Straight Edge Quotes

It seems that no one wants to be "ideological" anymore, and that includes being straight edge. On the one hand, you can see it as today's kids just being against "rules" of any kind, a sort of postmodernist end of ideology. On the other hand, you can see it as kids shying away from anything serious; from anything that demands deeper involvement. The result is that radical cultures are turned into commodities. ~ Jonathan Pollack

Straight edge means I'm better than you. ~ CM Punk

Ideology is a straight-edge ruler in a fractal universe. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Punk can be a mental ghetto. People get into it and make all these rules and pretty soon they're worse than born again Christians and have stupid three hour conversation about things like, which band is a sellout and is straight edge cool or un-cool and it's just completely idiotic. So punk has taught me the aesthetic of the outsider, which is great, but it's also taught me not to get involved in petty little cults. ~ Jesse Michaels

I'd much rather talk to a 30-year old that survived rough times in their lives [practicing Straight Edge] rather than someone that was harmed by a culture of violence. ~ Ian MacKaye

I'm Straight Edge for me, so what everyone else is doing, it doesn't matter. I've never been pressured to drink or smoke or anything by any of the boys, and if anything, a lot of them like me because I'm always the designated driver. I'm the one who makes sure everyone gets home alright and I'm happy doing that. ~ CM Punk

Jeremiah came over after a while. He sat on the edge of my chair and drank from my thermos of Kool-Aid.
"She's pretty," I said.
"Who? Yolie?" He shrugged. "She's nice. One of my many admirers."
"Ha!"
"So what about you? Cam Cameron, huh? Cam the vegetarian. Cam the straight edge."
I tried not to smile. "So what? I like him."
"He's kind of a dork."
"That's what I like about him. He's…different."
He frowned slightly. "Different from who?"
"I don't know." But I did know. I knew exactly who he was different from.
"You mean he's not a dick like Conrad?"
I laughed, and so did he. "Yeah, exactly. He's nice."
"Just nice, huh?"
"More than nice."
"So you're over him, then? For real?" We both knew the "him" he was talking about.
"Yes," I told him.
"I don't believe you," Jeremiah said, watching me closely-just like when he was trying to figure out what kind of hand I had in Uno.
I took off my sunglasses and looked him in the eye. "It's true. I'm over him."
"We'll see," Jeremiah said, standing up. "My break's over. Are you okay over here? Wait around and I'll drive us home. I can put your bike in the back."
I nodded, and watched him walk back to the lifeguard chair. Jeremiah was a good friend. He'd always been good to me, watched out for me. ~ Jenny Han

NO, I will not accept straight edge into my life! ~ Dolph Ziggler

Thought and science are therefore raising problems which their terms of study can never answer, many of which are doubtless problems only for thought. The trisection of an angle is similarly an insoluble problem only for compass and straight-edge construction, and Achilles cannot overtake the tortoise so long as their progress is considered piecemeal, endlessly having the distance between them. However, as it is not Achilles but the method of measurement which fails to catch up with the tortoise, so it is not man but his method of thought which fails to find fulfillment in experience. ~ Alan W. Watts

I was into punk, but I didn't go whole-hog. A lot of kids who grew up in small towns that were into punk music went the "safe" way - not doing drugs, being straight edge. ~ Daughn Gibson

At very best there are two problems with ideology. The first is that it does not represent or conform to or even address reality. It is a straight-edge ruler of a fractal universe. And the second is that it inspires in its believers the notion that the fault here lies with miscreant fact, which should therefore be conformed to the requirements of theory by all means necessary. To the ideologue this would amount to putting the world right, ridding it of ambiguity and of those tedious and endless moral and ethical questions that dog us through life, and that those around us so rarely answer to our satisfaction. ~ Marilynne Robinson

I listened a little to punk when I was younger, but it was straight edge punk. It was nothing like what is going on now, like poppy punk. ~ Travis Barker

