Like Being Killed Quotes & Sayings

Every person killed or injured was a personal friend of mine; and you can imagine how grieved I am, and how glad I was to be of service in a special way - being a registered pharmacist. "I feel that I justified my entire thirty-one years as a pharmacist, by this one night of horror, and I should like to have you make a special appeal to young women whose parents have given their life to pharmacy, thus giving them proper background, to go on from there and study pharmacy. "Mrs. Margaret Strickler — John Finlayson

One of the great myths about war is that there is a ground zero, a center stage, where the terrible forces unleashed by it can be witnessed, recounted, and replayed like the launching of a rocket. War is a human activity far too large to be contained in the experience of a single reporter in a single place and time in any meaningful way. When it comes, it happens to everyone. Everything is in its path. Yet this is the allure of war reporting, the chance of acquiring some personal mother lode of truth to beam back to the living rooms of a waiting nation. The fear that comes from reporting on a war is as much a fear of missing this mother load as it is of being injured or killed in battle, and it sets reporters apart from the people who have to fight wars. Soldiers have their own agonies to think about as a battle approaches. Missing the war is not generally one of them. — John Hockenberry

Are all our dates going to be like that?" said Perkins.
"I hope not", I replied with a smile, "but it was quite fun, wasn't it? I mean, it's not like we were killed or eaten or anything, right?"
"If your idea of a good date is not being killed and eaten, you'll never be disappointed. — Jasper Fforde

I know why you picked her," Frank says, still sitting on the grass. "She's like you, sort of. A writer. Unhappy. Wishing she had someone who understood her. That's what killed her- being lonely. — Albert Borris

Because there's no such thing as too much water under the bridge. The only problem is a refusal to deal with the water that's already gone pasts. — Ellen Miller

It isn't a coincidence that the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat happened after September 11. Gujarat is also one place where the toxic waste of the World Trade Center is being dumped right now. This waste is being dumped in Gujarat, and then taken of to Ludhiana and places like that to be recycled. I think it's quite a metaphor. The demonization of Muslims has also been given legitimacy by the world's superpower, by the emperor himself. We are at a stage where democracy - this corrupted, scandalous version of democracy - is the problem. So much of what politicians do is with an eye on elections. Wars are fought as election campaigns. In India, Muslims are killed as part of election campaigns. In 1984, after the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi, the Congress Party won, hands down. We must ask ourselves very serious questions about this particular brand of democracy. — Arundhati Roy

Your generosity is cosmetic if you don't fully comprehend that the power to give is positively correlated with a concomitant power to deny, and both of these are the privileges of those who live in abundance, and I don't mean money. — Ellen Miller

One of the things that sparked my interest in this is the case of Emmanuel Constant, who started a militia called FRAPH that was backed by the CIA. FRAPH killed thousands of Haitians in the early 1990s. Now while Constant is living comfortably in Queens, other Haitians are being deported. I wanted to see how those who have been bruised by people like that deal with coming face to face with their torturers. — Edwidge Danticat

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them. — Herman Melville

Dig trenches? With our men being killed off like flies? There isn't time to dig trenches. We'll have to buy them ready made. — Groucho Marx

Look. I see it. You can go to all the movies and watch all the television you want. I am the end of all time. I'm not hooked up to the machine. I don't care about being labelled a misogynist, misanthropic hate addict. I don't give a fuck if some human organism calls me politically incorrect. I like the idea of people getting killed in parking lots. I stab every person who passes me. In my mind, I stab them in the face with a fucking knife. If I thought I could get away with it, I would skin you alive. I only fear prison if I get caught killing one of you humans. I hate you all. I don't know anyone. I am the enemy of humans. I am that which spits in the face of humanity. — Henry Rollins

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god i'm glad i'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? did they say i'm glad i died to make the world safe for democracy? did they say i like death better than losing liberty? did any of them ever say it's good to think i got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? did any of them ever say look at me i'm dead but i died for decency and that's better than being alive? did any of them ever say here i am i've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? did any of them say hurray i died for womanhood and i'm happy see how i sing even though my mouth is choked with worms? — Dalton Trumbo

