Blood Bullets And Bones Quotes

I was never in danger. Nothing bad can happen to you if you're with your mom. Your mom can stop a bullet from lodging in your heart. She can prop you up when you can't. You mom is your blood and bone before your body even knows how to make any.

War is not just the shower of bullets and bombs from both sides, it is also the shower of blood and bones on both sides.

All he had to do was think of Linda at home, eight months into it, knowing that he was going to be a father and that straightened him right out. Feelings are just feelings, but families need to be fed.

You make out with a boy because he’s cute, but he has no substance, no words to offer you. His mouth tastes like stale beer and false promises. When he touches your chin, you offer your mouth up like a flower to to be plucked, all covered in red lipstick to attract his eye. When he reaches his hand down your shirt, he stops, hand on boob, and squeezes, like you’re a fruit he’s trying to juice. He doesn’t touch anything but skin, does not feel what’s within. In the morning, he texts you only to say, “I think I left the rest of my beer at your place, but it’s cool, you can drink it. Last night was fun.” You kiss a girl because she’s new. Because she’s different and you’re twenty two, trying something else out because it’s all failed before. After spending six weekends together, you call her, only to be answered by a harsh beep informing you that her number has been disconnected. You learn that success doesn’t come through experimenting with your sexuality, and you’re left with a mouth full of ruin and more evidence that you are out of tune. You fall for a boy who is so nice, you don’t think he can do any harm. When he mentions marriage and murder in the same sentence, you say, “Okay, okay, okay.” When you make a joke he does not laugh, but tilts his head and asks you how many drinks you’ve had in such a loving tone that you sober up immediately. He leaves bullet in your blood and disappears, saying, “Who wants a girl that’s filled with holes?” You find out that a med student does. He spots you reading in a bar and compliments you on the dust spilling from your mouth. When you see his black doctor’s bag posed loyally at his side, you ask him if he’s got the tools to fix a mangled nervous system. He smiles at you, all teeth, and tells you to come with him. In the back of his car, he covers you in teethmarks and says, “There, now don’t you feel whole again.” But all the incisions do is let more cold air into your bones. You wonder how many times you will collapse into ruins before you give up on rebuilding. You wonder if maybe you’d have more luck living amongst your rubble instead of looking for someone to repair it. The next time someone promises to flood you with light to erase your dark, you insist them you’re fine the way you are. They tell you there’s hope, that they had holes in their chest too, that they know how to patch them up. When they offer you a bottle in exchange for your mouth, you tell them you’re not looking for a way out. No, thank you, you tell them. Even though you are filled with ruins and rubble, you are as much your light as you are your dark.

[...] "I owe you", says "Your shoes are filling with your own damn blood, you must want something, just tell me, and it’s yours." But I can’t look at him, can hardly speak, I took the bullet for all the wrong reasons, I’d just as soon kill you myself, I say. You keep saying "I owe you, I owe…" but you say the same thing every time. Let’s not talk about it, let’s just not talk. Not because I don’t believe it, not because I want it any different, but I’m always saving and you’re always owing and I’m tired of asking to settle the debt. Don’t bother. You never mean it anyway, not really, and it only makes me that much more ashamed. There’s only one thing I want, don’t make me say it, just get me bandages, I’m bleeding, I’m not just making conversation. There’s smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars. It’s a Western, Henry, it’s a downright shoot-em-up. We’ve made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon. It’s another wrong-man-dies scenario and we keep doing it, Henry, keep saying until we get it right… but we always win and we never quit, see, we’ve won again, here we are at the place where I get to beg for it [...]

He decided to cut it up (using his butcher skills) and deposit the parts all over Brooklyn, apparently thinking police wouldn’t figure out that they belonged to the same person. Which poses the question: exactly how many people’s body parts did he think they would suppose were lying around the city?

