Quotes & Sayings About Cold Blood

And in the kisses, what deep sweetness! There are women's mouths that seem to ignite with love the breath that opens them. Whether they are reddened by blood richer than purple, or frozen by the pallor of agony, whether they are illuminated by the goodness of consent or darkened by the shadow of disdain, they always carry within them an enigma that disturbs men of intellect, and attracts them and captivates them. A constant discord between the expression of the lips and that of the eyes generates the mystery; it seems as if a duplicitous soul reveals itself there with a different beauty, happy and sad, cold and passionate, cruel and merciful, humble and proud, laughing and mocking; and the abiguity arouses discomfort in the spirit that takes pleasure in dark things. — Gabriele D'Annunzio

Every generation has its war. I have just been reminded of mine. It ended in 1989, 43 years after it began, the longest war Britain fought and certainly the most expensive. Its climax was total victory. Yet there was no parade, no medals, no colours hung in cathedrals. The Cold War saw no battles and cost almost no blood. Where there is no blood there is no glory and hence no history. Asked What did you do in the war, Daddy?, I could say only that I paid my taxes and left it at that. — Simon Jenkins

Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

His eyes are cold and restless
His wounds have almost healed
And she'd give half of Texas
Just to change the way he feels
She knows his love's in Tulsa
And she knows he's gonna go
Well it ain't no woman flesh and blood
It's that damned old rodeo


Well it's bulls and blood
It's dust and mud
It's the roar of a Sunday crowd
It's the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He'll win the next go 'round
It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo
It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo


She does her best to hold him
When his love comes to call
But his need for it controls him
And her back's against the wall
And it's So long girl I'll see you
When it's time for him to go
You know the woman wants her cowboy
Like he wants his rodeo — Garth Brooks

Either to die the death or to abjure
For ever the society of men.
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires;
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness. — William Shakespeare

It is difficult to put into words what I suffered-the longing that seemed to be tearing my heart out by the roots, the dreadful sense of being alone in an empty universe, the agonies that thrilled through me as if the blood were running ice-cold through my veins, the disgust with living, the impossibility of dying. Shakespeare himself never described this torture; but he counts it, in Hamlet, among the terrible of all the evils of existence. I had stopped composing; my mind seemed to become feebler as my feelings grew more intense. I did nothing. One power was left to me-to suffer. — Hector Berlioz

Jason felt all the blood drain out of his face. He stood there as the reality of Mitch's words hit him hard. One day it would be another man Haley would talk to, watch games with, or just sit in absolute peaceful silence while they worked or ate, and worst of all it would be another man holding Haley in his arms at night.
'Fuck ... ,' he gasped.
'Oh great, you broke him! Are you happy now?' Brad demanded. 'Come on, buddy, we'll get you fixed up with a cold beer and a plate of hot wings. How does that sound? Does that sound good?' Numbly, Jason nodded. — R.L. Mathewson

For many a pasty have you robbed of blood, And many a Jack of Dover have you sold That has been heated twice and twice grown cold. From many a pilgrim have you had Christ's curse, For of your parsley they yet fare the worse, Which they have eaten with your stubble goose; For in your shop full many a fly is loose. — Geoffrey Chaucer

Ah! but a man cannot be held to write down in cold blood the wild and black thoughts that storm his brain when an uncontrolled passion has battered a breach for them. Yet, unless he sets up as a saint, he need not hate himself for them. He is better employed, as it humbly seems to me, in giving thanks that power to resist was given to him ... — Anthony Hope

IT WAS THE COUNTRY OF HER BLOOD, AND AS SHE WATCHED it rise and fall and spread outside the truck window, Iona understood it was the country of her heart. It settled into her like a sip of whiskey on a cold night, warm and comforting. Green hills rolled under a sky layered with clouds, stacked like sheets of linen. The sun shimmered through them, making intermittent swirls of blue luminous as opals. Fat — Nora Roberts

Martinis as cold as a banker's handclasp and dry as a deacon's cupboard. — Matthew Blood

