Arson Quotes

You know me. Running around. Living life. Committing arson.

Murtagh was right about women. Sassenach, I risked my life for ye, committing theft, arson, assault, and murder into the bargain. In return for which ye call me names, insult my manhood, kick me in the ballocks and claw my face. Then I beat you half to death and tell ye all the most humiliating things have ever happened to me, and ye say ye love me." He laid his head on his knees and laughed some more. Finally he rose and held out a hand to me, wiping his eyes with the other. "You're no verra sensible, Sassenach, but I like ye fine. Let's go.

Why do you have a cigarette lighter in your glove compartment?" her husband, Jack, asked her. "I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson

So would you like to try on some clothes?" Beth nodded at what was in her arms. "I don't have many dresses but Fritz can get you some." You know what?" Marissa eyed the blue jeans the queen had on. "I've never worn a pair of pants before." I've got two pairs here if you want to try them out." Well, wasn't this a night for firsts. Sex. Arson. Pants.

Arson is a respected profession among certain subcultures in Jersey, and the good ones don't get caught. The good ones channel lightning and mysterious acts of spontaneous combustion.

I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson.

She didn't add the elements that allowed me to proceed down a different path. She lent a spark, perhaps, or tendered the flame, but the arson was mine.

She was consumed. She was the kindling for the arson taking place in her heart, her brain dry wadding for the flames, her soul so much incandescent gas. She could not do this. She absolutely and fundamentally could not do this.

If rape or arson, poison or the knife Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff Of this drab canvas we accept as life - It is because we are not bold enough!

Well, wasn't this a night for firsts. Sex. Arson. Pants.

I was getting the hang of arson. It really sends a message, you know? Not only will I kill your dudes and steal your shit, but I will burn your place down behind me.

Your red dress,’ she said, and laughed. But I looked at the dress on the floor and it was as if the fire had spread across the room. It was beautiful and it reminded me of something I must do. I will remember I thought. I will remember quite soon now.

I'm standing in the middle of the greatest arson ever. A library. And I'm not going down without a fight.

I'm advocating taking a chance on a nice man who you're clearly into and who'll treat you well. And if you think that's arson, then yay, arson.

Some guys say it with flowers,” Tucker said. “I bring you arson reports.

I read in the papers here a while back some teachers came across a survey that was sent out back in the thirties to a number of schools around the country. Had this questionnaire about what was the problems with teachin in the schools. And they come across these forms, they'd been filled out and sent in from around the country answerin these questions. And the biggest problems they could name was things like talkin in class and runnin in the hallways. Chewin gum. Copyin homework. Things of that nature. So they got one of them forms that was blank and printed up a bunch of em and sent em back out to the same schools. Forty years later. Well, here come the answers back. Rape, arson, murder. Drugs. Suicide. So think about that. Because a lot of the time when I say anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I'm gettin old. That it's one of the symptoms. But my feelin about that is that anybody that cant tell the difference between rapin and murderin people and chewin gum has got a whole lot bigger of a problem than what I've got. Forty years is not a long time neither. Maybe the next forty of it will bring some of em out from under the ether. If it aint too late.

...It is as though in the middle of a chess tournament one competitor should suddenly begin screaming that the other is guilty of arson or bigamy. The point that is really at issue remains untouched. Libel settles nothing...

I took Jack his slippers this evening and lay at his feet before a roaring fire while he smoked his pipe, sipped sherry, and read the newspaper. He read aloud everything involving killings, arsons, mutilations, grave robberies, church desecrations, and unusual thefts. It is very pleasant just being domestic sometimes.

Sitting to think of what to write will only set your ass on fire, give you headache, twist your face to look stupid, instead, walk around with a blank mind and something from somewhere will fill it up.

If the war against drugs is lost, then so are the wars against theft, speeding, incest, fraud, rape, murder, arson, and illegal parking. Few, if any, such wars are winnable. So let us all do anything we choose.

Sometimes we’re made from the stuff that we want to do but don’t actually follow through on. Like when someone is an asshole and you want to burn down their garage, but then you don’t because it’s illegal and also because you can’t find the matches. I’m made from a lot of unfulfilled arson.

Arson is almost as good as Prozac.

The innovative leader has to be an arsonist and a firefighter.

You wouldn’t have anything to be scared of if you didn’t commit felony fucking arson.

The stories didn't seem to care who he was or what he could do; it didn't matter. In their world, he wasn't alone. In their world, a freak like him - like him - could become a hero.

The word “violence” is being systematically remade to conform to their worldview. Looting and arson aren’t violence, they argue. And yet physical violence directed at their opponents is also not violence but rather “self-defense.

