β
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
β
β
Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
β
Accept who you are. Unless you're a serial killer.
β
β
Ellen DeGeneres (Seriously... I'm Kidding)
β
Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin
β
He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.
β
β
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
β
A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
β
Killer skirt, deadly legs.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Hush, Hush (Hush, Hush, #1))
β
Jace's eyes sparkled, but he said calmly, "Not at all. the Silent Brothers can help her retrieve her memories."
"You hate the Silent Brothers," protested Isabelle.
"I don't hate them," said Jace candidly."I'm afraid of them. It's not the same thing."
"I thought you said they were libarians," said Clary.
"They are librarians."
Simon whistled. "Those must be some killer late fees.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, itβs just not that good. Itβs trying to be good, it has potential, but itβs not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesnβt have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone Iβve ever met. Itβs gonna take awhile. Itβs normal to take awhile. Youβve just gotta fight your way through.
β
β
Ira Glass
β
I gave him a smile. I was aiming for sweet, but he turned a shade paler and scooted a bit farther from me. Note to self: work more on sweet and less on psycho-killer.
β
β
Ilona Andrews (Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels, #3))
β
Time is the best killer.
β
β
Agatha Christie
β
Fear is the mind-killer.
β
β
Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
β
Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just winsβthoroughly.
β
β
Orson Scott Card (Enderβs Game (Ender's Saga, #1))
β
I was glad I wasn't in love, that I wasn't happy with the world. I like being at odds with everything. People in love often become edgy, dangerous. They lose their sense of perspective. They lose their sense of humor. They become nervous, psychotic bores. They even become killers.
β
β
Charles Bukowski (Women)
β
You could run from someone you feared, you could try to fight someone you hated. All my reactions were geared toward those kinds of killers β the monsters, the enemies. When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?
β
β
Stephenie Meyer (Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, #4))
β
Was it weird hearing from Jace?" asked Simon, his voice carefully neutral. "I mean, since you found out..."
His voice trailed off.
Yes?"said Clary, her voice sharply edged. "Since I found out what? That he's a killer transvestite who molests cats?"
No wonder that cat of his hates everyone."
Oh, shut up, Simon," Clary said crossly.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
I married a damned cereal killer
β
β
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Nobody's Baby But Mine (Chicago Stars, #3))
β
I am not sorry, she realized. She had chosen to live freely as a killer rather than die quietly as a slave, and she could not regret that.
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
β
Derek caught my arm again as I started to move--at this rate, it was going to be as sore as my injured one.
"Dog," he said, jerking his chin toward the fenced yard. "It was inside earlier."
Expecting to see a Doberman slavering at the fence, I followed his gaze to a little puff of white fur, the kind of dog women stick in their purses. It wasn't even barking, just staring at us, dancing in place.
"Oh, my God! It's a killer Pomeranian." I glanced up at Derek. "It's a tough call, but I think you can take him.
β
β
Kelley Armstrong (The Awakening (Darkest Powers, #2))
β
Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.
β
β
Charles Bukowski (Women)
β
The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism, said the monster.
β
β
Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls)
β
I was raised in hatred, Roma. I could never be your lover, only your killer.
β
β
Chloe Gong (These Violent Delights (These Violent Delights, #1))
β
You've got the killer instincts of a houseplant.
β
β
Josephine Angelini (Starcrossed (Starcrossed, #1))
β
You should have taken me with you," I whisper to him. Then I lean my head against his and begin to cry. In my mind, I make a silent promise to my brother's killer.
I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to. I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run. I make you this promise: your life is mine.
β
β
Marie Lu (Legend (Legend, #1))
β
Barrons was powerful, broodingly good-looking, insanely wealthy, frighteningly intelligent, and had exquisite taste, not to mention a hard body that emitted some kind of constant low-level charge. Bottom line: He was the stuff of heroes.
And psychotic killers.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Faefever (Fever, #3))
β
A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand.
β
β
Seneca
β
A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know is bad, or amoral, at least. You canβt act if you donβt know.
β
β
Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes)
β
We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be βthe mythologized epitome of a savage ruthless killer β which is, in reality, no more than a reflected image of ourself.
β
β
Farley Mowat (Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves)
β
Nereus spun and expanded, turning into a killer whale, but I grabbed his dorsal fin as he burst out of the water.
A whole bunch of tourists went, "Whoa!"