Generally, as a rule, the farther you get from clean-cut looks and fancy clothes the more interesting Straight Edge will probably get. ~ Jonathan Pollack

Drinking is such a necessity to human life that people cannot fathom an individual who, like a child confined to a church pew, gets little enjoyment out of it and would rather do other things. ~ Criss Jami

At the very best there are two major problems with ideology. The first is that it does not represent or conform to or even address reality. It is a straight-edge ruler in a fractal universe. And the second is that it inspires in its believers the notion that the fault here lies with miscreant fact, which should therefore be conformed to the requirements of theory by all means necessary. ~ Marilynne Robinson

I think that the idea of straight edge, the song that I wrote, and the way people have related it it, there's some people who have abused it, they've allowed their fundamentalism to interfere with the real message, which in my mind, was that people should be allowed to live their lives the way they want to. ~ Ian MacKaye

I respect Chris Carrabba as a songwriter and I also respect his past. He's got this fierce, straight edge, kind of hardcore core. There's so many songs that people are connected to and they all came together in a kind of DIY way, which I really do respect. ~ Stephan Jenkins

If I like hardcore straight-edge punk music, gentle psychedelic folk music, gangster rap, indie-rock with a lot of guitar pedals, and I find inspiration from all these things in different songs of mine, shouldn't I be allowed to make any of this kind of music that I want? And it's the same for the comic books, why should I only make autobiographical stories? Or only political stories? Or only superhero stories? Or only comedy stories? I am a bit creatively desperate, when I sit with a pen and paper I am desperate for ANY idea that makes me excited, I don't care what kind of idea it is! ~ Jeffrey Lewis

Personally I have my own political views and being straight-edge I'm happy to talk about that, but the music that always meant the most to me, was more emotional. ~ Davey Havok

"Straight Edge" was a song about my life. There was no structure, no premise as if I was forming a club. There were no tenets. I mean I wrote a song called "Straight Edge," I'll take that, but the song was about my life the way I wanted to live it. ~ Ian MacKaye

Later, months later, when Jude thought back to the way it all went down -how did a burnout like him end up straight edge?- he'd remember that ambulance, just like the one he'd been unconscious inside. Its red cross, when viewed from the right angle, was an X on its side. ~ Eleanor Henderson

I think my parents raised me well. And I'm pretty straight edge. All my friends make fun of me for being straight edge. ~ Ansel Elgort

I live a straight edge lifestyle because there is no bigger high or lower down that LIFE ~ Luke Wood

I'm straight edge, and that means I'm better than you. ~ CM Punk

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what's underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don't think it ever will be. ~ Lady Gaga

When people sit across from people - gay, straight, whatever - and they talk, they find out that people they may have been demonizing for their lifetime aren't the demons we've expected them to be. ~ Mark Ruffalo

She knew again the delicious little frisson of fear that came with walking the edge of something she knew better than to cross. She had forgotten what this was like. How a man could heighten every moment, remind you of the point of possessing sight and smell, let alone skin and nerve endings and a heart. That a man could so easily make your heart sing like a bloody lark or plummet like a stone. ~ Julie Anne Long

I would revisit them all in the long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on going to bed I would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the most diverse materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets, a piece of a shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper, all of which things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of birds building their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in a keen frost, I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world (like the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire keeping in all night, I would sleep wrapped up. ~ Marcel Proust

It is, actually," Sherm said, looking her straight in the eyes, the way he had during the intruder drill. "Best thing ever. ~ Rebecca Stead

The woman behind the bar called out: 'Why do you stand like hypnotized fish? Did you come to drink beer or to eat food?'

'Be patient,' said Gersen. 'We are making our decision.'

