Tearing Up Quotes & Sayings

Social networking is about building people up in your network NOT tearing them down — Tasha Turner

I hate these affairs", he'd told her once, tearing up an engraved invitation to an exclusive charity ball. "They're the worst kind of discrimination. An invitation doesn't really mean that you're invited; it means that a whole lot of people aren't — Melinda Cross

Blake waited for her to look at him with a smile, but her shoes were still too captivating. He held a hand up to stop Cole from beginning the ceremony. He knelt on one knee, close to the hem of her dress, and looked up at her. She watched him as he kissed her hand.
"Beautiful, enchanting Livia, will you marry me today?"
Livia's disobedient tears emerged, gravity bathing his smiling face with their small, splashy wishes. She took her hand from his and covered her mouth. She nodded over and over as she cried.
Blake stood and gathered her. Livia dissolved into him, leaving the guests alternately tearing up or looking in other directions.
Blake tried to stroke her hair through the veil, but he was afraid he would pull it out. "Shhh. It's okay. I'm not that terrible, am I?"
Livia shook her head.
"I'm making you my wife right now, even if you cry through the whole damn thing." Blake switched to wiping her tears. — Debra Anastasia

I'm very proud that our country still produces people like my son, who choose the path less traveled; that knowingly step up to serve, even though our country is tearing itself apart with things like political machinations. — Steve Daines

Called her a whore and attacked her walls, tearing down her posters and throwing her books everywhere. I found out because some whitegirl ran up and said, Excuse me, but your stupid roommate is going insane, and I had to bolt upstairs and put him in a headlock. — Junot Diaz

I am not as scared about people tearing this one up as I would have been in the past because of the basis in 'knowing' this one has. There are people out there that are hungry for this. — Kenny Loggins

I believe that time is like a train, with men hanging out in front of the engine and off the back of the caboose; the man in front is laying down new tracks the moment before the train touches them and the man in the caboose is tearing up the rails the moment they are passed. There is no linear continuation: The past disappears, the future is unimagined, and the present is ephemeral. It cannot be traversed. — Chuck Klosterman

And we took off-whoosh-into the night. Through the clouds, we hurtled up into the sky. And this man farted. I will never forget it as long as I live. Not only was it the worst fart, it was the longest. Maybe, it was the position he was in, he had squeezed his ass all up. But he was kinda leanin over and pointing his ass up toward me. And it made the strangest noise. It was like cloth tearing. — Billy Connolly

It's Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they've done to him? We're reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones.
It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break
these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward? — Laurie Halse Anderson

That's a heavy word, but picking up a newspaper every day, how can you not despair at what's happening in the world, and how we're represented as human beings? The disappointments and corruption are dismaying at every level. And the biggest source of evil is of course religion. Religions are tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshipping the same god. — Ridley Scott

Criticism is an alluring substitute for creation, because tearing
things down, unlike building them up, really is as easy as falling off a stump. It's blissfully simple to strike a savvy, sophisticated pose by attacking someone else's creations, but the old adage is right: Any fool can burn down a barn. Building one is something else again. — Martha Beck

The lifting up of the woman does not require the tearing down of the man. In fact, a strong woman appreciates a strong man. Conversely, a strong man is not intimidated by a strong woman. — T.D. Jakes

How is faith to endure, O God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity's song
all without lifting a finger that we could see. You have allowed bonds of love beyond number to be painfully snapped. If you have not abandoned us, explain yourself.
We strain to hear. But instead of hearing an answer we catch sight of God himself scraped and torn. Through our tears we see the tears of God. — Nicholas Wolterstorff

She glanced down and saw that a glove of blood covered her lower arm from the elbow to the wrist. The arm
was throbbing, stiff, and painful.
"Is this when you start tearing strips off your T-shirt to bind up my wound?" she joked.
She hated the sight of blood, especially her own.
"If you wanted me to rip my clothes off, you should have just asked." He dug into his pocket and brought out
his stele. "It would have been a lot less painful. — Cassandra Clare