Look into his eyes and tell yourself he's just a man. Tell yourself he can't know the things he says he does. He can't know your fears. But he has Alfred. He has your friend. And his eyes... you have studied the human eye. There are six eye movements that reveal motive, then fifteen variations of each one. On everyone else you face - even the most hardened criminals - the pupils contract or expand depending on emotion. Happiness, laughter, affection. The pupils open. Fear, anger, hatred, the pupils close. But not his. His pupils stay fixed, tiny points of blackness, the eyes of someone who hates everything, everyone. Eyes that let in no light, that see through the darkness, stare into you, each pupil a tiny black pearl fixed in space. A bullet coming at you. Eyes that say he's more than a man, eyes that say he knows you. No... you know what he is. Tell yourself the truth. He's just a man who fell in a vat of chemical waste. He's just a man... like you, made of bone and tissue and blood.

i am something very gentle, very jealous of the selfless way my heart pumps blood for my ungrateful body, of how the bones in my spine uplift my head, despite how i insist we're crumbling, we're crumbling, always crying over spilled milk, when i could be strong like stainless steel or spider silk, when i could be kevlar instead of the honeycombed human digging out bullets, when i could be the tornado instead of Dorothy missing Kansas, when i could be a bone-dry Martini instead of the one retching, when i could be something like you, the shoulder to lean on and not the one reeling, the one picking up eggshells and never the one breaking.

People who say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” don’t understand how words can be stones, hard and sharp-edged and dangerous and capable of doing so much more harm than anything physical. If someone chucks a real stone at you on the playground, it leaves a bruise. Bruises heal. Bruises get people in trouble, too; bruises end with detentions for the rock-throwers, with disapproving parents ushered into private offices for serious conversations about bullying and bad behavior. Words almost never end that way. Words can be whispered bullet-quick when no one’s looking, and words don’t leave blood or bruises behind. Words disappear without a trace. That’s what makes them so powerful. That’s what makes them so important. That’s what makes them hurt so much.

I AM PUSHING a rusty wheelbarrow in a town where the air smells of blood and burnt flesh. The breeze brings the faint cries of those whose last breaths are leaving their mangled bodies. I walk past them. Their arms and legs are missing; their intestines spill out through the bullet holes in their stomachs; brain matter comes out of their noses and ears. The flies are so excited and intoxicated that they fall on the pools of blood and die. The eyes of the nearly dead are redder than the blood that comes out of them, and it seems that their bones will tear through the skin of their taut faces at any minute. I turn my face to the ground to look at my feet. My tattered crapes are soaked with blood, which seems to be running down my army shorts. I feel no physical pain, so I am not sure whether I’ve been wounded. I can feel the warmth of my AK-47’s barrel on my back; I don’t remember when I last fired it. It feels as if needles have been hammered into my brain, and it is hard to be sure whether it is day or night. The wheelbarrow in front of me contains a dead body wrapped in white bedsheets. I do not know why I am taking this particular body to the cemetery. When I arrive at the cemetery, I struggle to lift it from the wheelbarrow; it feels as if the body is resisting. I carry it in my arms, looking for a suitable place to lay it to rest. My body begins to ache and I can’t lift a foot without feeling a rush of pain from my toes to my spine. I collapse on the ground and hold the body in my arms. Blood spots begin to emerge on the white bedsheets covering it. Setting the body on the ground, I start to unwrap it, beginning at the feet. All the way up to the neck, there are bullet holes. One bullet has crushed the Adam’s apple and sent the remains of it to the back of the throat. I lift the cloth from the body’s face. I am looking at my own.   I

The bullet sliced through its forehead, blowing the back of its head wide open. Like a papier-mâché piñata, the prizes inside—bone and brains

the rush of adrenaline overcame indecision, fear and nervousness. The paralysing cold seeping into his bones was replaced by the heat of blood coursing through his veins. As the tracer bullet came flying past, lighting the place with a deadly cocktail of shrapnel and fire, Manoj stood up, tall and brave, his slight frame coiled like spring, his face a mask. Through the scream of the wind, he roared at those of his men that were fit to fight, ordering them to follow him through the hail of bullets. Like a colossal god with invincible powers he walked into the curtain of shells and bullets. He didn’t look back even once to see who had followed his final command but if he had he would have been a satisfied man. All his Gorkha jawans who could pick themselves up and walk were right behind him, their khukris gripped firmly in their hands.

