Blackmailing Quotes

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One last thing," he said. "Stop looking for me." "I'm not looking for you." I scoffed. He touched his index finger to my forehead, my skin absurdly warming under his touch. It didn't escape me that he couldn't seem to stop finding reasons to touch me. Nor did I miss that I didn't want him to stop. "Under all the layers, a part of you remembers. It's the part that came looking for me tonight. It's that part that's going to get you killed, if you're not careful." We stood face-to-face, both of us breathing hard. The sirens were so close now. "What am I supposed to tell the police?" I said. "You're not going to talk to the police." "Oh, really? Funny, because I plan on telling them exactly how you rammed that tire iron into Gabe's back. Unless you answer my questions." He gave an ironic snort. "Blackmail? You've changed, Angel.
Becca Fitzpatrick (Silence (Hush, Hush, #3))
But the captain just shook his head. “That’s very good of you to say, Cress. But trust me. I would have blackmailed someone.
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail . We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on Earth to rule all of humanity.
Thomas Sankara
Blackmailers never explain their thinking. They're like pirates that way. Dark-hearted, dangerous--- and cool like Johnny Depp.
Janette Rallison (How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend)
Strange how things turn out. Two birds, one stone and all that.' McBlane chuckled at his own impromptu joke. 'But things have worked out for the best and now we all get to work together,' he said, and a smile spread across his face as easy as a politician's lie.
R.D. Ronald (The Elephant Tree)
Alan: Conning people out of their savings. Forgery. Blackmail. Selling real estate on Mars. We could have it all. You with me, Bambi?" Sin: "Clive, I was with you from 'I'm a social worker.
Sarah Rees Brennan (The Demon's Surrender)
Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.
C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)
My husband would do anything for me ...' It's degrading. No human being ought to have such power over another." "It's a very real power, Harriet." "Then ... we won't use it. If we disagree, we'll fight it out like gentlemen. We won't stand for matrimonial blackmail.
Dorothy L. Sayers (Busman's Honeymoon (Lord Peter Wimsey, #13))
You’re a blackmailer—” “I broker information.” “A con artist—” “I create opportunity.” “A bawd and a murderer—” “I don’t run whores, and I kill for a cause.” “And what cause is that?” “Same as yours, merch. Profit.” “How do you get your information, Mister Brekker?” “You might say I’m a lockpick.” “You must be a very gifted one.” “I am indeed.” Kaz leaned back slightly. “You see, every man is a safe, a vault of secrets and longings. Now, there are those who take the brute’s way, but I prefer a gentler approach—the right pressure applied at the right moment, in the right place. It’s a delicate thing. “Do you always speak in metaphors, Mister Brekker?” Kaz smiled. “It’s not a metaphor.” He was out of his chair before his chains hit the ground.
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
What's going on?" Kynan asked Luc smiled, which was little more than a baring of his teeth. "She's a warg. She knows I know, but I'm guessing her human buddies don't know. She's afraid I'll tell." "Are you going to?" "That depends." "On what?" Luc's voice dropped an octave. "Whether or not she gives me what I want." "And that is?" "Fifteen minutes. Naked." "That's blackmail." Luc snorted. "Wargs call it negotiation." "So you want fifteen minutes...what will she want?" "With me?" Luc winked. "Two hours.
Larissa Ione (Passion Unleashed (Demonica, #3))
He pulled away abruptly - self-preservation required it - and pressed his brow to hers, breathing deep. "You remember one thing. You decide you want to get married, it's going to be me." Briony watched him stalk outside, slamming the kitchen door behind him. Both eyebrows raised, she turned to Ken. Close your mouth, honey. That's just Jack trying to be romantic and failing miserably. Don't let him get away with that shit either. If he's going to ask you, make him do it all they way. You know - down on one knee, looking stupid." Briony nearly choked. "That's just mean, Ken." He leaned close to her. "If you do it, Briony, tell me first so I can videotape it. I could blackmail him for the rest of his life.
Christine Feehan (Conspiracy Game (GhostWalkers, #4))
Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail.
Benito Mussolini
That's blackmail on top of attempted murder, Kye. I can officially kill you
Keri Arthur (Bound to Shadows (Riley Jenson Guardian, #8))
Whether they’re family or friends, manipulators are difficult to escape from. Give in to their demands and they’ll be happy enough, but if you develop a spine and start saying no, it will inevitably bring a fresh round of head games and emotional blackmail. You’ll notice that breaking free from someone else’s dominance will often result in them accusing you of being selfish. Yes, you’re selfish, because you’ve stopped doing what they want you to do for them. Wow. Can these people hear themselves?!
Rosie Blythe (The Princess Guide to Life)
The self is like a pimping blackmailing chauffeur who gets you from here to there on word lines.
William S. Burroughs
Love is a wonderful thing, my dear, but it leaves you wide open for blackmail.
Jasper Fforde (Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next, #2))
Pia was blackmailed into committing a crime more suicidal than she could possibly have imagined, and she had no one to blame but herself.
