, so you read In Cold Blood. You were grimacing and flinching through the whole book, as though it was happening personally to you. ~ Alicia Thompson

Nancy clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that is the definition of a lady. ~ Truman Capote

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out ... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel ... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man with his mouth. ~ Mark Twain

How many brave Men, courageous Women, and innocent Children did I see butcher'd, to do God good Service?.. I went to the Irish Rebellion, where I saw more than three hundred thousand Souls murder'd in cold Blood.crying, Nits will become Lice, destroy Root and Branch: with a thousand other Barbarities, too tedious as well as too dreadful to repeat, beside what has been transacted abroad. ~ Mary Davys

At the age of eight, John Quincy Adams was made the man of his house while his father, John Adams, was off doing important John Adams things for America. This would be a lot of terrifying responsibility at any time in American history, but it just so happens that, when Adams was eight years old, the *Revolutionary freaking War* was happening right outside his house. He watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from his front porch, according to his diary, worried that he might be 'butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried ... as hostages by any foraging or marauding detachment of British soldiers.' I don't have the diary I kept at age eight, but I think the only things I worried about was whether or not they'd have for dogs in the school the next day and if I had the wherewithal and clarity of purpose to collect all of the Pokemon. John Q, on the other hand, guarded his house, mother, and siblings during wartime.

This isn't to imply that eight-year-old John Quincy Adams could have beaten eight-year-old you in a fight, but to imply that eight-year-old John Quincy Adams could beat you *as an adult*. ~ Daniel O'Brien

I heard a rumor I died, Murdered in cold blood dramatized, Pictures of me in my final state, You know mama cried, But that was fiction, Some coward got the story twisted, Like I no longer existed, Mysteriously missin', I'm known worldwide baby, I ain't hard to find. ~ Tupac Shakur

I've always been a fan of books that create an interesting blend of fact and fiction - whether it's Norman Mailer, or 'The Short Timers,' or 'In Cold Blood.' I'm a fan of that genre. ~ Mark Boal

And what is love, Angel? What is love! he yelled. Is it a pressure inside that makes me want to scream when you do this? he palmed his chest roughly, Is it my body in constant chaos when you're around me? Is it murder in cold blood when I even think of you being with anybody but me! he roared. Or maybe it's not being able to think or speak when your life is in danger, or wanting to spend every second - of every - fucking day with you, wanting to never leave your side. Is that love? Is it, Isadore? He drew closer and hit his fist repeatedly against his chest. Is it pain so hard and heavy that I can't fucking breathe unless I smell you, touch you, taste you? His body heaved as his bright green gaze seared her heart. Because if it is, Angel...he held his lips together and shook his head slowly, then I am....slain with an eternal and violent love for you. ~ Lucian Bane

I believe he's been asked to testify today," I told Lennox, who'd continued to track Truman's progress through the room. "He's a member of the historical undead, Truman Capote, the author. He wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood."...
"Hi, Truman, you're sitting next to me," I said, pulling out his chair. I figured after he'd asked me to suck on his cherry, we should be on a first-name basis. ~ Suzanne Johnson

The murder that is depicted as a horrible crime is repeated in cold blood, remorselessly. ~ Cesare Beccaria

And when he got through I felt for the first time that there had really been a war and that the man I was listening to had been in it and that despite his bravery the war had made him a coward and that if he did any more killing it would be wide-awake and in cold blood, and nobody would have the guts to send him to the electric chair because he had performed his duty toward his fellow men, which was to deny his own sacred instincts and so everything was just and fair because one crime washes away the other in the name of God, country and humanity, peace be with you all. ~ Henry Miller

The successful man has enthusiasm. Good work is never done in cold blood; heat is needed for forge anything. Every great achievement is the story of a flaming heart. ~ Harry S. Truman

Ah! but a man cannot be held to write down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm his brain when an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them. Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was given to him ... ~ Anthony Hope

I'm constantly snatching my books out of the hands of precocious ten-year-olds who are simply too young to read them, despite parents insisting that dear Octavia has a reading age of 28. I remember trying to read 'In Cold Blood' at the age of twelve, and realising that just because you can read book doesn't mean you should. ~ Meg Rosoff