The truth of it was, I'd been running the wrong experiment my whole life, and while Cassidy was the first person to realize, she didn't add the elements that allowed me to proceed down a different path. She lent a spark, perhaps, or tendered the flame, but the arson was mine. Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that’s all. I don’t know if he’s right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.

Everything burns...you just gotta know what kind of fire to set.

Arson, kidnapping, I think I'm up to murder. Maybe all this will get me just a glimmer of attention, not the good, glorious kind, but still the national media kind.

The dark sky seemed to swallow the moon, as Samantha stood alone on the deserted highway.

And the girl who was there with them, Kaylie Rooney, she’d just gotten out of juvenile detention for arson. It was easier to deflect blame toward her than to try to pin it on nature.

Murtagh was right about women. Sassenach, I risked my life for ye, committing theft, arson, assault, and murder into the bargain. In return for which ye call me names, insult my manhood, kick me in the ballocks and claw my face. Then I beat you half to death and tell ye all the most humiliating things have ever happened to me, and you say ye love me.” He laid his head on his knees and laughed some more. Finally he rose and held out a hand to me, wiping his eyes with the other. "You're no verra sensible, Sassenach, but I like ye fine. Let's go.

She was the personal assistant to The Villain, after all. She chuckled at the job title, imagining the ridiculous way the employment posting would appear in a news pamphlet. Must be well organized. Must enjoy working late nights and relish writing long documents. Must be comfortable and even supportive of arson, torture, murder. And must not scream when there is an occasional dead body lying across your desk.

I like to write literature that reads like pulp fiction.

I’m made from a lot of unfulfilled arson.

Two murders and an act of arson. Junior was being a bold boy this evening

I think you’ve drifted from ‘giving me a pep-talk’ into ‘advocating arson’.

Arson is another crime we can check off the list tonight.

Fuck what you have heard or what you have seen in your son. He may lie about homework and laugh when the teacher calls home. He may curse his teacher, propose arson for the whole public system. But inside is the same sense that was in me. None of us ever want to fail. None of us want to be unworthy, to not measure up.

And that was when it really came home to me what I was about to do. I was going to rob a bank, committing the additional crime of arson in the process, and if I got caught I'd go to prison. Well, I thought, go on selling second-hand jalopies for another forty years and maybe somebody'll give you a testimonial and a forty-dollar watch.

After all, all devices have their dangers. The discovery of speech introduced communication—and lies. The discovery of fire introduced cooking—and arson. The discovery of the compass improved navigation—and destroyed civilizations in Mexico and Peru. The automobile is marvelously useful—and kills Americans by the tens of thousands each year. Medical advances have saved lives by the millions—and intensified the population explosion.

There is no morality to be found in evil. But to recognise that which is truly evil one must forget the rules of morality.

It is the greatest tragedy and the greatest beauty of a relationship: that at some level, the person you are closest to will always be a total friggin' mystery.

There was some kind of passion between them. It gave off a faint wrong smoky odor, like something burning where it shouldn’t be, arson committed by children playing with matches. I

Petty theft, murder, forgery, arson, and the abduction of women were all capital offenses, so the death penalty for heresy was neither unusual nor extreme.50

Red is frequently associated with passion because it is the color of fire. Those who take this seriously need to be reminded there is such a thing as arson.

Oh, what a valiant roar What a bland goodbye The coward claimed he was a lion I'm combing through the braids of lies "I'll never leave" ... "Never mind" Our field of dreams, engulfed in fire Your arson's match your somber eyes And I'll still see it until I die You're the loss of my life

One of my favorite dialogue pieces from Black Creek Burning: “It was a polite, white lie,” Brie whispered. “I’ll have to remember you think that way,” Nathan said.

With Adrienne dead, Dani in lockup, Julia in the hospital, and Heather missing (also: suspected of arson), the sooner we start sorting things out with law enforcement the better. The police will have questions and I should cooperate. I agreed.

Like waking up in our home one night to find ourselves in a blazing fire, we must be arsonists of emotion, forcing ourselves to grab only what is truly important to us before our life-rafters collapse in on us and we can no longer escape alive.

The Dick tells us that Denny once worked on some arson cases, but I'd wager a mortgage payment that those cases took place when you created fire by rubbing two sticks together so you could cook the stegosaurus you killed with a spear and dragged back to the cave.

Born deceitful, obdurate, imperious, barbaric, selfish, as extravagant in his pleasures as he was miserly when it came to doing any good, a liar, a glutton, a drunkard, a coward, given to sodomy, incest, murder, arson and theft – not a single virtue compensated for all these vices.