I managed to wave at the crowd. Yeah, we do this every day here in San Francisco.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Titanβs Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3))
β
I really feel that we're not giving children enough credit for distinguishing what's right and what's wrong. I, for one, devoured fairy tales as a little girl. I certainly didn't believe that kissing frogs would lead me to a prince, or that eating a mysterious apple would poison me, or that with the magical "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo" I would get a beautiful dress and a pumpkin carriage. I also don't believe that looking in a mirror and saying "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman" will make some awful serial killer come after me. I believe that many children recognize Harry Potter for what it is, fantasy literature. I'm sure there will always be some that take it too far, but that's the case with everything. I believe it's much better to engage in dialog with children to explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Then they are better equipped to deal with people who might have taken it too far.
β
β
J.K. Rowling
β
Cam was already on his feet, waiting for me. I arched my brow at him. "Following me?" "Like a true serial killer," he replied.
β
β
J. Lynn (Wait for You (Wait for You, #1))
β
Killers aren't always assassins. Sometimes, they don't even have blood on their hands.
β
β
Ruta Sepetys (Salt to the Sea)
β
Personally, I say, "Out of the frying pan and into the deadly pit filled with sharks who are wielding chainsaws with killer kittens stapled to them." However, that one's having a rough time catching on.
β
β
Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones (Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, #2))
β
Ronan's smile was sharp and hooked as one of the creature's claws. "'A sword is never a killer; it is a tool in the killer's hand'."
"I can't believe Noah didn't stick around to help."
"Sure you can. Never trust the dead.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
β
You are enough to drive a saint to madness or a king to his knees.
β
β
Grace Willows (To Kiss a King)
β
Actually, orcas aren't quite as complex as scientists imagine. Most killer whales are just four tons of doofus dressed up like a police car.
β
β
Christopher Moore (Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings)
β
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.
β
β
D.H. Lawrence (Studies in Classic American Literature)
β
We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole worldβbullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts.
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson (Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century)
β
It's my job as best friend to make sure he's not a serial killer. Or an English major, not sure which one's worse.
β
β
Shelly Crane (Significance (Significance, #1))
β
Of course Iβm sure! Jesus Christ, Iβm goddamn God for fuckβs sake! Now quit sniveling and jump through that goddamn glass wall forthwith or Iβll leave you with the killer clones, revoking your Chosen One status and whatnot.
β
β
Jasun Ether (The Beasts of Success)
β
The perfect killer has no friends. Only targets.
β
β
Brent Weeks (The Way of Shadows (Night Angel, #1))
β
What a waste of trees ... that adoption author is definitely a tree killer. ... I wish trees would sprout legs and come barging through the front doors and seek revenge for their obliterated brethren by ramming themselves down his goddamn throat.
β
β
Jasun Ether (The Beasts of Success)
β
What problems?" "Well for starters.. you're an evil duck killer.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Last Song)
β
Kind of like love before first sight.β
and
βButterflies in your stomach. That was such a crappy metaphor. More like killer bees.
β
β
Kami Garcia (Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1))
β
So be who you really are. Embrace who you are. Literally. Hug yourself. Accept who you are. Unless you're a serial killer.
β
β
Ellen DeGeneres (Seriously... I'm Kidding)
β
I just look at her and she creeps me out. She looks like she would eat a baby. Not that she's fat. She just looks hungry in some dangerous way that can't be explained. She's always so nice and friendly. Exactly the disposition of a baby killer.
β
β
Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors)
β
Luke', I said, and immediately added, 'My boyfriend.' My supernatural, doomed, gorgeous, killer boyfriend.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception (Books of Faerie, #1))
β
A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.
β
β
Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
β
I fell asleep that night in the arms of a killer. I'd never slept better.
β
β
T.M. Frazier (The Dark Light of Day (The Dark Light of Day, #1))
β
There are two kinds of people who sit around all day thinking about killing people...mystery writers and serial killers. I'm the kind that pays better.
β
β
Richard Castle
β
All women love Colin Firth: Mr. Darcy, Mark Darcy, George VIβat this point he could play the Craigslist Killer and people would be like, 'Oh my God, the Craigslist Killer has the most boyish smile!
β
β
Mindy Kaling (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns))
β
Life is merely a series of moments and is in fact an unflinching serial killer, since it kills steadily each moment one after the other. Memory is the only survivor. (βJust for a momentβ)
β
β
Erik Pevernagie
β
He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive.
β
β
Jack London (The Call of the Wild)
β
Really now: If you can't get me my newspaper on time, how can you expect me to refrain from killing people?