For years I had been aware of an important deficiency in the English language: a word to describe something a person loses that was never really hers. — Ellen Miller

would react with violent seizures. Because of the rudimentary working conditions, and the difficulty of correctly reproducing body parts in miniature, this body had been built using only parts from the biggest and fittest of cadavers. The straps were not sufficient to hold me. I tore free. Lightning was cascading through copper rods buried in my chest. I ripped them out. Elixir and blood were being pumped into my body by a machine. I smashed it. I roared like an animal as I began destroying the very tools that had brought me to life. The bellows were manned by one of Dippel's assistants. I remember him looking at me with an expression of terror as I picked him up by the neck. I killed my first man only ten seconds after I had been born. With blood and Elixir pouring from my self-inflicted wounds, I — Larry Correia

These people say things like "If a liberal intellectual like you can't speak about the link between specific doctrines and violence without being defamed as a bigot, what hope is there for someone like me, who has to worry about being killed by her own family or village for merely expressing doubts about God?" So yes, I'm aware that one can't speak in Pakistan as I do here. — Sam Harris

It wasn't ENOUGH that I was working beside him like an idiot; it wasn't enough for him that I was wasting the few good hours left in my life - no, he also wanted me to share his own mind-soul, to sniff his dirty stockings, to chew on his angers and hates with him. I was not PAID for that, the fucker. And that's what killed you on the job - not the actual physical work but being closed in with the dead. I — Charles Bukowski

It was like a dream in which one is being pursued, nearly caught and will be killed, and is rooted to the spot and cannot even move one's arms. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Her smile was a supernova: blazing, beautiful, short-lived. — Ellen Miller

There is no racism against white people. If you can turn on the tv and see people like you that's not racism. If you can have your favorite characters who are poc race changed to look like you then you don't face racism. If you don't think about Ferguson every single second because your race is being killed every hour, that's not racism. If you don't get called derogatory slurs because of your skin tone that's not racism. If you don't hate your body because of your race that's not racism. If you don't have to go through life knowing people will think of you as ugly or disgusting and hate you simply because your white that's not racism. You don't face racism for being white. Ya people can be jerks about it. But its not institutionalized. That's like saying you face discrimination for being straight. It's not a thing. You don't face racism. You might want to get over that — Adam Snowflake

My life was not meant to be an example to copy. Being my follower is not trying to 'be like Jesus,' it means for your independence to be killed. I came to give you life, real life, my life. We will come and live our life inside of you, so that you begin to see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and touch with our hands, and think like we do. — Wm. Paul Young

You can't please everybody, and basically I just decided to please myself first on this record. This record is more like my diary and I am expressing myself through my music. And that's what it should be about. That's why I didn't change my name or anything. It's not about the name; it's about the music. The old saying goes that video killed the radio star and it's very true. And now I'm just letting everything revolve around the music. There is no image; I am just being myself. — Vanilla Ice

Nothing ever killed more people than being afraid to look like a sissy. — James S.A. Corey

I'm a visual writer, so it's fitting that my first brush with 'Red Queen' was an image. I had the idea of a teenage girl in an arena, a bit like 'Gladiator,' and she's about to be executed. But instead of being killed, she kills her executioner with lightning. — Victoria Aveyard

I was too apathetic to be bored or anxious. Boredom and anxiety were the neurotic cousins of concern; they implied wishes. I had no wishes or wants. I didn't even want dope. I only needed it. — Ellen Miller

This constant 'stay inside and let yourself be protected' mentality has gotten more people killed than all the accidental exposures in the world. It's like we're all addicted to being afraid. — Mira Grant

We came through the Ring to stop James Holden from talking to the aliens first. But this is the same man that helped send Eros to Venus instead of letting it destroy the Earth. Why did we assume he'd do a bad job of being the first human the aliens met? And now something has slapped us down, taken all our guns away, but not killed us. This should mean something. Certainly anything this powerful could kill us as easily as it declawed us. But it didn't. Instead of trying to figure out what it means, we're hurting so we call it evil. I feel like we're children who've been punished and we think it's because our parents are mean. — James S.A. Corey

I never saw her a burglar prying my windows open with a jimmy to steal whatever she found inside. — Ellen Miller

Sometimes I became so permeable, so porous, that I would absorb too much, until a valve yielded, and everything rushed out in a quick drain. — Ellen Miller

