No sword shall touch you. Unless it be mine. I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift - in the one hand love in the other freedom - and she said to the woman - "Choose" - and the woman waited long; and she said "Freedom" - and Life said "Thou has well chosen. If thou hadst said "Love" I would have given thee that thou didst ask for: and I would have gone from thee and rethrned to thee no more - now the day will come when I shall return - on that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand." I hear the woman laugh in her sleep. I got my feet on the ground and I don't go to sleep to dream I believe a man is as big as what will make him mad. The good die young. That is why immortality is reserved for the greatest of evil. "You make such a big thing," she said, "of developed countries, rich countries, not being allowed to impose their ways of life and their way of thinking and of doing business on smaller or poorer countries, and that extending to religions and customs and the like, and yet you want to make everybody think the same way. You're like most people who have to...fulminate about things: you want everybody to think the same way you do. ... You are a colonialist of the mind. ... You wish to see the flag of your rationalism planted firmly in every brain on the planet. You say you don't care what people believe in, that you respect their right to worship as they wish, but you don't really respect the people or their beliefs at all. You think that they are fools and what they believe in is worse than useless." "I maintain that though you would often in the 15th century have heard the snobbish Roman say in a would-be off hand tone, "I am dining with the Borgias to-night," no Roman was ever able to say, "I dined last night with the Borgias." In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields at Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And won their freedom. The Gods love the obscure and hate the obvious. "I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and have changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind." "I told yeh I was up here the night they opened the buildin', didn't I? It was fabulous, Jesse. When we got to the top an' looked out an'...The way the city glowed, like someone had scattered gold dust from the top've Harlem to Battery Park...the moths up here, flyin' around us in the light an' the warmth...I looked out that first night an' all I could see was America, stretchin' away in every direction. I got this mad idea--if I jumped off the Empire State Buildin' I could land anywhere in America I wanted...an' the great adventure could begin. This city, she's as beautiful tonight as the first time I saw her." Living too long takes more than time. So I'm gonna buy a gun and start a war "Bullshit. I'm Minister for Gunrunning, Daylight Robbery, and General Mayhem." The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, often well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated....It meant thinking well beyond the powers of normal concentration and then daring your courage to follow your thoughts. There is more than one way to purify the soul. There is absolution and redemption, salvation and a means to an end. And if some of these axioms are of opposing polarities, there is, at least, some consolation in the fact that they have a common ground. Still, so still in the city tonight, twelve o'clock tick-tock, when all that is good slinks away like a beaten dog and the black black shadows are alive with the dead, twisted poetry in broken English, flesh and blood and staring faces...
"Tell him if he comes back here I'll paint Paradise Square with his blood. Two coats." Every man has to die Dobby is used to death threats, he gets them five times a day at home. "Last four days on earth? If I had a dick, I'd go get laid. We can do the next best thing....Let's kill people." "Mass genocide's the most exhausting activity one can engage in. Next to soccer." O wrangling schools, that search what fire This world is spinning around me Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room! "You have to consider the possibility that God doesn't like you. He hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. His hate is better than his indifference....We are God's middle children, with no special place in history, and no special attention. Unless we get God's attention, we have no hope of damnation or redemption." In any attempt to bridge the domains of experience belonging to the spiritual and physical sides of our nature, time occupies the key position. I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature. A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, "The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language." When I get a little money, I buy books; when I get a little more, I buy food and clothing. "Tyler sold it to the stores at twenty bucks a bar. God knows what they charged. We were selling rich women their own fat back to them." "Self-improvement is masturbation. Self-destruction is the answer."
Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of a shadow or the image of a gun. Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button.
