Red Ink Quotes & Sayings

Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Her face was as red as her hair. "What are you doing," she cried.
Devon put a question mark next to the sentence. "Editing your paper." What did it look like he was doing?
"You're just cutting out stuff!"
"What do you think editing is? — M.M. John

He saw her draw closer in the mirror. Her black hair was an ink splash against the white tile walls. She paused behind him. "You protected me, Kaz."
"The fact that you're bleeding through your bandages tells me otherwise."
She glanced down. A red blossom of blood had spread on the bandage tied around her shoulder. She tugged awkwardly at the strip of towel. "I need Nina to fix this one."
He didn't mean to say it. He meant to let her go. "I can help you."
Her gaze snapped to his in the mirror, wary as if gauging an opponent. I can help you. They were the first words she'd spoken to him, standing in the parlor of the Menagerie, draped in purple silk, eyes lined in kohl. She had helped him. And she'd nearly destroyed him. Maybe he should let her finish the job. — Leigh Bardugo

With red ink, and referred to it nightly. Life: a constellation of vital phenomena - organization, irritability, movement, — Anthony Marra

If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this: Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings. — Neal Stephenson

Kennedy: You mean it's not a matter of good deeds versus bad deeds, a kind of moral bookkeeping? Lewis: No indeed. Look at the thief on the cross. He made it to paradise even though his life's red ink certainly outweighed the black. Kennedy: — Peter Kreeft

The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink. — Joseph Conrad

The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. "For Gogol Ganguli," it says on the front endpaper in his father's tranquil hand, in red ballpoint ink, the letters rising gradually, optimistically, on the diagonal toward the upper right-hand corner of the page. "The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name" is written within quotation marks. — Jhumpa Lahiri

He sees his world in black and white: Filthy snow, a hollow sky, the gray cement of the walls - water stains, like giant ink spills, eating into them - and his own skin, an ashy patina enveloping his body. Even the wounds on his feet, hardened and crusted, have lost their red. He has come to think of colour as something fantastic that exists only in his mind - the red of a tomato sliced and salted at the lunch table, the deep blue of a lapis lazuli on Farnaz's finger, the honey hue of his daughter's hair in the sun. — Dalia Sofer

Scenes from the Playroom

Now Lucy with her family of dolls
Disfigures Mother with an emery board,
While Charles, with match and rubbing alcohol,
Readies the struggling cat, for Chuck is bored.

The young ones pour more ink into the water
Through which the latest goldfish gamely swims,
Laughing, pointing at naked, neutered Father.
The toy chest is a Buchenwald of limbs.

Mother is so lovely; Father, so late.
The cook is off, yet dinner must go on
With onions as her only cause for tears
She hacks the red meat from the slippery bone,
Setting the table, where the children wait,
Her grinning babies, clean behind the ears. — R.S. Gwynn

I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence. It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink. We can debate its origins endlessly and search for villains on ideological grounds, but the reality is pure arithmetic. — Mitch Daniels

Black-on black crime' is jargon, violence on language, which vanishes the men who engineered the covenants, who fixed the loans, who planned the projects, who built the streets and sold red ink by the barrel. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Thus it is that four strangers sit in the red chairs, strip off their socks, plunge their feet into the ink-baths, and hold hands under an amphibian stare. This is the first act of anyone entering Palimpsest: Orlande will take your coats, sit you down, and make you family. She will fold you four together like Quartos. She will draw you each a card - look, for you it is the Broken Ship reversed, which signifies Perversion, a Long Journey without Enlightenment, Gout - and tie your hands together with red yarn. Wherever you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlande's salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no whore that you do not also feel beneath you, and until that ink washes from your feet - which, given that Orlande is a creature of the marsh and no stranger to mud, will be some time - you cannot breathe but that they breathe also. — Catherynne M Valente

Look- here's a table covered with red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. [ ... ] On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8. [ ... ] The most interesting thing here isn't even the carrot-munching rabbit in the cage, but the number on its back. Not a six, not a four, not nineteen-point-five. It's an eight. This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room ... except we are together. We are close. We're having a meeting of the minds. [ ... ] We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy. — Stephen King

Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. — James Joyce

It is a source of pride for a kitty to have "Must Sedate Before Exam" or "This Cat Is Psycho" scrawled across his records in bright red ink. You should be proud of your kitty for inspiring such fear, and reward him with several crunchy treats. — Max Thompson