I want you." She felt the words wrench from her. As they slipped from her mouth into his, he crushed her against him in a grip that left all gentleness behind. His lips savaged, warred, absorbed, util they were both speechless. With an inarticulate mrumuer, Grant buried his face in her hair and fought to find reason.
"Good God,in another minute I'll forget it's still daylight and this is a public road."
Gennie ran her fingers down the nape of his neck. "I already have."
Grant forced the breath in and out of his lungs three times, then lifted his head. "Be careful," he warned quietly. "I have a more difficult time remembering to be civilized than doing what comes naturally. At this moment I'd feel very natural dragging you into the backseat,tearing off your clothes and loving you until you were senseless."
A thrill rushed up and down her spine, daring her,urging her. She leaned closer utnil her lips were nearly against his. "One should never go against one's nature. — Nora Roberts

Getting the puppy's hopes up. More likely, every bloodbag on Eden is screaming and tearing their faces off, but, oh, no, no one wants to hear that" He waved a hand. "So, go ahead, tell him that everything is going to be fine. All the meatsacks are perfectly content on their happy little island, Sarren has given up world destruction to raise kittens, and the magic wish fairy will wave her wand and turn shit into gold. — Julie Kagawa

A giant caterpillar, its segmented body made of severed human heads, their faces screaming, their tongues functioning as legs, rippled up a wall and began tearing out chunks of concrete where a ledge had been worn, destroying another shrine. — Jim Butcher

...we tear down the places where birds live, and put up places where people live, or places where people work to earn the money to pay for the places they live. We don't ask the birds for permission, nor do they complain about it. To a bird there is no tearing down or putting up. — John Porcellino

She used to suffer these intense bouts of homesickness in her own bedroom. When she was very small, she would wake up tearing at her bedspread and shrieking, "I wanna go home! I wanna go home!" Which was distressing to all of us, of course, because she was home. — Karen Russell

During the canvass in the State of Mississippi, I traveled into different parts of that state, and this is the doctrine that I everywhere uttered: that while I was in favor of building up the colored race, I was not in favor of tearing down the white race. — Hiram Rhodes Revels

Aye, Rob, but we canna help noticin' ye also have tae do the Explainin', too,' said Daft Wullie.
There was a general nodding from the crowd. To Feegles, Explaining was a dark art. It was just so HARD.
'Like, when we come back from drinkin', stealin', and fightin', Jeannie gives ye the Pursin' o' the Lips,' Daft Wullie went on.
A moan went up from all the Feegles: 'Ooooh, save us from the Pursin' o' the Lips!'
'An' there's the Foldin' o' the Arms,' said Wullie, because he was even scaring himself.
'Oooooh, waily, waily, waily, the Foldin' o' the Arms!' the Feegles cried, tearing at their hair.
'Not tae mention the Tappin' o' the Feets ... ' Wullie stopped, not wanting to mention the Tappin' o' the Feets.
'Aargh! Oooooh! No' the Tappin' o' the Feets!' Some of the Feegles started to bang their heads on trees. — Terry Pratchett

Saga of Tristan and Danika. The battles and the victories. The defeats and the triumphs. The tragedies and the trials. Somewhere in the middle, I had him tearing up, — R.K. Lilley

The shells had landed on the cobblestone road.
"Sonsofbitches," Wiseman muttered.
We looked up and grinned at each other.
"Here they come again!"
Sitting in an inch of water. I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, held my breath, and clutched my elbows with my arms around my knees.
Three more shells came in, low and angry, and burst in the orchard.
"They're walking 'em towards us," I whispered.
I felt as if a giant with exploding iron fingers were looking for me, tearing up the ground as he came. I wanted to strike at him, to kill him, to stop him before he ripped into me, but I could do nothing. Sit and take it, sit and take it. The giant raked the orchard and tore up the roads and stumbled toward us in a terrible blind wrath as we sat in our hole with our heads between our legs and curses on our lips. — David Kenyon Webster

A healthy family builds up the weakest members while not tearing down the strong. — Philip Yancey

I'm going to hang up now," she said quietly.
"Fine."
"Good-bye, Ian," she said.
He paused again. She thought she heard something like a sniff or a choke, but it was probably the sound of him tearing up his plane ticket. "Good-bye, Amy."
She hung up the phone: Dan and Nellie were quiet.
"Well, think about it," said Dan. "Did you really want Natalie Kabra as a sister-in-law? — Clifford Riley

I winked and locked my arm in Carter's, and we stood there, watching Dean stroll away.
"You know the guy's never gonna give up," Carter nudged me, letting out a sigh.
"We'd have really pretty babies, huh?"
"Yup. They'd be rad little Brangelinas, running around tearing the place up."
"Yeah, you're right. My rejection is such a disservice to the world ... — Rachael Wade