Of course he has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183 and we're all barbarians. (On High & Dry) Over two years old now...ah! so young, pure and innocent then - now I'm just old, pure and innocent. Damn! The Bends was many things, but it wasn't really chirpy, was it? It was more like a darkness lumbering over the horizon with gun turrets strafing the Britpop hordes with misery...er, sorry. Got a bit carried away there. One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true. Hooks in you, hooks in me, hooks in the ceiling,
If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education. Monstering is, ultimately, about giving a shit. It's about giving something back to these bastards, these people whom we somehow let run our goddamn lives for us. Giving them a taste of what it means to be us. Every law that curbs my basic human freedoms; every lie about the things I care for; every crime committed against me by their politics -- that's what makes me get up and hound these fuckers, and I'll do that until the day I die or until my brain dries up or something. That's what we achieve. We show they they're accountable. We show them that just as they try to herd us back into cages of quiet mediocrity, we can chase them back to fucking hell with the Truth. "I know you can look after yourself. Only way I didn't trust you was not to be bulletproof." Looked in the mirror and saw what was wrong [This is] the loneliest conspiracy in the history of mankind.
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
"Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other clause - that it must be lived forwards." "Let yourself really hear, really feel, really see. Let yourself be a human being. Only when you are real with yourself can you begin to find the true path in life."
We are what you have made us. We have grown up watching your television. We are a symptom of your Christian America, the biggest Satan of all. This is your world in which we grow. And we will grow to hate you. Because it's a great big white world "It is precisely the soul that is the traveller; it is of the soul and of the soul alone that we can say with supreme truth that "being" necessarily means "being on the way." There is no hope in regretting now Nothing determines who we will become so much as those things we choose to ignore.
Brother will kill brother "It's just raining black people in New York." "I want you on the next transport off this rock or I will shoot you where it won't grow back." The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevalent superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are."
"We've got a date with Destiny. And it looks like she had the lobster."
Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited, for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and too petty - I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind. devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest Probably our biggest criticism of ourselves is we think too much. We all went to university and have never thought there was anything wrong with thinking too much. There's life outside your mother's garden
"Wasn't he great, wearin' his important uniform an' makin' his big speech? Just cryin' out for his place in history...People like that are dangerous, Proinsias. They get yeh killed....I keep me eyes open. It's good advice, Proinsias, an' if yeh want some more-- yeh know I was talkin' about fellas like Pearse, who go on about blood sacrifices an' glory an' beauty in fightin'...? Well, they're the ones yeh fuckin' shoot first." "A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you
least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit."
Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who is bled dry? Who dies first? Who laughs last? Who cares? Who is housed? Who is healed? Who is born to lose? Who does the crime? Who does the time? What disappears? Who is beyond the law? Who is bought and sold? Who speaks? Who is silent? Who owns who? And you know we do not really change over time: we are as flowers unfolding; we merely become more nearly ourselves. death is nothing at all. i have only slipped away into the next room. i am i, and you are you. whatever we were to each other, that we still are. call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way you always used to. put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. play, smile, think of me, pray for me. let my name be ever the household word that it always was, let it be spoken without effort, no trace of a shadow on it. life means all that it ever meant. it is the same as it ever was. there is unbroken continuity. why should i be out of mind because i am out of sight? i am waiting for you, somewhere very near. just around the corner. all is well. rows of houses all bearing down on me "All my filth is in alphabetical order. This, for example, was under H for toy."
"Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed." Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory....In this war, we know, books are weapons. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scare over, all the vermin will drown. Puritanism - the haunting fear that somewhere, someone is happy. "And the things that we fear are the weapons to be held against us." Time is the school in which we learn Tell me a tale, a parable, an illumination. Speak to me of truths hidden in metaphor and secrets glimpsed behind a fleeting image. Give me a hard crust of fantasy to nibble on. It's so much more palatable than the dry waybread of conventional wisdom. "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player
Bad things happen. Sometimes you do them, sometimes they're done to you. Claiming they never took place doesn't solve anything, and it won't make them go away. No matter how deeply you hide something in the trash, it's still there, and it's still a part of you. Once you've read a letter which breaks your heart, burning it doesn't help, so you call a truce. You stop twisting the knife in the night, and try to stop letting it ruin your day. Waiting for perfection is merely a way of turning your back on reality, placing a higher value on what's inside your head than what is evident all around you. Though where we live may be based on shadows, it is our home: and the battered furniture and handprints near the lightswitches are what make it so.
