β
I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself from under my feet;
My eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.
β
β
Sylvia Plath
β
After years of having a dog, you know him. You know the meaning of his snuffs and grunts and barks. Every twitch of the ears is a question or statement, every wag of the tail is an exclamation.
β
β
Robert McCammon (Boy's Life)
β
The damaged loves the damaged.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
It can only take a moment to waste the rest of your life.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
Goodness is about what you do. Not who you pray to.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
There isn't enough darkness in all the world to snuff out the light of one little candle.
β
β
Gautama Buddha
β
Fathers. Mothers. With all their caring and attention. They will f--- you up, every time.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Bagombo Snuff Box)
β
Not half as much as Iβd miss me if you killed me. (He blinked like a girl and leaned against Ashβs shoulder.) Please donβt hurt me, Ash. Please. I donβt want to die while Iβm still a virgin. At least let me get laid before you kill me β which according to my mom I canβt do until Iβm married and I canβt do that until I finish college. So you have to wait a good ten years before you snuff me. Deal? (Nick)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Infinity (Chronicles of Nick, #1))
β
No, whether a woman is a concubine to fuck or a damsel to redeem, she's always just some passive object to fulfill a man's purpose.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
Wisdom's daughter walks aloneββ
βElla!β Frank stood suddenly. βMaybe it's not the best timeββ
βThe Mark of Athena burns through Rome,β Ella continued, cupping her hands over her ears and raising her voice. βTwins snuff out the angel's breath, Who holds the key to endless death. Giants' bane stands gold and pale, Won with pain from a woven jail.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
β
The worst thing you can do is nothing.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste! (p. 225)
β
β
AndrΓ© Aciman
β
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (BAGOMBO SNUFF BOX.)
β
If you want to change a whole people, then you start with the girls. It stands to reason: they learn faster, and they pass on what they learn to their children.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
I tell you, commander, it's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Isn't a kid alive who doesn't dream about rewarding her folks, or punishing them.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
Stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle.
β
β
Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties: Stories)
β
In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, donβt snuff it out, donβt be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than weβd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything β what a waste!
β
β
AndrΓ© Aciman (Call Me by Your Name)
β
Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.
β
β
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Red-Headed League (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes #2))
β
Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39))
β
I know that I am a small, weak man, but I have amassed a large library; I dream of dangerous places.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.
β
β
Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
β
It only takes one mistake and nothing else you ever do will matter. No matter how hard you work or how smart you become, you'll always be known for that one poor choice.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
The street outside is empty, lit only by a half moon; yet factory engines beat in the background and the working day is about to begin. Maggie steps out of the tenement and suddenly the street begins to fill with women, some running, some pulling their jackets around them, some lighting pipes, some, like Maggie herself, taking a pinch of snuff. From other tenements come other women, and soon all merge into one, like a herd of cattle off to market, clopping over the stone pavements and the cobbles, lowing with last nightβs news.
β
β
Michael Tobert (Karna's Wheel)
β
β¦ you were so worried about legal and illegal that you never stopped to think about whether it was right or wrong.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.
β
β
Shan Sa (The Girl Who Played Go)
β
What about animals slaughtered for our consumption? who among us would be able to continue eating pork chops after visiting a factory farm in which pigs are half-blind and cannot even properly walk, but are just fattened to be killed? And what about, say, torture and suffering of millions we know about, but choose to ignore? Imagine the effect of having to watch a snuff movie portraying what goes on thousands of times a day around the world: brutal acts of torture, the picking out of eyes, the crushing of testicles -the list cannot bear recounting. Would the watcher be able to continue going on as usual? Yes, but only if he or she were able somehow to forget -in an act which suspended symbolic efficiency -what had been witnessed. This forgetting entails a gesture of what is called fetishist disavowal: "I know it, but I don't want to know that I know, so I don't know." I know it, but I refuse to fully assume the consequences of this knowledge, so that I can continue acting as if I don't know it.
β
β
Slavoj Ε½iΕΎek (Violence: Six Sideways Reflections)
β
Hazel always used to say There's not enough darkness in the entire universe to snuff out the light of just one little candle.
β
β
Fannie Flagg (I Still Dream About You)
β
but what should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Want to talk third wave feminism, you could cite Ariel Levy and the idea that women have internalized male oppression. Going to spring break at Fort Lauderdale, getting drunk, and flashing your breasts isn't an act of personal empowerment. It's you, so fashioned and programmed by the construct of patriarchal society that you no longer know what's best for yourself.