β
β
Jeff Lindsay (Darkly Dreaming Dexter (Dexter, #1))
β
Sometimes, I don't notice I'm singing.
β
β
Sara Shepard (Killer (Pretty Little Liars, #6))
β
Yes, heβs a good boy. Never been in trouble at school and heβs on the honor roll. Captain of the football team. All-around psycho serial killer who hides bodies in the fridge whenever his parents go out of town. (Nick)
I also eat babies for breakfast and torture small animals for fun. My therapist says Iβm making real progress though. (Caleb)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Infinity (Chronicles of Nick, #1))
β
Who the hell would attack the Steel Horse anyway? What was the thinking behind that? βHere is a bar full of psychotic killers who grow giant claws and people who pilot the undead for a living. I think Iβll go wreck the place.
β
β
Ilona Andrews (Magic Bleeds (Kate Daniels, #4))
β
There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.
β
β
Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me)
β
And tonight our skin, our bones,
that have survived our fathers,
will meet, delicate in the hold,
fastened together in an intricate lock.
Then one of us will shout,
"My need is more desperate!" and
I will eat you slowly with kisses
even though the killer in you
has gotten out.
β
β
Anne Sexton (Love Poems)
β
We also told her you weren't a serial killer," Brit interjected.
Cam nodded. "That's a glowing recommendation. Hey, at least he's not a serial killer. I'm going to put that on my Facebook profile.
β
β
J. Lynn (Wait for You (Wait for You, #1))
β
What are you? (Nick)
Completely perplexed. You remember everything that happened. (Acheron)
Yeah. Duh. Not like youβre going to forget the killer zombie stalkers and psyched-out kitchen staff. What kind of freak show is this? (Nick)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Infinity (Chronicles of Nick, #1))
β
It strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.
β
β
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)
β
I have people in my life, of course. Some write; some don't. Some read; some don't. Some stare vacantly into space when I talk the geeky talk and walk the geeky walk, but they make killer chocolate chip pancakes and so all is forgiven.
β
β
Rob Thurman
β
People always talk about how hard it can be to remember things - where they left their keys, or the name of an acquaintance - but no one ever talks about how much effort we put into forgetting. I am exhausted from the effort to forget... There are things that have to be forgotten if you want to go on living.
β
β
Stephen Carpenter (Killer (A Jack Rhodes Mystery Book 1))
β
You won't even know you've crossed the line until it's way back in your rearview mirror.
β
β
Barry Lyga (I Hunt Killers (I Hunt Killers, #1))
β
The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.
β
β
Oyinkan Braithwaite (My Sister, the Serial Killer)
β
She was a ray of sunshine, a warm summer rain, a bright fire on a cold winterβs day, and now she could be dead because she had tried to save the man she loved.
β
β
Grace Willows
β
That was horrible. Horrible. That poor little guy."
Pex was unrepentant. "Yeah, well, he asked for it. Calling us ... all those things."
But---buried alive! That's like in that horror movie. Y'know -- the one with all the horror."
I think I saw that one. With all the words going up on the screen at the end?"
Yeah, that was it. Tell you the truth, those words kinda ruined it for me.
β
β
Eoin Colfer (The Eternity Code (Artemis Fowl, #3))
β
You do not have to be alone. The world never inflicts loneliness upon us. That is something we choose or reject by ourselves.
β
β
Darren Shan (Birth of a Killer (The Saga of Larten Crepsley, #1))
β
The show's writers had peppered the piece with words like "savage," "wild," and "animalistic." What bullshit. Show me the animal that kills for the thrill of watching something die. Why does the stereotype of the animalistic killer persist?
Because humans like it. It neatly explains things for them, moving humans to the top of the evolutionary ladder and putting killers down among mythological man-beast monsters like werewolves.
The truth is, if a werewolf behaved like this psychopath it wouldn't be because he was part animal, but because he was still too human. Only humans kill for sport.
β
β
Kelley Armstrong (Bitten (Otherworld, #1))
β
He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart.
β
β
Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter, #2))
β
God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.
β
β
Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter, #2))
β
But why can't the language for creativity be the language of regeneration? You killed that poem, we say. You're a killer. You came into that novel guns blazing. I am hammering this paragraph, I am banging them out, we say. I owned that workshop. I shut it down. I crushed them. We smashed the competition. I'm wrestling with the muse. The state, where people live, is a battleground state. The audience a target audience. "Good for you, man" a man once said to me at a party, "you're making a killing with poetry. You're knockin' em dead.