I would rather have been shot straight-up in cold blood-but to be set up? By people who you trusted? That's bad. ~ Tupac Shakur

For the life of me, I did not understand how he[Atticus] could sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with a Confederate Army relic. ~ Harper Lee

And it wasn't because of anything the Clutters did. They never hurt me. Like other people. Like people have all my life. Maybe it's just the Clutters were the ones that had to pay for it. ~ Truman Capote

You can't drive a bayonet through a chap's body in cold blood," he remembered him saying. "And you can't go in for an exam. without drinking," said Edward. ~ Virginia Woolf

All that belonged to him, Dick, but he would never have it.Why should that sonofabitch have everything, while he had nothing? ~ Truman Capote

Well, I didn't wanna kill someone in cold blood - " "That's good, I suppose." " - but there weren't no fire around to light her with first. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Jem," he said, "are you responsible for this?"
"Yes sir."
"Why'd you do it?"
Jem said softly, "She said you lawed for niggers and trash."
"You did this because she said that?"
Jem's lips moved, but his, "Yes sir," was inaudible.
"Son, I have no doubt that you've been annoyed by your contemporaries about me
lawing for niggers, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is
inexcusable. I strongly advise you to go down and have a talk with Mrs. Dubose," said
Atticus. "Come straight home afterward."
Jem did not move.
"Go on, I said."
I followed Jem out of the livingroom. "Come back here," Atticus said to me. I came
back.
Atticus picked up the Mobile Press and sat down in the rocking chair Jem had
vacated. For the life of me, I did not understand how he could sit there in cold blood and
read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with
a Confederate Army relic. Of course Jem antagonized me sometimes until I could kill
him, but when it came down to it he was all I had. Atticus did not seem to realize this, or
if he did he didn't care.
I hated him for that, but when you are in trouble you become easily tired: soon I was
hiding in his lap and his arms were around me.
"You're mighty big to be rocked," he said.
"You don't care what happens to him," I said. "You just send him on to get s ~ Harper Lee

He's difficult, isn't he?"
"That's the understatement of a lifetime," I told Franz. "What a pain in the ass. I really don't know how someone hasn't killed him in cold blood yet. ~ Mariana Zapata

As a child he had often thought of killing himself, but those were sentimental reveries born a wish to punish his father and mother and other enemies. ~ Truman Capote

No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me. ~ Truman Capote

I will kill in cold blood just to know the secret you keep in your lonely eyes. ~ Nessie Q.

Henry's recollections of the past, in contrast to Proust, are done while in movement. He may remember his first wife while making love to a whore, or he may remember his very first love while walking the streets, traveling to see a friend; and life does not stop while he remembers. Analysis in movement. No static vivisection. Henry's daily and continuous flow of life, his sexual activity, his talks with everyone, his cafe life, his conversations with people in the street, which I once considered an interruption to writing, I now believe to be a quality which distinguishes him from other writers. He never writes in cold blood: he is always writing in white heat.
It is what I do with the journal, carrying it everywhere, writing on cafe tables while waiting for a friend, on the train, on the bus, in waiting rooms at the station, while my hair is washed, at the Sorbonne when the lectures get tedious, on journeys, trips, almost while people are talking.
It is while cooking, gardening, walking, or love-making that I remember my childhood, and not while reading Freud's 'Preface to a Little Girl's Journal. ~ Anais Nin

A soldier is a "Yahoo" hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own Species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. ~ Jonathan Swift

I mean it,' said Bosie seriously. 'I'd like to murder him, in cold blood.'
'Well, you can't, Bosie,' said Oscar, 'leastways, not tonight.'
'Why not?' demanded Bosie petulantly.
'It's Sunday, Bosie,' said Oscar, 'and a gentleman never murders his father on a Sunday. You should know that. Did they teach you nothing at Winchester? ~ Gyles Brandreth

There are certain things which are human nature," he asserted with an owl-like look, "which always have been and always will be, which can't be changed."
Amory looked from the small man to the big man helplessly. "Listen to that! That's what makes me discouraged with progress. Listen to that! I can name offhand over one hundred natural phenomena that have been changed by the will of man
a hundred instincts in man that have been wiped out or are now held in check by civilization. What this man here just said has been for thousands of years the last refuge of the associated mutton-heads of the world. It negates the efforts of every scientist, statesman, moralist, reformer, doctor, and philosopher that ever gave his life to humanity's service. It's a flat impeachment of all that's worth while in human nature. Every person over twenty-five years old who makes that statement in cold blood ought to be deprived of the franchise. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Religion, like beauty, cannot be experienced in cold blood. ~ Evelyn Underhill