Strange," he murmurs.
"What's strange?"
"It's just . . ." He pushes his hair back. "You're not like the jinni in the stories and songs. That jinni was a monster. You seem . . . different."
Then he turns and begins trudging up the next dune, wrapping his cloak around him to keep the wind from tearing at it.
I stand still a moment longer, watching him. "Zahra."
He pauses and looks over his shoulder. "What?"
"My name," I stammer. "I mean . . . one of them. You can call me Zahra."
He turns around fully, his grin as wide and as bright as the moon. "I'm Aladdin. — Jessica Khoury

Sometimes he wished he didn't have a sister, though he loved Deenie and still remembered the feeling he had when he caught that kid Ethan pushing her off the swing set in the school yard in fifth grade. And how time seemed to speed up until he was shoving the kid into the fence and tearing his jacket. The admiring look his sister gave him after, the way his parents pretended to be mad at him but he could tell they weren't.
These days, it was pretty different. There'd be those moments he was forced to think about her not just as Deenie but as the girl whose slender tank tops hung over the shower curtain. Like bright streamers, like the flair the cheerleaders threw at games.
Sometimes he wished he didn't have a sister. — Megan Abbott

Thank you, Adam," I told him. "Thank you for tearing Tim into small Tim bits. Thank you for forcing me to drink one last cup of fairy bug-juice so I could have use of both of my arms. Thank you for being there, for putting up with me." By that point I wasn't laughing anymore. "Thank you for keeping me from being another of Stefan's sheep - I'll take pack over that any day. Thank you for making the tough calls, for giving me time." I stood up and walked to him, leaning against him and pressing my face against his shoulder.
"Thank you for loving me."
His arms closed around me, pressing flesh painfully hard against bone. Love hurts like that sometimes. — Patricia Briggs

P.P.P.P.S. Also, if you try to make a shrimp boil, but the bag of spices bursts, and so you just toss it in along with whatever spices you can find in the pantry
you can make homemade pepper spray. Unintentionally.
And everyone at your dinner party will run outside for the next hour, coughing and tearing up as if they've been maced, because technically they kind of have been, because mace was one of the spices I found in the panty. I blame whoever makes spice out of mace, and I remind my gasping dinner guests that even if I did mace them, I did it in an old fashioned, homemade, Martha Stewart sort of way. With love. — Jenny Lawson

The reason I started writing was because I was a little kid in San Diego who was getting beaten up by her dad and sexually abused and because I felt different than everybody else and I had this big huge secret that was tearing me apart. — Dorianne Laux

God and religion before every thing!' Dante cried. 'God and religion before the world.'
Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.
'Very well then,' he shouted hoarsely, 'if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!'
'John! John!' cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve.
Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb.
'No God for Ireland!' he cried, 'We have had too much God in Ireland. Away with God! — James Joyce

He had to keep tearing his gaze from her chest, because this was so not the time to be caught up in lust. This was shit creek, and they were without paddles. — Bethany K. Lovell

One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I'm going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I'll have lost nothing - writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off. — Lawrence Block

I had surgery to repair the ACL in February 2010 and was back in the gym by June, but rushed things too quickly and ended up re-tearing my MCL in September. — Shawn Johnson

By the end of the time I'm writing a book, I'm tearing my hair out and I want to go do stand-up. And then I want to do something else. I don't know why it is true with me that I can't just be satisfied doing the one thing, but I'm constantly flitting from one thing to another. — Michael Ian Black

Always, sailing up from the south, from beyond the bend in the river, were clumps of water hyacinths, dark floating islands on the dark river, bobbing over the rapids. It was as if rain and river were tearing away bush from the heart of the continent and floating it down to the ocean, incalculable miles away. But the water hyacinth was the fruit of the river alone. The tall lilaccoloured flower had appeared only a few years before, and in the local language there was no word for it. The people still called it "the new thing" or "the new thing in the river," and to them it was another enemy. Its rubbery vines and leaves formed thick tangles of vegetation that adhered to the river banks and clogged up waterways. It grew fast, faster than men could destroy it with the tools they had. The channels to the villages had to be constantly cleared. Night and day the water hyacinth floated up from the south, seeding itself as it travelled. I — V.S. Naipaul