A damsel too dumb to even know she's in distress.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
The jurisdiction of a good man extends to the end of the world.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
It's weird, I was such a survivor and so wanted to be a part of life while I was trying to snuff out the life that was inside of me. I had this duality of trying to kill myself with drugs, then eating really good food and exercising and going swimming and trying to be a part of life. I was always going back and forth on some level.
β
β
Anthony Kiedis (Scar Tissue)
β
Wisdom's daughter walks alone.
The Mark of Athena burns through Rome.
Twins snuff out the angel's breath,
Who holds the key to endless death.
Giant's bane stands gold and pale,
Won through pain from a woven jail.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
β
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of."
[From the preface.]
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Bagombo Snuff Box)
β
If there were such a thing as an inter-city thieving contest, Ankh-Morpork would bring home the trophy and probably everyoneβs wallets.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
To you, death does not simply end life. It steals away the sunsets you'll never see, the children you'll never hold, the wife you'll never love. It's frightening to almost lose your future, and it's heartbreaking to witness death snuff out other people's tomorrows.
β
β
Robert Liparulo (Gatekeepers (Dreamhouse Kings, #3))
β
Vimes's lack of interest in other people's children was limitless.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Cassie Wright knows, the moment you make yourself available to any man, he starts to take you for granted
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
We live and learn, or, perhaps more importantly we learn and live.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Among your instincts you will find the longing for strong friendships, that the modern evil tries to snuff out. And they have good reason to try this, because every great thing in the past was done through strong friendships between two men, or brotherhoods of men, and this includes all great political things, all acts of political freedom and power. The modern zoo wants you instead to be a weak and isolated "individual".
β
β
Bronze Age Pervert (Bronze Age Mindset)
β
Honor was a luxury item, like hair pomade and snuff. Its only purpose was to show the world that you could afford to be impractical, that you had enough money to behave in a way that was compatible with some ludicrous code instead of acting out of self-preservation like the rest of humanity.
β
β
Cat Sebastian (The Soldier's Scoundrel (The Turners, #1))
β
We are as we are. How can you claim to know what life I was meant to lead, let alone threaten to force me into it? All your quibbling is nonsense. As well forbid your nose to snuff, or your ears to hear. We are as we do.
β
β
Robin Hobb
β
So much paperwork to read! So much paperwork to push away! So much paperwork to pretend he hadn't received and that might have been eaten by gargoyles.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Little crimes breed big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
The damaged love the damaged. True fact.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
Yes, sir, thank you, sir, and I wouldnβt trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Do not seek perfection. None exists. All we can do is strive.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Well, the news has got around. The Duchess of Keepsake has invited us to a ball, Sir Henry and Lady Withering have invited us to a ball, and Lord and Lady Hangfinger have invited us to... yes, a ball."
"Well, that's a lot of..."
"Don't you dare, Sam.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off forever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.
β
β
Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
β
Handsome enoughβ is this Grim Reaper, Who can snuff all these βbrief candles,β every fluttering soul sucking the air, from this hall.
β
β
Anne Rice (The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2))
β
Thatβs why weβre called the Luminaries, Winnie: we are lanterns the forest can never snuff out.
β
β
Susan Dennard (The Luminaries (The Luminaries, #1))
β
I have no personal stake in these people, Jean-Claude, but they are people. Good, bad, or indifferent, they are alive, and no one has the right to just arbitrarily snuff them out.β
"So it is the sanctity of life you cling to?"
I nodded. βThat and the fact that every human being is special. Every death is a loss of something precious and irreplaceable.
β
β
Laurell K. Hamilton
β
Not all questions are answered, commander, but fortunately some answers are questioned.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39))
β
Vimes woke in damp and utter darkness with sand under his cheek. Some parts of his body reported for duty, others protested that they had a note from their mother.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
They say that the eyes of some paintings can follow you around the room, a fact that I doubt, but I am wondering whether some music can follow you for ever.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
The chase was the best part, Hunting was intoxicating. And knowing I had the power to snuff out Nila Weaverβs life the moment I caught her gave me a certainβ¦thrill.
β
β
Pepper Winters (Debt Inheritance (Indebted, #1))
β
Kill me if I ever look that Bad" . . . "Dude, what are you saying? . . . On the TV? That is you, dude. From like five years ago.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
Perhaps Germany will serve as a warning,β said Arvid. βMay they learn from us to snuff out fascism in America when the first sparks arise and not delay until democracy goes up in flames all around them.β βThis could never happen in America. A nation that elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt would never elect a madman populist.
