Quotessence
Home / Topics / Violent Quotes

Violent Quotes

Browse 1659 quotes about Violent.

Related topics

PeopleViolenceIfsMenThinkingWorldWayNon ViolentCrimeMeanKnowsWarWantHas BeensViolent CrimesCountryPersonsKindStatesFeelsPassionHumansMayNeedsShouldActionRevolutionWellsLooksDoeForceBelieveChildrenProblemDangerousTryingFightingGovernmentYearsCriminalsFacesHateKidsAmericaFirstsGamesMadeFactsLawMindShowsSometimesCausesStillsHeartSidesCharacterExtremesOrderSocialUseArtEnemyFilmLittlesLongPoliticalTwoViolent DeathCulturePeaceRealSeemsWould BeConflictNonviolencePeacefulReasonViolent ActsDesireEndsEyeFeelingsGivingGunSpiritUsedWholeHomeSportsViolent ManBeautifulI CanMightNationsStruggleYoungAnimalBodyBookmore

Violent Quotes

“Afterward, I curl around her. We lie in silence until darkness falls, and then, haltingly, she begins to talk...She speaks without need or even room for response, so I simply hold her and stroke her hair. She talks of the pain, grief, and horror of the past four years; of learning to cope with being the wife of a man so violent and unpredictable his touch made her skin crawl and of thinking, until quite recently, that she'd finally managed to do that. And then, finally, of how my appearance had forced her to realize she hadn't learned to cope at all.”

ThinkingMenNeedsYearsMadePainPastLyingFallSpeakRealizingRoomsGriefSilenceDarknessFourWifeHairHorrorSkinsResponseAppearanceViolentFour YearsStrokesUnpredictableCurls
Author:Sara Gruen
Create image

“Looking at suicide—the sheer numbers, the pain leading up to it, and the suffering left behind—is harrowing. For every moment of exuberance in the science, or in the success of governments, there is a matching and terrible reality of the deaths themselves: the young deaths, the violent deaths, the unnecessary deaths”

MomentsRealityGovernmentPainYoungSufferingLeftNumbersBehindsTerribleSuicideViolentSheerUnnecessaryLeft BehindMatchingExuberanceViolent Death
Book:Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
Create image

“Is it wrong, wanting to be at home with your record collection? It's not like collecting records is like collecting stamps, or beermats, or antique thimbles. There's a whole world in here, a nicer, dirtier, more violent, more peaceful, more colorful, sleazier, more dangerous, more loving world than the world I live in; there is history, and geography, and poetry, and countless other things I should have studied at school, including music.”

WorldShouldWholeHomeSchoolRecordsDangerousShould HaveIncludingViolentWhole WorldPeacefulCollectionsStampsGeographyCollectingColorfulAntiques
Author:Nick Hornby
Create image

“The city was asleep on its right side and shaking with violent nightmares. Long puffs of snoring came out of the chimneys. Its feet were sticking out because the clouds did not cover it altogether. There was a hole in them and the white feathers were falling out. The city had untied all its bridges like so many buttons to feel at ease. Wherever there was a lamplight the city scratched itself until it went out.”

FeelsLongFallSidesWhiteCitiesFeetCloudsViolentHolesBridgesEaseNightmareButtonsFeathersShakingPuffChimneysSnoringSticking Out
Author:Anais Nin
Create image

“For it was Saturday night, the best and bingiest glad-time of the week, one of the fifty-two holidays in the slow-turning Big Wheel of the year, a violent preamble to a prostrate Sabbath. Piled up passions were exploded on Saturday night, and the effect of a week's monotonous graft in the factory was swilled out of your system in a burst of goodwill. You followed the motto of 'be drunk and be happy,' kept your crafty arms around female waists, and felt the beer going beneficially down into the elastic capacity of your guts.”

YearsTwoBigsNightPassionFeltWeekEffectsArmsCapacityFemaleGladViolentDrunkBeerWheelsFiftyGutsHolidayFactoriesSaturdayMottoGoodwillSabbathSaturday NightMonotonousCraftyPreamble
Book:Every Day of the Week: An Alan Sillitoe Reader
Create image

“And I said to myself that unless you conceive Death to be a violent guerrilla and kidnaper who snatches those you love, and if you are not cowardly and cannot submit to such terrorism as civilized people now do in every department of life, you must pursue and inquire and explore every possibility and seek everywhere and try everything.”