You are wearing no panties with another male in the room?Raphael ran his hand down Elena's spine and over her lower curves, searching for lines and finding nothing but firm feminine flesh.You truly aren't
Elena's shoulders shook, deep creases in her cheeks. Oh, my God, you're scandalized! Eyes tearing up in the effort to fight her laughter, she pressed her hands to his chest and stared down at the floor.Should I tell you I did find a way to wear a knife? In a thigh sheath.
Of course you did. What do panties matter so long as you have your steel. — Nalini Singh

With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides,
flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one
end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist
attacks, Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of
the Pledge of Allegiance? — Jay Leno

[Stares at dead knight, killed by the Direwolves]
Ersen: If he had sounded his horn ...
Theon: Try and imagine it was you up there, Ersen. Its dark and cold. You have been walking century for hours looking forward to the end of your watch. Then you hear a noise and you move forward to the gate, and suddenly, you see eyes glowing green and gold in the torchlight.
Two shadows come rushing toward you faster than you can believe. You catch a glimpse of teeth, start to level your spear, and they slam into you and open your belly, tearing through leather as if it was cheese cloth.
[Shoves Ersen hard]
Theon: And now you're down on you back, your guts are spilling out and one of them has his teeth around your neck.
[Grabs Ersen around the neck and sqeezes]
Theon: Tell me, at what moment during all of this do you stop to blow your Fucking horn?
[Shoves Ersen roughly] — George R R Martin

No-one ever built themselves up by tearing down another. — Brian Randleas

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I often think about dogs when I think about work and retirement. There are many breeds of dog that just need to be working, and useful, or have a job of some kind, in order to be happy. Otherwise they are neurotically barking, scratching, or tearing up the sofa. A working dog needs to work. And I am a working dog. — Martha Sherrill

Unlike the women she'd known back at home, these women didn't thrive on gossip. They built each other up rather than tearing each other down. — Marie Force

Twenty-two pages is not a lot of space. Believe me. Having written a bazillion comics, I still find myself more often than nine pages into a script and realizing to my horror that I'm only about a quarter of the way through the story I wanted to tell, and the next thing you know, I'm making fresh coffee and tearing up the floorboards to rewrite. — Mark Waid

In my experience, love is a destructive force, tearing hearts to shreds and forcing people to pick up the pieces. Even the best love stories are violent tales. — Karina Halle

The dowager rose and slipped from her pew. There was the sound of tearing silk as she threw up her arms to embrace her son. Then:
"Oh, Rupert, darling," she exclaimed in tones of theatrical despair, "don't you see? The game's up! — Eva Ibbotson

Cricket's voice broke through Thomas's memory. He was reading a letter, most likely from his mother. He was trying hard to hide it, but he was tearing up.
"Captain I don't want to be here," was all he could choke out. Thomas reached over and gave Cricket's shoulder a tight squeeze. — Jessica Fortunato

Back on the beach, everyone was tearing off their costumes piece by piece. It was like some kind of crazy dream, the sight of all those people emerging from their disguises, shedding the fake muscles and plastic armor, the fairy wings and angel wings, and devils horns, all of it piled up like a mass grave for make-believe. — Tommy Wallach

I wondered whether mad people would be better off if their memories could be neatened up, or taken off the shelves on which they were stored and replaced with nicer ones, and if they'd be the same person then, or completely different ones, and whether dreams were like a vandal rampaging through a library of memories, tearing out random pages and turning them into paper boats ... — Michelle Cooper

That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life. — Jack Henry Abbott

The pleasure and joy of man lies in treading down the rebel and conquering the enemy, in tearing him up by the root, in taking from him all that he has. — Genghis Khan

The blessing hands of Christ are like a roof that protects us. But at the same time, they are a gesture of opening up, tearing the world open so that heaven my enter in, may become "present" within it. — Pope Benedict XVI

Slavery has become so engrafted into the policy of the Southern States, that it cannot be eradicated without tearing up by the roots their happiness, tranquillity, and prosperity. — William Loughton Smith

Poetry is a will to put things right, an imaginary solution, a way of avoiding a catastrophe that already happened. Poetry is an escape, perhaps intelligent, perhaps idiotic, from a senile situation. It is a dialectical movement, it keeps tearing open the wounds while trying to heal them. Here we see the only acceptable path open up towards an existence worthy of human beings. Here the seriousness is unfaltering and absolute. Where it will lead no one knows. — Aase Berg