β
β
Jennifer Chiaverini (Resistance Women)
β
She threw her head back and laughed. The kid fucking laughed, eyes shining. Like there was no greater adventure she could possibly be on. Like life was turning out to be the most exhilarating, fantastic roller coaster ride she could ever have imagined. Fuck the pain. Fuck the misery. In the middle of the hopeless, brutal hell her short existence on this earth had been, that girl laughed. You don't snuff out a life like that. You honor it. You take measures to protect it, even from itself when necessary, and keep it alive.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Burned (Fever, #7))
β
C'mon on down to the Whiff and Spit; snuff it up and cough it out," Lewis chanted, giving it a catchy rhythem.
β
β
L.J. Smith
β
And what do you keep in such a pretty little box, sir? Snuff?'
Oh, no! It is a great treasure of mine that I wish Lady Pole to wear tonight!' He opened the box and showed Stephen a small, white finger.
β
β
Susanna Clarke
β
Yes, I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery.
...I hate it because of all the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages, that it snuffs out every year. It is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive.
β
β
Brenda Ueland (If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit)
β
Sometimes you had to take a look at yourself and then look away.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Like the he-man movie stars who turn out to be queer . . . or the silent-film actors whose voices sound terrible recorded--the audience only wants a limited amount of honesty. [ellipses original]
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk
β
What is normal? Normal is yesterday and last week and last month taken together
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
That just goes to show that you never know, although what it is we never know I suspect we'll never know.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
He wrapped his arms around her waist and looked at her through those intense brown eyes she loved. "I wanted you when I thought you'd pull a bag over my head and snuff out my life. I wanted you more than I've wanted anything. I love you more than I've loved anyone. You burst into my life like sunshine and made me see how lonely I was. I don't want to live that way anymore." He pressed a kiss to her hairline. "I will love you with my last breath.
β
β
Rachel Gibson (Sex, Lies, and Online Dating (Writer Friends, #1))
β
I'm not cruel, sir, I won't shoot you in the guts, but I will make you realize how much you took your toes for granted.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Reading a novel, War and Peace for example, is no Catnap. Because a novel is so long, reading one is like being married forever to somebody nobody knows or cares about.
β
β
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Bagombo Snuff Box)
β
Don't start weaving a social hypothesis in front of an angry woman holding a blade.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Fire needs air to live. Air fuels fire, stokes it, and makes it burn brighter and hotter than it ever could alone. But too much air will snuff it completely, just as too many flames will consume all the air. They are far greater than the sum of their parts together, but are equally as dangerous to each otherβs existence.
β
β
Elise Kova (Air Awakens (Air Awakens, #1))
β
It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the worldβwhat pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?
β
β
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
β
This is Masher,' said Feeney. 'His father was a wild boar, his mother was surprised.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the worldβwhat pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?
β
β
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
β
You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven't you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you've seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?" She made a tiny spitting sound. "You can always get some more people. they reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know that it costs us less to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format. Real human flesh is cheaper than a machine. It's the axiomatic truth of our times.
β
β
Richard K. Morgan (Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs, #1))
β
This is the key to the entire universe. You know what this is? It's not a microphone, this right here is your voice. This physical thing just amplifies it. Don't be afraid of your voice. You have a voice without a microphone. Use it and don't let anybody snuff you out and tell you don't have one.
β
β
Hayley Williams
β
New eyes awaken.
I send Love's name into the world with wings
And songs grow up around me like a jungle.
Choirs of all creatures sing the tunes
Your Spirit played in Eden.
Zebras and antelopes and birds of paradise
Shine on the face of the abyss
And I am drunk with the great wilderness
Of the sixth day in Genesis.
But sound is never half so fair
As when that music turns to air
And the universe dies of excellence.
Sun, moon and stars
Fall from their heavenly towers.
Joys walk no longer down the blue world's shore.
Though fires loiter, lights still fly on the air of the gulf,
All fear another wind, another thunder:
Then one more voice
Snuffs all their flares in one gust.
And I go forth with no more wine and no more stars
And no more buds and no more Eden
And no more animals and no more sea:
While God sings by himself in acres of night
And walls fall down, that guarded Paradise.
β
β
Thomas Merton
β
What do you do when your entire identity is destroyed in an instant? How do you cope when your whole life story turns out to bw wrong?
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
Sex reincarnated that good, pure girl, but as something else.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
Everyone should occasionally break the law in some small and delightful way, Drumknott. Itβs good for the hygiene of the brain.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39))
β
As the message drained away Vimes stared at the opposite wall, in which the door now opened, after a cursory knock, to reveal the steward bearing that which is guaranteed to frighten away all nightmares, to wit, a cup of hot tea.*
* The sound of the gentle rattle of china cup on china saucer drives away all demons, a little-known fact.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39))
β
Aristocrats don't notice philosophical conundra. They just ignore them. Philosophy includes contemplating the possibility that you might be wrong, sir, and a real aristocrat knows that he is always right. It's not vanity, you understand, it's built-in absolute certainty. They may sometimes be as mad as a hatful of spoons, but they are always definitely and certainly mad.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
β
I know love is begun by time,
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it.
