Knife Fights Quotes

It did not last long. It is only in the movies that knife fighters stab and miss and slash and miss and tussle over several city blocks. ~ James Jones

Any serious social encounter with knives has one main goal: to stop the action. Beyond that, you have a little flexibility: to kill, or merely get away, or what have you. But first comes the cessation of hostilities.
There are many ways to handle this. You can run, shoot, call the cops, or even try to organize a discussion group to talk the problem out. But I'm talking knives, so I'll limit myself to that.

All wounds are painful and pain is a great tool for stopping fights. So is the loss of use of various parts of the body. Therefore, it follows that although we wish to inflict any wound we can, the more painful it is, the better. ~ Hank Reinhardt

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide.
(Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?)
Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They w ~ Don DeLillo

If you are ever so unlucky as to get close to a real knife fight, it would be useful to keep one fact in mind above all others: the real knife fighter does not wish to engage in a fight.

He doesn't care who is best with a knife. He only wants to cut you. He will then do anything he can to take you by surprise, attack, and finish you off before you can fight back. ~ Hank Reinhardt

It's important to hold the knife with the edge down. How important? Well, it depends. How important is your life? ~ Hank Reinhardt

We've had the works. Indy's kidnappings and murder. Jet's kidnappings and rape attempt. Roxie's kidnapping and stalking. Car bombs. Grenades. Knife fights. Female wrestling at Chinese restaurants. Mayhem at a haunted house. Gunshots at a strip club. Showdowns at society parties. Now we got a vigilante on our hands. ~ Kristen Ashley

The big rules of knife fighting are (a) do not try it at home, and (b) the whole point is never, ever use the blade. It is there to distract your opponent. While he stares at the gleaming steel, you kick his balls to kingdom come
he's all yours. Just a tip! ~ Keith Richards

Is Jensen really your name?" she asked when he sat down again, closing the knife and tucking it back into his pocket.
"Does it matter? I've used any number of names. Jensen, Davidson, Wilson, Madsen."
"In other words your mother didn't know who your father was. ~ Anne Stuart

Fights over ideas are the most vicious of all. If it were merely food, or water, or shelter, we would work something out. But in the realm of ideas one can become idealistic . ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Your mind is the knife that cuts the continuum of space and time into neat slices of linear experience. ~ Deepak Chopra

The blade gleamed in his hand, making my knees go so weak that I had to hold onto the car. Even watching him use a butter knife on an unsuspecting piece of toast was enough to make my whole body burn, inciting an erection under the table that would last long past dessert. ~ Nicole Castle

Lord help me take the knife out of my back and not place it on my tongue. ~ Brenda DeMoss Lanz

Armed with the leg as a blunt instrument and with the warrior's knife, Johnston managed to fight his way out of the Blackfoot camp and make his escape into the woods. ~ DamnInteresting.com

All right, so give me some idea of what you can do," says Haymitch.
I can't do anything," says Peeta, "unless you count baking bread."
Sorry, I don't. Katniss. I already know you're handy with a knife," says Haymitch.
Not really. But I can hunt," I say. "With a bow and arrow."
And you're good?" asks Haymitch.
I have to think about it. I've been putting food on the table for four years. That's no small task. I'm not as good as my father was, but he'd had more practice. I've better aim than Gale, but I've had more practice. He's a genius with traps and snares. "I'm all right," I say. ~ Suzanne Collins

And yet, it was still a performance. Odin and I both knew it. It was a kind of play, a dream of how things might have been if he and I had been capable of trusting each other for a change. And so we hunted, and sang, and laughed, and told heavily edited stories of the good old days, while each of us watched the other and wondered when the knife would fall. ~ Joanne Harris

I am the voice of the voiceless; Through me the dumb shall speak. Till the deaf world's ears be made to hear. The wrongs of the wordless weak. And I am my brothers keeper, And I will fight his fights; And speak the words for beast and bird. Till the world shall set things right. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There is a story they tell, about a girl dared by her peers to venture to a local graveyard after dark. This was her folly: when they told her that standing on someone's grave at night would cause the inhabitant to reach up and pull her under, she scoffed. Scoffing is the first mistake a woman can make.

I will show you, she said.

Pride is the second mistake.

They gave her a knife to stick into the frosty earth, as a way of proving her presence and her theory.

She went to that graveyard. Some storytellers say that she picked the grave at random. I believe she selected a very old one, her choice tinged by self-doubt and the latent belief that if she were wrong, the intact muscle and flesh of a newly dead corpse would be more dangerous than one centuries gone.

She knelt on the grave and plunged the blade deep. As she stood to run she found she couldn't escape. Something was clutching at her clothes. She cried out and fell down.