Read about things that wouldn't keep you up all night long, weeping and tearing out your hair. — Lemony Snicket

There's relief in not having to be outside. No gardening, no mowing the lawn, no tyranny of long daylight hours to fill with productive activity. We rip through summer, burning the hours and tearing up the land. Then snow comes like a bandage, and winter heals the wounds. — Jerry Dennis

Something? Sometimes she'd go to a movie with Honor, though she clucked about the unsanitary nature of theaters, theater staff and humans in general. Hmm. Mrs. Johnson was probably her best bet. They could bring Spike, who loved movies as well as popcorn. At that moment, her phone rang, startling her so much that she sloshed her coffee. Spike barked from her little doggy bed and began leaping up against Honor's leg, tearing — Kristan Higgins

So today, I am tearing up my Introverts Anonymous card." Jake held out the card and tore it in two, handing the pieces to Charli. "I promise that I will get out and socialize now and then, and that Charli may schedule up to one dinner party per year, as long as the invitees are aware that they are free to stay home and read a book if they wish. — Al Macy

And now she was just Gabby, currently staying in a dreamy, magnificent castle in Scotland with a Fae prince who did all kinds of non-nasty, non-inhuman things like tearing up lists of names, and returning tadpoles to lakes, and saving people's lives.
Not to mention kissing with all the otherwordly splendor of a horny angel. — Karen Marie Moning

Every time you rip the bandages off, you just open the wound up again. Every time he sees you, it's like tearing off the bandages. — Cassandra Clare

You don't know what it's like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, not about her children or the world, who was always suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams. When my first pen pal, Tomoko, stopped writing me after three letters she was the one who laughed: You think someone's going to lose life writing to you? Of course I cried; I was eight and I had already planned that Tomoko and her family would adopt me. My mother of course saw clean into the marrow of those dreams, and laughed. I wouldn't write to you either, she said. She was that kind of mother: who makes you doubt yourself, who would wipe you out if you let her. But I'm not going to pretend either. For a long time I let her say what she wanted about me, and what was worse, for a long time I believed her. — Junot Diaz

The world is tearing itself apart," the retired General began. "This administration is compromising national security. In another few years he will be gone to go write his memoirs and tour the country doing speaking engagements before picking up a job in some think tank. Then guys like you and me will be left holding the mess that he created. We will have inherited an unworkable situation in the Middle East. "He forced Mubarak out; clearly the wrong move. We had a good deal going with Gaddafi and many worked very hard to get him into our camp, but we did flip him. Then the President helps the militias overthrow him without the slightest understanding of the region and the complicated east, west, and south tribal conflict overlaid on top of sectarian issues. — Jack Murphy

Tearing a world down was a simple affair; the gravity of human nature tugged willingly. It was the building up afterward that proved complex. It was what to replace injustice with that very few gave thought to. — Hugh Howey

We looked at each other standing on the podium, and I think we all were tearing up. But we had to keep it cool. I think we did. Then we let out a breath. — Michael Irvin

Golf is the Great Mystery. Like some capricous goddess, it bestows its favours with what would appear an almost fat-headed lack of method and discrimination. On every side we see big two-fisted he-men floundering round in three figures, stopping every few minutes to let through little shrimps with knock-knees and hollow cheeks, who are tearing up snappy seventy-fours. — P.G. Wodehouse

Never build yourself up by tearing another down. — Larry Winget

It means, your worships' excellencies, that - you - can't come to it! This chicken won't fight. It means that the fat's in the fire, and the cat's out of the bag! It means confusion! Distraction! Perdition! And a tearing off of our wigs! It means the game's up, the play's over, villainy is about to be hanged and virtue about to be married, and the curtain is going to drop and the principal performer - that's I - is going to be called out amid the applause of the audience! — E.D.E.N. Southworth

I feel like I am always the one tearing everything up and forever sewing it back together. — Saadat Hasan Manto

The kingdom of God must be a continuing revolution against the norms of the society that fall below the standards that are set for us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the field of public life, it must be a continuing revolution against proposals that contradict the fundamental principles as laid down in the Constitution of the United States, which was written by men whom God raised up for this very purpose. If we remember that, we will be in the forefront of every battle against the things that are tearing down our society. — Harold B. Lee

Faithfulness to your husband means sticking up for him, always building him up and never tearing him down. — Myles Munroe

