Gunfire Quotes & Sayings

Don't talk to me about Matisse
the European style of 1900, the tradition of the studio
where the nude style woman reclines forever
on a sheet of blood.

Talk to me instead about the culture generally
how the murderers were sustained
by the beauty robbed of savages: to our remote
villages the painters came, and our white-washed
mud-huts were splattered with gunfire. — Michael Ondaatje

I wish to God that she [principal Dawn L. Hochsprung] had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids. — Louie Gohmert

Every day in the United States, seventeen children are killed by gunfire. That's about 6,000 children each year who are killed by guns, as compared, for example, with about 3,000 a year who died at the height of the polio epidemic of the 1950s. We rose up as a society to fight against polio. Why do we not act more forcefully to halt today's even greater scourge? — Jimmy Carter

Children playing while in the background the TV blares with screams, gunfire and rape-murder scenes. It seeps in. — Bryant McGill

I will be so glad for you to hear not the sounds of gunfire but the sounds of church bells, and of people working in peace. — Elizabeth Berg

Everyone froze.
In real time the whole sequence had probably taken ten seconds. In the slow motion of crisis time it had unreeled in ponderous elegance, and the crystalline immobility that followed was intensified by the lingering smell of gunfire, like an olfactory echo of the big bang. — Robert B. Parker

trailed off as her attention moved from Will taking his juice from the bartender to the glass behind the bartender. There were red dots on the glass. Alessandro brushed her shoulder again and Bree followed a row of red dots from the glass mirror to the wall. Some of the red dots danced over the guests and as an icy cloak of understanding fell over Bree, it seemed to grip Alessandro as well. Then she turned to face him and there were red dots on his chest, as well as her shoulder, which he had been brushing, thinking it was a speck of dust. "GET DOWN!" he screamed to everyone grabbing Bree by the waist and throwing her down while and trying to be heard over the music. Chaos erupted as gunfire drowned out the sound of music and people fell screaming on top of each other as pieces of the wall and glass from the doors and the mirrors rained down on them. The gunfire raged on and on for what seemed like an eternity. Then there was silence. — E. Jamie

If you weren't humping, you were waiting. I remember the monotony. Digging foxholes. Slapping mosquitoes. The sun and the heat and the endless paddies. Even in the deep bush, where you could die any number of ways, the war was nakedly and aggressively boring. But it was a strange boredom. It was boredom with a twist, the kind of boredom that caused stomach disorders. You'd be sitting at the top of a high hill, the flat paddies stretching out below, and the day would be calm and hot and utterly vacant, and you'd feel the boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet, except it wasn't water, it was a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you'd feel the stuff eating away at important organs. You'd try to relax. You'd uncurl your fists and let your thoughts go. Well, you'd think, this isn't so bad. And right then you'd hear gunfire behind you and your nuts would fly up into your throat and you'd be squealing pig squeals. That kind of boredom. I — Tim O'Brien

The darkness of the room is pulsing with gunfire, and by our standards we are grossly outnumbered - there are only three of us to every one of them - but something is tipping things in our favor. Our manic speed is uncharacteristic of the Dead, and our prey are not prepared for it. Is this all coming from me? Creatures without desire usually don't move quickly, but they're following my lead, and I am an angry whirlwind. — Isaac Marion

First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire.-Roland Deschain, of Gilead — Stephen King

To Christopher's amazement, Albert didn't move. A dog who thought nothing of running through gunfire was completely cowed by Beatrix Hathaway. — Lisa Kleypas

This was what Ditlev loved: ceaseless gunfire, ceaseless killing, flapping specks in the sky terminated in an orgy of color. The slow drizzle of birds' bodies falling from above. The eagerness of the men to reload their weapons. — Jussi Adler-Olsen

Every year when it's Chinese New Year here in New York, there are fireworks going off at all hours. New York mothers calm their frightened children by telling them it's just gunfire. — David Letterman

As I get older, Vincent, I have come to prefer a quiet evening at home to a bracing exchange of gunfire in the dark. — Douglas Preston

Susan of course would rather face gunfire than walk in the rain and ruin her hair. But — Robert B. Parker