The remark annoyed the woman. Her voice took on a coarse edge. "Be patient,' you say? All night I pour beer for crapulous men; isn't that patience enough? Come over here, backwards; I'll put this spigot somewhere amazing, at full gush, and then we'll discover who calls for patience! ~ Jack Vance

I figure if you've got to take someone down or set them straight, you might as well enjoy it on some level.
Malcom ~ Nora Roberts

Honest hope has an edge. It's messy. It requires that we let go of all pat answers, all preconceived formulas, all confidence that our sailing will be smooth. It's not a resting point. Honest hope is movement. ~ Frances Moore Lappe

Life is not a straight forward plain ... no linear pattern, simply A to B, and on to C and inevitably ending us up at Z, where we are the inevitably tossed by angels into heaven or hell. Progression is immaterial, time relative. For Jacob, life ebbed and flowed into complex woven conundrums of interrelatedness, of stops and starts and intervening presents transforming over and into elaborate and repeating futures. He believed that at all times man existed with one foot in heaven, another in hell, and everywhere in between and within lay his soul. ~ Nancy Young

Every bargain we made was chewed over carefully before it was swallowed. Each one seemed like the best choice at the time, and yet it seemed that we swallowed enough unwholesome things to bring us down to the very edge of death. ~ Alter S. Reiss

Bodies like the earth are not made to move on curved orbits by a force called gravity; instead, they follow the nearest thing to a straight path in a curved space, which is called a geodesic. A geodesic is the shortest (or longest) path between two nearby points. ~ Stephen Hawking

His dark eyes met mine, just the same. A lean, saturnine face, his cheekbones balanced, his mouth a straight unforgiving line. The demon Tierce Japhrimel touched my cheek, his knuckles brushing my skin. The contact sent a shudder through me, my body recognizing him before the rest of me could dare to. "You burned," I managed, before another fit of retching and gagging shook me. "You burned - you were
ash - "
"While you live, I live." The corners of his mouth turned down, an expressive movement that managed to give the impression of a grim smile. "I suppose nobody told you." I shook my head weakly. ~ Lilith Saintcrow

You own me," he said, water sputtering against his lips as his head bobbed at the surface. "You have lock and key, deed to the house, the welcome mat, all that shit. It's all yours, baby."
"I'll have to take good care of my property, then."
"And I'll have to behave on and off the premises. I may be a little rowdy, but ... I'll use my manners."
I sent him a small splash. "No swearing, invading personal space, or forgetting your pleases and thank-yous."
A glimmer twinkled in his irises, and for a moment, it looked as if he was the one about to drown. "Damn straight," he pulled me against him abruptly, nose to nose. "Now please get over here and fucking kiss me. ~ Rachael Wade

I have often urged my young friends, when faced with an adversary, to "play polo" with him; i.e., not to go at him bald-headed but to ride side by side with him and gradually edge him off your track. Never lose your temper with him. If you are in the right there is no need to, if you are in the wrong you can't afford to. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

I used to like eating frozen corn straight out of the bag. But I also love microwaving frozen corn and adding butter and sugar and garlic powder and chili powder to it. And sometimes I just like to microwave it and add a little bit of hot sauce to it. My friends always laugh at me when they catch me eating it. ~ Thu Tran

What's that around your neck?" asked Emily.
"It's a golden star." Said Reed.
"What did you get it for?"
"Chemistry class."
"What's the star for?" the shadow asked, Usually stars represent a straight A student.
"You get it for having greatness. But Emily doesn't know what that is." He said, answering the shadows question and looking at Emily.
"Greatness, what's greatness?" Emily asked, all wide eyed, and clueless looking
"It's when you do really awesome stuff, and people recognize you for it."
"Oh, no" Emily laughed ."No, I don't know what that is. ~ Rumi Antoinette

There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature. Therefore, buildings must have no straight lines or sharp corners. ~ Antoni Gaudi