Thea Harrison (Dragon Bound (Elder Races, #1))
Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
Jean Cocteau
Are you sad?” “Not yet.” He closes his eyes. “I’ll drive for a bit.” I hold out my hand. He shakes his head. “You’re my guest. I’ll drive. You’re tired.” “Oh, I’m your guest now?” I put as much menace as I can into my walk and he puts both hands behind his back. I smile at him and he smiles back. I’m surprised the pinprick stars above us don’t explode into silver powder. The sadness I caught in his eyes is burned away by a spark of amusement. “My hostage. My blackmailed, unwilling captive. Stockholm Shortcake.
Sally Thorne (The Hating Game)
‎A farm is a manipulative creature. There is no such thing as finished. Work comes in a stream and has no end. There are only the things that must be done now and things that can be done later. The threat the farm has got on you, the one that keeps you running from can until can't, is this: do it now, or some living thing will wilt or suffer or die. Its blackmail, really.
Kristin Kimball (The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love)
if you walk the straight and narrow, they can never blackmail you or coerce you into doing something you don’t agree with.
Sidney Halston (Against the Cage (Worth the Fight, #1))
Loyalty, Signor Molteni, not love. Penelope is loyal to Ulysses but we do not know how far she loved him...and as you know people can sometimes be absolutely loyal without loving. In certain cases, in fact, loyalty is form of vengeance, of black-mail, of recovering one's self-respect. Loyalty, not love.
Alberto Moravia (Contempt)
Are you trying to blackmail me?” she asked. “Not trying, no. Not yet, at least.” He smiled pleasantly, because he had the sense it would irritate her even more. “But give me time, and I might find something I want from you.” She let out a derisive laugh. “In your dreams.” He winked. “Every night, sweetheart.
Lisa Maxwell (The Last Magician (The Last Magician, #1))
When that bastard calls back, you tell him he’s won this round. I’ll marry him. But I don’t take well to being blackmailed, and tell him I intend to spend the rest of my life making him miserable, got that?
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Ain't She Sweet?)
You have a virus time bomb in your software. The active boot partition of your system has been encrypted. You must respond to this message within fifteen minutes to prevent detonation.
Michael Parker (The Eagle's Covenant)
The necessity of reform mustn’t be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: “Don’t criticize, since you’re not capable of carrying out a reform.” That’s ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, “this, then, is what needs to be done.” It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn’t have to lay down the law for the law. It isn’t a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is.
Michel Foucault (The Essential Foucault: Selections from the Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984)
She frowned at him. "That sounds vaguely like a threat." "It's not vague and it's not a threat. It's clearly blackmail.
P.C. Cast (Brighid's Quest (Partholon, #5))
Blackmail is aggravating in normal circumstances, but far worse when it's coming from a younger sister.
Mackenzi Lee (The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Siblings, #1))
Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to slip inside a story and stop being recognizable, controllable, subject to blackmail.
Fabrizio De André
Grayson looked at me again. This time his gaze traveled form my hair down, and he let me see that he was looking. What he meant by this was that he thought I was beautiful, it was not just my miraculous hair, and we shouldn’t be distracted from our true love by the pesky detail that he was blackmailing me into dating his brother. Right.
Jennifer Echols (Such a Rush)
Okay you know what, I'm through with you and your threats and your blackmail. Just go ahead and kill me already
Theodora Taylor (Her Russian Billionaire: 50 Loving States, Texas)
Blackmail. It was the socially-approved equivalent of blow me, and I'll get you some of the good stuff.
Kitty Thomas (Comfort Food)
The ideological blackmail that has been in place since the original Live Aid concerts in 1985 has insisted that ‘caring individuals’ could end famine directly, without the need for any kind of political solution or systemic reorganization. It is necessary to act straight away, we were told; politics has to be suspended in the name of ethical immediacy. Bono’s Product Red brand wanted to dispense even with the philanthropic intermediary. ‘Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism - on the contrary, Product Red’s ‘punk rock’ or ‘hip hop’ character consisted in its ‘realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town. No, the aim was only to ensure that some of the proceeds of particular transactions went to good causes. The fantasy being that western consumerism, far from being intrinsically implicated in systemic global inequalities, could itself solve them. All we have to do is buy the right products.
Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?)
The price you pay for your addiction to praise will be an extreme vulnerability to the opinions of others. Like any addict, you will find you must continue to feed your habit with approval in order to avoid withdrawal pangs. The moment someone who is important to you expresses disapproval, you will crash painfully, just like the junkie who can no longer get his “stuff.” Others will be able to use this vulnerability to manipulate you. You will have to give in to their demands more often than you want to because you fear they might reject or look down on you. You set yourself up for emotional blackmail.
David D. Burns (Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy)
Does he live alone?” “Yes.” Conor stood up. “Thank you,” he said pleasantly and shot him in the head.