PeopleIfsTryingSaidPossibilityTerrorismViolentPursueDepartmentCivilizedSubmitCowardlyGuerrillasThose You Love
Book:Humboldt's Gift
Create image

“At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the suffering of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful.”

MadeFeelingsAgeSpiritSufferingHoursMy OwnAttitudeAliveAreasEndureCaughtSeekingInsightCriticalViolentPeacefulTwelveSkepticalSuffering Of Others
Book:Black Boy
Create image

“When our thoughts revolve we are so often deceived into supposing that their violent movement is an indication of their vigorous originality, the upheaval of prejudice and fixed ideas, when all the time it is more likely that the machine which contains them is only an elaborate cement-mixer, and when the thinking is finished, those whirling thoughts are smoothed into the unchanged conventional mould and seeing them set solid enough to dance, to build, to travel upon, we would never dream of their first deceit, of the hope once roused by their apparently violent reorganisation.”

ThinkingFirstsIdeasEnoughDreamSeeingMovementMachinesPrejudiceFinishedViolentFixedDeceitOriginalityConventionalOur ThoughtsDeceivedIndicationVigorousCementMouldUpheavalSupposingSupposing ThatReorganisation
Author:Janet Frame
Create image

“We have certain demons who are motivated by the smell of food. They tend to get rather violent whenever they smell it. I personally wouldn’t be caught eating anything because I would end up dead. You might not. But you’d still have to fight them, and since some of them are rather ugly and really, really smelly, it might spoil your appetite. Then again, maybe not. Doesn’t spoil Noir’s. I think it makes him hungrier, especially when he guts them. Sick, but true. (Asmodeus)”

ThinkingStillsEndsMightCertainFightingEatingSickCaughtUglySmellViolentDemonGutsMotivatedAppetiteSpoilNoirSmellyAsmodeus
Book:Dream Warrior
Create image

“Infuriatingly stupid analysts - especially people who called themselves Arabists, yet who seemed to know next to nothing about the reality of the Islamic world - wrote reams of commentary [after 9/11]. Their articles were all about Islam saving Aristotle and the zero, which medieval Muslim scholars had done more than eight hundred years ago; about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violent. These were fairy tales, nothing to do with the real world I knew.”

PeopleKnowsWorldYearsRealDoneRealityNextBitsStupidHundredYears AgoIslamEightToleranceViolentTalesSavingFairyIslamicZeroReal WorldArticlesScholarFairy TaleMedievalCommentaryAnalystsPeace And Tolerance
Author:Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Create image

“At this point two elderly security guards in parkas, the guys who normally work the front desk at the plant, asked John to step behind the tape. John claims that here he told the guards that he could not speak English and when that failed to persuade them, he fa...ked a violent seizure. I am unclear as to the purpose of this part of his plan. John flung himself down and began rolling around in the snow, thrashing his limbs about and screaming “EL SEIZURE!!! NO ES BUENO!!!” in a Mexican accent.”

TwoPurposeGuySpeakBehindsStepsPlansSecurityFrontsClaimsDown AndPlantViolentSnowTapeAccentsDesksRollingLimbsMexicanElderlySpeak EnglishUnclearSeizuresSecurity GuardsKedsFront Desk
Book:John Dies at the End
Create image

“It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work in not only convenient but unavoidable.”

WorldDoeRealitySeemsArtistConditionsSatisfactionViolentInventionIntenseDisorderConvenientRecourse
Book:The Glass Menagerie
Create image

“"I'm human," he said in a tormented tone. "And I'm not." He dropped his hand to her shoulder. "I never knew softness," he breathed. "Not until the moment you touched me in your store. My life is violent and dangerous. It's dark and twisted and no place for someone like you. I have more people wanting me dead than I can count. They will stop at nothing, and you.." He ground his teeth before he spoke again. "You'll never want again for anything in your life. I swear it on what little bit of human soul I have left."”