I'm through with you. Yes, I am going to put you down. From now on, I am my own God. I am going to live by the rules I se for myself. I'll discard everything I was once taught about you. Then I'll be you. I'll be my own God, living my life as I see fit. Not as Mr. Charlie says I should live it, or Mama or anybody else. I shall do as I want in this society that apparently wasn't meant for me and my kind. If you are getting angry because I am talking to you like this, then just kill me, leave me here in this graveyard dead. Maybe thats where all of us belong anyway. Maybe then we wouldn't have to suffer so much. At the rate we are being killed now, we'll all be soon dead anyway. — Anne Moody

[Christopher:] You cannot conceive of the quantity of explosives the armies throw at each other for each man killed! The shells make a continuous noise, sometimes like an enormous machine breaking apart. At other times, they come whistling towards you in a thoughtful sort of way and then go crump and the screw cap flies off, hurtling through the air, screaming. There's a kind of shell which comes with a crescendo like an express train, only faster. Another kind which makes a noise like tearing calico, louder and louder. The largest kind are the ones which burst in the sky and make a double crack, like a wet canvas being shaken out by a giant. Such immense explosions to kill such small, weak animals. — Tom Stoppard

Ten feet to my left, Sadie smacked a vulture with her staff. The bird exploded into white sand. Annabeth jogged toward us, giving me one of those annoyed expressions like, If you get yourself killed, I'm going to murder you. Carter, being invisible, was nowhere to be seen. — Rick Riordan

Isn't man an amazing animal? He kills wildlife - birds, kangaroos, deer, all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes, and dingoes - by the millions in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed. Then he kills domestic animals by the billions and eats them. This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative - and fatal - health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer. So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases. Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals. Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out a card praying for 'Peace on Earth. — C. David Coats

You know what?' said Vimes aloud. 'This is going to be the world's first democratically killed dragon. One man, one stab.'
Then you've got to stop them. You can't let them kill it!' said Lady Ramkin.
Vimes blinked at her.
Pardon?' he said.
It's wounded!'
Lady, that was the intention, wasn't it? Anyway, it's only stunned,' said Vimes.
I mean you can't let them kill it like this,' said Lady Ramkin insistently. 'Poor thing!'
What do you want to do, then?' demanded Vimes, his temper unravelling. 'Give it a strengthening dose of tar oil and a nice comfy basket in front of the stove?'
It's butchery!'
Suits me fine!'
But it's a dragon! It's just doing what a dragon does! It never would have come here if people had left it alone!'
Vimes thought: it was about to eat her, and she can still think like this. He hesitated. Perhaps that did give you the right to an opinion ... — Terry Pratchett

Arys is notorious in this city for being the kind of guy you tiptoe around if you don't want to get killed. He has a tendency of making sure everyone weaker than him knows it." That I could certainly believe. "So, who isn't weaker than Arys?" His cocky attitude was nothing new to me, but it sounded like a recipe for trouble. Kale fixed me with a serious gaze that betrayed the monster behind his eyes. "For a long time, very few. Since he has been bound to you, nobody. — Trina M. Lee

Have you wondered what our babies would have looked like?" Jen asked absently as she frowned inwardly trying to picture the future she might have had with her wolf.
"Baby this isn't really the time to discuss our babies. Let's focus on who is carrying you so that I can get you back so that we can make babies."
Jen groaned and felt the arms around her tighten which brought a gasp from her. Decebel must have sensed her pain as she felt his worry.
"I'm okay, just hurts." Jen actually felt a smile spread across her face, "So you want to make babies with me?"
This time when Decebel laughed she swore she could feel his hands run down her sides to her waist.
"Only you would want to discuss making babies at a time like this."
"Well you have to admit that it's a better topic than my nearly being killed and now being kidnapped. Seriously Dec, I'd much rather think about us making babies. — Quinn Loftis

It is recorded in the monastic rules that a monk once performed an abortion on a girl; the Buddha judged his action seriously wrong, which incurred him the highest offense in the monastic rule. A monk committing this kind of wrongful deed must be expelled from the monastic community. The Buddha considered the embryo to be a person like an adult, so the monk who killed the embryo through abortion was judged by Buddhist monastic rules as having committed a crime equal in gravity to killing an adult. In the commentary on the rule stated above, it is stated clearly that killing a human being means destroying human life from the first moment of fertilization to human life outside the womb. So, even though the Buddha himself did not give a clear-cut pronouncement about when personhood occurs, the Buddhist tradition, especially the Theravada tradition, clearly states that personhood starts when the process of fertilization takes place. — Soraj Hongladarom