And nothing is at a like goodness still.
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,
We should do when we would, for this βwouldβ changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents.
And then this βshouldβ is like a spendthrift sigh
That hurts by easing.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
β
Crush your individuality first. Shake off the dreams of personal comfort. Then start to work. Inch by inch you shall have to proceed. It needs courage, perseverance and very strong determination. No difficulties and no hardships shall discourage you. No failure and betrayals shall dishearten you. No travails (!) imposed upon you shall snuff out the revolutionary will in you. Through the ordeal of sufferings and sacrifice you shall come out victorious. And these individual victories shall be the valuable assets of the revolution.
β
β
Bhagat Singh
β
You had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, or pray that their sons land on their feet soon enough. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is a pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste.
β
β
AndrΓ© Aciman (Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1))
β
No, Miss Wright didn't want to meet her kid. To her, that relationship was just as important, just as ideal and impossible as it would be to the child. She'd expect that young man to be perfect, smart, and talented, everything to compensate for all the mistakes that she'd made. The whole wasted, unhappy mess of her life.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
The ego is definitely an advancement, but it can be compared to the bark of the tree in many ways. The bark of the tree is flexible, extremely vibrant, and grows with the growth beneath. It is a treeβs contact with the outer world, the treeβs interpreter, and to some degree the treeβs companion. So should manβs ego be. When manβs ego turns instead into a shell, when instead of interpreting outside conditions it reacts too violently against them, then it hardens, becomes an imprisoning form that begins to snuff out important data, and to keep enlarging information from the inner self. The purpose of the ego is protective. It is also a device to enable the inner self to inhabit the physical plane. It is in other words a camouflage. It is the
β
β
Jane Roberts (The Early Sessions: Book 1 of The Seth Material)
β
Potassium cyanide," says the talent wrangler as she leans over to pick up a paper napkin off the floor. "Found naturally in the cassava or manioc roots native to Africa, used to tint architectural blueprints in the form of the deep-blue pigment known as Prussian blue. Hence the shade 'cyan' blue.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
β
In Hollywood, the real stars are all in animation. Alvin and the Chipmunks don't throw star fits, don't demand custom-designed Winnebagos, and are a breeze at costume fittings. Cruella DeVille, Gorgo, Rainbow Brite, Gus-Gus, Uncle Scrooge, and the Care Bears are all superstars and they don't have drug problems, marital difficulties, or paternity suits to blacken their images. They don't age, balk at promoting, or sass highly paid directors. Plus, you can market them to death and they never feel exploited. I'd like to do a big-budget snuff film starring every last one of them.
β
β
John Waters (Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters)
β
During the First World War, I told her, Hitler had been a runner, delivering messages between the German trenches, and he was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure,and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory before the dolls could ever go into wide distribution.
β
β
Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
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Nick:"Make me immortal." Ash wasn't charmed. "Look, Nick, I don't like talking about my powers and not a lot of people know what I can do. I'm trusting you with a secret and I expect you to keep it. If you can't..." He tilted his head down as if he was looking at him over the rim of his sunglasses. "Well, I'm sure your mom's going to miss you." "Not half as much as I'd miss me if you killed me." He blinked like a girl and leaned against Ash's shoulder. "Please don't hurt me, Ash. Please. I don't want to die while I'm still a virgin. At least let me get laid before you kill me - which according to my mom I can't do until I'm married and I can't do that until I finish college. So you have to wait a good ten years before you snuff me. Deal?" Nick, CoN Infinity
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Infinity (Chronicles of Nick, #1))
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Your dad was in a street gang?" My adopted dad was an accountant for a big Fortune 500 corporation. Him, me, and my adopted mom lived in the suburbs in an English Tudor house with a gigantic basement where he fiddled with model trains. The other dads were lawyers and research chemists, but they all ran model trains. Every weekend they could, they'd load into a family van and cruise into the city for research. Snapping pictures of gang members. Gang graffiti. Sex workers walking their tracks. Litter and pollution and homeless heroin addicts. All this, they'd study and bicker about, trying to outdo each other with the most realistic, the grittiest scenes of urban decay they could create in HO train scale in a subdivision basement
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Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
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The religious school she went to, growing up, Ms. Wright said how all the girls had to wear a scarf tied to cover their ears at all times. Based on the biblical idea that the Virgin Mary became pregnant when the Holy Spirit whispered in her ear. The idea that ears were vaginas. That, hearing just one wrong idea, you lost your innocence. One detail too many and youβd be ruined. Overdosed on information.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Snuff)
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Vimes died. The sun dropped out of the sky, giant lizards took over the world, and the stars exploded and went out and all hope vanished and gurgled into the sinktrap of oblivion. And gas filled the firmament and combusted and behold! There was a new heaven - or possibly not. And Disc and Io and and possibly verily life crawled out of the sea - or possibly didn't because it had been made by the gods, and lizards turned to less scaly lizards - or possibly did not. And lizards turned into birds and bugs turned into butterflies and a species of apple turned into banana and a kind of monkey fell out of a tree and realised life was better when you didn't have to spend your time hanging onto something. And in only a few billion years evolved trousers and ornamental stripey hats. Lastly the game of Crocket. And there, magically reincarnated, was Vimes, a little dizzy, standing on the village green looking into the smiling countenance of an enthusiast.