When morning came, her friends arrived at the cemetery. They found her dead on the grave, the blade pinning the sturdy wool of her skirt to the ground. Dead of fright or exposure, would it matter when the parents arrived? She was not wrong, but it didn't matter any more. Afterwards, everyone believed that she had wished to die, even though she had died proving that she could live.

As it turns out, being right was the third, and worst, mistake. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

There was a barber and his wife. And he was beautiful. A proper artist with a knife but they transported him for life. And he was beautiful ~ Anonymous

Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote. ~ Stanislaw Lem

All I knew about Ireland before I went there was what I learned from watching soap commercials all my life. I was totally misinformed. I thought it was an Irish tradition where you don't even take a shower with your soap - you take your soap for a walk, you compliment the soap for a little while and then, suddenly, you just start hacking it up with a hunting knife. ~ Arj Barker

You don't have to come with me," Ash said. "I only brought you along because you're good with a knife. And got us the uniforms. And the explosives."
Lila snorted. "Sorry I'm not pulling my weight."
"This may not be your idea," Ash said doggedly, "but it's what we're going to do."
"Is it? Are you really going to start playing the prince card after all?"
"Don' start in about my mother the queen, because I don't want to hear it."
"All right, then, as your peer and absolute equal, I can't help thinking this is a really bad idea. ~ Cinda Williams Chima

I thought you were good. That some part of you was good."
In a blink of an eye, Balthazar stood right in front of her. Arianne yelped. He took her wrist and brought the tip of the knife to the center of his chest. With his other hand, he tilted her chin up so she could look into the white center of his black irises. His silver hair rained over his forehead, covering the crease that marred its usual smoothness.
"You think I'm the good guy?" he whispered. She continued trembling, worse now. He leaned down until his lips touched her ear. "I'm not. ~ Kate Evangelista

I can't do this anymore, Allie. I can't keep pretending two weeks will be enough." His impassioned voice was barely a whisper. "The thought of you leaving tears me apart, a knife twisting into my soul. ~ Ann Marie Walker

That accounts for his crying so. Poor creature!"

"Well--you must do the sticking--there's no help for it. I'll showyou how. Or I'll do it myself--I think I could. Though as it issuch a big pig I had rather Challow had done it. However, his basketo' knives and things have been already sent on here, and we can use'em."

"Of course you shan't do it," said Jude. "I'll do it, since it mustbe done."

He went out to the sty, shovelled away the snow for the space of acouple of yards or more, and placed the stool in front, with theknives and ropes at hand. A robin peered down at the preparationsfrom the nearest tree, and, not liking the sinister look of thescene, flew away, though hungry. By this time Arabella had joinedher husband, and Jude, rope in hand, got into the sty, and noosed theaffrighted animal, who, beginning with a squeak of surprise, rose torepeated cries of rage. Arabella opened the sty-door, and togetherthey hoisted the victim on to the stool, legs upward, and while Judeheld him Arabella bound him down, looping the cord over his legs tokeep him from struggling.

The animal's note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but thecry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless.

"Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have hadthis to do!" said Jude. "A creature I have fed with my own hands."

"Don't be such a tender-hearted fool! There's the sticking-knife--the one with the point. Now whatever ~ Thomas Hardy

What a burning shame it is that many of the pieces on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, contained in different school books, have been lost sight of, or been subject to the pruning knife of the slaveholding expurgatorial system! ~ Robert Purvis

[F]or he had heard an inarticulate promise: he has been pierced by Spring, that sharp knife. And life unscales its rusty weathered pelt, and earth wells out in tender exhaustless strength, and the cup of a man's heart runs over with dateless expectancy, tongueless promise, indefinable desire. Something gathers in the throat, something blinds him in the eyes, and faint and valorous horns sound through the earth. ~ Thomas Wolfe

The intelligent fights only when he must and never for sport. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Emotions don't know how to stitch back the way flesh could. How do you go to a person, your wife of two decades, and tell her you want to start over again? How do you say, "Forget everything we've got together. Forget the kids and the fights and all the good times, too. I take it all back." How do you do that? It ain't a lizard's tail, those years. It ain't something you walk away from and start over. ~ Hugh Howey

What do you have in this car?" he asked.
"What do you mean, like weapons?"
"That would be a good start."
"Well, I 've got a mini Swiss Army Knife on my key chain."
"A two-inch stainless steel blade and a nail file. They might as well surrender to us now ... ~ Richard Castle

I'm still not certain on the nature of the spork, whether it is a fork and a spoon, or a fork and a knife mixed together, or maybe a fork and a fork on top. Life is full of mysteries yeah man ~ Thom Yorke

They never expect the knife. ~ Richelle Mead

But this is what I'm finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I'm waiting for, for that adventure, that movie-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets - this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of us will ever experience. ~ Shauna Niequist

Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage, But wise through time, and narrative with age, In summer-days like grasshoppers rejoice - A bloodless race, that send a feeble voice. ~ Alexander Pope

The Process of Explication"

I

Students, look at this table
And now when you see a man six feet tall
You can call him a fathom.