β
β
Ocean Vuong (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous)
β
It's not the bad memories that tear a person apart. It's the good ones.
β
β
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Killer Instinct (The Naturals, #2))
β
People who love horror films are people with boring lives... when a really scary movie is over, you're reassured to see that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. That's the real reason we have horror films - they act as shock absorbers - and if they disappeared altogether, I bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers. After all, anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news.
β
β
RyΕ« Murakami (In the Miso Soup)
β
But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.
β
β
Robert Ardrey (African Genesis: A Personal Investigation Into the Animal Origins and nature of Man)
β
What other problems do American soldiers face when hunting down these fanatΒical killers?β
βA personβs senses are more acute when being hunted,β Reid said. βMore adept at avoiding capture.β
These guys are good, Blake thought as a bead of sweat trickled down the small of his back. What have I gotten myself into?
β
β
Chad Boudreaux (Scavenger Hunt)
β
This is why I forgive, but I don't forget. When you forget someone, the forgiveness doesn't mean anything anymore.
β
β
Barry Lyga (I Hunt Killers (I Hunt Killers, #1))
β
She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger, a killer that offered itself as a vessel of the king's fury.
But then it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly.
A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster , did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?
Perhaps she wouldn't recognize her own nature after all.
β
β
Kristin Cashore (Graceling (Graceling Realm, #1))
β
Maybe, to do what you and I do, we have to have a little bit of the monster in us.
β
β
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Killer Instinct (The Naturals, #2))
β
There is a stark difference between fear and uncertainty, Sarai. You fear nothing but are uncertain of everything.
β
β
J.A. Redmerski (Killing Sarai (In the Company of Killers, #1))
β
Love is a fire that burns unseen,
a wound that aches yet isnβt felt,
an always discontent contentment,
a pain that rages without hurting,
a longing for nothing but to long,
a loneliness in the midst of people,
a never feeling pleased when pleased,
a passion that gains when lost in thought.
Itβs being enslaved of your own free will;
itβs counting your defeat a victory;
itβs staying loyal to your killer.
But if itβs so self-contradictory,
how can Love, when Love chooses,
bring human hearts into sympathy?
β
β
LuΓs de CamΓ΅es (Sonetos de CamΓ΅es)
β
If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity.
If there's no relationship with nature then you become a killer;
then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man
either for gain, for "sport," for food, or for knowledge.
Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty.
You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places
but you are a killer and so lose their friendship.
You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband.
β
β
J. Krishnamurti
β
Your world is so different from mine. Do you guys have anything in common with humans?β
He looks at me with those killer eyes in that perfect face over his Adonis body. βNothing weβll admit to.β
βThereβs no way around it, is there?β I ask. βWeβre mortal enemies and I should be trying to kill you and everyone like you.β
He leans over, touches the tip of his forehead to mine, and closes his eyes. βYes.β His gentle breath caresses my lips as he says the word.
I close my eyes too, and try to focus on the warmth of his forehead resting on mine.
β
β
Susan Ee (World After (Penryn & the End of Days, #2))
β
Later, I would come to think of those first days as the time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and swine flu and killer bees. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always differentβunimagined, unprepared for, unknown.
β
β
Karen Thompson Walker (The Age of Miracles)
β
Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding.
Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.
β
β
William S. Burroughs (Junky)
β
One day soon, youβll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. Youβll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. Like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, twenty-nine years after he killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew, in Sullivan, Wisconsin. Like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, thirty years after he killed Lori Billingsley, in Aloha, Oregon.
The doorbell rings.
No side gates are left open. Youβre long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell.
This is how it ends for you.
βYouβll be silent forever, and Iβll be gone in the dark,β you threatened a victim once.
Open the door. Show us your face.
Walk into the light.
β
β
Michelle McNamara (I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer)
β
The trainee knew he should leave, but he was unable to look away. He'd never seen anything snap out so fast or strike so hard as the male's fists. Obviously, the rumours about the instructor were all true. He was a flat-out killer.
With a metal clank, a door opened at the other end of the gym, and the sound of a newborn's cries echoed up into the high ceiling. The warrior stopped in midpunch and wheeled around as a lovely female carrying young in a pink blanket came over to him. His face softened, positively melted.