This was not the story of Accomack. This was the story of America. In 1910, back in the peak of the Eastern Shore’s wealth, more than 70 percent of Americans lived in rural counties. It was the norm, it was the standard. Now, rural counties contained only 15 percent of the nation’s population.

Baseball was mighty glamorous and exciting to me,” he remembered, “but there is no use in blinking at the fact that at that time the game was thought, by solid, respectable people, to be only one degree above grand larceny, arson and mayhem, and those who engaged in it were beneath the notice of decent society.

The tactics that the antis have used, for decade, have been so explicitly un-Christian (and I’m not just talking about the murder, arson, bombings, and other terrorist attacks that have stained the anti-abortion movement since its inception) that it seems to me a wonder that any faithful Christian would want any part of them.

In Detroit, it's so fucking poor that fire is cheaper than a movie. A can of gas is $3.50 and movie is 8 bucks. But there aren't any movie theaters left in Detroit so fuck it. They burn the empty house next door and they sit on the fucking porch with a 40, and they're barbecuing and laughing because it's fucking entertainment.

Dalin must have whiffed the anarch in me, a man with no ties to state or society. Still, he was unable to sense an autonomy that puts up with these forces as objective facts but without recognizing them. What he lacked was a grounding in history. Opposition is collaboration; this was something from which Dalin, without realizing it, could not stay free. Basically, he damaged order less than he confirmed it. The emergence of the anarchic nihilist is like a goad that convinces society of its unity. The anarch, in contrast, not only recognizes society a priori as imperfect, he actually acknowledges it with that limitation. He is more or less repulsed by state and society, yet there are times and places in which the invisible harmony shimmers through the visible harmony. This is obviously chiefly in the work of art. In that case, one serves joyfully. But the anarchic nihilist thinks the exact opposite. The Temple of Artemis, to cite an example, would inspire him to commit arson. The anarch, however, would have no qualms about entering the temple in order to meditate and to participate with an offering. This is possible in any temple worthy of the name.

Black Creek Burning: “It was a polite, white lie,” Brie whispered. “I’ll have to remember you think that way,” Nathan said.

It's a filthy city. Everything here is trash. Eventually someone's gotta burn it.

I’m the daughter of a mad man, who also grew up without a mother’s love. Do you want to bet that I won't bite? I’m notoriously known to do so.

Restraint is the whole purpose of want and desire; just as the resistance of the filament makes a light bulb glow, your restraint gives you character.

Do you spend a lot of nights keeping the fire department in hysterics with creative acts of arson?” “Everyone needs a hobby,” he said. Then

far, they have helped prevent three burglaries, two carjackings, and an attempted arson.

If a person starts a wildfire, it is called ‘arson’. If a corporation starts a wildfire, it is called a ‘normal aspect of business’.

[Non-flammable? Challenge accepted.] [Alan], I texted, [arson is bad.] [It's in the spirit of academic inquiry! It's SCIENCE!] ['Science' is not a legal defense.] [Damn them.]

Arson. Assault. Mischief and Misinformation.

Why did you decide to join me?” “Why … ?” repeated Redhead, needing time to think. “Word of three letters,” said Lymond. “Come along, for God’s sake: no need to let me have it all my own way. What was it? Rape, incest, theft, treason, arson, wetting the bed at night …” “… Or burning my mother alive,” said the other sarcastically. “Oh, be original at least.

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 were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other. In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own. I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel. Is there a tunnel?" he said.

I’ve never been with a boy who hasn’t seen me naked. It’s always the squeaky futon, bear-it-all, turn-off-the-lights quickstep. Don’t chalk it up to “daddy issues.” Maybe I’m sick of keeping private parts private. I don’t want rainwater secrets on my lips, tasting of “don’t make too much noise”. October’s dust in my lungs, maybe I don’t want bits of four AM lingering in my subconscious. Smokers breathe in fire, coat their insides in ash. Is that suicide or arson? Listen to me, listen to me. I’m alive. I’M ALIVE. I’m naked and bruised, but I’m alive. I’m not a piece of fruit. Don’t press into my flesh, looking for soft spots. My whole body is tender and rotten, but I’m alive. I’m alive and just because you can see it all, doesn’t mean you know it all

White folk commit the bulk of the crimes in our nation. And, beloved, it might surprise you that white folk commit the most violent crimes too. According to FBI statistics, black folk committed 36 percent of violent crime in 2015, while white folk committed 42 percent of violent crimes in the same year. White folk consistently lead all other groups in aggravated assault, larceny, illegal weapons possession, arson, and vandalism. And white folk are far more likely to target the vulnerable too. White folk lead the way in forcible rape. You’re also more likely to kill children, the elderly, significant others, family members, and even yourselves. White folk commit a majority of gang-related murders too. A majority of the homicide victims in this country are white. White folk are six times as likely to be murdered by a white person as they are to be taken out by a black “thug.” The white-on-white mayhem is profound, yet no one speaks of it in racial terms. That’s

If it was in Grief, it was philosophy, if in joy, it was madness. Just the way a philandering flame could be for warmth, or for arson. My hands clutch my stomach, as wave after wave kicked my feet.