Justin looks familiar because he's an architect."
As far as an explanation goes, that one is pretty terrible. "Yes. And we all know each other through The Gay Architects Association. I forgot. Were you at the potluck last month?"
"Yup. I brought the pasta salad," Justin answers, without missing a beat.
Avery salutes him with his beer bottle. "It was really good. I liked the bacon."
"It was real too. Only straight architects put bacon bits in their pasta salad." Justin smiles. "I'm in it for the real meat."
"Aren't we all?" Avery laughs and clinks his beer bottle with Justin's.
"Oh, this was a good idea," Brandon says and sighs. "Introducing you two. ~ Avon Gale

I believe his lies, so he believes mine.' She turns and looks at me straight on. 'That's how it goes at the end of love. ~ Paul Murray

All these self-serving efforts by powerful factions to define their racist rhetoric as nonracist has left Americans thoroughly divided over, and ignorant of, what racist ideas truly are. It has all allowed Americans who think something is wrong with Black people to believe, somehow, that they are not racists. But to say something is wrong with a group is to say something is inferior about that group. These sayings are interlocked logically whether Americans realize it or not, whether Americans are willing to admit it or not. Any comprehensive history of racist ideas must grapple with the ongoing manipulation and confusion, must set the record straight on those who are espousing racist ideas and those who are not. My definition of a racist idea is a simple one: it is any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or superior to another racial group in any way. I define anti-Black racist ideas - the subject of this book - as any idea suggesting that Black people, or any group of Black people, are inferior in any way to another racial group. ~ Ibram X. Kendi

If you take the view that one of the chief objects in life is to remain in loving relationships with other people, straight-line power becomes useless. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

I want to set the record straight for everybody who's been waiting to hear my music. The song that's on the internet is an incomplete song that I'm still working on. When it's ready, you'll be hearing it from me. ~ Dr. Dre

Here you had the top professional soldier in Japan, and to think he didn't know how to kill himself with a gun! They took him straight to the hospital, he got the best care the American medical team could give him, recovered, then was tried and hanged. It's a terrible way to die. ~ Haruki Murakami

The appeal to the intellectually insecure is also more important than it might seem. Because economics touches so much of life, everyone wants to have an opinion. Yet the kind of economics covered in the textbooks is a technical subject that many people find hard to follow. How reassuring, then, to be told that it is all irrelevant
that all you really need to know are a few simple ideas! Quite a few supply-siders have created for themselves a wonderful alternative intellectual history in which John Maynard Keynes was a fraud, Paul Samuelson and even Milton Friedman are fools, and the true line of deep economic thought runs from Adam Smith through obscure turn-of-the-century Austrians straight to them. ~ Paul Krugman

and exactly twenty-one feet from the ground. From there it fell about nine feet, culminating in a perfect hangman's knot, one that Seth had undoubtedly worked on for some time. The noose was straight from the textbook with thirteen ~ John Grisham

She was one woman who knew what to do with a slight moral edge. The ~ Peter S. Beagle

At the edge of who you are, you may find the fragments of your original beginnings. ~ Talismanist Giebra

I followed Him for His wisdom. But served Him for His goodness. ~ Chuck Black

whatever that he left by the 6.15. That gets up to London about 10.30. He went straight to ~ Agatha Christie

On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In
the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

Now, Mr. Antonio. I understand that there are people who are close to you who want me dead."
"No, mija. They don't want you dead."
"Then explain this." I handed him the picture.
He chuckled again.
"No, they don't want you dead. That would be too easy. They want revenge."
Cold sweat broke out all over me, but I kept my face calm. I looked at him straight in the eye.
"Well, then they are going to be quite disappointed, aren't they?" I flashed my teeth at him.
"Senorita, you might want to warn Senor Smith, you see, my nephew he doesn't like to share, and if he sees another man after you, he'll get very, eh, aggressive." The silver fox looked at me and winked.
"Oh, he won't have to worry." I said as I was walking out the door. "I doubt he will be alive long enough to know Agent Smith."
Then I slammed the door. ~ Rumi Antoinette

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came
And he pushed
And they flew. ~ Christopher Logue

A Song for the End of the World"

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it always should be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world. ~ Czesław Miłosz

Claudette looks down at the thing in her hand. She turns it one way and the other. It is a packet of Italian coffee, half used, left behind. Innocuous enough in itself but in Claudette's hands, this particular morning, it is as dangerous as cyanide.

