Razor's Edge Quotes & Sayings

The razor hung between his shoulder-blades from a loop of cotton string round his neck inside his shirt. The same motion of the hand which brought the razor forward over his shoulder flipped the blade open and freed it from the cord, the blade opening on until the back edge of it lay across the knuckles of his fist, his thumb pressing the handle into his closing fingers, so that in the second before the half-drawn pistol exploded he actually struck at the white man's throat not with the blade but with a sweeping blow of his fist, following through in the same motion so that not even the first jet of blood touched his hand or arm. — William Faulkner

The razor-edge bit into my skin as a warning and seconds later, a small, warm trickle of blood slithered all the way down between my breasts. I froze solid, unable to move, scream, or breathe; once again reminded of the glaring truth: becoming a vampire didn't mean there was nothing to fear ... — Sharon Ricklin Jones

sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse, A difficult path is this - the poets declare!2 Science — Huston Smith

There is some research that suggests that viruses like the flu are really actually kind of at the razor's edge when it comes to mutation. They're mutating so fast that if they mutated much faster they would actually develop a lot of harmful mutations that could slow them down and cripple them and eventually literally drive them extinct. — Carl Zimmer

I love the razor's edge. I want to be cut open. My terror is of a bourgeois, ordinary life. I can't bear the everyday constraint. I believe that ordinariness would put out my spark, such as it is. — Hanif Kureishi

Every match in the Euro is a dance on a razor's edge. — Otto Rehhagel

The runner who is in peak condition is only a razor's edge from catastrophe. — George Sheehan

The Razor's Edge, — Anonymous

The path to Salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge. — W. Somerset Maugham

I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for. — Thornton Wilder

The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen
As is the razor's edge invisible. — William Shakespeare

This was home: running along a razor's edge of self-induced terror, calculating mortality against probability.
Assignments were the reprieve. When she was abroad, although she would do whatever was necessary to get the job done, there was a degree of normalcy, sanity, purpose, and the destructive forces propelling her to gamble with her life were dormant. — Taylor Stevens

My favorite film is Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power in The Razor's Edge. — Terence Stamp

The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor's edge, sharper than a hound's tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom. — Philip K. Dick

And God the taste of undercover on my tongue again, the brush of it down the little hairs on my arms. I'd thought I remembered what it was like, every detail, but I'd been wrong: memories are nothing, soft as gauze against the ruthless razor-fineness of that edge, beautiful and lethal, one tiny slip and it'll slice to the bone. — Tana French

He said he was disappointed with the way his fellow-countrymen had reacted to the depression; he would have expected them to take their misfortune with more equanimity. Knowing that nothing is easier than to bear other people's calamities with fortitude, I thought that Elliot, richer now than he had ever been in his life, was perhaps hardly entitled to be severe. — W. Somerset Maugham

Its the danger that makes it fun." -Razor
Walk The Edge — Katie McGarry

Truth: We are the present. We are now. We are the razor's edge of history. The future flies at us and from that dark blur we shape the past. And the past is forever. — N.D. Wilson

Be not in despair, the way is very difficult, like walking on the edge of a razor; yet despair not, arise, awake, and find the ideal, the goal. — Swami Vivekananda

I told Ersken, "Lately it's been like living on the knife's edge, never knowing which side I'll fall off on"
Ersken clapped me on the shoulder as we stepped into the street. "Cheer up, Beka. Maybe you were going to fall off that razor's edge before, but not today," he said, as good humored as always. "Today we're doing to jump. — Tamora Pierce

But I so want to walk that razor's edge,
Take feeling to a whole new level. — Ellen Hopkins

Children came running with their mothers' scissors, or the carving knife, or the paternal razor, or anything else that lacked an edge (except, indeed, poor Clifford's wits) that the grinder might apply the article to his magic wheel, and give it back as good as new. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It's a razor's edge, a romance with an old man and a young woman. — Peter O'Toole

The beautiful clarity of all marked outlines occurred to her--there would be a deep satisfaction in strengthening fences, for instance, going along on the inside of a strong fence enclosing a large land, leaning outward to push towards the extreme limit of property; too, what about the lovely definition of a sheet of white paper alone on her desk, oblong and complete, the tightness with which the sky fitted onto the earth at the horizon, the act of caressing the spine of a book? Irresistibly, she thought with a shiver of a razor sharp edge slicing horizontally through her eyes, into her mouth, and then coming around the hard corner of a building, saw again the campus and its lights and heard its sounds. — Shirley Jackson

walking, as it were, on a razor's edge, — Sharad Pawar

Every good thing in the world stands on the razor-edge of danger. — Thornton Wilder