β
β
J.R. Ward (Lover Awakened (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #3))
β
Kid, let me tell you something. Most people spend their short time in this world less than half alive. They wander through their days in a haze of responsibility and resentment. Something happens to them not long after they're born. They get conflicted about what they want and start worshiping the wrong gods. Should. Mercy. Equality. Altruism. There's nothing you should do. Do what you want. Mercy isn't Nature's way. She's an equal opportunity killer. We aren't born the same. Some are stronger, faster. Never apologize for it. Altruism is an impossible concept. There's no action you can make that doesn't spring from how you want to feel about yourself.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Iced (Fever, #6))
β
Dominator culture teaches all of us that the core of our identity is defined by the will to dominate and control others. We are taught that this will to dominate is more biologically hardwired in males than in females. In actuality, dominator culture teaches us that we are all natural-born killers but that males are more able to realize the predator role. In the dominator model the pursuit of external power, the ability to manipulate and control others, is what matters most. When culture is based on a dominator model, not only will it be violent but it will frame all relationships as power struggles.
β
β
bell hooks
β
Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.
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Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
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I've been clinically diagnosed with sociopathy,' I said. 'Do you know what that means?'
'It means you're a freak,' he said.
'It means that you're about as important to me as a cardboard box,' I said. 'You're just a thing - a piece of garbage that no one's thrown away yet. Is that what you want me to say?'
'Shut up,' said Rob. He was still acting tough, but I could see his bluster was starting to fail. He didn't know what to say.
'The thing about boxes,' I said, 'is that you can open them up. Even though they're completely boring on the outside, there might be something interesting inside. So while you're saying all of these stupid, boring things I'm imagining what it would be like to cut you open and see what you've got in there.
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Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
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Do you understand what I'm saying?"
shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!"
"Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm.
"What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"
"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.
"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may beββ all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"
"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.
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Terry Pratchett (Going Postal (Discworld, #33; Moist von Lipwig, #1))
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Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill.
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Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
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The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.
The more indifferent people are to politics, to the interests of others, the more obsessed they become with their own faces. The individualism of our time.
Not being able to fall asleep and not allowing oneself to move: the marital bed.
If high culture is coming to an end, it is also the end of you and your paradoxical ideas, because paradox as such belongs to high culture and not to childish prattle. You remind me of the young men who supported the Nazis or communists not out of cowardice or out of opportunism but out of an excess of intelligence. For nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of nonthought⦠You are the brilliant ally of your own gravediggers.
In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.
How to live in a world with which you disagree? How to live with people when you neither share their suffering nor their joys? When you know that you donβt belong among them?... our century refuses to acknowledge anyoneβs right to disagree with the worldβ¦All that remains of such a place is the memory, the ideal of a cloister, the dream of a cloisterβ¦
Humor can only exist when people are still capable of recognizing some border between the important and the unimportant. And nowadays this border has become unrecognizable.
The majority of people lead their existence within a small idyllic circle bounded by their family, their home, and their work... They live in a secure realm somewhere between good and evil. They are sincerely horrified by the sight of a killer. And yet all you have to do is remove them from this peaceful circle and they, too, turn into murderers, without quite knowing how it happened.
The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order. Or to put it the other way around: the desire for order is a virtuous pretext, an excuse for virulent misanthropy.
A long time a go a certain Cynic philosopher proudly paraded around Athens in a moth-eaten coat, hoping that everyone would admire his contempt for convention. When Socrates met him, he said: Through the hole in your coat I see your vanity. Your dirt, too, dear sir, is self-indulgent and your self-indulgence is dirty.
You are always living below the level of true existence, you bitter weed, you anthropomorphized vat of vinegar! Youβre full of acid, which bubbles inside you like an alchemistβs brew. Your highest wish is to be able to see all around you the same ugliness as you carry inside yourself. Thatβs the only way you can feel for a few moments some kind of peace between yourself and the world. Thatβs because the world, which is beautiful, seems horrible to you, torments you and excludes you.
If the novel is successful, it must necessarily be wiser than its author. This is why many excellent French intellectuals write mediocre novels. They are always more intelligent than their books.
By a certain age, coincidences lose their magic, no longer surprise, become run-of-the-mill.
Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.