Michael Parker (The Eagle's Covenant)
[T]he very multiculturalism and multiethnicity that brought Salman to the West, and that also made us richer by Hanif Kureishi, Nadeem Aslam, Vikram Seth, Monica Ali, and many others, is now one of the disguises for a uniculturalism, based on moral relativism and moral blackmail (in addition to some more obvious blackmail of the less moral sort) whereby the Enlightenment has been redefined as 'white' and 'oppressive,' mass illegal immigration threatens to spoil everything for everybody, and the figure of the free-floating transnational migrant has been deposed by the contorted face of the psychopathically religious international nihilist, praying for the day when his messianic demands will coincide with possession of an apocalyptic weapon. (These people are not called nihilists for nothing.) Of all of this we were warned, and Salman was the messenger. Mutato nomine et de te fabula narrator: Change only the name and this story is about you.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
A good book is never exhausted. It goes on whispering to you from the wall. Books perfume and give weight to a room. A bookcase is as good as a view, as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms, fogs, zephyrs. I read about a family whose apartment consists of a series of spaces so strictly planned that they are obliged to give away their books as soon as they've read them. I think they have misunderstood the way books work. Reading a book is only the first step in the relationship. After you've finished it, the book enters on its real career. It stand there as a badge, a blackmailer, a monument, a scar. It's both a flaw in the room, like a crack in the plaster, and a decoration. The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait. - in "About books; recoiling, rereading, retelling", The New York Times, February 22, 1987
Anatole Broyard
I’m afraid I don’t suffer petty bureaucrats gladly. A very bad habit, but one I find hard to break. Nevertheless, you will find, Dr. Kelly, that humiliation and blackmail, when used judiciously, can be marvelously effective
Douglas Preston (The Cabinet of Curiosities (Pendergast, #3; Nora Kelly, #0B))
Is this blackmail or bribery?" "Neither. It's insurance." "Insurance?" "Yeah. That's twelve cups of coffee. Twelve trips to Grounds. Twelve chances to see you.
Kim Holden (Bright Side (Bright Side, #1))
But you are my first choice, Aria. I’ll burn down the world if I have to. I’ll kill and maim and blackmail. I’ll do anything for you.
Cora Reilly (Luca Vitiello (Born in Blood Mafia Chronicles, #0))
It was a nice bit of blackmail that kept him off my back, but he refused to take the message that I wasn’t going to work for him. ’Course, that might be my fault…since I seemed unable to say no when he waved enough money at me.
Kim Harrison (For a Few Demons More (The Hollows, #5))
Well, I'm pressuring him into having a relationship with me, and I don't know how into it he is, and there are even worse problems than that, but apart from that, its okay." "Anyone would be lucky to be emotionally blackmailed or physically forced into romance with you, friend," said Angela. "What a jerk.
Sarah Rees Brennan (Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy, #3))
If this person is a blackmailer, El, I want you to have nothing more to do with it. Blackmailers are dangerous." Her brows rose. "You've had dealings with them before, have you?" Too bloody many times. "Attempting to blackmail the Mackenzie family is a popular pastime," Hart said.
Jennifer Ashley (The Duke's Perfect Wife (MacKenzies & McBrides, #4))
But you are my first choice, Aria. I’ll burn down the world if I have to. I’ll kill and maim and blackmail. I’ll do anything for you. Maybe love is a risk, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take and as you said, it’s not a choice. I never thought I would, never thought I could love someone like that, but I fell in love with you. I fought it. It’s the first battle I didn’t mind losing.
Cora Reilly (Bound by Honor (Born in Blood Mafia Chronicles, #1))
Her mouth drops open in disbelief. “Your dad tried to blackmail the mob? Has he never seen The Godfather?
M. Leighton (Down to You (The Bad Boys, #1))
In short, the truly courageous stance is to admit that the light at the end of the tunnel is most probably the headlight of a train approaching us from the opposite direction.
Slavoj Žižek (Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbours)
He didn't give a shit what Sin did, who she "mated" with, or what she did with her assassin business. But this Lycus fucker was blackmailing her, and that just pissed him off. The sudden image of her naked, beneath a well-muscled body did'nt bother him at all. At. All.
Larissa Ione (Sin Undone (Demonica, #5))
The bonds of friendship dwindle with age, Oliver. But a little blackmail lasts forever.
Stephen Hunt (The Court of the Air (Jackelian, #1))
I gave her a dangerous smile of my own. “Do not,” I warned, “try to threaten, bribe, or blackmail me. Ever. You won’t like the consequences.
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
You're a blackmailer-" "I broker information." "A con artist-" "I create opportunity." "A bawd and a murderer-" "I don't run whores and I kill for a cause." "And what cause is that?" "Same as yours, merch. Profit.
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
Unless a person can give reasons, there is, literally, no reason why anyone else should take that person seriously. But without reasons, all we are left with is emotional blackmail. We sometimes call it 'moral blackmail,' but it has nothing to do with morals, only with the implied juvenile threat of having a tantrum unless everyone else gives in.