Abel was also the first of the human family to experience physical death- and it was through murder! He suffered death because of another's sin, the transgression of his elder brother Cain, who, in a fit of rage, killed him in cold blood. At the same time, thanks to faith in the sin-offering, he overcame death. The first man to descend into the Valley of the Shadow of Death was the first one to triumphantly march straight through it into the Paradise of Glory. He stepped from the excruciating pain of mortal manslaughter's hate into the exquisite land of eternal delights prepared by the Father's love! He led the way, like a pioneer, for all subsequent generations of men and women of faith throughout human history. — Robert L. Sumner

The sun was just coming up over the mountains--blood red and cold. I felt as if I was standing in the mightiest cathedral that had ever been built. There was no end to it, and no beginning. All I could do was look at it and worship. — Robert Specht

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.
I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.
Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.
In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood. — Pablo Neruda

The flames scorch the edges of her leather gloves, but she comes away with a small white flower the shape of a teardrop. When touched it expands and darkens to the color of blood before wilting and turning to ash. I've never seen anything like it. Nor do I particularly give a piss about the showmanship. It's too cold for that. — Pierce Brown

A man's blood soon runs cold where there is no one around to warm it up. — Anonymous

As a king, I have specified 2 urns as my backdrop, I have drank a cold Islamic green from my goblet, I have surveyed the Moorish lanterns of Iberia, so that when I come to a stance, when I come to a wisely chosen acre of granite, I am on grounds of a new undistinguished bodily grain, a prophet increased by fore-shortened spells, by Persian miniature gladioli, roosting upon the blood of erupting lateral wheat. — Will Alexander

All that belonged to him, Dick, but he would never have it.Why should that sonofabitch have everything, while he had nothing? — Truman Capote

A soldier is a "Yahoo" hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own Species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. — Jonathan Swift

I gave way to a wave of home-sickness that almost shames me now when I recollect it. I find it impossible in cold blood, and at this distance, to put into words the longing that shook me. I have forgotten the pain in the neck, but never will I forget the pain in my heart. — H.V. Morton

The passion for vengeance is a terrifyingly strong one, very easily and probably inevitably wrought up by such evidence [of atrocities], even at our distance. But however well aware I am of its strength, and that in its full immediate force and expression it is in some respects irrelevant to moral inquiry, I doubt that it is ever to be honored, or regarded as other than evil and in every direction fatally degrading and destructive; even when it is obeyed in hot blood or in a crisis of prevention; far worse when it is obeyed in cold blood and in the illusion of carrying out justice. — James Agee

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day. — Oscar Wilde

The head of the sledgehammer was cold, icy cold, and it touched his forehead as gently as a kiss.
'Pock! There,' said Czernobog. 'Is done.' There was a smile on his face that Shadow had never seen before, an easy, comfortable smile, like sunshine on a summer's day. The old man walked over to the case, and he put the hammer away, and closed the bag, and pushed it back under the sideboard.
'Czernobog?' asked Shadow. Then, 'Are you Czernobog?'
'Yes. For today,' said the old man. 'By tomorrow, it will all be Bielebog. But today, is still Czernobog.'
'Then why? Why didn't you kill me when you could?'
The old man took out an unfiltered cigarette from a pack in his pocket. He took a large box of matches from the mantelpiece and lit the cigarette with a match. He seemed deep in thought. 'Because,' said the old man, after some time, 'there is blood. But there is also gratitude. And it has been a long, long winter. — Neil Gaiman

These three brothers were not afforded the opportunity to defend themselves in a court of law. They were not given a fair and public trial. Paramilitaries, under the command of senior Ministry of Interior officials, denied them these rights and shot them in cold blood. — Garry Robbins

In the case of acupuncture, the time period must also be considered. On a fine day, the sun shining, blood in the human body flows smoothly, saliva is free, breathing is easy. On days of chill and cloud, blood flows thick and slow, breathing is heavy, saliva is viscous. When the moon is waxing, blood and breath are full. When the moon wanes, blood and breath wane. Therefore acupuncture should be used only on fair warm days, when the moon is waxing or, best of all, when the moon is full.'
'Interesting,' Grace said in a comment, 'in bioclimatic research in the West, coronary attacks increase in frequency on cold chilly days when the sun is under clouds.'
Dr Tseng turned the page of his blue cloth-covered book. 'Ah, doubtless the barbarians across the four seas have heard of our learning,' he observed without interest. — Pearl S. Buck