The invitation came from Studio Morra in Naples: Come and perform whatever you want. It was early 1975. With the scandalized reactions of the Belgrade press fresh in my mind, I planned a piece in which the audience would provide the action. I would merely be the object, the receptacle. My plan was to go to the gallery and just stand there, in black trousers and a black T-shirt, behind a table containing seventy-two objects: A hammer. A saw. A feather. A fork. A bottle of perfume. A bowler hat. An ax. A rose. A bell. Scissors. Needles. A pen. Honey. A lamb bone. A carving knife. A mirror. A newspaper. A shawl. Pins. Lipstick. Sugar. A Polaroid camera. Various other things. And a pistol, and one bullet lying next to it. When a big crowd had gathered at eight P.M., they found these instructions on the table: There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired. I am the object. During this period I take full responsibility. Duration: 6 hours (8pm - 2am) Slowly at first and then quickly, things began to happen. It was very interesting: for the most part, the women in the gallery would tell the men what to do to me, rather than do it themselves (although later on, when someone stuck a pin into me, one woman wiped the tears from my eyes). For the most part, these were just normal members of the Italian art establishment and their wives. Ultimately I think the reason I wasn’t raped was that the wives were there. As evening turned into late night, a certain air of sexuality arose in the room. This came not from me but from the audience. We were in southern Italy, where the Catholic Church was so powerful, and there was this strong Madonna/whore dichotomy in attitudes toward women. After three hours, one man cut my shirt apart with the scissors and took it off. People manipulated me into various poses. If they turned my head down, I kept it down; if they turned it up, I kept it that way. I was a puppet—entirely passive. Bare-breasted, I stood there, and someone put the bowler hat on my head. With the lipstick, someone else wrote IO SONO LIBERO—“I am free”—on the mirror and stuck it in my hand. Someone else took the lipstick and wrote END across my forehead. A guy took Polaroids of me and stuck them in my hand, like playing cards. Things got more intense. A couple of people picked me up and carried me around. They put me on the table, spread my legs, stuck the knife in the table close to my crotch. Someone stuck pins into me. Someone else slowly poured a glass of water over my head. Someone cut my neck with the knife and sucked the blood. I still have the scar. There was one man—a very small man—who just stood very close to me, breathing heavily. This man scared me. Nobody else, nothing else, did. But he did. After a while, he put the bullet in the pistol and put the pistol in my right hand. He moved the pistol toward my neck and touched the trigger. There was a murmur in the crowd, and someone grabbed him. A scuffle broke out. Some of the audience obviously wanted to protect me; others wanted the performance to continue. This being southern Italy, voices were raised; tempers flared. The little man was hustled out of the gallery and the piece continued. In fact, the audience became more and more active, as if in a trance. And then, at two A.M., the gallerist came and told me the six hours were up. I stopped staring and looked directly at the audience. “The performance is over,” the gallerist said. “Thank you.” I looked like hell. I was half naked and bleeding; my hair was wet. And a strange thing happened: at this moment, the people who were still there suddenly became afraid of me. As I walked toward them, they ran out of the gallery.

The bullets from the enemy on the other side, the giant seeds falling from the metallic sky, they aren't to pass through heads, flesh, to break bones and to sever lives.

The bullets from the enemy on the other side , the giant seeds falling from the metallic sky, the aren't afraid of screams, they aren't afraid to pass through heads, flesh, to break bones and to sever lives.

Leave me,” he groaned in pain. “Run.”
His face paled, blood dribbling between his lips as he coughed. I’d seen death on people’s faces more times than I could count. Death had a way of revealing people’s true natures. Some people begged, some threatened, some tried to bargain. And this idiot I didn’t even know was dying and still trying to help me. I hated him for it.
 He started trying to talk again, grabbing at my hands. 
 “Shut up, dumbass,” I hissed at him, pressing harder at his wound. 
 He cried out in pain, but his cry cut off as the familiar warmth spread from my chest down my arms and into his stomach. The bullet had gone clean through his gut. Normally a death wound, but not tonight. I could feel his body mending beneath my fingers, all the muscles and organs knitting themselves back together. His hand curled over the top of one of mine, squeezing gently, and I glanced up to see his eyes full of awe. The wound closed shut, leaving what I knew would be a fresh pink scar, and all the warmth left me.

sayin’, “Men like us don’t fall in love the way they do in storybooks. We see a woman, and somethin’ hits us like a bullet through the chest. We get this sense in our blood and bones, through the center’a our bein’ that this person is meant for us. It might take a while to get there.