Doctor Nye," Clarabelle said.
The spider-like being turned to them. "Zombies," it said, mildly surprised. "And a blue-haired girl."
"My name is Clarabelle. I'm here looking for a job... I have no medical or scientific training to speak of, and no inclination to learn, and I pick up things fairly slowly because of my short attention span..."
"Clarabelle... Clarabelle... You worked as Kenspeckle Grouse's assistant, did you not?"
"One of them. He fired all the others."
"But not you?"
"He fired me on the second day, but I kept coming in. I had nowhere else to go."
"And then you killed him."
"Yes."
"A Remnant squirmed inside you, and you killed Kenspeckle Grouse."
"Yes."
It grinned. "You're hired. — Derek Landy

August Smith is a child telling the truth. Sometimes the truth is he has to listen to the voices of various creatures he's killed speak to him reproachfully, and he shares that with us, because wouldn't we all? Parties abound in this collection and reading it feels like being invited. You can tell Smith wants you there. — Matthew Rohrer

For groups that made this political transition to egalitarianism, there was a quantum leap in the development of moral matrices. People now lived in much denser webs of norms, informal sanctions, and occasionally violent punishments. Those who could navigate this new world skillfully and maintain good reputations were rewarded by gaining the trust, cooperation, and political support of others. Those who could not respect group norms, or who acted like bullies, were removed from the gene pool by being shunned, expelled, or killed. Genes and cultural practices (such as the collective killing of deviants) coevolved. The end result, says Boehm, was a process sometimes called "self-domestication." Just as animal breeders can create tamer, gentler creatures by selectively breeding for those traits, our ancestors began to selectively breed themselves (unintentionally) for the ability to construct shared moral matrices and then live cooperatively within them. — Jonathan Haidt

What always strikes me in the story of Cain and Abel is how often the word "brother" is used. Cain killed his "brother." God says it was "the blood of your brother." The killing was done to another human being, a child of God like you, breaking that sacred bond of common humanity. — Allan Boesak

That night, the Raka conspirators had plenty of news to report, particularly Ochobu. Aly had not known that the mages of the Chain had been laboring to eliminate any mages who had worked magic on the Crown's behalf. So far they had killed seven of the most powerful.

Chelaol would call this count of the dead another 'good start,' Aly thought grimly. This crude business of counting up lives taken struck her as a bad idea. It took the horror from death. When Ochobu named four mages on Lombyn who had had been killed in the streets of their towns, it had been about numbers, not lives.

Maybe this is how you become a Rittevon, she thought. You get used to the dead being described as numbers, not fathers or daughters or grandparents.

She turned to Dove when Ochobu finished, 'don't ever be like this,' she urged. 'don't think that it doesn't matter if you only hear of murder as a number. If you keep it at a distance. — Tamora Pierce

(Speaking about ponies engaging in a game of running around and chasing a ball with "imaginary riders")
Along with everything else about it, it seemed to be a parable for life. Going forwards and backwards and round in circles, striving ever forward only to have to run like crazy backwards to get the ball again, realizing that your enemy is after the same goal and you're actually helping him toward it and getting roughed up and possibly killed while you're at it but still feeling the comradeship of being in the game all together. — Susan Trott

At least ten times as many people died from preventable, poverty-related diseases on September 11, 2011, as died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that black day. The terrorist attacks led to trillions of dollars being spent on the 'war on terrorism' and on security measures that have inconvenienced every air traveller since then. The deaths caused by poverty were ignored. So whereas very few people have died from terrorism since September 11, 2001, approximately 30,000 people died from poverty-related causes on September 12, 2001, and on every day between then and now, and will die tomorrow. Even when we consider larger events like the Asian tsunami of 2004, which killed approximately 230,000 people, or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed up to 200,000, we are still talking about numbers that represent just one week's toll for preventable, poverty-related deaths - and that happens fifty-two weeks in every year. — Peter Singer