It ended. Of course it did, it finally did, and like a lot of things, by the time it actually ended, people were starting to become a little less aware of the fact that it was still going on at all.

And on the other side of the ledger, unions like the Teamsters often employed their own muscle, their own reigns of terror, including bombings, arsons, beatings, and murders. The warfare and violence were not just between labor and management. It was often between rival unions vying for the same membership. Sadly, it was often violence directed at rank-and-file union members who urged democratic reform of their unions. The

Frankly, They get on like a house on fire is the most misleading saying in the English language. Faulty wiring? Misuse of heating equipment? Suspected arson? Not evocative of two people getting along in the least.

Mike Cabral’s task force came to believe that John Orr was responsible for the vast majority of all the arsons they were studying, and by way of unverifiable proof, they pointed to the astounding statistic that showed a 90 percent drop in brush-fire activity since his arrest. In the county foothill area, brush fires had averaged sixty-seven a year clear back to 1981. After his arrest the average had dropped to one per year.

That's what we've been taught, this is the underpinning of all European culture-this firm belief that there are no secrets that won't sooner or later come to light. Who was it that said it? Jesus? No, Pascal, I think it was… so naïve. But this faith has been nurtured for centuries; it has sprouted its own mythology: the cranes of Ibycus, manuscripts don't burn. An ontological faith in the fundamental knowability of every human deed. The certainty that, as they now teach journalism majors, you can find everything on the Internet. As if the Library of Alexandria never existed. Or the Pogruzhalsky arson, when the whole historical section of the Academy of Sciences' Public Library, more than six-hundred thousand volumes, including the Central Council archives from 1918, went up in flames. That was in the summer of 1964; Mom was pregnant with me already, and almost for an entire month afterward, as she made her way to work at the Lavra, she would get off the trolleybus when it got close to the university and take the subway the rest of the way: above ground, the stench from the site of the fire made her nauseous. Artem said there were early printed volumes and even chronicles in that section-our entire Middle Ages went up in smoke, almost all of the pre-Muscovite era. The arsonist was convicted after a widely publicized trial, and then was sent to work in Moldova's State Archives: the war went on. And we comforted ourselves with "manuscripts don't burn." Oh, but they do burn. And cannot be restored.

People think they’re being saved from a Bolshevik revolution,” Frunze said. “The Nazi press has them convinced that the Communists were about to launch a campaign of murder, arson, and poison in every town and village.

Sometimes I think Earth has got to be the insane asylum of the universe. . . and I'm here by computer error. At sixty-eight, I hope I've gained some wisdom in the past fourteen lustrums and it’s obligatory to speak plain and true about the conclusions I've come to; now that I have been educated to believe by such mentors as Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Pohl, (S. Fowler) Wright, Orwell, Taine, Temple, Gernsback, Campbell and other seminal influences in scientifiction, I regret the lack of any female writers but only Radclyffe Hall opened my eyes outside sci-fi. I was a secular humanist before I knew the term. I have not believed in God since childhood's end. I believe a belief in any deity is adolescent, shameful and dangerous. How would you feel, surrounded by billions of human beings taking Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and the stork seriously, and capable of shaming, maiming or murdering in their name? I am embarrassed to live in a world retaining any faith in church, prayer or a celestial creator. I do not believe in Heaven, Hell or a Hereafter; in angels, demons, ghosts, goblins, the Devil, vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, warlocks, UFOs or other delusions; and in very few mundane individuals--politicians, lawyers, judges, priests, militarists, censors and just plain people. I respect the individual's right to abortion, suicide and euthanasia. I support birth control. I wish to Good that society were rid of smoking, drinking and drugs. My hope for humanity - and I think sensible science fiction has a beneficial influence in this direction - is that one day everyone born will be whole in body and brain, will live a long life free from physical and emotional pain, will participate in a fulfilling way in their contribution to existence, will enjoy true love and friendship, will pity us 20th century barbarians who lived and died in an atrocious, anachronistic atmosphere of arson, rape, robbery, kidnapping, child abuse, insanity, murder, terrorism, war, smog, pollution, starvation and the other negative “norms” of our current civilization. I have devoted my life to amassing over a quarter million pieces of sf and fantasy as a present to posterity and I hope to be remembered as an altruist who would have been an accepted citizen of Utopia.