The death of an Archangel, of a world power, could shudder through time and space. A second could last an hour. A day. A year. So Hunt saw everything. Saw the endlessly slow movements of everyone in the room, the gaping shock that rippled, Sandriel’s outrage, Pollux’s white-faced disbelief, Ruhn’s terror— The Godslayer bullet was still burrowing through Micah’s skull. Still twisting through bone and brain matter, dragging time in its wake. Then Bryce stood at the office’s blown-out window. A sword in both hands.

Even if I accept your bogus excuses for war, today we have the technology to fight wars without actually killing people - only reason we don't, is because it's not economical. Life is not economical, death is - peace is not economical, war is. It's far cheaper to kill enemy soldiers than take them prisoner, at the expense of the taxpayer. One bullet costs half a dollar, whereas one prisoner costs thousands per year. So, naturally, preserving life is not the priority, neither is peace. Besides, think of the rush of pride the primitive taxpayers get, from the headlines - "our nations' gallant forces took down several enemy soldiers in a bone-chilling surgical strike!" And more the primitives of a nation are exposed to this kind of blood-boiling headlines, more they get conditioned to believe, that in every war, they are on the right side of justice. World calls it Geopolitics - I call it Pavlovian Conditioning of Patriotism - where the citizen canines of a state are made to believe even the worst of stately atrocity to be just and righteous, by repeated exposure of a patriotic narrative. As I once said, whoever controls the narrative, controls the people. And fear is at the root of it all. Once the citizens conquer their fear and prejudice, and grow up into civilized thinking humans, that'll be the end of state, war and geopolitical tribalism.

I raise my grease gun and I aim it at Cowboy's face. Cowboy looks pitiful and he's terrified. Cowboy is paralyzed by the shock that is setting in and by the helplessness. I hardly know him. I remember the first time I saw Cowboy, on Parris Island, laughing, beating his Stetson on his thigh. I look at him. He looks at the grease gun. He calls out: "I NEVER LIKED YOU, JOKER. I NEVER THOUGHT YOU WERE FUNNY--" Bang. I sight down the short metal tube and I watch my bullet enter Cowboy's left eye. My bullet passes through his eye socket, punches through fluid-filled sinus cavities, through membranes, nerves, arteries, muscle tissue, through the tiny blood vessels that feed three pounds of gray butter-soft high protein meat where brain cells arranged like jewels in a clock hold every thought and memory and dream of one adult maleHomo sapiens. My bullet exits through the occipital bone, knocks out hairy, brain-wet clods of jagged meat, then buries itself in the roots of a tree. Silence. Animal Mother lowers his M-60. Animal Mother, Donlon, Lance Corporal Stutten, Harris, and the other guys in the squad do not speak. Everyone relaxes, glad to be alive. Everyone hates my guts, but they know I'm right. I am their sergeant; they are my men. Cowboy was killed by sniper fire, they'll say, but they'll never see me again; I'll be invisible.

Nothing bad can happen to you if you’re with your mom. Your mom can stop a bullet from lodging in your heart. She can prop you up when you can’t. Your mom is your blood and bone before your body even knows how to make any.

The last time I saw you,” Grey said, very quietly, “I came within an inch of putting a bullet through your head. Don’t give me cause to regret my restraint.” He let go and stood up. “Stay away from my son—stay away from me. And if you will take a well-meant bit of advice—go back to France. Quickly.

Brother, why do we fight like we are not flesh of flesh? Blood of blood. Bone of bone. Like if the time came I would not go to war for you or catch a thousand bullets just to keep you safe. Brother, why do we push these words at each other like we are not of the same womb. Brother, why do we use our truths like knives. Why does this distance exist between us? Why are we worlds apart on the same planet?

Brother, why do we fight like we are not flesh of flesh? Blood of blood. Bone of bone. Like if the time came I would not go to war for you or catch a thousand bullets just to keep you safe. Brother, why do we push these words at each other like we are not of the same womb. Brother, why do we use our truths like knives. Why does this distance exist between us? Why are we worlds apart on the same planet?

Brother, why do we fight like we are not flesh of flesh? Blood of blood. Bone of bone. Like if the time came I would not go to war for you or catch a thousand bullets just to keep you safe. Brother, why do we push these words at each other like we are not of the same womb? Brother, why do we use our truths like knives? Why does this distance exist between us? Why are we worlds apart on the same planet?