Why are you being nice to me?"
The suprise on his face suprises me even more.
"Because I care about you." he says simply.
"You care about me?" The numbness in my body is beginning to dissipate. My blood pressure is rising and anger making its way to the forefron of my consciousness. "I almost killed Jenkins because of you!"
"You didn't kill-"
"Your soldiers beat me! You keep me here like a prisoner! You threaten me! You threaten to kill me! You give me no freedom and you say you care about me?" I nearly throw the glass of water at his face. "You are a monster!"
Warner turns away so I'm staring at his profile. He clasps his hands. Changes his mind. Touches his lips. "I am only trying to help you."
"Liar."
He seems to consider that. Nods, just once. "Yes, most of the time, yes. — Tahereh Mafi

Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off. — Fannie Lou Hamer

Not take prisoners," Prince Andrew continued: "That by itself would quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have played at war - that's what's vile! We play at magnanimity and all that stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed: she is so kindhearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating the calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on. It's all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they humbugged us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people's — Leo Tolstoy

I used to want to be a cop for a brief time, a detective, solving crimes and upholding the law, ever since I stated watching crime shows in junior high. But being a cop, contrary to what many believe, isn't like the films or television shows that we see every day. If you're the cop who has to have the grim duty of telling a parent that their child was killed, or who loses their friend on a dangerous case, or who has to interview victims of horrible crimes, somehow I imagine that you just want to quit forever on some days. — Rebecca McNutt

Thucydides wrote of people who made rules and followed them. Going by rule they killed entire classes of enemies without exception. Most of those who died felt, I am sure, that a terrible mistake was being made, that, whatever the rule was, it could not be meant for them. 'I--!': that was their last word as their throats were cut. A word of protest: I, the exception.

"Were they exceptions? The truth is, given time to speak, we would all claim to be exceptions. For each of us there is a case to be made. We all deserve the benefit of the doubt.

"But there are times when there is no time for all that close listening, all those exceptions, all that mercy. There is no time, so we fall back on the rule. And that is a great pity, the greatest pity. That is what you could have learned from Thucydides. It is a great pity when we find ourselves entering upon times like those. We should enter upon them with a sinking heart. They are by no means to be welcomed. — J.M. Coetzee

Alec deadpanned, "You didn't just 'Call my name', you shouted it like you were being murdered."

An image of the gun going off in my nightmare struck me, but I shook it off.

"I would have screeched or at the very least given a high-pitched white-woman scream if I was being murdered. I wouldn't have shouted at all if I knew it would have upset you this much."

Alec looked exhausted as he rubbed his hand over his gorgeous face. "Why a white-woman?"

I shrugged, again. "It's usually the white ones who scream the loudest that get killed in the slasher films. — L.A. Casey

Ghouls," I heard Archer say. His voice was low and tense, like a person who's being confronted by a wild animal. "Reanimated human flesh, used as guardians. Seriously dark magic. Someone obviously didn't want us finding-"
"Oh my God,less talking, more stabbing, please." My voice was squeaky with fear, and I knew my eyes wer huge when I swiveled around to look at Archer.
He already had the sword in his hand, and he was crouching slightly. "I can slow them down, but ghouls can't be killed by blades. You're the one who has to stop them."
"Come again?" I nearly squeaked.
"You're a necromancer," he said. "They're dead."
Oh,right. One of the many "perks" of having a lot of dark magic at my disposal. But I'd never seen the point in boning up on my necromancer skills. When was I ever going to need to order around the dead? — Rachel Hawkins

He began talking about the Vietnam War and about the children who were being killed by the American forces there, and he told her that if she was a Christian, as she claimed to be, she ought to be indignant over the monstrous crimes the Yankees were committing. Martha told him that according to him and others like him the Americans were responsible for all the evil in the world, but people like him never talked about the way the Communists from North Vietnam were killing innocent people as they invaded South Vietnam. She said that it was never the men that caused the war who died - they sat comfortably behind their desks while the poor wretches they sent out to fight were dying. — Armando Valladares

He was like a sheep being led to be killed. He was quiet, as a lamb is quiet while its wool is being cut; he never opened his mouth. He was shamed and was treated unfairly. He died without children to continue his family. His life on earth has ended. — Davis Bunn