And David and Goliath I have done before, but this time there is a difference. David holds the head at arm's length and looks disgusted. And onto Goliath's severed head, I put my own features. The head hangs in darkness so that the black hair and beard framing the face blend off into the shadows, and there are four thin ropes of dark blood trailing down into space from the neck. And in one eye of the freshly severed head, there is still the faint glimmer of life.
That's me and that's the last painting I ever did.
Spectator, viewer, audience, however you care to call yourself; I address you here, with this, my final picture.
Cast a cold eye on it all, and on my work. I am still alive. — Christopher Peachment

The hearth in his room had been replenished, the blaze shedding warmth and light. Cam's eyes narrowed in curiosity as he saw a small shape beneath the covers.
Amelia's head lifted from the pillow. "I'm cold," she said, as if that were a perfectly reasonable explanation for her presence.
"My bed is no warmer than yours." Cam approached her slowly, trying not to feel like a predator, trying to ignore the heat that had ignited in his blood. His body had gone hard beneath the black silk, all his muscles tightening in anticipation. He knew what she wanted from him ... and he would be more than happy to provide it.
"It would be warmer if you were in it," she said. — Lisa Kleypas

We have come more and more under the dominance of mechanics and sacrificed living humanity to the dead rhythm of the machine without most of us even being conscious of the monstrosity of the procedure. Hence we frequently deal with such matters with indifference and in cold blood as if we handled dead things and not the destinies of men. — Rudolf Rocker

Well, I didn't wanna kill someone in cold blood - " "That's good, I suppose." " - but there weren't no fire around to light her with first. — Brandon Sanderson

What did he say? He is in love? My brain stops, my heart stops, my blood ceases to flow. My appendages go weak and cold, and there is a suspension of all space and time as the universe comes into perfect alignment. — Julie Sarff

But this is till the same girl who once lived in the steppes, wild and indomitable. Even when she ceased to play in the falling snow, the snow continued to fall within her soul. She never sough lovers among the wealthy men and the crown princes who prostrated themselves before her; her heart, like her voice, remained faultless. The reputation, temperament and talent of the woman partook of exactly the same crystalline transparency and icy clarity. ("The Glass Of Blood") — Jean Lorrain

Fear releases power. Man might be more tolerable, less fractious and smug, if he had more to fear. I do not mean fear of the intangible, the suffocation of the introvert, but physical fear, cold sweating fear for one's life, fear of the unseen menacing beast, imminent, bristly, tusked and terrible, ravening for one's own hot saline blood. — J.A. Baker

And the purple parted before it, snapping back like skin after a slash, and what it let out wasn't blood but light: amazing orange light that filled her heart and mind with a terrible mixture of joy, terror, and sorrow. No wonder she had repressed this memory all these years. It was too much. Far too much. The light seemed to give the fading air of evening a silken texture, and the cry of a bird struck her ear like a pebble made of glass. A cap of breeze filled her nostrils with a hundred exotic perfumes: frangipani, bougainvillea, dusty roses, and oh dear God, night-blooming cereus ... And rising above one horizon came the orange mansion of the moon, bloated and burning cold, while the sun sank below the other, boiling in a crimson house of fire. She thought that mixture of furious light would kill her with its beauty. — Stephen King

This is called the Great Snow Dance and it is done every year in Narnia on the first moonlit night when there is snow on the ground. Of course it is a kind of game as well as a dance, because every now and then some dancer will be the least little bit wrong and get a snowball in the face, and then everyone laughs. But a good team of dancers, Dwarfs, and musicians will keep it up for hours without a single hit. On fine nights when the cold and the drum-taps, and the hooting of the owls, and the moonlight, have got into their wild, woodland blood and made it even wilder, they will dance till daybreak. I wish you could see it for yourselves. — C.S. Lewis

Be bold, be bold, but not too bold,
Lest that your heart's blood should run cold. — Joseph Jacobs

Darian murdered them in cold blood. That's a crime punishable with life in the Terrorscape, where you experience the worst nightmares imaginable. — Shannon Duffy