Brutality is boring. Over and over, hell night after hell night, the same old dumb, tedious, bestial routine: making men crawl; making men groan, hanging men from the bars; shoving men; slapping men; freezing men in the showers; running men into walls; displaying shackled fathers to their sons and sons to their fathers. And if it turned out that you'd been given the wrong man, when you were done making his life unforgettably small and nasty, you allowed him to be your janitor and pick up the other prisoners' trash. There was always another prisoner, and another. Faceless men under hoods: you stripped them of their clothes, you stripped them of their pride. There wasn't much more you could take away from them, but people are inventive: one night some soldiers took a razor to one of Saddam's former general in Tier 1A and shaved off his eyebrows. He was an old man. "He looked like a grandfather and seemed like a nice guy," Sabrina Harman said, and she had tried to console him, telling him he looked younger and slipping him a few cigarettes. Then she had to make him stand at attention facing a boom box blasting the rapper Eminem, singing about raping his mother, or committing arson, or sneering at suicides, something like that⁠—these were some of the best-selling songs in American history. "Eminem is pretty much torture all in himself, and if one person's getting tortured, everybody is, because that music's horrible," Harman said. The general maintained his bearing against the onslaught of noise. "He looked so sad," Harman said. "I felt so bad for the guy." In fact, she said, "Out of everything I saw, that's the worst." This seems implausible, or at least illogical, until you think about it. The MI block was a place where a dead guy was just a dead guy. And a guy hanging from a window frame or a guy forced to drag his nakedness over a wet concrete floor⁠—well, how could you relate to that, except maybe to take a picture? But a man who kept his chin up while you blasted him with rape anthems, and old man shorn of his eyebrows whose very presence made you think of his grandkids--you could let that get to you, especially if you had to share in his punishment: "Slut, you think I won't choke no whore / til the vocal cords don't work in her throat no more!..." or whatever the song was.

I wished I’d thought of that last before I’d departed. It might have been good advice to give out in my final days in Copper Downs, had I been able to fit such a conversation in between my busy schedule of murder, arson, and funerary rites.

What are you doing?" Alain asked. "Starting a fire, of course." Mari held up the thing in her hand. "It's a fire-starter. A really simple device. Haven't you ever seen one?" Alain shook his head. "Never. That thing seems very complicated. I do not understand how it can work." "How do you start fires?" That was a Guild secret. Or was it? The elders had told him that no Mechanic could understand how it worked. What would this Mechanic say if he told her? "I use my mind to channel power to create a place where it is hot, altering the nature of the illusion there," Alain explained, "and then use my mind to put that heat on what I want to burn." "Oh," Mechanic Mari said. "Is that actually how you visualize the process?" "That is how it is done," Alain said. "That's...interesting." She grinned. "So, instead of making fire by doing something complicated or hard to understand like striking a flint, you just alter the nature of reality. That is a lot simpler.

It is Never Too Late to Mend." Since it can never be too late To change your life, or else renew it, Let the unpleasant process wait Until you are compelled to do it. The State provides (and gratis too) Establishments for such as you. Remember this, and pluck up heart, That, be you publican or parson, Your ev'ry art must have a start, From petty larceny to arson; And even in the burglar's trade, The cracksman is not born, but made. So, if in your career of crime, You fail to carry out some "coup", Then try again a second time, And yet again, until you do; And don't despair, or fear the worst, Because you get found out at first. Perhaps the battle will not go, On all occasions, to the strongest; You may be fairly certain tho' That He Laughs Last who laughs the Longest. So keep a good reserve of laughter, Which may be found of use hereafter. Believe me that, howe'er well meant, A Good Resolve is always brief; Don't let your precious hours be spent In turning over a new leaf. Such leaves, like Nature's, soon decay, And then are only in the way. The Road to—-well, a certain spot, (A Road of very fair dimensions), Has, so the proverb tells us, got A parquet-floor of Good Intentions. Take care, in your desire to please, You do not add a brick to these. For there may come a moment when You shall be mended willy-nilly, With many more misguided men, Whose skill is undermined with skilly. Till then procrastinate, my friend; "It Never is Too Late to Mend!

The truth of it was, I’d been running the wrong experiment my whole life, and while Cassidy was the first person to realize, she didn’t add the elements that allowed me to proceed down a different path. She lent a spark, perhaps, or tendered the flame, but the arson was mine. Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that’s all. I don’t know if he’s right, but I do know that I spent a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.