N.T. Wright
The Pomegranate The only legend I have ever loved is the story of a daughter lost in hell. And found and rescued there. Love and blackmail are the gist of it. Ceres and Persephone the names. And the best thing about the legend is I can enter it anywhere. And have. As a child in exile in a city of fogs and strange consonants, I read it first and at first I was an exiled child in the crackling dusk of the underworld, the stars blighted. Later I walked out in a summer twilight searching for my daughter at bed-time. When she came running I was ready to make any bargain to keep her. I carried her back past whitebeams and wasps and honey-scented buddleias. But I was Ceres then and I knew winter was in store for every leaf on every tree on that road. Was inescapable for each one we passed. And for me. It is winter and the stars are hidden. I climb the stairs and stand where I can see my child asleep beside her teen magazines, her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit. The pomegranate! How did I forget it? She could have come home and been safe and ended the story and all our heart-broken searching but she reached out a hand and plucked a pomegranate. She put out her hand and pulled down the French sound for apple and the noise of stone and the proof that even in the place of death, at the heart of legend, in the midst of rocks full of unshed tears ready to be diamonds by the time the story was told, a child can be hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance. The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured. The suburb has cars and cable television. The veiled stars are above ground. It is another world. But what else can a mother give her daughter but such beautiful rifts in time? If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift. The legend will be hers as well as mine. She will enter it. As I have. She will wake up. She will hold the papery flushed skin in her hand. And to her lips. I will say nothing.
Eavan Boland
Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister—that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.)
Christopher Hitchens (The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens)
Yet if there's one thing I know with absolute certainty, both personally and professionally, it is this: Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior. Insight won't do it. Understanding why we do the self-defeating things we do won't make us stop doing them. Nagging and pleading with the other person to change won't do it. We have to act. We have to take the first step down a new road.
Susan Forward (Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You)
He put the lasagna on the ground, stripped down to his skivvies, tucked into the shadows at the rear of the house and let his dinner come to him.
Diane L. Kowalyshyn (Crossbones (Cross your Heart and Die, #3))
Chacko had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and was permitted excesses and eccentricities nobody else was. He claimed to be writing a Family Biography that the Family would have to pay him not to publish. Ammu said that there was only one person in the family who was a fit candidate for biographical blackmail and that was Chacko himself.
Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
You’re a blackmailer—” “I broker information.” “A con artist—” “I create opportunity.” “A bawd and a murderer—” “I don’t run whores, and I kill for a cause.” “And what cause is that?” “Same as yours, merch. Profit.
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
This is emotional blackmail.' 'No, it’s life.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2))
It's a weirdly subtle conversation, I almost don't notice I'm being blackmailed.
Becky Albertalli (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Simonverse, #1))
There’s something you don’t understand about me, something you never did. When it comes to you, I’ll do whatever it takes to have you with me. I’ll steal you from another man, blackmail your father, or threaten someone’s life to bind you to me. Or kill a man for coveting what has always been mine.
Mia Knight (Once a Crime Lord (Crime Lord, #3))
I have to see him and Trevor Ogilvie on Monday. Both senior partners at once." "Good for you. I hope Jack's in trouble up to his neck." "They're being blackmailed." "Blackmail?" Riley said, his voice full of disbelief. "Jack? There's stuff out there that's even worse than the stuff everybody knows about him?
Jennifer Crusie (Fast Women)
I biked over to my dad's flat and emotionally blackmailed him into lending me enough cash to leave the country. On that trip I learnt something very inmortant. Escape through travel works. Almost from the moment i boarded my flight, life in England became meaningless. Seat-belt signs lit up, problems switched off. Broken armrests took precedence over broken hearts. By the time the plane was airborne I'd forgotten England even existed.
Alex Garland (The Beach)
I’ll let that go,” Ro told him, “if you tell me what it was like in my father’s head.” Fitz let out a relieved breath. “Fluffy.” “Like sinking into a giant marshmallow covered in feathers,” Sophie agreed. Ro choked on her laugh. “Okay, I need to figure out how to blackmail him with that.
Shannon Messenger (Flashback (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #7))
And me being jealous of how a girl like Abby could move here and choose to befriend you out of everyone, and you have so many friends already, and I don't think you even get what a big deal that is. ,.. I'm just saying that it seems like it's so easy for you, and you should know you're actually really lucky. ... You deserve it completely. You're an awesome dude, Spier and it was cool getting to know you. If I could do it again, I would have blackmailed you into being my friend and left it at that.
Becky Albertalli (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Simonverse, #1))
I’m not fucking you, not until you tell me the truth about Uram.' Something dark crawled across his face. 'Sexual blackmail, Elena?' She snorted. 'You treat me like a pet. Go fetch the bad archangel/vampire/whatever the fuck he is, Ellie, but don’t you dare ask me why. It’d be too much for your little human head.' Dropping the saccharine-sweet tone, she glared. 'I don’t sleep with men who think I’m a brainless twit.
Nalini Singh (Angels' Blood (Guild Hunter, #1))
To save one Jewish child, ten Poles and two Jews had to risk death. To betray that same child and the family that hid him required only one informer or, worse still, one blackmailer. The risk of being caught by the SS was not prison, but death- death for the entire family.
Irena Sendler
You don’t get to say it’s not a big thing. This is a big fucking thing, okay? This was supposed to be—this is mine. I’m supposed to decide when and where and who knows and how I want to say it.” Suddenly, my throat gets thick. “So, yeah, you took that from me.