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Milan Kundera
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He was the kind of young man whose handsome face has brought him plenty of success in the past and is now ever-ready for a new encounter, a fresh-experience, always eager to set off into the unknown territory of a little adventure, never taken by surprise because he has worked out everything in advance and is waiting to see what happens, a man who will never overlook any erotic opportunity, whose first glance probes every woman's sensuality, and explores it, without discriminating between his friend's wife and the parlour-maid who opens the door to him. Such men are described with a certain facile contempt as lady-killers, but the term has a nugget of truthful observation in it, for in fact all the passionate instincts of the chase are present in their ceaseless vigilance: the stalking of the prey, the excitement and mental cruelty of the kill. They are constantly on the alert, always ready and willing to follow the trail of an adventure to the very edge of the abyss. They are full of passion all the time, but it is the passion of a gambler rather than a lover, cold, calculating and dangerous. Some are so persistent that their whole lives, long after their youth is spent, are made an eternal adventure by this expectation. Each of their days is resolved into hundreds of small sensual experiences - a look exchanged in passing, a fleeting smile, knees brushing together as a couple sit opposite each other - and the year, in its own turn, dissolves into hundreds of such days in which sensuous experience is the constantly flowing, nourishing, inspiring source of life.
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Stefan Zweig (The Burning Secret and other stories)
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APD is primarily defined as a lack of empathy,' I said. I'd looked it up too, a few months ago. Empathy is what allows people to interpret emotion, the same way ears interpret sounds; without it you become emotionally deaf.
'It means I don't connect emotionally with other people. I wondered if he was going to pick that one.'
'How do you even know that?' she said. 'You're fifteen years old, for goodness' sake. You should be ... I don't know, chasing girls or playing video games.'
'You're telling a sociopath to chase girls?
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Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
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We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole worldβa nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. . . . No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or weβll kill you.
Well, shit on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didnβt vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America todayβand we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever.
Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?
They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among usβthey are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.
And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.
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Hunter S. Thompson (Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century)
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In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't, trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we areβbrighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't 'get by.'
Fire does.
Fire is.
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Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
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The Doors
The End
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end of our elaborate plans
The end of ev'rything that stands
The end
No safety or surprise
The end
I'll never look into your eyes again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need of
some strangers hand
In a desperate land
Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain
There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the king's highway
Weird scenes inside the goldmine
Ride the highway West baby
Ride the snake
Ride the snake
To the lake
To the lake
The ancient lake baby
The snake is long
Seven miles
Ride the snake
He's old
And his skin is cold
The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here and we'll do the rest
The blue bus is calling us
The blue bus is calling us
Driver, where you taking us?
The killer awoke before dawn
He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived
And then he paid a visit to his brother
And then he walked on down the hall
And he came to a door
And he looked inside
Father?
Yes son
I want to kill you
Mother, I want to.............
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end
It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end
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Jim Morrison (The Doors: The Complete Lyrics)
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Live or die, but don't poison everything...
Well, death's been here
for a long time --
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
and suspicion of the eye
and the religious objects
and how I mourned them
when they were made obscene
by my dwarf-heart's doodle.
The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked also with little maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn bitch!
Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became perjury of the soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I play it, dressed it up,
dressed it up like somebody's doll.
Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer.
Today life opened inside me like an egg
and there inside
after considerable digging
I found the answer.
What a bargain!
There was the sun,
her yolk moving feverishly,
tumbling her prize --
and you realize she does this daily!
I'd known she was a purifier
but I hadn't thought
she was solid,
hadn't known she was an answer.
God! It's a dream,
lovers sprouting in the yard
like celery stalks
and better,
a husband straight as a redwood,
two daughters, two sea urchings,
picking roses off my hackles.
If I'm on fire they dance around it
and cook marshmallows.
And if I'm ice
they simply skate on me
in little ballet costumes.
Here,
all along,
thinking I was a killer,
anointing myself daily
with my little poisons.
But no.
I'm an empress.
I wear an apron.
My typewriter writes.
It didn't break the way it warned.
Even crazy, I'm as nice
as a chocolate bar.
Even with the witches' gymnastics
they trust my incalculable city,
my corruptible bed.
O dearest three,
I make a soft reply.
The witch comes on
and you paint her pink.
I come with kisses in my hood
and the sun, the smart one,
rolling in my arms.
So I say Live
and turn my shadow three times round
to feed our puppies as they come,
the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,
despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
Despite the pails of water that waited,
to drown them, to pull them down like stones,
they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue
and fumbling for the tiny tits.
Just last week, eight Dalmatians,
3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood
each
like a
birch tree.
I promise to love more if they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,
I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.
The poison just didn't take.
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift.
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Anne Sexton (The Complete Poems)