He knew Kandinsky by heart: every trickle of red, slash of black ink, and hemorrhage of gold. Each dissonant note in its allegro, the harmony in its adagio, and its deep blue intermezzo, formed a symphony he had memorized in his body. He couldn't say if Fragment 2 symbolized the Deluge, the Last Judgment, or the Resurrection. But it had become his religion, offering both redemption and pain.. — Kelly Oliver

Faith and doubt cannot reside together. An iota of doubt is enough to taint the entire process, it is like a drop of red ink in water. — Malti Bhojwani

Look - here's a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8. Do we see the same thing? We'd have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do. There will be necessary variations, of course: some receivers will see a cloth which is turkey red, some will see one that's scarlet, while others may see still other shades. (To color-blind receivers, the red tablecloth is the dark gray of cigar ashes.) Some may see scalloped edges, some may see straight ones. Decorative souls may add a little lace, and welcome - my tablecloth is your tablecloth, knock yourself out. — Stephen King

Islamic history is written in two types of ink. Black for the ink of the scholars and red for the blood of the martyrs! — Me

In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink. — Catherine Drinker Bowen

I am only certain of one thing. If we are the sum total of our relationships, my balance sheet is bleeding red ink. — Cindy Cruciger

Bright beads of red are rising through the ink, Hearts-blood bubbles smearing out into the black stream — Sylvia Plath

Your goal over time is to use less red ink every day. — Keith Rabois

Yet I am not writing with ordinary ink, but with red blood that drips
from my heart. All its wounds long scarred over have opened and it
throbs and hurts, and now and then a tear falls on the paper. — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

As a matter of fact, Janice wrote Preacher a letter in red ink on lace-trimmed paper in which she told him he was vile beyond all human beings and words, that she considered their engagement broken, that he could have back the stuffed squirrel he'd given her. Preacher, saying he wanted to act nice, stopped her the next time she passed our house, and said, well, hell, she could keep that old squirrel if she wanted to. Afterwards, he couldn't understand why Janice ran away bawling the way she did. — Truman Capote

His fingers painted my skin with ruby red patterns of desire. In Keahi's kiss I could taste the red burn of chili encrusted in the rich sweetness of melted chocolate. I breathed in his scent and it spoke to me of vanilla. The ink of my malu tattoo began to burn, searing markings of fiery joy. — Lani Wendt Young

Unable to help herself, she traced the tat, startled by the black and red ink mixed together. But it was the dragon design itself that made her skin prickle with awareness, appreciation. Soul-sucking desire. — Donna Grant

I only read books if Voltaire's cock has been dipped in red ink and rolled over the cover. — Greg Proops

Without a doubt, first thing we should do is clean up our fiscal house, and that starts with balancing our budgets and digging out of this red ink. We cannot expect to continue in this fashion and remain the leader of the free world. — Marcy Kaptur

Harper Johnson looked down at the woman bleeding on the floor. He drew a line through the first name on his list of three with a pen. The ink was red and the tip was broken, so it bled unevenly as he ran it through the letters. — Elin Barnes

Summer explodes into Portland. In early June the heat was there but not the color
the green were still pale and tentative, the morning had a biting coolness
but by the last week of school everything is Technicolor and splash, outrageous blue skies and purple thunderstorms and ink-black night skies and red flowers as brights as spots of blood. — Lauren Oliver

We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom- war on terror and so on-falsifies freedom. — Slavoj Zizek

But again I dont know. Maybe it didn't take even three years of freedom, immunity from it to learn that perhaps the entire dilemma of man's condition is because of the ceaseless gabble with which he has surrounded himself, enclosed himself, insulated himself from the penalties of his own folly, which otherwise - the penalties, the simple red ink - might have enabled him by now to have made his condition solvent, workable, successful. — William Faulkner

He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink. — Virginia Woolf

I take a slow sip of lukewarm coffee, reopen the book, and read the words scribbled in red ink near the top: Everyone needs an olly-olly-oxen-free. — Jay Asher

He handed Mae a piece of paper, on which he'd written, in crude all capitals, a list of assertions under the headline "The Rights of Humans in a Digital Age." Mae scanned it, catching passages: "We must all have the right to anonymity." "Not every human activity can be measured." "The ceaseless pursuit of data to quantify the value of any endeavour is catastrophic to true understanding." "The barrier between public and private must remain unbreachable." At the end she found one line, written in red ink: "We must all have the right to disappear. — Dave Eggers

And an equation is the same whether it's written in red or green ink — Vikram Seth