Becky Albertalli (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Simonverse, #1))
He leaned over her, rested his head on her shoulder, and clung to her, his tears soaking into her shirt. What the fuck was she supposed to do with this? Hug him and say something comforting? He was blackmailing her and now she was supposed to take care of him like some kind of fucking nanny or something? She didn't know how to do that. What did people do to comfort each other?
Stacia Kane (Unholy Magic (Downside Ghosts, #2))
The next week she withheld my paycheck until I signed a document (drafted by David) in which I promised not to marry Connor. Ever. I signed the document, took the check, and had David draft another document forbidding all Spellmans to practice any form of blackmail. David tried to explain to me that a contract in which you promise not to break the law is ultimately redundant, but I didn't care.
Lisa Lutz (Revenge of the Spellmans (The Spellmans, #3))
Confidence is highly erotic.
K.D. Harp (Blackmail (True Colors #1))
So you stay, you don't tell anyone, is that it?" "Sure," Della Lee said easily. "That's blackmail." "Add it to my list of sins." "I don't think there's room left on that list," Josey said as she took a dress from its hanger. Then she closed the closet door on Della Lee.
Sarah Addison Allen (The Sugar Queen)
Kodan: “I had the good sense to win the hand of a woman as smart and kind as she is beautiful. If not more so.” Tava: “You mean you had the wit to blackmail me into following you home, where you promptly stole my heart,” she teased. Kodan: “That, too,” he agreed. “But I didn’t steal your heart. I merely exchanged it for mine.
Jean Johnson (Shifting Plains (Shifting Plains #1))
She was not a woman to be deterred by hatred: not from her workers, not from her rivals, not from the men she bullied, bribed or blackmailed to get her way. It is when they truly hate you, after all, that you know you have won. So she met the seething dislike with effortless superiority, paraded past with her shoulders back and chin high. If she was to be cast as the villain, so be it. They were always the most interesting characters anyway.
Joe Abercrombie (A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness, #1))
Every love story,every commercial trade, every secret, every matter in which trust is involved, is a gentle transaction of hostages. Everything is, to a degree, in the custody of every other thing. Blackmail, kidnapping, then, are among the extreme violations of the deal. Anyway, I seem to be about to have Jim's child; at least, I think I will, and the thing is I haven't mentioned it to Jim.
Renata Adler (Speedboat)
He, who was so monumentally intolerant by his very nature, was strangely tolerant of one human condition—a man’s morals. No other party in Germany came near to attracting so many shady characters. As we have seen, a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, homosexuals, alcoholics and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven. Hitler did not care, as long as they were useful to him.
William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany)
Knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me. All those bitter home truths she had flung at me, right from the beginning…and still loved me; was so blind that she still loved me. One day she had said: When you love me (and she had not meant “make love to me”) it’s as if God forgave me for being the mess I am; and I took it as chicanery, another emotional blackmail, to make me feel essential and so give me a sense of responsibility towards her.
John Fowles (The Magus)
His loss. I know a hell of a lot more about headstrong teenage girls than he does.” Colin gave her his most quelling look. “You’re baiting him again.” Ryan studied first one of them and then the other. “What’s going on with you two?” “Nothing.” Unfortunately, they spoke together, automatically making them look like liars. Sugar Beth recovered first and handled the situation in her own way. “Relax, Ryan. Colin’s done his best to get rid of me, but I’m blackmailing him with some unsavory facts I’ve unearthed about his past, which may or may not involve the ritual deaths of small animals, so if my body ends up in a ditch somewhere, tell the police to start their interrogations with him. Plus you might warn everybody to be careful with their cats.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Ain't She Sweet?)
The scent of blood in the wind drew him like a poultice.
Diane L. Kowalyshyn (Crossbones (Cross your Heart and Die, #3))
Fate had played a cruel trick and turned him into a monster.
Diane L. Kowalyshyn (Crossbones (Cross your Heart and Die, #3))
Changing mainstream media will be hard, but you can help create parallel options. More academics should blog, post videos, post audio, post lectures, offer articles, and more. You’ll enjoy it: I’ve had threats and blackmail, abuse, smears and formal complaints with forged documentation. But it’s worth it, for one simple reason: pulling bad science apart is the best teaching gimmick I know for explaining how good science works.
Ben Goldacre (I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That)
To demand of the loveless and the self-imprisioned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven…Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye'll accept no salvation which leaves one creature in the dark outside. But watch the sophistry or ye'll make a Dog in the Manger the tyrant of the universe.
C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)
Charity is salt in the wound. It is painful. The state gives charity with the bitter hatred of a victim to his blackmailer. The receiver of free money is subjected to harassment, insult, and profound humiliation. Newspapers are enlisted to heap scorn on the arrogant bastards who choose to beg instead of starve or let their children starve. It is made clear that the poor seek charity as a great and sordid chicanery in which they delight. And there are some who do. As there are people who take delight in sticking hot needles deep into their abdomens, swallow pieces of broken bottles. A special taste. Speaking for humanity in general, the poor accept charity with a shame and loss of self-respect that is truly pitiful.