The old bookseller had learnt at the seminary that when it comes to conceiving transcendent things, minds vary enormously in their capacity, and the trained mind is a very different matter to the untrained; and the mind that is conditioned by music and incense and dim lights has very different capacities to the mind that goes at the job in cold blood. ~ Dion Fortune

I heard about the project over a year before we began. My American agent said, 'Oh, you might want to read 'In Cold Blood' because they're talking about you for Capote, but the script's with Johnny Depp and Sean Penn at the moment.' So, these things take their time to dribble down the food chain. ~ Toby Jones

He is a demon, Clarissa," said Valentine, still in the same soft voice. "A demon with a man's face. I know how deceptive such monsters can be. Remember, I spared him once myself."
"Monster?" echoed Clary. She thought of Luke, Luke pushing her on the swings when she was five years old, higher, always higher; Luke at her graduation from middle school, camera clicking away like a proud father's; Luke sorting through each box of books as it arrived at his store, looking for anything she might like and putting it aside. Luke lifting her up to pull apples down from the trees near his farmhouse. Luke, whose place as her father this man was trying to take. "Luke isn't a monster," she said in a voice that matched Valentine's, steel for steel. "Or a murderer. You are."
"Clary!" It was Jace.
Clary ignored him. Her eyes were fixed on her father's cold black ones. "You murdered your wife's parents, not in battle but in cold blood," she said. "And I bet you murdered Michael Wayland and his little boy, too. Threw their bones in with my grandparents' so that my mother would think you and Jace were dead. Put your necklace around Michael Wayland's neck before you burned him so everyone would think those bones were yours. After all your talk about the untainted blood of the Clave - you didn't care at all about their blood or their innocence when you killed them, did you? Slaughtering old people and children in cold blood, that's monstrous. ~ Cassandra Clare

These three brothers were not afforded the opportunity to defend themselves in a court of law. They were not given a fair and public trial. Paramilitaries, under the command of senior Ministry of Interior officials, denied them these rights and shot them in cold blood. ~ Garry Robbins

He called after her as she
disappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry ... ~ Truman Capote

He leaned in closer, and on stepping back, I almost became one with the cupboard, afraid that if he came any closer, I would lose the little control I still possessed.His one arm extended above me, resting against the cupboard door, giving me a good whiff of his bewitching scent. I pinned my hands behind my back, restraining myself against the metal cupboard. As his hand brushed my damp hair back, and then his fingertips trailed down my shoulder – pins and needles gave way to warm and cold waves washing over me. The pins and needles ran down my spine, and then over my entire body. I kept my eyes on his chiseled, eight-pack abs. I struggled to breathe with him so close, virtually on top of me.
He smiled on a whisper. "I just wanted this moment, us together like this, this feeling in my stomach – like I am falling. ~ Carlyle Labuschagne

In the eight months he had been away, he had almost forgotten the gaze he found there, the gaze which came in moments like this, for it was not one of the looks that New Englanders use or have ever used to express a turn of mind or heart; it was a gaze more cold, more mean, more cruel even than the gaze a Vermont farmer gives a stranger asking directions; more cold, more mean, more cruel because it was completely blank, that very blankness a sign of the renunciation of alternatives, of tenderness or brutality, of pleasure or pain, of understanding or ignorance, of belief or disbelief, of compassion or intolerance, of reason or unswerving fanaticism; it was a gaze which signals the flicking off of the switch which controls the mechanism making man a human being; it said: Now we must fight. There is no time or need for talking; violence is already with us, part of us. ~ William Melvin Kelley

For the rest of his life, the greater the chaos, the calmer Rockefeller would become, particularly when others around him were either panicked or mad with greed. He would make much of his fortune during these market fluctuations - because he could see while others could not. This insight lives on today in Warren Buffet's famous adage to "be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." Rockefeller, like all great investors, could resist impulse in favor of cold, hard common sense. ~ Ryan Holiday