For me, the present agony of departure, the silent terror of leaving a place known to me if hated, the well-nigh impossible task of conquering the fear that possessed me. Not the fear of that hasty look round, the sudden plunge headlong and the giddy shock of hard, cold water, the river itself entering my lungs, rising in my throat, tossing me upon my back with my arms outflung - I could hear the sob strangled in my chest and the blood leave me - but fear of the certain knowledge that there was no returning, no possible means of escape, and no other thing beyond. — Daphne Du Maurier

Food tastes better 2. My skin has a sheen and radiance to it 3. I sleep better 4. Sex is better 5. I don't get winded as easily 6. My sense of smell has improved one hundred fold 7. My concentration is better 8. My heart rate is normal 9. My blood pressure is normal 10. My clothes don't stink 11. My hair and skin doesn't stink 12. My eyes are clearer and less bloodshot 13. My automobiles don't smell 14. My bank account is healthier 15. I exercise more 16. I drink less alcohol 17. My stress levels are more manageable 18. I work longer and harder 19. My blood work and screening is much better 20. My appetite is much better 21. My hands and feet don't get as cold in the winter 22. My overall wellness and health is much better — James Tower

A strange thing happened to me as I walked away from Jane's house
I was finally thinking clearly. I could see what Charlotte meant. Jane knew how to fix people. Now that I'd talked through some of my issues, I'd blown out the dust and garbage out of my brain and I could think for once. I could smell the rain, heavy with iron. The cold woke me, but it didn't sting. My breath puffed out in front of me in a great white plume, and I laughed. It was like I was breathing ghosts. I wasn't in the land of long highways and big box stores and humid, endless summers. I was in London, a city of stone and rain and magic. I understood, for instance, why they liked red so much. The red buses, telephone booths, and postboxes were a violent shock against the grays of the sky and stone. Red was blood and beating hearts.
And I was strong. — Maureen Johnson

If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven. — George Bernard Shaw

In Cold Blood is the story of these six people - the [four] Clutters, who died together November 15, 1959, and Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, who were hanged April 14, 1965. And my book is the story of their lives and their deaths. It's a completely factual account and every word is true.

- Truman Capote, interviewed in A Visit with Truman Capote, Maysles Films, 1966 (alternate title: With Love From Truman). — Truman Capote

I remember hearing myself start to whimper, a five-year-old, crouched by the side of the road, staring into my father's eyes, whimpering because it was so dark and there was no one coming to help, whimpering because my mother was back in the crushed car, not moving, and my father was lying here in the dirt, not answering me, not holding me, not comforting me, not helping my mother get out of the car, and there was blood, so much blood, and broken glass everywhere, and it was so dark and so cold and no one was coming to help. — Kelley Armstrong

I mean it,' said Bosie seriously. 'I'd like to murder him, in cold blood.'
'Well, you can't, Bosie,' said Oscar, 'leastways, not tonight.'
'Why not?' demanded Bosie petulantly.
'It's Sunday, Bosie,' said Oscar, 'and a gentleman never murders his father on a Sunday. You should know that. Did they teach you nothing at Winchester? — Gyles Brandreth

On fine nights when the cold and the drumtaps, and the hooting of the owls, and the moonlight, have got into their wild, woodland blood and made it even wilder, they will dance till daybreak. — C.S. Lewis

If you venture to be a sage
Let your virtues subside your rage
For deep wisdom you'll be venerated
Let cold veins feel blood cells generated — Munia Khan

Frightened, he runs off to the silent fields
and howls aloud, attempting speech in vain;
foam gathers at the corners of his mouth;
he turns his lust for slaughter on the flocks,
and mangles them, rejoicing still in blood.
His garments now become a shaggy pelt;
his arms turn into legs, and he, to wolf
while still retaining traces of the man:
greyness the same, the same cruel visage,
the same cold eyes and bestial appearance. ~ The story of King Lycaon from Ovid's Metamorphosis, Book I, ll. 321-331 tr. Charles Martin — Ovid