Mario Puzo (The Fortunate Pilgrim)
I blinked and wiped my hand over my face. My fingers came back damp. I glanced across the room and saw my reflection in the mirror, hair snarled, mascara running, face streaked with tears. "Yep, you look like shit," Adam said. "And I took plenty of pictures, which I will keep until an appropriate opportunity for blackmail arises.
Kelley Armstrong (Waking the Witch (Women of the Otherworld, #11))
Well, bingo, his name popped up in the database on this crime ring’s computer as one of their own. Sloane, Wilma, KazuKen, Celi-hag, BunnyMuff, were all part of the illegal and criminal cyber-bullying ring that used blackmail to extort celebrities and famous authors, musicians, schools like Aunt Sookie Acting Academy for money or they will post lies, false rumors, photo shopped fake photos, and accusations of fake awards, fake credentials on the internet. They did that to Summer and tried to do that with Aunt Sookie, apparently. But as seemingly innocent as they seem, using young girls’ photos as their supposed fake identities, they really were part of a larger crime ring.”, Loving Summer by Kailin Gow
Kailin Gow (Loving Summer (Loving Summer, #1))
Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin), your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold. Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? ... If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle Ages. I hope you will not answer me that Power is for political men a professional duty, and that any attack against that power must be considered as a threat against which one must guard oneself at any price. This opinion is no longer held even by kings... Are you so blinded, so much a prisoner of your own authoritarian ideas, that you do not realise that being at the head of European Communism, you have no right to soil the ideas which you defend by shameful methods ... What future lies in store for Communism when one of its most important defenders tramples in this way every honest feeling?
Pyotr Kropotkin
You have cast her as your beautiful victim and wilfully overlook those more shaded layers of her character, because it doesn’t comfortably fit your narrative. But this is the truth: Andie Bell was a bully who used emotional blackmail to get what she wanted. She sold drugs without care or regard for how they might be used. We will never know if she knew she was facilitating drug-assisted sexual assault, but certainly when confronted with this truth by her own sister she could not find it in herself to show compassion.
Holly Jackson (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #1))
What is certain is that he [the baby] has too much attention from the one person who is entirely at his disposal. The intimacy between mother and child is not sustaining and healthy. The child learns to exploit his mother's accessibility, badgering her with questions and demands which are not of any real consequence to him, embarrassing her in public, blackmailing her into buying sweets and carrying him.
Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch)
Children happen to be more attached to the female narcissist due to the way our society is still structured and to the fact that women are the ones to give birth and to serve as primary caretakers. It is much easier for a woman to think of her children as her extensions because they once indeed were her physical extensions and because her on-going interaction with them is both more intensive and more extensive. [The] male narcissist is more likely to regard his children as a nuisance than as a Source of Narcissistic Supply - especially as they grow older and become autonomous. With less alternatives than men, the narcissistic woman fights to maintain her most reliable Source of Supply: her children. Through insidious indoctrination, guilt-formation, emotional sanctions and blackmail, deprivation and other psychological mechanisms, she tries to induce in her offspring dependence which cannot easily be unraveled.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
Let me enlighten you. We are a pack of liars, thieves, and wastrels, the lot of us...There is not an honestly gained parcel of land in the whole earldom. Every acre, every village was stolen through one reprehensible manner or another. Deceit, blackmail, extortion, all of it. It’s disgusting.” Alex waited a moment to make sure Whit was quite through before asking, “How long ago?” “Did we steal the land, do you mean?” Alex nodded. “Up until about a hundred years ago, then the wastrels took over.
Alissa Johnson (As Luck Would Have It (Providence, #1))
Jordana is in the umpire's highchair. I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box. Her legs are crossed. I wait for her to speak. 'I have two special skills,' she says. She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet. 'Blackmail,' she says. She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this. 'And pyromania.' I am impressed that Jordana knows this word. 'Right,' I say. 'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.' I feel powerless. She is in a throne. 'Okay,' I say.
Joe Dunthorne (Submarine)
Events come to people, not people to events. Why do some people have exciting lives and other people dull ones? Because of their surroundings? Not at all. One man may travel to the ends of the earth and nothing will happen to him. There will be a massacre a week before he arrives, and an earthquake the day after he leaves, and the boat that he nearly took will be shipwrecked. And another man may live at Balham and travel to the City every day, and things will happen to him. He will be mixed up with blackmailing gangs and beautiful girls and motor bandits. There are people with a tendency to shipwrecks--even if they go on a boat on an ornamental lake, something will happen to it.
Agatha Christie (Three Act Tragedy (Hercule Poirot, #11))
Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day. Every anarchist is a baffled dictator. The truth is that men are tired of liberty. Socialism is a fraud, a comedy, a phantom, a blackmail. It's good to trust others but, not to do so is much better. War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it. Fascism is a religious concept. Let us have a dagger between our teeth, a bomb in our hands, and an infinite scorn in our hearts. The League is very well when sparrows shout, but no good at all when eagles fall out. We become strong, I feel, when we have no friends upon whom to lean, or to look to for moral guidance.