The sounds of gunfire didn't bother Winn any more. It just meant that this was the weekend, or a soccer tournament, or someone had a sale on ammunition. — Scott Rhine

His first sign that things were going wrong was a massive barrage of gunfire that seemed to come from everywhere at once. — James S.A. Corey

Every other Spartan on the field charged as well, hundreds of half-camouflaged armored figures, running and firing at the dazed Jackals, appearing as a wave of ghost warriors, half liquid, half shadow, part mirage, part nightmare.
They screamed a battle cry, momentarily drowning the sound of gunfire and explosion.
Tom yelled with them--for the fallen, for his friends, and for the blood of his enemies. — Eric Nylund

In the sunlight, snow melts, crystals evaporate into a steam, into nothing. In the firelight, vapors dance and vanish. In the core of a volcano, fragile things burst and disappear. The girl, in the gunfire, in the heat, in the concussion, folded like a soft scarf, melted like a crystal figurine. What was left of her, ice, snowflake, smoke, blew away in the wind. The tiller seat was empty. — Ray Bradbury

Revolutions are not made with literature. Revolutions equal gunfire. — Francois Duvalier

Passage between worlds. Then the gunfire. Then the killing. — Stephen King

Marines have a cynical approach to war. They believe in three things; liberty, payday and that when two Marines are together in a fight, one is being wasted. Being a minority group militarily, they are proud and sensitive in their dealings with other military organizations. A Marine's concept of a perfect battle is to have other Marines on the right and left flanks, Marine aircraft overhead and Marine artillery and naval gunfire backing them up. — Ernie Pyle

TV is a pornographic cacophony of violence, death obsession, screams, gunfire and drama. You think it's fine because you are damaged. — Bryant McGill

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
In with gunfire and out with smoke. — Victoria Schwab

Gunfire cracked around them.
"Just warning shots," he yelled.
"How do you know?"
"We're not dead. — Brynn Kelly

America experienced its first oil shock. Within days of the cutoff, oil prices rose from $2.90 to $11.65 a barrel; gasoline prices soared from 20 cents to $1.20 a gallon, an all-time high. Across America, fuel shortages forced factories to close early and airlines to cancel flights. Filling stations posted signs: 'Sorry, No Gas Today.' If a station did have gasoline, motorists lined up before sunrise to buy a few gallons; owners limited the amount sold to each customer. Motorists grew impatient. Fistfights broke out, and occasionally, gunfire. President Nixon called for America to end its dependence on foreign oil. 'Let us set as our national goal ... that by the end of this decade we will have developed the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy source,' he said. We have still not met this goal. — Albert Marrin

No more hellfires and please no more gunfire — Tiesto

At night my father often heard sporadic gunfire mixed in with the sound of dogs howling. If the war came closer, soon there would be only minor difference between shooting a dog and shooting a man. — Dinaw Mengestu

Couldn't tell which direction the gunfire was coming from. — James S.A. Corey

When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time. — Neal A. Maxwell

Quite a few of the dogs that come back from Afghanistan or Iraq or police dogs that are involved in violent confrontations where there's gunfire can in fact exhibit the symptoms and suffer from PTSD. — Robert Crais

They knew what gunfire meant better than anyone. Some were crying by the time they reached the exit and stepped outside into the afternoon air. The sun was already descending in the sky, leaving shadows crawling across the valley floor. Not daring to look behind her, Khalia's eyes fixed on her target, the emergency bunker. Across the expanse of lush green grass before her, the beckoning hillside seemed impossibly far away. A warning prickle began at her nape, as if someone had her in their sights and was taking aim at her. More shots erupted from the hills behind them. The lead group broke — Kaylea Cross

When it came to gunfire Jumper didn't have any more sense than a red ant in a hot skillet. — Fred Gipson

It began with one act of madness, and it ended with another. John Brown heard history's clock strike in the night and tried to hurry dawn along with gunfire; now John Wilkes Booth heard the clock strike, and he tried with gunfire to restore the darkness. Each man stood outside the human community, directed by voices the sane do not hear, and each kept history from going logically ... The line from Harper's Ferry to Ford's Theater is a red thread binding the immense disorder of the Civil War into an irrational sort of coherence. — Bruce Catton