You don't know what cold is until you've experienced the cold you feel when the blood is draining out of your body. — Ryu Murakami

targets destroyed, the training, the discipline, the hours of study, all led to this moment. This cold, bright afternoon in January 2061 marked the true beginning. A clear mind and cool blood. The apprentice knew these elements were as vital as skill, as wind direction, humiture, and speed. Under the cool blood lived an eagerness ruthlessly suppressed. The mentor had arranged all. Efficiently, and with an attention to detail that was also vital. The room in the clean, middle-class hotel — J.D. Robb

They say the sea is cold, but it contains the hottest blood of all. — Mark Quinn

Some instinct made her lift her hand and cup his cheek with her fingers. The room was too dark for her to see him, but she could feel the stickiness of the blood, and a wetness that was not blood. "Little bird," he said once more, his voice raw and harsh as steel on stone. Then he rose from the bed. Sansa heard cloth ripping, followed by the softer sound of retreating footsteps.
When she crawled out of bed, long moments later, she was alone. She found his cloak on the floor, twisted up tight, the white wool stained by blood and fire. The sky outside was darker by then, with only a few pale green ghosts dancing against the stars. A chill wind was blowing, banging the shutters. Sansa was cold. She shook out the torn cloak and huddled beneath it on the floor, shivering. — George R R Martin

When the fight ends you can afford to relax. That's the worst part. Winner or loser you have again eyes to see around you. Blood, butchered bodies, bodies pierced by arrows. You stir inside, your heart tightens, the feeling of loss wells up. The sense of smell is the next thing to revive, adding a new dimension of pain. I closed the eyes of the last cadet, blue eyes, unseeing, his body, so small, almost a child, the youngest cadets were all gone, their faces surprised in death. Cold lips never able again to kiss a girl. It's then that the emptiness swallows you and you mourn inside. Damn you, Scharon. No! Damn you, Travellers. — Florian Armas

Oh my god! You still have a crush on Nic don't you? That's so cute, brother! You're like Brand from Adventures in Babysitting." Miles cackles at this reference but my blood runs cold. Aubrey's pension for eighties movies has just turned me into a pedophile. — Marley Jacobs

Trying to out-guess Bonaparte; the thought makes my blood run cold. — Naomi Novik

Old Nan nodded. 'In that darkness, the Others came for the first time,' she said as her needles went click, click, click. 'They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children.' (p240) — George R R Martin

He was stricken anew by her, overcome with the knowledge that in the morning he would have to relinquish her. In Prison 33, little by little, you relinquished everything, starting with your tomorrows and all that might be. Next went your past, and suddenly it was inconceivable that your head had ever touched a pillow, that you'd once used a spoon or a toilet, that your mouth had once known flavors and your eyes had beheld colors beyond gray and brown and the shade of black that blood took on. Before you relinquished yourself
Ga had felt it starting, like the numb of cold limbs
you let go of all the others, each person you'd once known. They became ideas and then notions and then impressions, and then they were as ghostly as projections against a prison infirmary. Sun Moon appeared to him now like this, not as a woman, vital and beautiful, making an instrument speak her sorrow, but as the flicker of someone once known, a photo of a person long gone. — Adam Johnson

I like my blood warm. I find cold blood as appetizing as an old stale cup of coffee. It's hard to choke down, but then again I'm finicky. — Gea Haff

Just listen," she said. "You can't kill him in cold blood."
"Whyever not?"
Ye gods grant me patience. "Because he'll be dead," she said as patiently as she could, "and Lady Clara's reputation will be stained forever. Do not, I pray you, do anything, Lord Longmore. Leave this to us."
"Us."
"My sisters and me."
"What do you propose? Dressing him to death? Tying him up and making him listen to fashion descriptions? — Loretta Chase

My blood runs cold when she says his name... his last name... the name those people use for him. This isn't right. She doesn't know him. They don't know each other. They can't. "I'm not going to hurt her, Carmela, but I'm not letting her go. — J.M. Darhower