Benito Mussolini
You're innocent, Casaubon. You ran away instead of throwing stones, you got your degree, you didn't shoot anybody. Yet a few years ago I felt you, too, were blackmailing me. Nothing personal, just generational cycles. And then last year, when I saw the Pendulum, I understood everything." "Everything?" "Almost everything. You see, Casaubon, even the Pendulum is a false prophet. You look at it, you think it's the only fixed point in the cosmos. but if you detach it from the ceiling of the Conservatoire and hang it in a brothel, it works just the same. And there are other pendulums: there's one in New York, in the UN building, there's one in the science museum in San Francisco, and God knows how many others. Wherever you put it, Foucault's Pendulum swings from a motionless point while the earth rotates beneath it. Every point of the universe is a fixed point: all you have to do is hang the Pendulum from it." "God is everywhere." "In a sense, yes. That's why the Pendulum disturbs me. It promises the infinite, but where to put the infinite is left to me. So it isn't enough to worship the Pendulum; you still have to make a decision, you have to find the best point for it. And yet..." "And yet?" "And yet... You're not taking me seriously by any chance, are you, Casaubon? No, I can rest easy; we're not the type to take things seriously.... Well, as I was saying, the feeling you have is that you've spent a lifetime hanging the Pendulum in many paces, and it's never worked, but there, in the Conservatoire, it works.... Do you think there are special places in the universe? On the ceiling of this room, for example? No, nobody would believe that. You need atmosphere. I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe, to recognize it, we have to believe in it. Well, let's go see Signor Garamond." "To hang the Pendulum?" "Ah, human folly! Now we have to be serious. If you are going to be paid, the boss must see you, touch you, sniff you, and say you'll do. Come, let the boss touch you; the boss's touch heals scrofula.
Umberto Eco (Foucault’s Pendulum)
If you are a millionaire beset by blackmailers or anyone else to whose comfort the best legal advice is essential, and have decided to put your affairs in the hands of the ablest and discreetest firm in London, you proceed through a dark and grimy entry and up a dark and grimy flight of stairs; and, having felt your way along a dark and grimy passage, you come at length to a dark and grimy door. There is plenty of dirt in other parts of Ridgeway's Inn, but nowhere is it so plentiful, so rich in alluvial deposits, as on the exterior of the offices of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow and Appleby. As you tap on the topmost of the geological strata concealing the ground-glass of the door, a sense of relief and security floods your being. For in London grubbiness is the gauge of a lawyer's respectability.
P.G. Wodehouse (The Girl on the Boat)
On the positive side, you are “in love” with your partner. This is at first a deeply satisfying state. You feel intensely alive. Your existence has suddenly become meaningful because someone needs you, wants you, and makes you feel special, and you do the same for him or her. When you are together, you feel whole. The feeling can become so intense that the rest of the world fades into insignificance. However, you may also have noticed that there is a neediness and a clinging quality to that intensity. You become addicted to the other person. He or she acts on you like a drug. You are on a high when the drug is available, but even the possibility or the thought that he or she might no longer be there for you can lead to jealousy, possessiveness, attempts at manipulation through emotional blackmail, blaming and accusing — fear of loss. If the other person does leave you, this can give rise to the most intense hostility or the most profound grief and despair. In an instant, loving tenderness can turn into a savage attack or dreadful grief. Where is the love now? Can love change into its opposite in an instant? Was it love in the first place, or just an addictive grasping and clinging?
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
No one would argue that we owe a debt of gratitude to the Goliath Corporation. They helped us to rebuild after the Second War and it should not be forgotten. Of late, however, it seems as though the Goliath Corporation is falling far short of its promises of fairness and altruism. We are finding ourselves now in the unfortunate position of continuing to pay back a debt that has long since been paid--with interest...
Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1))
The primary vice of a bad person is precisely that he is more preoccupied with others than himself. Rousseau is describing a precise libidinal mechanism: the inversion which generates the shift of the libidinal investment from the object to the obstacle itself. This could well be applied to fundamentalist violence - be it Oklahoma City Federal Building, the Twin Towers - was what really mattered, not achieving the noble goal of a truly Christian or Muslim society.
Slavoj Žižek (Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbours)
Some of the things written during those years, justifying, for example, the execution of the Rosenbergs, or the crucifixion of Alger Hiss (and the beatification of Whittaker Chambers) taught me something about the irresponsibility and cowardice of the liberal community which I will never forget. Their performance, then, yet more than the combination of ignorance and arrogance with which this community has always protected itself against the deepest implications of black suffering, persuaded me that brilliance without passion is nothing more than sterility. It must be remembered, after all, that I did not begin meeting these people at the point that they began to meet me: I had been delivering their packages and emptying their garbage and taking their tips for years. (And they don’t tip well.) And what I watched them do to each other during the McCarthy era was, in some ways, worse than anything they had ever done to me, for I, at least, had never been mad enough to depend on their devotion. It seemed very clear to me that they were lying about their motives and were being blackmailed by their guilt; were, in fact, at bottom, nothing more than the respectable issue of various immigrants, struggling to hold on to what they had acquired.