I fully planned to burn the place down behind me on general principle. I was getting the hang of arson. It really sends a message, you know? Not only will I kill your dudes and steal your shit, but I will burn your place down behind me. Yes, I will.

Arson tried to grab him before his face hit the dirt, but it was too late. “Don’t touch me. This is where I belong.” “Fine.” Arson shrugged, lying down beside him on the ground. “What are you doing?” “Helping you,” Arson said, placing his hands behind his head. “The first session’s free.

In such circumstances there can be no argument; the necessary minimum of agreement cannot be reached ... It is as though in the middle of a chess tournament one competitor should suddenly begin screaming that the other is guilty of arson or bigamy. The point that is really at issue remains untouched.

Nietzsche, with his grotesque exaggeration, goes much further. The strong men, the masters, regain the pure conscience of a beast of prey; monsters filled with joy, they can return from a fearful succession of murder, arson, rape and torture with the same joy in their hearts, the same contentment in their souls as if they had indulged in some student’s rag… When a man is capable of commanding, when he is by nature a “Master,” when he is violent in act and gesture, of what importance are treaties to him?… To judge morality properly, it must be replaced by two concepts borrowed from zoology: the taming of a beast and the breeding of a specific species.

Incendiary That one small boy with a face like pallid cheese And burnt-out little eyes could make a blaze As brazen, fierce and huge, as red and gold And zany yellow as the one that spoiled Three thousand guineas' worth of property And crops at Godwin's Farm on Saturday Is frightening---as fact and metaphor: An ordinary match intended for The lighting of a pipe or kitchen fire Misused may set a whole menagerie Of flame-fanged tigers roaring hungrily. And frightening, too, that one small boy should set The sky on fire and choke the stars to heat Such skinny limbs and such a little heart Which would have been content with one warm kiss Had there been anyone to offer this.

She was right, though, in the end. I never should have given her so much credit. It all got tangled together, her appearance and Toby coming back into my life and the first time I ever read a book that spoke to me, and the question of who I wanted to be in the aftermath of my personal tragedy. Because I made a decision that year, to start mattering in a way that had nothing to do with sports teams or plastic crowns, and the reality is, I might have made that decision without her, or if I’d never fallen in love with a girl who considered love to be the biggest disaster of all. The truth of it was, I’d been running the wrong experiment my whole life, and while Cassidy was the first person to realize, she didn’t add the elements that allowed me to proceed down a different path. She lent a spark, perhaps, or tendered the flame, but the arson was mine. Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that’s all. I don’t know if he’s right, but I do know that I spent a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.

The trouble with being the type of person who would do anything for love was that you would do anything for love.

As economies change, as landscapes change, nostalgia is the only good America will never stop producing. We gorge on it ourselves and pass it down to generations.

One or two percent of any society is always subcultural. The Trotskyite, the Communist, the arsonist, the homosexual, the assassin--these are obviously dangerous and the courts must dispose their cases. Law has its problems. I shall not underestimate them; but law is not the problem. The enemy I am talking about is the one lurking in the guts of the whole nation like an invisible and deadly virus. It is not an action, but an attitude that says everyone has the right to arson, murder, rape, because doing those things is necessarily included under the rubric of freedom, of doing what one wants--not what I want or you want, but what someone wants. In a word, we have raised the abnormal and aberrant to the condition of a human right. The beast is loose among us, and he is welcome in our universities and homes.

Warning: “Good Intentions” contains violence, explicit sex, nudity, inappropriate use of church property, portrayals of beings divine and demonic bearing little or no resemblance to established religion or mythology, trespassing, bad language, sacrilege, blasphemy, attempted murder, arguable murder, divinely mandated murder, justifiable murder, filthy murder, sexual promiscuity, kidnapping, attempted rape, arson, dead animals, desecrated graves, gang activity, theft, assault and battery, panties, misuse of the 911 system, fantasy depictions of sorcery and witchcraft, multiple references to various matters of fandom, questionable interrogation tactics, cell phone abuse, reckless driving, consistent abuse of vampires (because they deserve it), even more explicit sex, illegal use of firearms within city limits, polyamory, abuse of authority, hit and run driving, destruction of private property, underage drinking, disturbances of the peace, disorderly conduct, internet harassment, bearers of false witness, mayhem, dismemberment, falsification of records, tax evasion, an uncomfortably sexy mother, bad study habits, and a very silly white guy inappropriately calling another white guy “nigga” (for which he will surely suffer). All characters depicted herein are over the age of 18, with the exception of one little girl who merely needs to get her cat out of a tree. Don’t worry, nothing bad happens to her. She makes it through the story just fine.