Tiff like in Breakfast at Tiffany's,' he says. 'Right?'
I couldn't be more shocked. 'Um ... yes, that's right - it's an old movie.'
'Is it? Don't watch that much TV. I've only heard of the book - got it at home. I bought it 'cause Truman Capote wrote it. I was stoked by In Cold Blood. He wrote that, too. You read it?'
'No.'
'Aw, you gotta. It rocks.'
I look away as if I've been suddenly distracted by something out the window. It's my version of the pause button. There's a lot of information to process. Here's a boy my own age; he shakes my hand, he talks to me - not just to ask directions to the toilet - and he reads books.
Heathcliff? — Bill Condon

You will not wonder at his weird pilgrimage,-who who in the swift whifl of living, amid its cold paradox and marvelous vision, have fronted life and aked its riddle face to face. And if you find that riddle hard to read, remember that yonder black boy finds it just a little harder; if it is difficult for you to find and face your duty, it is a shade more difficult for him; if your heart sickens in the blood and dust of battle, remember that to him the dust is thicker and the battle fiercer. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink. — F.H. Bradley

You can't drive a bayonet through a chap's body in cold blood," he remembered him saying. "And you can't go in for an exam. without drinking," said Edward. — Virginia Woolf

I told you to make yourself at home," he says. "I don't want you to feel like you have to tiptoe around, afraid of doing something wrong or hearing something you shouldn't, like phone conversations." My blood runs cold at those words. I can feel his eyes on me and not the screen. "I, uh ... " I don't know what to say. "It's okay," he says, those words silencing me. He kisses the top of my head again, subject closed as he goes back to watching the movie. A few minutes pass before Naz lets out a light laugh. "So, tell me something ... did you at least google me? — J.M. Darhower

Turning away, sobbing, I hide behind my hair, the kettle and coffee forgotten. It's too hard to talk about it. I can't talk about it. It's no one's business but mine. The trauma breathes in my blood, it feasts on my life, it gives me cold sweats and nightmares still. — Poppet

I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer's morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all men. I shall die innocent, and it shall be said of me-He was murdered in cold blood — Joseph Smith Jr.

Cold. Foggy cold. Soaking through fabric, biting into the skin, clutching the bones until flesh crawled.
There was no moonlight, only orange, smoky lanterns, and the light made the snow glitter and turned the shadows into blood. — Erik Tavares

A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art. — Fernando Pessoa

He wasn't a cold, aloof god anymore, but a flesh-and-blood man who could bleed, hurt. Want. — Kit Rocha

The old bookseller had learnt at the seminary that when it comes to conceiving transcendent things, minds vary enormously in their capacity, and the trained mind is a very different matter to the untrained; and the mind that is conditioned by music and incense and dim lights has very different capacities to the mind that goes at the job in cold blood. — Dion Fortune

He caressed my arm and then frowned as he leaned down and examined the marks Jac's nails had made in my skin, along with the blood I still hadn't washed off. "What is this?" His cold voice left me filled with dread. I tried to jerk away. "Nothing." "Maya," he growled. "Who the hell dared to lay a hand on you?" His voice was furious as his eyes flashed with rage. "Tell me. Now. — Rachel Van Dyken

The last dying days of summer, fall coming on fast. A cold night, the first of the season, a change from the usual bland Maryland climate. Cold, thought the boy; his mind felt numb. The trees he could see through his bedroom window were tall charcoal sticks, shivering, afraid of the wind or only trying to stand against it. Every tree was alone out there. The animals were alone, each in its hole, in its thin fur, and anything that got hit on the road tonight would die alone. Before morning, he thought, its blood would freeze in the cracks of the asphalt. — Poppy Z. Brite

So we may well believe that the King's men were shriven on the night before they fought. Something of the young man's vision had penetrated to his captains and his soldiers. Something of the new ideal of the Round Table which was to be born in pain, something about doing a hateful and dangerous action for the sake of decency
for they knew that the fight was to be fought in blood and death without reward. They would get nothing but the unmarketable conscience of having done what they ought to do in spite of fear
something which wicked people have often debased by calling it glory with too much sentiment, but which is glory all the same. This idea was in the hearts of the young men who knelt before the God-distributing bishops
knowing that the odds were three to one, and that their own warm bodies might be cold at sunset. — T.H. White

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I heard about the project over a year before we began. My American agent said, 'Oh, you might want to read 'In Cold Blood' because they're talking about you for Capote, but the script's with Johnny Depp and Sean Penn at the moment.' So, these things take their time to dribble down the food chain. — Toby Jones

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood. — Aldous Huxley

Look. I'm your expert consultant for a rather pathetic monetary wage, and under that agreement I have the option of selecting a technical assistant. He's mine."