He reaches forward slowly, to lift the pen from my lax grip. Wearily I regard the faltering trail of ink it has tracked down my page. I have seen that shape before, I think, but it was not ink then. A trickle of drying blood on the deck of a Red-Ship, and mine the hand that spilled it? Or was it a tendril of smoke rising black against a blue sky as I rode too late to warn a village of a Red-Ship raid? Or poison swirling and unfurling yellowly in a simple glass of water, poison I had handed someone, smiling all the while? The artless curl of a strand of woman's hair left upon my pillow? Or the trail of a man's heels left in the sand as we dragged the bodies from the smoldering tower at Sealbay? The track of a tear down a mother's cheek as she clutched her Forged infant to her despite his angry cries? Like Red-Ships, the memories come without warning, without mercy. — Robin Hobb

Her feelings as dark as the night sky, the moon was the only thing making her come alive
So she got some paper and pen to let the ink spill it all out because talking never seemed to work.
Blood drops fell on her little piece of paper, drowning it along with her. By the time the blood dried up it left her with nothing but red dust. Red. The same color her eyes were captivated by.
They never told her that there is no way to get over crazy, messy things in life. There's only crossing that red sea as if you're walking through the wilderniss. The sun will rise when you've gone through the depts of it all. Writing wont matter anymore. Don't you understand? You're life is not messy little girl, you're just crazy sometimes. — N

You haven't given me any ink," he said.
"Oh, you won't need ink," said Professor Umbridge with the merest suggestion of a laugh in her voice.
Harry placed the point of the quill on the paper and wrote: I must not tell lies.
He let out a gasp of pain. The words had appeared on the parchment in what appeared to be shining red ink. At the same time, the words had appeared on the back of Harry's right hand, cut into his skin as though traced there by a scalpel - yet even as he stared at the shining cut, the skin healed over again, leaving the place where it had been slightly redder than before but quite smooth.
Harry looked around at Umbridge. She was watching him, her wide, toadlike mouth stretched in a smile.
"Yes?"
"Nothing," said Harry quietly. — J.K. Rowling

You hid in my ink and guided my hand. You stained the pages with your silence as God wrote the words, "Be still." Yet, my heart's blindness could only write in loud hues of red, "I love you. — Shannon L. Alder

His thumb smoothed over the tiny red marks the pins had made on her palm, and he brought her hand to his face to kiss the little sore spots.
His voice curled hotly inside her palm. "Your hand smells like lemons."
She opened her eyes and stared at him gravely. "I scrub my hands with lemon juice to remove the ink stains."
The information seemed to amuse him, and lights of humor mixed with the heat in his gaze. — Lisa Kleypas

I want to go home. Then he mentally underlined the last sentence three times, rewrote it in huge letters in red ink, and circled it before putting a number of exclamation marks next to it in his mental margin. — Neil Gaiman

Borders are scratched across the hearts of men By strangers with a calm, judicial pen, And when the borders bleed we watch with dread The lines of ink across the map turn red. — Marya Mannes

Her touch is like doing simple math
When she sleeps in the bed, subtracting clothes
There is a red ink, like a sparkling red wine, adding colors
Dividing body, remembering gods, without multiplying — Santosh Kalwar

Recall that when the first presses produced copies of the Bible, the scribes who had to spend years at a time on the same work, just as it had been done for centuries, streamed out from the monasteries with quills raised in the air, decrying the work of the devil. When one of the pioneering tradesmen printed certain words in red ink to emphasize them, it was proof that he had used his own blood. That was why the printers' assistants began to be called "devils." Soon printers were threatened with burning, and some were indeed put into the fire along with their equipment. From the beginning, the creation of the modern book was viewed as the work of Satan - an attempt to usurp the word of God. — Matthew Pearl

He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would
for one heartbeat
flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red. — Kristin Hannah

I'll never let you go is scrawled three inches long down the side of my ribcage. The skin is still an angry red color, puffy and irritated looking. My gaze drifts up to Colin's in the mirror. I suck in a sharp breath as I'm caught up in a tornado of emotion. He has the same thing on his arm. They are simple, black ink only, but the meaning of the words are anything but. — K. Lars

Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down in red ink: Dizziness and Desire. A tendency to stare at the night sky, searching for a message that might be found up above. A lurching in the pit of the stomach, as if something much too sweet had been eaten. The ability to hear the quietest sounds--snails munching the lettuce leaves, moths drinking nectar from the overripe pears on the tree by the fence, a rabbit trembling in ivy-just in case he might be there, which was what mattered all along. Real hunger, just to see him, as if this would ever be enough. — Alice Hoffman