If today is your typical day in America, 80 of our fellow citizens will die from gunfire. In the last two weeks, more Americans have died from gunfire here at home in the United States than in the entire war in Iraq since it started. — Michael D. Barnes

Brutal death shouldn't be so easily accepted. It should still be an occasion for tears and hysteria and, at the very least, an interruption of daily life. Routine should not continue in the face of such a loss. It should be shattered like silence before gunfire. It should shake everyone it touches, and we should demand an end to it. — Rachel Vincent

The snow filled the air with a soft grey-blue mist, softening the wind and gunfire, bringing the earth and sky together into one swaying blur.
The snow fell on Bach's shoulders; it was as though flakes of silence were falling on the still Volga, on the dead city, on the skeletons of horses. It was snowing everywhere, on earth and on the stars; the whole universe was full of snow. Everything was disappearing beneath it: guns, the bodies of the dead, filthy dressings, rubble, scraps of twisted iron.
This soft, white snow settling over the carnage of the city was time itself; the present was turning into the past, and there was no future. — Vasily Grossman

Lately it has become more and more difficult to attend dinner parties without the evening ending in gunfire or tapioca ... — Daniel Handler

It was a heavenly summer, the summer in which France fell and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk. Leaves were never such an intense and iridescent green; sunlight glinted on flower-studded meadows as the Germans encircled the Maginot Line and overran not only France but Belgium and Holland. Birdsong filled the air in the lull between bursts of gunfire and accompanied the fleeing refugees who blocked the roads. It was as though the weather was preparing a glorious requiem for the death of Europe. — Eva Ibbotson

In bygone days, commanders were taught that when in doubt, they should march their troops towards the sound of gunfire. I intend to march my troops towards the sound of gunfire. — Jo Grimond

Mind over body over bodies on the floor over tallies seared day by day by day into skin until it cracked and broke and bled into the beat of gunfire and the melody of pain and the world was made of savage music, made and was made of, and that was the cycle, the big bang into the whimper and on and on and none of it was real except for August or all of it was real except for him. . . . He — Victoria Schwab

I listen to the gunfire we cannot hear, and begin this journey with the light of knowing the root of my own furious love. — Joy Harjo

We don't talk about the danger
but what I imagine is a cartoon version, bullets flying and each boy a super hero, running, invincible, through a spray of gunfire. — Christina Baker Kline

The pistol had been one hell of a find, because it hadn't quite been what she'd thought it was at first blush. Not simply the S&W Mk 39, but rather a modified version of the same, the Mk 22 Mod 0, also called the "hush puppy". It was Vietnam-era, not the most reliable gun in the world, but wonderfully silent, not only equipped with a silencer to eliminate the sound of gunfire, but also with a slide lock, to keep the actual mechanical operation of the gun quiet as well. She'd test-fired the gun at the market before purchasing, and been stunned that it still worked. The Uzbek vendor had offered to sell it to her cheap.
"It's too quiet," he'd explained. "No one wants it."
Chace shut her eyes, half smiling at the memory. — Greg Rucka

Two subsequent incidents of import established CNN: the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, which CNN was the only network to cover as it happened, and the 1991 Gulf War, which CNN chronicled round the clock from a proximity as irresistible as it was alarming, bomb blasts and gunfire lighting up TV screens from coast to coast. — Steve Erickson

In 1998 Gordon Hempton, a sound recordist attempting to build a library of natural sounds, toured fifteen states west of the Mississippi and found only two areas--in the mountains of Colorado and the Boundary Waters of Minnesota--that were free of motors, aircraft, industrial clamor, or gunfire for more than fifteen minutes during daylight. — Robyn Griggs Lawrence

Evan's head was filled with the sound of water. He thought of the ghost in the grass, her blue dress and bare feet. He thought of the way the doves had flown up into the sky all in a ruse, startled by gunfire, and then all he could think was that despite everything that happened, he was alive. — Alice Hoffman

If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people readingfor the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching. — Virginia Woolf

August groaned inwardly.

Mind over body.

Mind over body.