She blew out a breath, paced to the window. Paced back. "Not just yours. It makes him mine, too. I don't know how to deal with a teenaged type person."

"Ah, well, I'd say you'd deal with him as you deal with everyone else. You order him around, and if he argues or doesn't jump quickly enough you freeze his blood with one of those vicious looks you're so good at and verbally abuse him. It always works so well for you."

"You think so?"

"There, see." He cupped her chin. "There it is now. I can actually feel my blood running cold. — J.D. Robb

What his son, Marty, never fully understood was that deep down there was an Ethel-shaped hole in Henry's life, and without her, all he felt was the draft of loneliness, cold and sharp, the years slipping away like blood from a wound that never heals. — Jamie Ford

You do resemble me," the duke said. "The question is, does your blood run hot or cold? — Nicole Luiken

Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.
Beatrice: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. -Much Ado About Nothing — William Shakespeare

Myrnin blinked, looked at Eve, and smiled. It was his seductive smile, and it came with a lowering of his thick eyelashes. "Sweet lady," he said, "could you get me one of those delicious drinks you prepared for my friend, here?" He gracefully indicated Oliver, who remembered the cup of blood still sitting in front of him, and angrily choked it down. "Perhaps warm the bag a bit in hot water first? It's a bit disgusting, cold."
"Yeah, sure," Eve sighed. "Want a shot of espresso with that?"
Myrnin seemed to be honestly considering it. Claire urgently shook her head no. The last thing she - any of them - needed just now was Myrnin on caffeine. — Rachel Caine

His voice, dark and velvety soft, intimate and yet cold: You have blood on your hands. — Jackie Morse Kessler

The worst, the very worst requirement of friendship, in Eve Dallas's opinion, was sitting through an entire evening of childbirth classes.
What went on there
the sights, the sounds, the assault on all the senses
turned the blood cold. — J.D. Robb

I investigated reported Japanese atrocities committed by the Japanese Army in Nanking and elsewhere. Verbal accounts of reliable eyewitnesses and letters from individuals whose credibility is beyond question afford convincing proof that the Japanese Army behaved and is continuing to behave in a fashion reminiscent of Attila and his Huns. Not less than 300,000 Chinese civilians were slaughtered, many in cold blood. — Koki Hirota

If one of the people who'd gone Cold drank human blood, the infection mutated. It killed the host and then raised them back up again, Colder than before. Cold through and through, forever and ever. — Holly Black

It's so cold that foreigners have to wrap in layers of fur to walk from building to building, while our natural Winterian blood keeps us warm even in the worst conditions. And snow is everywhere, always, so much that the grass beneath it is white from lack of sun. An entire kingdom wrapped in an orb of eternal winter. — Sara Raasch

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I like Russian trains. Not for comfort, of which there is none, nor speed, of which there is barely any to be spoken about, particularly when you relate it to the size of the country that must be crossed. Not even, particularly, for the view, which is inevitably repetitive, as Mother Nature decrees that her works of wonder can only occur so frequently across such a vast and cultivated space. I like Russian trains, or at least those I travelled on in the early spring of 1956, so many centuries after I gunned Lisle down in cold blood; I like the trains for the sense of unity that all these hardships create in its passengers. I suspect the experience is relative. — Claire North

When blood is once cold and stagnant, it is no longer human blood; when flesh is once dead, it is no longer that flesh which we desire in our lovers and respect in our friends. The grace, the attraction, the terror, have all gone from it with the animating spirit. Accustom yourself to look upon it with composure; for if my scheme is practicable you will have to live some days in constant proximity to that which now so greatly horrifies you. — Robert Louis Stevenson