When I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold; and when it is confused, my preaching is confused; and so I can often observe also in the best of my hearers, that when I have grown cold in preaching, they have grown cold too; and the next prayers which I have heard from them have been too like my preaching. We are the nurses of Christ's little ones. If ~ Richard Baxter

Nothingness

It is only in nothing...
A damp, dull, nothingness
Those cold, sharp, empty spaces
In our times of scarcity and loss
That we understand the true meaning of everything
And the indelible value of what was cost ~ Christine Evangelou

Bridget's voice floated out from the kitchen. Cold blows the wind tonight, sweetheart, Cold are the drops of rain; The very first love that ever I had In greenwood he was slain. I'll do as much for my sweetheart As any young woman may; I'll sit and mourn at his graveside A twelve-month and a day. ~ Cassandra Clare

Then he crouches down behind it, motions for Tess and me to sit down, and begins unbuttoning his vest.
I blush scarlet and thank every god in the world for the darkness surrounding us. "I'm not cold and I'm not bleeding," I say to him. "Keep your clothes on."
The boy looks at me. I would've expected his bright eyes to look dimmer in the night, but instead they seem to reflect the light coming from the windows above us. He's amused. "Who said anything about you , sweetheart? ~ Marie Lu

Anyone who thinks hunters are just 'bloodthirsty morons' hasn't looked into hunting. If you wait through long, cold hours in the November woods with a bow in your hands hoping a buck will show, or if you spend days walking in the African bush trailing Cape buffalo while listening to lions roar, you're sure to learn hunting isn't about killing. ~ Donald Trump, Jr.

With a cold barren weariness that quenched the dry glow of anger, he thought, What can you do about these people? The terrible thing is, there are such a lot of them. There are so many, they expect to meet each other wherever they go.
Not wicked, he thought: that's not the word, that's sentimentality. These are just runts. Souls with congenitally short necks and receding brows. They don't sin in the sight of heaven and feel despair: they only throw away lighted cigarettes on Exmoor, and go on holiday leaving the cat to starve, and drive on after accidents without stopping. A wicked man nowadays can set millions of them in motion, and when he's gone howling mad from looking at his own face, they'll be marching still with their mouths open and their hands hanging by their knees, on and on and on. ... ~ Mary Renault

I am not expecting anyone to feel sorry for me, but when friends ask how it feels to be a debut novelist who has also been long listed for the Man Booker prize, I have to admit that my response has confused me. I am so overwhelmed, so delighted, so honoured and so surprised, I have come out in a violent cold. ~ Rachel Joyce

Like That"

Love me like a wrong turn on a bad road late at night, with no
moon and no town anywhere
and a large hungry animal moving heavily through the brush in
the ditch.
Love me with a blindfold over your eyes and the sound of rusty
water
blurting from the faucet in the kitchen, leaking down through
the floorboards to hot cement. Do it without asking,
without wondering or thinking anything, while the machinery's
shut down and the watchman's slumped asleep before his small TV
showing the empty garage, the deserted hallways, while the thieves
slice through
the fence with steel clippers. Love me when you can't find
a decent restaurant open anywhere, when you're alone in a glaring
diner
with two nuns arguing in the back booth, when your eggs are
greasy
and your hash browns underdone. Snick the buttons off the front
of my dress
and toss them one by one into the pond where carp lurk just
beneath the surface,
their cold fins waving. Love me on the hood of a truck no one's
driven
in years, sunk to its fenders in weeds and dead sunflowers;
and in the lilies, your mouth on my white throat, while turtles
drag
their bellies through slick mud, through the footprints of coots and
ducks.
Do it when no one's looking, when the riots begin and the planes
open up,
when the bus leaps the curb and the driver hits the brakes and the
Kim Addonizio

Destiny is not one push, she thought as she waited to cross a quiet street on that cold Paris evening years later, but a thousand small moments that through insight and hard work you line up in the right direction, like the magnet does the metal shavings. ~ Robert M. Edsel

There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion." The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led. ~ Eric Hoffer

Neatly at its foot, a gauze. I hear her gargling in the bathroom. My hands and feet are blue from the cold and I cannot see through the window for the frost and icicles. When Ana Iris starts ~ Junot Diaz