Bravo,’ said Mathis. ‘I’m proud of you. You ought to be tortured every day. I really must remember to do something evil this evening. I must start at once. I have a few marks in my favour – only small ones, alas,’ he added ruefully – ‘but I shall work fast now that I have seen the light. What a splendid time I’m going to have. Now, let’s see, where shall I start, murder, arson, rape? But no, these are peccadilloes. I must really consult the good Marquis de Sade. I am a child, an absolute child in these matters.’ His face fell.

They don’t want the Negro who has just moved out of rural Dixie as their neighbor,” a city official told the Chicago Defender in a story that described what it called a “2-Year City Ban on Migrants.” With close to half a million colored people overflowing the black belt by 1950, racial walls that had been “successfully defended for a generation,” in the words of the historian Allan Spear, were facing imminent collapse, but not without a fight. Chicago found itself in the midst of “chronic urban guerilla warfare” that rivaled the city’s violent spasms at the start of the Migration, “when one racially motivated bombing or arson occurred every twenty days,” according to the historian Arnold Hirsch.

The campaign’s most chilling feature was the huge wave of murder and arson orchestrated by the Ku Klux Klan against black and white Republicans in the South. As state conventions drafted new constitutions that endowed blacks with the franchise, the white South acted to stamp out that voting power through brute force. Nathan Bedford Forrest boasted that the Klan had recruited forty thousand men in Tennessee alone, half a million across the South. This bloodthirsty backlash grew out of simple arithmetic: in South Carolina and Mississippi, blacks made up a majority of the electorate, while in other southern states, the substantial black populace, joined with white Republicans, appeared set to prevail during Reconstruction.

Twenty thousand troops drawn from several countries, including Japan, marched to Beijing to relieve the siege and loot the city. Among the British contingent was a north Indian soldier, Gadhadar Singh, who felt sympathetic to the anti-Western cause of the Boxers even though he believed that their bad tactics had ‘blanketed their entire country and polity in dust.’ His first sight of China was the landscape near Beijing, of famished Chinese with skeletal bodies in abandoned or destroyed villages, over whose broken buildings flew the flags of China’s joint despoilers- France, Russia and Japan. River waters had become a ‘cocktail of blood, flesh, bones and fat.’ Singh particularly blamed the Russian and French soldiers for the mass killings, arson and rape inflicted on the Chinese. Some of the soldiers tortured their victims purely for fun. ‘All these sportsmen,’ Singh noted, ‘belonged to what where called “civilized nations”.

Grabbing my hair and pulling it to the point my skull throbs, I rock back and forth while insanity threatens to destroy my mind completely. Father finally did what Lachlan started. Destroyed my spirit. The angel is gone. The monster has come and killed her. Lachlan Sipping his whiskey, Shon gazes with a bored expression at the one-way mirror as Arson lights the match, grazing the skin of his victim with it as the man convulses in fear. “Show off,” he mutters, and on instinct, I slap the back of his head. He rubs it, spilling the drink. “The fuck? We are wasting time, Lachlan. Tell him to speed up. You know if you let him, he can play for hours.” All in good time, we don’t need just a name. He is saving him for a different kind of information that we write down as Sociopath types furiously on his computer, searching for the location and everything else using FBI databases. “Bingo!” Sociopath mutters, picking up the laptop and showing the screen to me. “It’s seven hours away from New York, in a deserted location in the woods. The land belongs to some guy who is presumed dead and the man accrued the right to build shelters for abused women. They actually live there as a place of new hope or something.” Indeed, the center is advertised as such and has a bunch of stupid reviews about it. Even the approval of a social worker, but then it doesn’t surprise me. Pastor knows how to be convincing. “Kids,” I mutter, fisting my hands. “Most of them probably have kids. He continues to do his fucked-up shit.” And all these years, he has been under my radar. I throw the chair and it bounces off the wall, but no one says anything as they feel the same. “Shon, order a plane. Jaxon—” “Yeah, my brothers will be there with us. But listen, the FBI—” he starts, and I nod. He takes a beat and quickly sends a message to someone on his phone while I bark into the microphone. “Arson, enough with the bullshit. Kill him already.” He is of no use to us anyway. Arson looks at the wall and shrugs. Then pours gas on his victim and lights up the match simultaneously, stepping aside as the man screams and thrashes on the chair, and the smell of burning flesh can be sensed even here. Arson jogs to a hose, splashing water over him. The room is designed security wise for this kind of torture, since fire is one of the first things I taught. After all, I’d learned the hard way how to fight with it. “On the plane, we can adjust the plan. Let’s get moving.” They spring into action as I go to my room to get a specific folder to give to Levi before I go, when Sociopath’s hand stops me, bumping my shoulder. “Is this a suicide mission for you?” he asks, and I smile, although it lacks any humor. My friend knows everything. Instead of answering his question, I grip his shoulder tight, and confide, “Valencia is entrusted to you.” We both know that if I want to destroy Pastor, I have to die with him. This revenge has been twenty-three years in the making, and I never envisioned a different future. This path always leads to death one way or another, and the only reason I valued my life was because I had to kill him. Valencia will be forever free from the evils that destroyed her life. I’ll make sure of it. Once upon a time, there was an angel. Who made the monster’s heart bleed.