I thought about ... our kind being killed, but I am not concerned. I have real power - no one could keep me chained, because my blood can transform iron into water. I could walk through walls if I needed, and now - now I know I can throw my mind into another's, and how easy, then, would it be to unlock any cage? We are invincible, Philip and I. Like unto God. Or the Devil. — Tessa Gratton

An angel lay dying in the mist. Once upon a time.
And the devil should have finished him off without a second thought.
But she hadn't. And if she had? Karou had wondered it a hundred different ways. She'd even wished for it, in her blackest grief at the Kasbah, when all she could see was the death that had come of her mercy.
If she'd killed Akiva that day, or even just let him die, the war would have ground on unbroken. Another thousand years? Maybe. But she hadn't, and it hadn't. "The age of wars is over," Akiva had just said, and even as Karou saw what she saw and no possibility of mistake, and even as her whole being gathered itself into a scream, her heart defied it. The age of wars was over, and Akiva would not die like this.
The blade entered his heart. — Laini Taylor

Well, besides, I've arranged with the computer that anyone who doesn't look and sound like one of us will be killed if he - or she - tries to board the ship. I've taken the liberty of explaining that to the Port Commander. I told him very politely that I would love to turn off that particular facility out of deference to the reputation that the Sayshell City Spaceport holds for absolute integrity and security - throughout the Galaxy, I said - but the ship is a new model and I didn't know how to turn it off."
"He didn't believe that, surely."
"Of course not! But he had to pretend he did, as otherwise he would have had no choice but to be insulted. And since there would be nothing he could do about that, being insulted would only lead to humiliation. And since he didn't want that, the simplest path to follow was to believe what I said."
"And that's another example of how people are?"
"Yes. You'll get used to this. — Isaac Asimov

The principles of liberalism can have a real existence only in conjunction with a police system. Anarchism is an attempt to cleanse liberalism of the police. But just as pure oxygen is impossible to breathe, so liberalism without the police principle means the death of society. Being a shadow-caricature of liberalism, anarchism as a whole has shared its fate. Having killed liberalism, the development of class contradictions has also killed anarchism. Like every sect which founds its teaching not upon the actual development of human society, but upon the reduction to absurdity of one of its features, anarchism explodes like a soap bubble at that moment when the social contradictions arrive at the point of war or revolution. — Leon Trotsky

They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed
run over, maimed, destroyed
but they continued to play anyhow. — Philip K. Dick

Being poor is neither history nor permanent but a status. Writers who begin with this sentence "X is a poorest country in the world," to describe any African country are lacking intelligence. How would they feel if we turned the tables and used sentences that portray historical offenses committed to other countries? I bet nobody would like to read, "X is a country that killed millions of Y during Z's regime. — Gloria D. Gonsalves

When a person becomes a legend, the very thing that makes them human and knowable is killed off, so it's like being killed over and over and over again, for all eternity. — Miriam Toews

They don't know what it's about, or ... you know, at least they don't know what's going to happen. This isn't even built like a torture chamber. It's all being watched, right? Water and air sensors. It's a Petri dish. They don't know what that s*** that killed Julie does, and this is how they're finding out."
Holden frowned.
"Don't they have laboratories? Places where you could maybe put that crap on some animals or something? Because as experimental design goes, this seems a little messed up. — James S.A. Corey

The light, like the sensation of togetherness, was manufactured, seeping in from external commerce. — Ellen Miller

If there were any seeds of doubt in my mind as to whether I really loved Adam or just some image of Adam, they were all killed by the frost that was tonight's dinner party. No, wait, that sounds like it was some cold, deadly evening. I mean the opposite. I guess I mean that if the flower of my love for Adam wass being stunted by any feelings of doubt, then tonight fully fertilized my seed and allowed it to grow. That works if you don't think about the face that fertilizer is made if shit. — Daniel Handler

Gone is what happens when people stop asking, when all research has ceased, when no one contributes to the archives of a life or its extinction. — Ellen Miller

I had the mistaken idea, based on what happened in World War I, that we would stay out of the war, and it is very unfortunate that I felt like that. If I had been more convinced, as Wigner and Szilard were, that we were going to get into the war, I would have pushed harder to begin making the bomb. I figured out that roughly half a million to a million people were being killed a month in the later stages of the war. Every month by which we could have shortened the war would have made a difference of a half million to a million lives, including the life of my own brother. — Gregory Benford

