#violence

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence."

"As a teacher of fourth-graders in a public school, where corporal punishement was not allowed, she had years of violence stored up and was, truth be told, sort of enjoying letting it out on Kona, who she felt could have been the poster child for the failure of public education."

"Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain."

"I could scarf down a scarf faster than I could eat any other throat warmer, with the possible exception of your clenched hands around my neck."

"Nobody peels a banana before stabbing themselves with it. But that’s exactly how I love—dangerously."

"Physical love is unthinkable without violence."

"I forgive you,"I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death."

"Politically, I feel out of touch, like I’m wearing gloves—boxing gloves. We need to go bareknuckle to beat back the entrenched establishment."

"[On Schopenhauer in Black and White] Schopenhauer's views of love are flawed. Love can't be merely an illusion of the mind to aid in procreation, but the path to redemption for an otherwise violently selfish species. Past human greatness has proven that when challenged, love can overpower impulsive instinct, and in essence, the vilest aspects of our nature."

"Everyone who is not happy must be shot."

"The problem with our society is that our values aren’t in the right place. There’s an awful lot of bleeding and naked bodies on prime-time networks, but not nearly enough cable television on public programming."

"Among peoples who possess a highly developed pugnacious instinct we find the greatest progress in the arts, sciences, social and political organization, commerce and industry. The instinct takes the milder form of rivalry which is the motive force of the great portion of the serious labors of mankind."

"Gewalt ist die letzte Zuflucht des Unfähigen."

"Knocking on a door is so violent. Instead, try talking to the door to get it to open up to you. I should write a self-help book for door-to-door salesmen."

"An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind."

"Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them."

"This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back."

"If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? 'I love you, too'."

"I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out of me with steel pipes."