Senescent judges show how patriotic they are by passing out hard sentences for tearing up a draft card or following one's conscience according to the principles established by our country at the Nuremburg trials. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

No airplane could make it. Not since the war. None could venture above a couple hundred feet, the place where the winds began. The winds: the mighty winds that circled the globe, tearing off the tops of mountains and sequoia trees, wrecked buildings, gathered up birds, bats, insects, and anything else that moved, up into the dead belt; the winds that swirled about the world, lacing the skies with dark lines of debris, occasionally meeting, merging, clashing, dropping tons of rubbish wherever they came together and formed too great a mass. Air transportation was definitely out, to anywhere in the world, for these winds circled, and they never ceased. Not in all the twenty-five years of Tanner's memory had they let up. Tanner — Roger Zelazny

I remember tearing up the first time I read Nabokov's description, in 'Speak, Memory,' of his father being tossed on a blanket by cheering muzhiks, with its astonishingly subtle foreshadowing of grief and mourning. — Michael Chabon

The gates were doing something to him already, because as he raised his hand to wave back at his parents, Mitchell felt ten years old again, tearing up, choked with feeling for these two human beings who, like figures from myth, had possessed the ability throughout his life to blend into the background, to turn to stone or wood, only to come alive again, at key moments like this, to witness his hero's journey. Lillian — Jeffrey Eugenides

I waited at least two hours. I'd begun to think that he'd given up on me in the weeks that had passed. Or that he no longer cared about me. Hated me even. And the idea of losing him for ever, my best friend, the only person I'd ever trusted with my secrets, was so painful I couldn't stand it. Not on top of everything else that had happened. I could feel my eyes tearing up and my throat starting to close the way it does when I get upset.
Then I look up and there he was, three metres away, just watching me. Without even thinking, I jumped up and threw my arms around him, making some weird sound that combined laughing, choking and crying. — Suzanne Collins

The light blazed out across the patch of grass; fell on the child's green bucket with the gold line round it, and upon the aster which trembled violently beside it. For the wind was tearing across the coast, hurling itself at the hills, and leaping, in sudden gusts, on top of its own back. How it spread over the town in the hollow! How the lights seemed to wink and quiver in its fury, lights in the harbour, lights in bedroom windows high up! And rolling dark waves before it, it raced over the Atlantic, jerking the stars above the ships this way and that. — Virginia Woolf

Dancing is when you rise above both worlds, tearing your heart to pieces & giving up your soul — Rumi

George W. Bush and his administration embarked on a full-scale assault on civil liberties, human rights and the rule of law, walking away from his international obligations, tearing up international treaties, protocols and UN conventions. — Bianca Jagger

A vast canvass had been stretched across the back of [the stage] and painted to look like an idealized vision of Golden Square stretching off into a hazy distance. Before it, model town houses had been erected to perfect the illusion. It tricked the eye very well until a bloody, slashed-up man vaulted over the parapets and rolled to the ground in the deep upstage. He looked like a giant, thirty feet tall, fee-fie-fo-fumming around Golden Square and bleeding on the bowling green, which was most inexplicable, until a moment later, the very fabric of the universe was rent open, for a blade of watered steel had been shoved through the taught canvas upstage and slashed across it in a great arc, tearing the heavens asunder. Through the gap leapt Jack Shaftoe, and then giants dueled in Golden Square. — Neal Stephenson

Am I pushing or dying? the light up there, the immense round blazing white light is drinking me. It drinks me slowly, inspires me into space. If I do not close my eyes, it will drink all of me. I seep upward, in long icy threads, too light, and yet inside me there is a fire too, the nerves are twisted, there is no rest from this long tunnel dragging me, or am I pushing myself out of the tunnel, or is the child being pushed out of me, or is the light drinking me. Am I dying? The ice in the veins, the cracking of the bones, this pushing in darkness, with a small shaft of light in the eyes like the edge of the knife, the feeling of a knife cutting the flesh, the flesh somewhere is tearing as if it were burned through by a flame, somewhere my flesh is tearing and the blood is spilling out. I am pushing in the darkness, in utter darkness. — Anais Nin

Maybe I should off myself right now and come join you."
Cordy frowned. "Why?"
"Well," said Lex, "it's no picnic over here in the land of the living. The whole town hates me, Mom and Dad probably despise me, there's an angry, murderous bitch tearing up the country, I've got your death to avenge and no one's offering ME any hard candy. — Gina Damico