A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done. — Margaret Atwood

Being a hangman requires you to take someone else's life based on someone else's judgment, and carry it out on someone else's schedule. The job does not provide the same satisfaction that an ordinary murderer gets from smashing a skull. It robs them of the fulfillment of plunging a knife into someone's throat. In the world of capital punishment, the prisoner's crimes have been sanitized by years of sitting on death row. By then, the execution is a cold and impersonal affair. There is prayer, a noose, and a few last words. The prisoner then experiences a sudden rush of blood to the head. At the end of it all, you have a broken neck and a dead body swinging from the end of a rope. That is it. You don't get to manhandle them with your own hands. That's why the brutes you mention will never be hired. So you see, Vaida, this is not a job for a murderer. It is a job for a humanitarian. — Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

That's a cold-blooded way to view the world," said Runajo.

"And the way of the Sisters isn't?"

"Blood is hot when you spill it," said Runajo, and Juliet laughed suddenly, her head tilting back. — Rosamund Hodge

Said the lion to the lioness - "when you are amber dust -
No more a raging fire like the heat of the sun
(no liking but all lust) -
Remember still the flowering of the amber blood
and bone,
the rippling of bright muscles like
a sea,
Remember the rose-prickles of
bright paws
Though we shall mate no more
Till the fire of that sun
and the moon -
Cold bone are one"

Said the skeleton lying upon the
sands of time -
"The great gold planet that
is the mourning heat
of the sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a lion that fire
consumes
Like all that grows or leaps...so
is the heart.

More powerful than all dust. Once
I was hercules
Or Samson, strong as the pillars of the
seas:
But the flames of the heart
Consumed me, and
the mind
Is but a foolish wind. — Edith Sitwell

If love wants you; if you've been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills; with feathers and scales; with warm blood and cold. — Anne Michaels

I'm proud of you, Bliss," he said.
"Michael's sword released the souls that were trapped in your blood. You freed them. You freed me."
"But now I'm never going to see you again, am I?" she asked.
Dylan smiled. "It's unlikely. But I never say never.'
"I wish you wouldn't go. I'll miss you so much," Bliss said.
"I'll miss you too."
Dylan put his hand up, and so did Bliss. But this time, instead of touching air, she felt his warm hand grasping her cold one. She looked at Allegra. Somehow, she knew her mother was making this happen. Dylan leaned down, and she could feel his lips, soft and inviting, gently kissing hers. Then Dylan was gone. But Bliss did not feel anguished. She felt at peace. Dylan was not broken and incomplete anymore. He was whole. — Melissa De La Cruz

Places: a cold, bleak, lonely day on the rim at Muley Point, Utah. And the heart-cracking loveliness of the blood-smeared, bitter, incomprehensible slaughterhouse of a world ... — Edward Abbey

I woke, remembering a dream from the night before. Pictures of frightened children lingered in my mind as I approached them with a hunger unsated by mundane appetites. I recalled how flesh smelled: sweet. The texture was tender, yet it was bitter to the taste. Blood was messy and dripped down my chin. The demon, the cold-blooded monster mingled with my DNA: a gift from one of my parents brought to daylight by evil people. — Millicent Ashby

I heard a rumor I died, Murdered in cold blood dramatized, Pictures of me in my final state, You know mama cried, But that was fiction, Some coward got the story twisted, Like I no longer existed, Mysteriously missin', I'm known worldwide baby, I ain't hard to find. — Tupac Shakur

Nancy clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that is the definition of a lady. — Truman Capote

They came up with a civil rights bill in 1964, supposedly to solve our problem, and after the bill was signed, three civil rights workers were murdered in cold blood. And the FBI head, Hoover, admits that they know who did it, they've known ever since it happened, and they've done nothing about it. Civil rights bill down the drain. — Malcolm X

Here lies Morris, a good man and friend. He enjoyed the finer points of civilized life but never shied away from a hearty adventure or hard work. He died a free man, which is more than most people can say, if we are going to be honest about it. Most people are chained to their own fear and stupidity and haven't the sense to level a cold eye at just what is wrong with their lives. Most people will continue on, dissatisfied but never attempting to understand why, or how they might change things for the better, and they die with nothing in their hearts but dirt and old, thin blood - weak blood, diluted - and their memories aren't worth a goddamned thing, you will see what I mean. — Patrick DeWitt