I dream of a small room and a man with one eye. Blood seeps like scarlet tears from his empty socket. I turn away and the room becomes a hallway that becomes a stairway that becomes a roof. The wind tugs at my body; the sky tries to wrap me in stars. Below me, a gazebo glows with red light. A line of black cars crawls like cockroaches through the streets.
An air conditioner exhaust fan chitters angrily near the roof's edge, one of its blades bent just enough to scrape against the side of the casing. For a second I let the wind push me close enough to the fan's razor- sharp blades that a lock of my hair gets snipped and sent out into the night. As it twists and flutters toward the gazebo, I think about just letting go, letting the breeze carry my body into the whirling blades, the wind scattering pieces of me throughout the city. Blood and flesh seeping into the cracked pavement. Flowers blooming wherever I land. — Paula Stokes

We are all of us walking a razor's edge between darkness and light, — Ichabod

Why do you hold a razor in one hand?
So men remember that I am sharp as any edge.
And why do you hold broken glass in the other?
So men remember that I am always watching. — Susan Dennard

In the sense that Watchmen references movies, comic books, pop culture in general. It knows it's a movie. I really do like movies that ride that fine line, the razor's edge between parody and supporting the fake movie part of the movie. — Zack Snyder

She stood on the edge of night, that sliver of gray between darkness and dawn, that razor-thin line separating the first part of her life and whatever lay ahead. — Anne Blankman

I am living on the razor's edge between success and failure, adulation and humiliation - between justifying my existence and revealing my unworthiness to be alive. — Scott Stossel

Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side. — Lauren Oliver

Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side. — Logan Pearsall Smith

I think that today, integration is the name of the game and not separating these things out, and not trying to find the razor's edge, the narrow path. There's a lot of lanes in the highway, the trick is not fall into the ditches on either side, like a one sided nihilism, nothing matters life. — Surya Das

As in smooth oil the razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set; Their want of edge from their offence is seen, Both pain us least when exquisitely keen. — Edward Young

I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for - whether it's a field, or a home, or a country. — Thornton Wilder

No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed to almost vanish when seen edge on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing and a ghost light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew that it was sharper than any razor. — George R R Martin

Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor. — Willard Van Orman Quine

Mi Corazon. Mi alma. Son tuyos." My heart. My soul. They are yours, he whispered against the generous curve of her breast as a million sensations, all of them hot, all of them rich, all of them straddling the razor-sharp edge of pain, ripped through his loins like a flash fire and stripped him of everything but consciousness.
"Tuyo. Todo que tengo es tuyo." Yours. Everything I have is yours. — Cindy Gerard

They sat on the edge of a brook and took off their shoes and let the water cut their feet off to the ankles with an exquisite cold razor. — Ray Bradbury

We did not flinch but gave our lives to save Greece when her fate hung on a razor's edge. — Simonides Of Ceos

The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, Those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, Like they who lick the honey from a razor's edge. How pitiful they who cling strongly to concrete reality: Turn your attention within, my heart friends.5 — Sogyal Rinpoche

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor and surviving. — Marlon Brando

Calm down," comes a voice, and it's not Razor's. I rip my focus away from the water and there's a man [Pigpen] with blond hair and a cut like Razor's slowly approaching the bridge. His hands are up - a sign of submission. "Just calm down. — Katie McGarry

... you might go to great lengths to avoid disappointing the people in your life, as I did for many years in relationships. The problem with this approach, however, is that it sets an impossible standard. Disappointment is inevitable in all relationships. It is impossible for two people to have the exact same feelings and desires all of the time. Inevitably, someone will want something, and the other person will not. A natural response to not getting something that we want is disappointment.

As long as we avoid disappointing others at any cost to our ourselves, we will never feel truly safe and connected in our relationships. We will always have that nagging fear that if we were to disappoint them, they would be gone. This is a fine razor's edge to walk along. It can be incredibly freeing and relaxing to acknowledge that you will disappoint people in your life, and that they will disappoint you. — Aziz Gazipura

We regarded each other across an expanse wider than the universe, within a space thinner than a razor's edge. — Rick Yancey

Nowness is the sense that we are attuned to what is happening. The past is fiction and the future is a dream, and we are just living on the edge of a razor blade. — Chogyam Trungpa

The basic structure of the universe is balanced on a razor's edge for life to exist — Sunday Adelaja

In order to be a writer, "Maugham continues: "one must take chances and not be afraid to look foolish. I wrote The Razor's Edge while wearing a paper hat ... . — Woody Allen

Incredible brilliance often dwells on the razor's edge of madness ... — Brad Thor