Who wouldn't admire the gall of a fellow brings a machine gun and a peck of hired killers to his own goddamn trial? Who wouldn't admire a fellow never leaves a trail of evidence? That's got this far in the world and galled so many folks and killed twice that number and cheated the rest, all without being blowed to itty bitty pieces or hanged by his goddamn neck or succumbing to one of countless infirmities he seems to collect like a goddamn hobby, hell yeah I admire the son-of-a-bitch. — Tom Franklin

Have a care, Sir Tucker, lest you find yourself in the stockades."
He scoffs and looks at Mr. Erikson. "She can't do that, can she? She's not the ruler of this class. Brady is."
...
"You could strip him of his title," suggests Brady, apparently not minding at all that I have usurped his throne. "Make him a serf."
"Yeah," says Christian. "Make him a serf. Being a serf blows."
As a serf, poor Christian has already been killed several times in our class. Aside from dying of the Black Plague on the first day, he's starved to death, had his hands cut off for stealing a loaf of bread, and been run down by his master's horse just for kicks. He's like Christian the fifth now. — Cynthia Hand

The idea that a game is anything more than a game ... You know, there are people who are basically unbalanced who are going to misuse a game and have bad results. If a golfer who insists on playing during a lightning storm gets hit by a stroke of lightning and is killed nobody says, 'There's golfers dying by the droves being hit by lightning!' You can overdo what you really like, and if you're unbalanced you go overboard. — Gary Gygax

Once upon a time, I'd come close to being killed in the big trash bin outside. This counts as nostalgia for someone like me (p. 317).
Kinsey Millhone in V is for Vengeance — Sue Grafton

He paid me to discover ways to express the unnameable; to get to the bottom of an utterance; to find words for the things for which there were no words yet, thereby bringing them into existence, committing them to paper, projecting them into the future. The work was part drudgery, part deity. — Ellen Miller

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.
'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'
They moved on. — Philip Pullman

You never hear about a pit bull doing anything good in the media. And they have a stigma to them ... and, in many ways, pit bulls are like young African-American males. Whenever you see us in the news, it's for getting shot and killed or shooting and killing somebody - for being a stereotype. — Ryan Coogler

Doing 'Prometheus' was what you imagine being an actor is like when you're five. In a spacesuit, on another planet, getting killed by an alien. It was a real treat; it felt like being a part of movie history. — Rafe Spall

Normally death scenes are good, if you have a significant death scene and it means something it's like the audience has an attachment to you being killed that's a good thing. — Jared Harris

It's nice of Mrs. Goe to think that marching against the juvenile juror law is going to keep kids safe. But the fact is, we're NOT safe. Nobody is. That's the whole point. There's no such thing as being safe
here or anywhere. People get hurt every day. Some people get killed by weirdos like Bob White and some people just get teased to death at the lunch table for drinking orange soda or eating a tuna fish sandwich. — Kate Klise

Words were cannibals eating up their own past.

-- Like Being Killed — Ellen Miller

Being killed for Allan's cause is a great honor achieved by only those who are the elite of the nation. We love this kind of death for Allah's cause as much as you like to live. We have nothing to fear for. It is something we wish for. — Osama Bin Laden

We men have always fought to protect others... since the ancient times. Even though we were naked, and only had sticks and stones to defend ourselves... we still had the elderly, the young, our wives, friends, family, and homes... and to protect all of that we braved any danger, no matter what... and fought! And even among those cavemen there were useless failures! Just like how we are today! But in the end, even they gathered their courage, and fought! And, not surprisingly, being incompetent... they were killed! Even thought it was the death of an idiot... it was also... the death of a selfless hero! — Nobuyuki Fukumoto

What I had was classic short-term PTSD. From an evolutionary perspective, it's exactly the response you want to have when your life is in danger: you want to be vigilant, you want to avoid situations where you are not in control, you want to react to strange noises, you want to sleep lightly and wake easily, you want to have flashbacks and nightmares that remind you of specific threats to your life, and you want to be, by turns, angry and depressed. Anger keeps you ready to fight, and depression keeps you from being too active and putting yourself in more danger. Flashbacks also serve to remind you of the danger that's out there - a "highly efficient single-event survival-learning mechanism," as one researcher termed it. All humans react to trauma in this way, and most mammals do as well. It may be unpleasant, but it's preferable to getting killed. Like — Sebastian Junger