One thing about cold weather: it brings out the statistician in everyone. ~ Paul Theroux

One of the reasons why I liked living in Manhattan was that the city would share your mood the moment you walked out the door. If you were in a hurry, everything else was too, even the pigeons. You shared the same speed and sense of urgency to get wherever you were going.
When you had time to kill, it was happy to give you things to look at and do that easily took up whole days. I didn't agree with people who said Manhattan was a cold, indifferent town. Sure it was gruff, but it was also playful and sometimes very funny. ~ Jonathan Carroll

How can you just leave me standing? Alone in a world that's so cold? (So cold) Maybe I'm just too demanding, Maybe I'm just like my father too bold.Maybe you're just like my mother She's never satisfied (She's never satisfied) Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when doves cry. ~ Prince

Method rules his training, which blends the physical with the mental. How many chess masters put in, prior to an important match, an allotted time daily to bicycling and shadow-boxing, followed by a cold douche and a brisk rub down? ~ Hans Kmoch

It didn't take long. In that despondent changeless heat the entire human content of the ship congealed into a massive drunkenness. People moved flabbily about like squid in a tank of tepid smelly water. From that moment on we saw, rising to the surface, the terrifying nature of white men, exasperated, freed from constraint, absolutely unbuttoned, their true nature, same as in the war. That tropical steam bath called forth the instincts as August breeds toads and snakes on the fissured walls of prisons. In the European cold, under gray, puritanical northern skies, we seldom get to see our brothers' festering cruelty except in times of carnage, but when roused by the foul fevers of the tropics, their rottenness rises to the surface. That's when the frantic unbuttoning sets in, when filth triumphs and covers us entirely. It's a biological confession. Once work and cold weather cease to constrain us, once they relax their grip, the white man shows you the same spectacle as a beautiful beach when the tide goes out: the truth, fetid pools, crabs, carrion, and turds. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

We know each other," he agreed. "They say that you follow in my steps."
"I go my own way. But you, you had never, until just now, looked behind you. You turned back today for the first time."
Geralt remained silent. Tired, he had nothing to say. "How ... How will it happen?" he asked her at last, coldly and without emotion. "I will take you by the hand," she replied, looking him straight in the eye. "I will take you by the hand and lead you across the meadow, through a cold and wet fog." "And after? What is there beyond the fog?" "Nothing," she replied, smiling. "After that, there is nothing. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

It was very dark; but in the murky sky there were masses of cloud which shone with a lurid light, like monstrous heaps of copper that had been heated in a furnace, and were growing cold. ~ Charles Dickens

It will be a battle, then. A siege. A hundred-thousand Ink-borne arrows, flying forth from my flaming pen to assault the walls of tyrannical Cold that hold this man in awful rapture.
It will be campaign for my friend's very soul. A war of Ice, Ink, and Ember.
So be it.
My pen scratches the icy parchment once more. A second Ember joins the first.
The War begins.
-The Penitent God ~ S.G. Night

The best thing you can ever have is peace of mind, it is a basking fire to keep a cold heart in warmth, and a fortified confidence to be proud of. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Quite without warning, I began to cry. No sobbing, no throat-gripping spasms. Water simply welled in my eyes and flowed down my cheeks, slow as cold honey. A quiet acknowledgment of despair as things spiraled slowly out of control. ~ Diana Gabaldon

The sun loses its thin grip on the air first, turning it cold, making it remember that winter is coming and winter will be long. Thin clouds form, and the shadows lengthen out. They have no breadth, as summer shadows have; there are no leaves on the trees or fat clouds in the sky to make them thick. They are gaunt, mean shadows that bite the ground like teeth. ~ Stephen King

Very soon afterward, Tom Erskine found her, and in five minutes, during which her heart in its cold cage took wearily to itself a new, lifelong burden of protective and fond understanding, Christian Stewart became his affianced wife. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

The more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a modus vivendi; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent or brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men.
'What a cold-blooded jest!' said he to himself. 'It was not devised by a God.'
From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never uncovered himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the carven saints in the churches became works of art ~ Honore De Balzac