Mind over body over bodies on the floor over tallies seared day by day by day into skin until it cracked and broke and bled into the beat of gunfire and the melody of pain and the world was made of savage music, made and was made of, and that was the cycle, the big bang into the whimper and on and on and none of it was real except for August or all of it was real except for him. . . . — Victoria Schwab

Rupert yanked Rebecca off her seat to the floor! If that weren't bad enough, he dropped down on top of her, not with his full weight,, but enough to make it uncomfortable.
Rebecca had,of course, heard the gunfire that had prompted Rupert's actions. She wasn't deaf. Still, annoyed, she asked, "Do you really think a shot is going to get through the back panel of a coach this sturdily built? And fired from a moving vehicle? Anyone aiming isn't likely to hit us a'tall."
"They're on horseback," was all he said.
"Even worse.Have you ever hit what you aimed at while racing along on a horse?"
"Yes."
She snorted,but believing him at all. — Johanna Lindsey

Cowgirl Interlude (Bonanza Jellybean)
She is lying on the family sofa in flannel pajamas. There is Kansas City mud on the tips and heels of her boots, boots that have yet to savor real manure. Fourteen, she knows she ought to remove her boots, yet she refuses. A Maverick rerun is on TV; she is eating beef jerky, occasionally slurping. On her upper stomach, where her pajama top has ridden up, is a small deep scar. She tells everyone, including her school nurse, that it was made by a silver bullet.
Whatever the origin of the extra hole in her belly, there are unmistakable signs of gunfire int he woodwork by the closet door. It was there that she once shot up one half of an old pair of sneakers. "Self-defense," she pleaded, when her parents complained. "It was a [sic] out-law tennis shoe.
Billy the Ked. — Tom Robbins

I can't. I'm not a good influence on him. I keep getting him shot. I swear too much, I don't brush my teeth every time I go to bed, and I never remember to eat a balanced breakfast. You want someone with culture. Poise. A lack of gunfire.
-Toby — Seanan McGuire

No gunfire, famine, or flies. Just lots of toothpaste, gardening and people stuff. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Whoever had designed the block of flats had obviously worked to a clear set of priorities. Unfortunately, while cost, size, and low-maintenance had made it to the top of the list, aesthetics, good escape routes, and shelter from gunfire hadn't. — Benedict Jacka

I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don't want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that's fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I'm wrong about that. — Chris Hayes

NO TRESPASSING and SOLICITORS WARMLY GREETED WITH GUNFIRE signs, — Marcus Sakey

WE
We feel the heat, and for a moment, We believe! Life is back. But this heat is intense, not gentle. Not submissive but searing. Painful.
We moan, scream, Our face cracking like gunfire ... like a whip. Thirty-five, one hundred. One hundred! ONE HUNDRED!
The fire consumes our wooden host. It burns, breaks, explodes. Releases Our remaining souls to travel to Our final resting places.
Or.
To find new places to hide.
And wait.
Touch me. — Lisa McMann

LIFE IN ALEXANDRA was exhilarating and precarious. Its atmosphere was alive, its spirit adventurous, its people resourceful. Although the township did boast some handsome buildings, it could fairly be described as a slum, living testimony to the neglect of the authorities. The roads were unpaved and dirty, and filled with hungry, undernourished children scampering around half-naked. The air was thick with the smoke from coal fires in tin braziers and stoves. A single water tap served several houses. Pools of stinking, stagnant water full of maggots collected by the side of the road. Alexandra was known as "Dark City" for its complete absence of electricity. Walking home at night was perilous, for there were no lights, the silence pierced by yells, laughter, and occasional gunfire. So different from the darkness of the Transkei, which seemed to envelop one in a welcome embrace. — Nelson Mandela

She is awake. Again she thinks about fear. Until then, she had not been aware of fear, she had been convinced that she did not feel fear, not even when they had taken the group of men out from the gym, or when she had heard the burst of gunfire. She listens. She knows now that fear is the absence of all emotion, it is emptiness, it is as if your whole body is drained of blood all at once. — Slavenka Drakulic

The chime wasn't the most pleasant sound in the world to wake up to, but Eric had awakened to far worse in the past. Gunfire was always a sure way to go from dead to the world to more alive than you'd ever been, assuming none of the bullets actually struck you. — Evan Currie