PeopleWantHumansLittlesSaidI CanSoulMomentsHandsLife IsLeftBitsDarkDangerousLike YouLittle BitStoresViolentShouldersTeethToneTouchedSpokesSwearTwistedHuman SoulSoftnessSomeone You LikeDark And Twisted
Author:Sherrilyn Kenyon
Create image

“Let's say someone has experienced a violent trauma or betrayal: a child has been raped by a parent or has witnessed the destruction of someone he loves or has been so traumatized by the possibility of beatings and punishments that he's afraid to act. If the trauma is great enough, that person's life may become frozen, emotionally frozen even though he still gets up in the morning, is busy all day, and goes to bed at night. But there's this empty space that begins to fill with rage, rage toward everyone - the perpetrator, the people in the world who haven't suffered, even toward himself. (174)”

PeopleIfsWorldMayChildrenPersonsHas BeensStillsEnoughNightParentSpaceMorningHavensPossibilityBedEmptyDestructionBusyTraumaBetrayalRagePunishmentViolentGet UpFrozenEmpty SpacePerpetrators
Book:Boy in the Water: A Novel
Create image

“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. the lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glance of the lover’s inward eyes.”

PeopleMenEyeLove IsStupidLoversSafeWeakViolentBelovedWickedLoved OnesInwardGlancesFrozenStupid PeopleFree ManGift Of LoveWeak People
Author:Toni Morrison
Create image

“If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.”

IfsMenNeedsGivingTryingHumansLooksStatesSeemsLawPoliticalCertainReligiousMankindProduceGiving UpJudgmentIntellectualCapacityIndependentAffairViolentImpressionPsychologicalDestroyedInstanceFollyOverwhelmingDisplayDeprivedOutburstSociologicalHuman Capacity
Book:Letters Papers from Prison
Create image

“Individual heterosexual women came to the movement from relationships where men were cruel, unkind, violent, unfaithful. Many of these men were radical thinkers who participated in movements for social justice, speaking out on behalf of the workers, the poor, speaking out on behalf of racial justice. However when it came to the issue of gender they were as sexist as their conservative cohorts.”

MenIndividualSocialJusticePoorIssuesMovementSocial JusticeWorkersConservativeGenderViolentRadicalThinkerBehalfSexistUnkindUnfaithfulSpeaking OutRacial Justice
Book:Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
Create image

“I looked around the store and what I saw was not very encouraging. There were rows and rows of violent toys...aisle after aisle of training devices for recreational slaughter. No wonder our world was such a mean and violent place...if we teach children that killing is fun, can we really be surprised if now and then someone is smart enough to learn?”

IfsWorldMeanChildrenEnoughFunWonderTeachSawsSmartTrainingKillingStoresViolentDevicesOur WorldToysNow And ThenSlaughterAisle
Author:Jeff Lindsay
Create image

“To feel our character, our personality, and our personal, hard-won history fade from being is to be exposed to whatever lies beneath these comforting, operational conveniences. What remains when the conscious and functioning self has been erased is mankind's fundamental condition – irrational, violent, guilt-wracked, despairing, and mad.”

FeelsHas BeensSelfHardCharacterLyingConditionsMankindPersonalityConsciousFundamentalsRemainsMadGuiltViolentExposedFadesIrrationalComfortingConvenience
Author:Peter Straub
Create image

“And in "Elbow Room" the cast sings the glories of westward expansion in the United States, which involved the murder of native peoples and the violent conquest of half of Mexico. Among the lines in the song is one that intones, "There were plenty of fights / To win land right / But the West was meant to be / It was our Manifest Destiny?" Let it suffice to say that happily belting out a tune in which one merrily praises genocide is always easier for those whose ancestors weren't on the receiving end of the deal.”

EndsStatesSongFightingWinningLinesUnitedRoomsDealsHalfDestinyUnited StatesLandInvolvedEasierGloryMurderPraiseWestCastsViolentPlentyNativeTunesMeant To BeManifestGenocideAncestorMexicoReceivingExpansionConquestElbowsWere Meant To BeManifest DestinyWestward Expansion
Author:Tim Wise
Create image