She isn't going to sniff it, no, she isn't. She wouldn't be stupid enough to attempt such a thing. Just a whiff of those smoky, dark, aromatic granules – heated up they always were, at length, lovingly, every morning in this kitchen, for all the years he lived here, the way he would stand waiting for them to brew, looking out of that window, that robe of his loose over his pyjamas, a child, usually, on his shoulder or his arm – would be enough to tip her over the edge. She isn't going to do it.

Certainly not.

Then she does, of course. She removes the clip, she places it on the counter, she parts the top of the silver-and-red packet and she brings it to her face and she inhales, she inhales, she inhales. ~ Maggie O'Farrell

Now I knew that if that's how the devil looks, I wanted to go straight to hell. ~ Carolina Soto

[On Las Vegas:] ... The City That Never Sleeps. The City That Sins and Smiles and Lives On the Edge. The city where vices become virtues, become what everyone is here to do. ~ Karen Kijewski

Sometimes to see your work's rightful place you have to walk to the edge of the precipice and search the deep chasms. You have to see that the universe is not formless and dark throughout, but awaits simply the revealing light of your own mind. Your art does not arrive miraculously from the darkness, but is made uneventfully in the light. What ~ David Bayles

The guys from the board are at a smaller bonfire near the tree line. They're laughing. Talking shit. Enjoying the fact that they've tried to play with my life. Yelling. Loud shouts. It's near me, but the chaos controlling me makes it incoherent. ~ Katie McGarry

In the dead of night, his keen senses suddenly focused on the entry door. An infinitesimal sound of metal pierced the silence in the hallway. Immediately, Sharko turned off the light and grabbed up his Sig. Here they were. Beneath his door, he saw, very briefly, the beam of a flashlight, before everything went black again. His jaw set, he slowly got up from his chair and crept toward the living room. On the other side, the linoleum floor creaked slightly. Sharko felt the edge of his sofa and crouched down, his gun aimed blindly in front of him. He could have attacked from the front, by surprise, but he didn't know how many there were. One thing was for sure: they rarely went out alone. ~ Franck Thilliez

What are you cooking this night, wife?" One of the crepes picked that moment to dislodge itself from the ceiling. It landed at her feet with a plop as if on cue. "Crepes." She kept a straight face and tried to look like this was the normal way to make crepes. ~ Shelly Thacker

Tallow walked into Bat and Scarly's office to find Bat slumped on a chair with his head on the workbench, turned away from the door, while Scarly softly sharpened on old straight razor on a worn strop, watching her partner intently.
"I don't think he needs his eyebrows, do you? I mean, they don't serve an immediate function or anything," she whispered. ~ Warren Ellis

I think: I would like to take N back to a story right now, like a rake.
I would say, "Oh, this rake is uneven. Do you have any where the tines go straight across?"
I would like to do a straight exchange.
But there are things that cannot be returned. Errant husbands are one of them. Wives are not. Wives can be exchanged; I have always known this. ~ Suzanne Finnamore

It is not simply that these two cities are perched side by side at the edge of the Pacific; it is that adolescence sits next to middle age, and they don't know how to relate to each other. In a way, these two cities exist in different centuries. San Diego is a post-industrial city talking about settling down, slowing down, building clean industry. Tijuana is a preindustrial city talking about changing, moving forward, growing. Yet they form a single metropolitan area. ~ Richard Rodriguez

It is day after day in this institution, borrow money, run up the debt, run up the deficits and then with a straight face say, we are going to repeal a tax that affects 1 percent of the American people, just 1 percent of the American people. ~ Richard Neal