Probit analysis provides a mathematical foundation for the doctrine first established by the sixteenth-century physician Paracelsus: "Only the dose makes a thing not a poison." Under the Paracelsus doctrine, all things are potential poisons if given in a high enough dose, and all things are nonpoisonous if given in a low enough dose. To this doctrine, Bliss added the uncertainty associated with individual results. One reason why many foolish users of street drugs die or become very sick on cocaine or heroin or speed is that they see others using the drugs without being killed. They are like Bliss's insects. They look around and see some of their fellow insects still alive. However, knowing that some individuals are still living provides no assurance that a given individual will survive. There is no way of predicting the response of a single individual. — David Salsburg

I bunched the squirrel-fur hat up under my head and left the pack for Mal to use as a pillow. Then I pulled my coat close around me and huddled beneath the new furs. I was nodding off when I heard Mal return and settle himself beside me, his back pressed comfortably against mine. As I drifted into sleep, I felt like I could still taste the sugar from that sweet roll on my tongue, feel the pleasure of laughter gusting through me. We'd been robbed. We'd almost been killed. We were being hunted by the most powerful man in Ravka. But we were friends again, and sleep came more easily than it had in a long time. At some point during the night, I woke to Mal's snoring. I jabbed him in the back with my elbow. He rolled onto his side, muttered something in his sleep, and threw his arm over me. A minute later he started snoring again, but this time I didn't wake him. — Leigh Bardugo

He used to annoy me with sophistry that we all chose our destiny. Then one day I told him that that's great when fate offers you a nice set of destinies to choose from, but when you find yourself choosing between risking being raped, tortured and killed, or moving to another country to live like an alien without tongue, money or understanding, you are buggered either way. And that's not even to mention how easily he could navigate through the mine filed of his mistakes... — Dunya Look

I think over time I've learned to stop being a screamer and get interactive; otherwise, you get killed in Hollywood. I stopped being a screamer shortly after 'Blade Runner,' kicking doors and things like that, because I wasn't actually getting anywhere. — Ridley Scott

After school the very next day, El Rey's mobile home was gone. I laid in bed and wondered what happens to people when they go, if they become like shadows, if they fade away when they disappear from your life. The only thing I could see was the broken picket fence. The only sound I could hear was the cry of birds being killed in the night. — Joe Meno

Did you see all that? Did you see that little baby girl? I carried her body and buried it as best I could but I had no time. It really gets to me to see children being killed like this, but we had no choice. — Matt Martin

I don't like the idea of being killed by fools. I shall have to ensure that this does not happen. — Kerry Greenwood

Damn it. Why didn't the United States know when to declare a real war? Those running the country he loved were making a mockery of it. Misusing the word war had become a joke, like The War on Drugs or The War on Women. What was taking place in Guatemala was being run the same way as the fake War on Terror. Similar to Afghanistan, it didn't take long before he realized he was in a no man's land where the dead piled up in silence and the living had nothing to say. Hordes of beggars and gang members roamed the area seeking food, money or young women to rape. Life was cheap. People were killed for a pair of shoes or a handful of pills. — Ava Armstrong

This is the beginning of a new time," Torius said, "a great moment for us. One of us has learnt the Tongue and freed a princess. I have saved him and killed the guards. No longer will we be slaves. No longer will the guards tell us what to do. No longer will we listen. We will fight till we get what we want!"
A roar exploded from the children around him.
"This is a revolution," Torius went on. "You all remember the pain that you have felt when the guards have touched you. You all know the shame we carry within us at being treated like this. No more! We will stand! — Y.K. Willemse

Did they like being maids & butlers? Before you answer this consider everything you've ever read about English history after Robin Hood and before he Who. Your choices were: serving, being served, being killed by Jack the Ripper. So, the employee class made the best of it and got with the program. It was indoor work, after all. And as a wise man once observed, "You're gonna hafta serve somebody." (Bob Dylan, C. 1497-1580). And it beat mining. — Chris Kelly