I've often thought about that old man, about how chance words can touch peoples' lives in ways that are impossible to predict. Bend the world, he said, don't accept having less than you want, and blow a hole in anything that blocks your way. Armed with that notion, many people could have gone on to carve themselves a life that culminated in something approaching peace. It was good advice, and well meant.
Weasley's wand causes devastation with the simplest spells. We'll be sending Potter to the hospital wing in a matchbox.
Love will save you from the black night and the lightning and the ghost
"And when you wake up in the middle of the night, tied to your bed, covered in gasoline, wondering where your life went, I'm gonna be there, going, "Hi."
...Reducing crime, disorder, and fear.
I only ever experience this City properly on the street. It only speaks to me here. The TV is too managed, the feedsites too much like a stage, the goddamn gated community too much like living in a paranoid middle-class bubble where everyone has fever dreams of dirty nasty City people bursting the wall in by sheer pressure of numbers crowded up against it.
There are always possibilities, my sergeant told me. But he never had his possibilities ripped away like wings from a fly.
There isn't always a silver lining behind a dark, dark cloud. Sometimes, what's back there is much worse. "That...man...says women can't have as much rights as man, cause Christ wasn't a woman. Where did your Christ come from?...From God and a woman. Man had nothing to do with him." One owes respect to the living. To the dead one owes only truth. "You know, we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. 'My God, my God,' I said to myself. 'It's the Children's Crusade.'"
I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist when I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. "My advice to the women of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias." ...good people, idealists, dreamers - forever looking for the best in others. With them, killing is a last resort. With me, it's second nature. I take the world as it is an' give better than I get. Come at me with a sword, I'll meet you with a sword. You want mercy - show a little first. "I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...." I'm not afraid of computers taking over the world. They're just sitting there. I can hit them with a two by four. You will become a hypocrite, you'll become a liar, you'll try to paper up your own cracks and that's what being an adult is.
You got your head in the clouds and you're not at all what you seem
This mind, this body, and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways
So don't forget what I told you, don't come around, I got my own hell to raise
If you can tell me something worth fighting for.
So grey and disparing, strong as steel, but collapsed inside, the Crow laughs under a streetlight, a voodoo smile of one who lived and died and still yet lives...
He makes his way home where he can be shapeless in the dark and paint his face in the colors of joy...
Tonight, Hell sends an angel bearing gifts.
But it's written in the starlight
And every line in your palm
We're fools to make war
On our brothers in arms
Shall burn the world, had none the wit
Unto this knowledge to aspire
That this her fever might be it?
This world is spinning without me
Every day sends future to past
Every breath leaves me one less to my last
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow in the morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night in Bangkok and the tough guys crumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the devil walking next to me.
For that well-hung feeling.
Got to get back to where I belong - where I belong.
And we are drained of our colors
We used to love ourselves,
We used to love one another
All my stitches itch
My prescription's low, I wish you
Were queen
Just for today
In a world so white what else could I say?
All the pain that we could not see
We both knew what we wanted
And we took it believing it free
Spilling blood across the land
Killing for religion
Something I don't understand
Fools like me, who cross the sea
And come from foreign lands
Ask the sheep, for their beliefs
Do you kill on God's command?
angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress
need to contaminate to alleviate this loneliness
i now know the depths i reach are limitless
There's life beyond your wildest dreams
There hasn't been any explosion
We're not spinning like Dorothy
Who decides what remains to be seen?
i can feel their blue hands touching me
all these things in all positions
all these things will one day take control
and fade out again and fade out
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Astonish me.
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale,
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
I was just the wrong person to give it to.
And love will save you from our misery, then tie you to the bloody post
And love will save you from the hands that pull you down, beneath the sea
Love may save all you people, but it will never save me.