James Baldwin (No Name in the Street)
A cult is a group of people who share an obsessive devotion to a person or idea. The cults described in this book use violent tactics to recruit, indoctrinate, and keep members. Ritual abuse is defined as the emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive acts performed by violent cults. Most violent cults do not openly express their beliefs and practices, and they tend to live separately in noncommunal environments to avoid detection. Some victims of ritual abuse are children abused outside the home by nonfamily members, in public settings such as day care. Other victims are children and teenagers who are forced by their parents to witness and participate in violent rituals. Adult ritual abuse victims often include these grown children who were forced from childhood to be a member of the group. Other adult and teenage victims are people who unknowingly joined social groups or organizations that slowly manipulated and blackmailed them into becoming permanent members of the group. All cases of ritual abuse, no matter what the age of the victim, involve intense physical and emotional trauma. Violent cults may sacrifice humans and animals as part of religious rituals. They use torture to silence victims and other unwilling participants. Ritual abuse victims say they are degraded and humiliated and are often forced to torture, kill, and sexually violate other helpless victims. The purpose of the ritual abuse is usually indoctrination. The cults intend to destroy these victims' free will by undermining their sense of safety in the world and by forcing them to hurt others. In the last ten years, a number of people have been convicted on sexual abuse charges in cases where the abused children had reported elements of ritual child abuse. These children described being raped by groups of adults who wore costumes or masks and said they were forced to witness religious-type rituals in which animals and humans were tortured or killed. In one case, the defense introduced in court photographs of the children being abused by the defendants[.1] In another case, the police found tunnels etched with crosses and pentacles along with stone altars and candles in a cemetery where abuse had been reported. The defendants in this case pleaded guilty to charges of incest, cruelty, and indecent assault.[2] Ritual abuse allegations have been made in England, the United States, and Canada.[3] Many myths abound concerning the parents and children who report ritual abuse. Some people suggest that the tales of ritual abuse are "mass hysteria." They say the parents of these children who report ritual abuse are often overly zealous Christians on a "witch-hunt" to persecute satanists. These skeptics say the parents are fearful of satanism, and they use their knowledge of the Black Mass (a historically well-known, sexualized ritual in which animals and humans are sacrificed) to brainwash their children into saying they were abused by satanists.[4] In 1992 I conducted a study to separate fact from fiction in regard to the disclosures of children who report ritual abuse.[5] The study was conducted through Believe the Children, a national organization that provides support and educational sources for ritual abuse survivors and their families.
Margaret Smith (Ritual Abuse: What It Is, Why It Happens, and How to Help)
Will:"You know, when two people narrowly escape falling to their deaths, they usually have something to talk about, Even if they hadn't met before that moment, they usually have something to sayto each other afterward. But you haven't said anything to me. I've been tryingto give you some time. I've been trying to give you some space. All I want is-" Ivy:"Thank you. Thank you for risking your life. Thank you for saving me." "That's not what I wanted! Gratitude is the last thing I-" "Well, let me tell you what I want, Honesty." "When haven't I been honest? When?" "I found your note, Will. I know you blackmailed Gregory. I didn't tell the police yet, but I will." "So tell them, go ahead! It's old news to them, but if you've got the note, it's one more piece for the police files. I just don't get- Wait a minute. Do you think- You couldn't really think I did that to make money, could you?" "That's usually why people blackmail." "You think I'd betray you like that? Ivy I set up that blackmail--I got the Celentanos to help me out, and i videotaped it-so that i had something to take to the police." "Back in August when you were in the hospital, Gregory called me and told me you had tried to commit suicide. I couldn't believe it. I knew how much you missed Tristan, but I knew you were a fighter, too. I went to the train station that morning to look around and try to figure out what had gone through your head. As i was leaving I found the jacket and hat. I picked them up, but for weeks I didn't know how or even if they were connected to what had happened." "When school started I ran across some file photos of Tristan in the newspaper office. Suddenly I figured it out. I knew it wasn't like you to jump in front of a train, but it was just like you Eric and Gregory to con you across the track. I remembered how Eric had played chicken with us, and I blamed him at first. Later I realized that there was a lot more than a game going on." "Why didn't you tell me this before? You should have told me this before." "You weren't telling me things, either." "I was trying to protect you!" "What the heck do you think I was doing?...I had to distract him, give him another target, and try to get something on him at the same time. It almost worked. I gave the tape to Lieutenant Donnelly Tuesday afternoon, but Gregory had already laid his trap." "You thought I'd betray you." "Will I'm sorry. I was wrong. I really am sorry, I made a mistake. A big one. Try to understand. I was so mixed up and afraid. I thought I betrayed myself when I trusted you-and betrayed Tristan when I fell in love with you. Will!" "You fell in love with me?" "Love you, Will." "Love you, Ivy.
Elizabeth Chandler (Soulmates (Kissed by an Angel, #3))