Information or allegations reflecting negatively on individuals or groups seen less sympathetically by the intelligentsia pass rapidly into the public domain with little scrutiny and much publicity. Two of the biggest proven hoaxes of our time have involved allegations of white men gang-raping a black woman-- first the Tawana Brawley hoax of 1987 and later the false rape charges against three Duke University students in 2006. In both cases, editorial indignation rang out across the land, without a speck of evidence to substantiate either of these charges. Moreover, the denunciations were not limited to the particular men accused, but were often extended to society at large, of whom these men were deemed to be symptoms or 'the tip of the iceberg.' In both cases, the charges fit a pre-existing vision, and that apparently made mundane facts unnecessary. Another widely publicized hoax-- one to which the President of the United States added his sub-hoax-- was a 1996 story appearing in USA Today under the headline, 'Arson at Black Churches Echoes Bigotry of the Past.' There was, according to USA Today, 'an epidemic of church burning,' targeting black churches. Like the gang-rape hoaxes, this story spread rapidly through the media. The Chicago Tribune referred to 'an epidemic of criminal and cowardly arson' leaving black churches in ruins. As with the gang-rape hoaxes, comments on the church fire stories went beyond those who were supposed to have set these fires to blame forces at work in society at large. Jesse Jackson was quoted was quoted in the New York Times as calling these arsons part of a 'cultural conspiracy' against blacks, which 'reflected the heightened racial tensions in the south that have been exacerbated by the assault on affirmative action and the populist oratory of Republican politicians like Pat Buchanan.' Time magazine writer Jack White likewise blamed 'the coded phrases' of Republican leaders for 'encouraging the arsonists.' Columnist Barbara Reynolds of USA Today said that the fires were 'an attempt to murder the spirit of black America.' New York Times columnist Bob Herbert said, "The fuel for these fires can be traced to a carefully crafted environment of bigotry and hatred that was developed over the last century.' As with the gang-rape hoaxes, the charges publicized were taken as reflecting on the whole society, not just those supposedly involved in what was widely presumed to be arson, rather than fires that break out for a variety of other reasons. Washington Post columnist Dorothy Gilliam said that society in effect was 'giving these arsonists permission to commit these horrible crimes.' The climax of these comments came when President Bill Clinton, in his weekly radio address, said that these church burnings recalled similar burnings of black churches in Arkansas when he was a boy. There were more that 2,000 media stories done on the subject after the President's address. This story began to unravel when factual research showed that (1) no black churches were burned in Arkansas when Bill Clinton was growing up, (2) there had been no increase in fires at black churches, but an actual decrease over the previous 15 years, (3) the incidence of fires at white churches was similar to the incidence of fires at black churches, and (4) where there was arson, one-third of the suspects were black. However, retractions of the original story-- where there were retractions at all-- typically were given far less prominence than the original banner headlines and heated editorial comments.

There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition. ‘So,’ continued Bond, warming to his argument, ‘Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.’ ‘Bravo,’ said Mathis. ‘I’m proud of you. You ought to be tortured every day. I really must remember to do something evil this evening. I must start at once. I have a few marks in my favour – only small ones, alas,’ he added ruefully – ‘but I shall work fast now that I have seen the light. What a splendid time I’m going to have. Now, let’s see, where shall I start, murder, arson, rape? But no, these are peccadilloes. I must really consult the good Marquis de Sade. I am a child, an absolute child in these matters.’ His face fell. ‘Ah, but our conscience, my dear Bond. What shall we do with him while we are committing some juicy sin? That is a problem. He is a crafty person this conscience and very old, as old as the first family of apes which gave birth to him. We must give that problem really careful thought or we shall spoil our enjoyment. Of course, we should murder him first, but he is a tough bird. It will be difficult, but if we succeed, we could be worse even than Le Chiffre.