#violence

"We got into an argument over the color of love. I said it was pink, and he said it was red. So you see, I had no other choice but to stab him."

"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."

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

"I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil."

"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."

"Can America get back to a point where politicians are honest? Not unless that point is the tip of a sword."

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

"If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?"

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

"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."

"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'."

"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."

"Gewalt ist die letzte Zuflucht des Unfähigen."

"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."

"When her boyfriend broke his leg, I knew it was my chance to ask her to dance. So I put down my baseball bat and approached her like Babe Ruth."

"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."