Has she glanced you way yet?"
Twice," Nick said on a note of satisfaction.
Meaning?"
Nick glanced at him. "She's not completely disinterested."
I see Moreland. That makes it an even half dozen hanging out for a rich wife. Four looking for their second. Rossman, the old satyr, certainly isn't likely to be much competition. What in the hell does he think he's doing anyway? He must be sixty."
Basking, I should think. She hasn't given him the cold shoulder yet," Nick responded coolly. ~ Jaide Fox

Personality is a physical matter almost entirely; it lowers the people it acts on - I've seen it vanish in a long sickness. But while a personality is active, it overrides 'the next thing.' Now a personage, on the other hand, gathers. He is never thought of apart from what he's done. He's a bar on which a thousand things have been hung - glittering things sometimes, as ours are; but he uses those things with a cold mentality back of them. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying ... nameless ... ~ Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

Gentlemen," the king called out, "and ladies, First Meal is getting cold."
Which was the cue for everyone to head back to the dining room and actually eat what had been only studiously ignored up until now.
With Payne safe and at home, appetites were free to roam once more . . . although as God was his witness he was not going to think about what the hell that surgeon and his sister were no doubt about to get into.
As he groaned, Jane tightened her arm around his waist. "Are you all right?"
He glanced down at his shellan. "I don't think my sister is old enough to have sex."
"V, she's the same age you are."
He frowned for a moment. Was she? Or had he been born first?
Yeah, only one place to go for the answer to that. Shit, he hadn't even thought of his mother in all this. And now that he was . . . he had absolutely no desire or interest to pop up there and announce that Payne was doing great, fuck you very much.
Nope. If the Scribe Virgin wanted to keep tabs on what her "children" were up to? She could look into those fakakta seeing bowls she liked so much.
He kissed his shellan. "I don't care what the calendar says or about the birth order. That's my baby sister, and she's never going to be old enough to . . . 'um, yeah.' "
Jane laughed and retucked herself under his arm. "You are a very sweet male."
"Nah."
"Yeah."
Leading her into the dining room and over to the table, he gallantly pulled her chair ~ J.R. Ward

Esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, said good old Berkeley; but, according to most philosophers, he was wrong. Yet, obviously, there are things for which the adage holds. Perception, trivially, to begin with. If elements of conscious awareness
pains, tickles, feelings of heat and cold, sensory qualia of colors, sounds, and the like
have any existence, it must consist in their being perceived by a subject ... This shows, of course, that such experiences are epiphenomenal, at least with respect to the physical world. ~ Zeno Vendler

Rage.

Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, of Peleus' son, murderous, man-killer, fated to die, sing of the rage that cost the Achaeans so many good men and sent so many vital, hearty souls down to the dreary House of Death. And while you're at it, Muse, sing of the rage of the gods themselves, so petulant and so powerful here on their new Olympos, and of the rage of the post-humans, dead and gone though they might be, and of the rage of those few true humans left, self-absorbed and useless though they have become. While you are singing, O Muse, sing also of the rage of those thoughtful, sentient, serious but not-so-close-to-human beings out there dreaming under the ice of Europa, dying in the sulfur ash of Io, and being born in the cold folds of Ganymede.

Oh, and sing of me, O Muse, poor born-against-his-will Hockenberry, dead Thomas Hockenberry, Ph.D., Hockenbush to his friends, to friends long since turned to dust on a world long since left behind. Sing of my rage, yes, of my rage, O Muse, small and insignificant though that rage might be when measured against the anger of the immortal gods, or when compared to the wrath of the god-killer Achilles.

On second though, O Muse, sing nothing of me. I know you. I have been bound and servant to you, O Muse, you incomparable bitch. And I do not trust you, O Muse. Not one little bit. ~ Dan Simmons

God damn there is nothing better tasting in the whole damn world than warm brains when you were shot the hell up, like a cold beer after a long hot day of working in the yard. ~ Diana Rowland

My agent Sue realised after 'Cold Feet' that I could have spent the rest of my life doing similar roles. So she was instrumental in moving me away from that. ~ James Nesbitt