I got what I wanted, I guess. I'm here, in this home that I worked so hard to insulate from the problems of the world, our happy little bubble. The girls have their father every night. Adam has a newfound respect for me, the New Rachel, for the glittering, sharp edge that's emerged like a razor in the grass. When I think about my old self, I feel pity and yearning at the same time. Poor Old Rachel, the sweet, naive idiot. And lucky Old Rachel, so completely happy. There's one niggling thought I can't shake, one that keeps me awake at night. What would I tell my daughters if they came to me with the news that their husband had a mistress? That he told her, my precious daughter, that sex with the other woman was amazing? Stay and work things out. Oh, and get that STD panel ASAP, darlings! But do stay. Take all that hurt and betrayal and just ball it up and swallow it. Want to bake cookies? — Kristan Higgins

On the stage it is always now; the personages are standing on that razor-edge, between the past and the future, which is the essential character of conscious being. — Thornton Wilder

It's walking the razor's edge of the sacred moment where you don't know, you can't count on, and comfort yourself with any sure hope. All you can know is your allegiance to life and your intention to serve it in this moment that we are given. In that sense, this radical uncertainty liberates your creativity and courage. — Joanna Macy

Sometimes, I seem to be only able to actually move and get going with things on the razor edge of possibly still managing whatever it is I'm supposed to do. I think, secretly, I might even get a buzz out of it. Maybe I crave the adrenalin like some sort of crazy gambler high on risking everything on the turn of a card. — Steven Hall

Together we all live every moment
On the very brink;
The razor's edge
Of ecstasy or disaster. — Scott Hastie

It's a razor's edge kind of innocence, which relies on a willingness to be duped for the sake of transcending ordinary experience, for the sake of astonishment. — Maud Casey

Since we're all snails riding on the razor's edge, we might as well say it as it is. — Peter Tieryas

Life and death are balanced on the edge of a razor. — Homer

Kate slid to her knees, pulling the child's head to her breast, her mouth in its hair. "Pippa. Pippa, we're awful fools. What Father means is that truly nothing we have ever done can harm us, and Mr. Crawford has mixed us up with someone else. But you know what unstable-looking parents you have. He doesn't believe us, but he says he'll believe you. It's not very flattering," said Kate, looking at her daughter with bright eyes, "but you seem to be the one in the family with an honest sort of face, and your father and I must just be thankful for it. Go over to him, darling. I'll be behind you. And just speak," she said with an edge like a razor. "Just speak as you would to the dog. — Dorothy Dunnett

There's many lanes on the highway of enlightenment, they don't have to be on the razor's edge like the yellow line dotted in the middle. Balance is appropriate, not too tight, not too loose, the Middle Way as we call it in Buddhist dharma teachings. — Surya Das

Where does the hand become the wrist?
where does the neck become the shoulder? The watershed
and then the weight, whatever turns up and tips us over that
razor's edge
between something and nothing, between
one and the other. — Simon Armitage

[T]hat his cheating and his bitterness and his cruelty were the revolt of his will ... against a deep-rooted instinct of holiness, against a desire for God that terrified and yet obsessed him. — W. Somerset Maugham

To love God more is never to love people less. It's to love people best. It's to relieve them of the responsibility of being your false Christ. It's to keep their sins against you from being unforgivable and your sins against them from being ignorable. It's to guard them from our mean-streaks and strong human tendencies to respond to disappointment with punishment. It's to keep the people close by from cutting their wrists on the razor-sharp blades of our insecurities. It's to dull the edge of our cravings to be adored. It's to untie the double knots of codependency. It's to let the affirmations of others be the overflow and not the essential source of our emotional survival. To love God is to guard man. — Beth Moore

It's often a razor's edge you'll walk between coaxing adaptation while avoiding exhaustion (or injury). Master this, and you'll unlock the key to continual progress. — Craig Cecil

Belief is reassuring. People who live in the world of belief feel safe. On the contrary, faith is forever placing us on the razor's edge. — Jacques Ellul

The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. — W. Somerset Maugham

Milla put her hands on his ribs, holding on as he braced his weight on one arm while with his other hand he guided his penis to her and in the same rough motion pushed deep inside.
He froze in place, his breath panting between his parted lips as they stared at each other. She couldn't move; the feel of him inside her was too sharp, almost painful in its intensity. Their gazes met in the mellow lamplight, and she was mesmerized by the tension in his face, the way his steely muscles were locked as if he didn't dare move. It built and built, that clawing need, and yet she remained poised on the razor's edge of something she knew she couldn't control. His chest suddenly heaved on a convulsive breath, and he moved in a long, deep stroke that took him all the way to the hilt. — Linda Howard