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Terry Pratchett (Snuff (Discworld, #39; City Watch, #8))
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So, you care about me now,β I said, meaning to make a joke of it, but it came out soft and low and full of something guttural that made me embarrassed. βWhy?β
βBecause I donβt know anybody like you. Youβre like β¦ a rare artefact. And it would be a shame if you got broken.β Amusement spluttered from me in the most unattractive way. βAre you really comparing me to an antique right now? Oh my God, you nerd.β
He started laughing, and the carefree melody of it swept me up until I was laughing too, and it was absurd because our families were being threatened and murdered and there we were squished together in a hundred-degree heat outside a maximum security prison, and we used to hate each other and now we were laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.
He composed himself first, but it took a while and I was left choking my laughter into silence. βWhat I meant was,β his face twisted into a quiet smile that felt secret and deadly, βyouβre a bright spark, Sophie. And I donβt want anyone to snuff you out.β
βOh.β Well I couldnβt make fun of that. Was I supposed to say something back? Wasnβt that how compliments worked? The silence was growing and suddenly his words felt heavy and important and he was so close to me and I was perspiring and panicking, and β¦ and I said, βAnd youβre kind of like a snowflake.β
Oh, Jesus Christ.
He masked his fleeting surprise with a quirked eyebrow. βExcuse me?β
βNothing,β I said quickly. βI didnβt say anything.β
βNo, no,β he said, rounding on me so his face was too close, his eyes too searing, his smile too irritating. βIβm a snowflake, am I?β
βShut up. Seriously.β I pulled wisps of loose hair around my cheeks. βShut up.β
βI think you were trying to tell me I was special.β
βIcy,β I said. βI meant you were icy.β
I could practically taste his glee. I was floundering, and he was relishing it.
βAnd unique, in that youβre uniquely annoying,β I added. βGod, youβre annoying.
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Catherine Doyle (Inferno (Blood for Blood, #2))
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I could also see just by looking around me how we tend to over-romanticize history. Life in those other centuries had not been all knights-and-ladies stuff. There was nothing romantic about cottages where eight or ten people slept in one room with no privacy; where there were no bathrooms, not even outside priviesβeven if the cottage did happen to have picturesque thatch on the roof. There was nothing glamorous in any century about no running water in which to bathe or about fleas on human beings; or about the blackgum twigs with which some of the women right now, in 1912, dipped snuff and then rubbed their teeth and gums. So many of the people had terrible-looking teeth or no teeth at all. And the eye trouble that was so prevalent. I had learned that it was trachoma and that it was a dangerous infection which, if unchecked, resulted in blindness.
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Catherine Marshall (Christy)
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I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instigated by Syrian and other agents. As the (literally) extorted confession unfolds, names begin to be named. Once a fellow-conspirator is identified, guards come to his seat and haul him from the room. The reclining Saddam, meanwhile, lights a large cigar and contentedly scans his dossiers. The sickness of fear in the room is such that men begin to crack up and weep, rising to their feet to shout hysterical praise, even love, for the leader. Inexorably, though, the cull continues, and faces and bodies go slack as their owners are pinioned and led away. When it is over, about half the committee members are left, moaning with relief and heaving with ardent love for the boss. (In an accompanying sequel, which I have not seen, they were apparently required to go into the yard outside and shoot the other half, thus sealing the pact with Saddam. I am not sure that even Beria or Himmler would have had the nerve and ingenuity and cruelty to come up with that.)
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Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)