WITHOUT YOU
I miss you more than ever and do not know what to do.
I remember waking up at dawn,
but can't expect to live another day without you.
The mirror does not lie.
I feel so different.
I miss you you.
People spend and spend as long as the pace of life seems wrong.
I was so different when you were here.
It was so different when you were here.
There is nothing more difficult than living without you.
I'm suffering in the hope to once again see.
You get the cold out of my body and it asks for you.
But I do not know where you are ...
If you had been here, I would be so happy.
But there is nothing more difficult than living without you ... ~ Jose N Harris

And while it's all very nice to know that a woman has a mind, literature coming from the cold corpse of a whore is the last thing to be served in bed. Germaine had the right idea: she was ignorant and lusty, she put her heart and soul into her work. She was a whore all the way through - and that was her virtue! ~ Henry Miller

It was awfully quiet. Chicago only gets this quiet when it snows, he thought. And then he flipped open the phone, pressed the voice button, and said "Katherine." He said it softly, reverently.

Five rings and then her voice mail. Hey, it's Katherine, he heard, and in the background cars rushed by. They'd been walking home together from the RadioShack when she recorded the message. I'm not, uh. And she uhed, he remembered, because he'd goosed her butt as she tried to talk. Uh, at my cell phone, I guess. Leave me a message and I'll call you back. And he remembered everything about it, and also everything about everything else, and why couldn't he forget and beep.

"Hey, it's Col. I'm standing in a soybean field outside of Gutshot, Tennessee, which is a long story, and it's hot. K. I'm standing here sweating like I had hyperhidrosis, that disease where you sweat a lot. Crap. That's not interesting. But anyway, it's hot, and so I'm thinking about cold to stay cool. And I was remembering walking through the snow coming back from the ridiculous movie. Do you remember that, K? We were on Giddings, and the snow made it so quiet, I couldn't hear a thing in the world but you. And it was so cold then, and so silent, and I loved you so much. Now it's hot, and dead quiet again, and I love you still."

Five minutes later, he was trudging back when his phone began vibrating. He raced back to the spot with good reception and, breathless answered.

"Di ~ John Green

Penetrate deeply in the secret existence of anyone about you, even of the man or woman whom you count happiest, and you will come upon things they spend all their efforts to hide. Fair as the exterior may be, if you go in, you will find bare places, heaps of rubbish that can never be taken away, cold hearths, desolate altars, and windows veiled with cobwebs. ~ Myrtle Reed

The traffic was heavy, carriages, cabs, wagons, carts of every description passing by, splashing the water out of the gutters, wheels hissing on the wet road, horses dripping, sodden hides dark. Drivers sat hunched with collars up and hats down in a futile attempt to keep the cold rain from running down their necks, hands clenched on the reins. ~ Anne Perry

I would like to sing someone to sleep,
to sit beside someone and be there.
I would like to rock you and sing softly
and go with you to and from sleep.
I would like to be the one in the house
who knew: The night was cold.
And I would like to listen in and listen out
into you, into the world, into the woods.
The clocks shout to one another striking,
and one sees to the bottom of time.
And down below one last, strange man walks by
and rouses a strange dog.
And after that comes silence.
I have laid my eyes upon you wide;
and they hold you gently and let you go
when something stirs in the dark. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The moon seemed to veil herself before the bold looks of Satan. The night was cold. All the doors were closed, all the windows darkened. and the streets deserted. From their appearance, one would have imagined that, for a long time past no foot had traversed those silent streets. Everything around us bore a death-like aspect. It seemed as if, when day came, no one would open their doors; that no head, of woman or of child, would look out of those dark, dull windows; that no step would break the silence which fell, like a pall, upon all around. I seemed to be walking in a city which had been buried some ages. In truth, the town seemed to have been depopulated, and the cemetery to have grown full.

Still we went forward, without hearing a murmur, or meeting even with a shadow. The street stretched for a long way across this fearful city of silence and repose. At last we reached my house.

'You remember it?' said the fiend.

'Yes,' replied I, sullenly, 'let us enter.'

'First,' said he, 'we must open the door. It is I, by the way, who invented the science of opening doors without breaking them in. In fact, I have a second key to all doors and gates - with one exception - that of Paradise! ~ James Hain Friswell

She had one of those husky voices that sounded as if she were permanently coming down with a cold. Men seemed to find that sexy in a woman, which Jackson thought was odd because it made women sound less like women and more like men. Maybe it was a gay thing. ~ Kate Atkinson