Likewise, students when yes and you do that and other stuff
Likewise too the shoe falls upon the sun
And the alphabet is full of blood
And when you knock upon a sentence in the
Process of explication you are going to need a lot of rags

Likewise, hello and goodbye.


II

Nick Algiers is my student
And he sits there in a heap in front of me thinking of suicide
And so, I am the one in front of him
And I dance around him in a circle and light him on fire
And with his face on fire, I am suddenly ashamed.

Likewise the distance between us then
Is the knife that is not marriage.


III

Students, I can't lie, I'd rather be doing something else, I guess
Like making love or writing a poem
Or drinking wine on a tropical island
With a handsome boy who wants to hold me all night.

I can't lie that dreams are ridiculous.
And in dreaming myself upon the moon
I have made the moon my home and no one
Can ever get to me to hit me or kiss my lips.

And as my bridegroom comes and takes me away from you
You all ask me what is wrong and I say it is
That I will never win. ~ Dorothea Lasky

I've learned that when someone does something very kind and refuses payment, giving them an engraved Swiss Army knife is never refused! ~ Christine Lavin

It hurts," Horatia gasped as the weight of everything descended upon her. Like knife shards embedded in her lungs, each breath she sucked in was ragged and icy.
"That's a good thing, my love. It means your heart is still alive. Just let it all out." Lucien brushed his lips along her tear-stained cheek and absorbed her shaking with his body.

-His Wicked Seduction ~ Lauren Smith

The silence is the worst part of any fight, because it's made up of all the things we wish we could say, if only we had the guts. ~ Pete Wentz

So long as I'm Commander-in-Chief, we will sustain the strongest military the world has ever known. When you take off the uniform, we will serve you as well as you've served us - because no one who fights for this country should have to fight for a job, or a roof over their head, or the care that they need when they come home. ~ Barack Obama

I wish it were socially acceptable to brandish a knife. ~ Caroline Kepnes

A fight is like the perfect storm. It is risky and dangerous. But, as the African proverb goes, Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. Fights are often learning opportunities - if we're willing to dig deep enough past our own egos. ~ Lauren Klarfeld

Never in the history of American warfare has this nation witnessed such an exhibition of cowardice, indecisiveness, incompetence, and laziness in the army's senior officer ranks. Battle after battle was lost, untrained troops were sacrificed in fights they could never win, territories won were quickly squandered, and the chain of command was ignored to near-treasonous levels. ~ Dennis Byrne

One thing he says: If you could be an emotion, it would be spite.

One thing I say: If you could be an animal, it would be a sloth.

But I only say that out of spite. ~ Weike Wang

It's always a shame when good men die for a wretched man's cause. ~ Matthew Wolf

There is a false ecumenism, as sentimental and vague as you please, which for all intents and purposes abolishes doctrine; in order to reconcile two adversaries, one strangles them both, which is certainly the best way to make peace.
[...]
Objectivity toward the perspectives and spiritual ways of other peoples is too often the result of philosophic indifferentism or sentimental universalism, and in such a case there is no reason to pay it homage; indeed one may well ask whether objectivity in the full sense of the word is really involved. The Christian saint who fights Muslims is closer to Islamic sanctity than the philosopher who accepts everything and practices nothing. ~ Frithjof Schuon

XVI. Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the culprit, - Life! ~ Emily Dickinson

John had once said to me, in a complaining tone, that Father had taught us to be afraid of no man except him. And it was true. Father always insisted that we think for ourselves in every way, except when we disagreed with him, and that we hold ourselves independent of every man's will, except his. He wanted us simultaneously to be independent and yet to serve him. Father was to be our Abraham; we were to be his little Isaacs. We were supposed to know ahead of time, however, the happy outcome of the story - we were supposed to know that it was a story, not about us and our willingness to lie on a rock on Mount Moriah and be sacrificed under his knife, but about our father and his willingness to obey his terrible God. ~ Russell Banks

If you work hard the fight's easy. If you don't work hard then the fight's hard. ~ Ronda Rousey

Jon wanted nothing more. No, he had to tell himself, those days are gone. The realization twisted in his belly like a knife. They had chosen him to rule. The Wall was his, and their lives were his as well. A lord may love the men that he commands, he could hear his lord father saying, but he cannot be a friend to them. One day he may need to sit in judgement on them, or send them forth to die. ~ George R R Martin

It's hard to say which I like more, the perfectly happy days or the hours right after we've ended a good fight. ~ Crystal Woods

The man who fights for his ideals is alive. ~ Miguel De Cervantes