Alas, all that sound and fury disguised the fact that on Omaha Beach at least, the bombs fell too long, the rockets fell too short, and the naval gunfire was too brief. — Craig L. Symonds

People can live without a giant state. We've proven that already. But a giant state cannot live without dependent people. We feed the beast that puts us in shackles of our own creation. They are dependent on us. We think of revolutions as gunfire in the streets. But a soft and creeping tyranny can be beaten with a soft and creeping revolution. Think about it. Think about all the ways the totalitarian state is dependent on your personal actions. Think about what you do every day to help feed this beast and then stop doing that! — Bill Whittle

Once more, dully menacing, comes the noise of gunfire, and already from afar, like the bill of a woodpecker, sounds the knock-knocking of a machine gun. We grow calm and are almost glad to hear again the familiar, trusty noises of death. — Erich Maria Remarque

The U.S. has more guns per capita and supplies more guns to the world than any other country. What would be a fistfight without guns turns into dead bodies with them. Families with guns in the house are more likely to shoot themselves accidentally than to shoot any intruder. Women abused by their partners have a five-fold increased risk of being killed when their partner owns a gun. Every three hours, at least one child is wounded or killed by gunfire. — Gloria Steinem

The men were ordered to retreat, and to leave the dead. In the sun the injured would die of thirst the following day. "That was the moment when I realised the truth of my mother's words, that we were just 'cannon-fodder'. Young private soldiers were ordered, time and time again, to march directly into gunfire, and High Command didn't give a damn how many died, nor the cost in human suffering. — Jennifer Worth

We stayed huddled that way until the early hours of the morning. The shootings and explosions had lasted less than an hour, but they had frightened us badly, because none of us had ever heard gunshots in the streets. They were foreign sounds to us then. The generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born ... — Khaled Hosseini

A miserable scrooge whom lacks charity for the entire world is a menace to society. Spiritual sullenness destroys men quicker than gunfire. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Children younger than 5 are twice as likely to die from ingesting household poisons than by gunfire - So the question for the Legislature should be: Is a parent criminally responsible for leaving an unlocked container of bleach below the sink? — Don Kates

Lightning streaks like gunfire through the clouds, volleys of thunder shake the air. — Edward Abbey

Overhead, an enemy plane had been dragging, drumming slowly round in the pool of night, drawing up bursts of gunfire
nosing, pausing, turning, fascinated to the point for its intent. The barrage banged, coughed, retched; in here the lights in the mirrors rocked. Now down a shaft of anticipating silence the bomb swung whistling. With the shock of detonation, still to be heard, four walls of in here yawped in then bellied out; bottles danced on glass; a distortion ran through the view. The detonation dulled off into the cataracting roar of a split building:
direct hit,
somewhere else. — Elizabeth Bowen

First the smiles, then the lies. Last comes gunfire. — Stephen King

What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can. — Tennessee Williams

Opening my door to Dillon Ruddick, my bulding super. I handed him a cup of coffee. "Sorry about the blood."
"What was it this time?" No one reported gunfire."
"I hit a guy in the face with a hair dryer."
"Whoa." Dillon said.
"It wasn't my fault," I told him.
"Maybe we should lay down some linoleum here. It would make things easier for clean up. — Janet Evanovich

I also have a brand-new prescription for gunfire jitters: When the shooting gets loud, proceed to the nearest wooden staircase. Run up and down a few times, making sure to stumble at least once. What with the scratches and the noise of running and falling, you won't even be able to hear the shooting, much less worry about it. Yours truly has put this magic formula to use, with great success! — Anne Frank

There's nothing like gunfire to drive the glamour from words. — Kyril Bonfiglioli

At the door , she made him promise to go without goodbyes .She closed the door on him . Laila leaned her back against it , shaking against his pounding fists , one arm gripping her belly and a hand across her mouth , as he spoke throughout the door and promised that he would come back for her . She stood there until he tired , until he gave up , and then she listened to his uneven footsteps until they faded , until all was quiet , save for the gunfire cracking in the hills and her own heart thudding in her belly , her eyes , her bones . — Khaled Hosseini

Where I grew up - I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights - that's every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don't want your kids to hear growing up. — LeBron James