Isn't it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up? — Sean Covey

Curran spared me half a second of his hard stare. "Even if you thought I was in the Guild, what did you think I was doing while the giant was tearing it up? Did you think I was sitting on my hands?" "I thought you might be injured." He looked at me. "We've met, you and I?" I deliberately took a big step back. "What?" he growled. "I'm making room for your ego." "Fine. I should've left a note!" "You should've." "Answer me this, did you hesitate at all or did you see the giant, go 'Wheee!' and run toward it?" "She ran toward it," Juke quipped. "He was biting people in half." "I rest my case," Curran said. "A note wouldn't have made any difference." Note or not, I didn't care. I was just happy he was alive. — Ilona Andrews

the literary equivalent of tearing the petals off and grinding them up and running the goo through a spectrometer to explain why a rose smells so pretty. — David Foster Wallace

And most of the wreckage revolves around two guys. Two guys that, for totally different reasons, are tearing me up inside. Two guys I want. Two guys I can't have. Two guys I can't stop thinking about. — M. Leighton

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once. — Audrey Hepburn

Boggs comes a-tearing along on his horse, whooping and yelling like an Injun, and singing out: "Clear the track, thar. I'm on the waw-path, and the price uv coffins is a-gwyne to raise."
He was drunk, and weaving about in his saddle; he was over fifty year old, and had a very red face. Everybody yelled at him and laughed at him and sassed him, and he sassed back, and said he'd attend to them and lay them out in their regular turns, but he couldn't wait now because he'd come to town to kill old Colonel Sherburn, and his motto was, "Meat first and spoon vittles to top off on." He see me, and rode up and says:"Whar'd you come f'm boy? You prepared to die?" Then he rode on. I was scared, but a man says: "He don't mean nothing; he's always a-carryin' on like that when he's drunk. He's the best-naturedest old fool in Arkansaw
never hurt nobody, drunk no sober. — Mark Twain

We have all grown up, one might say, thinking of nature as an
adorable, helpless bunny that some people want to protect and
others, motivated by the will to power that is the unmentionable
force behind so much of contemporary culture, want to stomp into
a bloody pulp just to show that they can. Both sides are mistaken,
for what they have misidentified as a bunny is one paw of a sleep-
ing grizzly bear who, if roused, is quite capable of tearing both sides
limb from limb and feasting on their carcasses. The bear, it must be
remembered, is bigger than we are, and stronger. We forget this at
our desperate peril. — John Michael Greer

You're back and forth with me, with your actions, with your emotions. You act like you don't remember me, then spring on me that you do. You flirt with me and then you stop on a dime. You kiss me and then you pull away as soon as I touch you. You're mad then you're not." I don't stop to take a breath or let him speak before finally raising the hand he's holding and letting it go. "You're holding my hand, then . . ." I trail off, not sure of how to finish that thought. Tearing my gaze from his, I try to rein in my emotions, to wipe the flustered girl up off the floor. — Kim Karr

The pain in my lungs swells up and blossoms until it feels like it's everywhere, tearing through all my cells and muscles at once. The cramp in my leg makes me wince every time my heel hits the pavement. It's always like this on miles two and three, like all the stress and anxiety and irritation and fear get transformed into little needling points of physical pain, and you can't breathe or imagine going farther or think anything but: I can't. I can't. I can't. — Lauren Oliver

I do love the sound of ripping corn husks. The violence of the noise, the sustained popping and shoring of the silky organic threads, made me think of someone tearing up an expensive and potentially Italian set of trousers in a fit of madness that this person just might regret later. — Reif Larsen

Only union with you gives joy.
The rest if tearing down one building to put up another. — Rumi

How am I supposed to live the single life vicariously if I don't get any details?
I shook my head and shrugged mournfully.
"I'm doing my part. I tell you everything."
"And don't think I don't appreciate it," she said, tearing up slightly. We gave each other a drunken hug. — Joanna Wylde

My husband. No! A moment!" He was tearing himself apart from her. "We shall not be separated long. I feel that this will break my heart by-and-bye; but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God will raise up friends for her, as He did for me." Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to both of them, but that Darnay put out a hand and seized him, crying: "No, no! What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel to us! We know now, what a struggle you made of old. We know, now what you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. We know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake. We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and duty. Heaven be with you!" Her father's only answer was to draw his hands through his white hair, and wring them with a shriek of anguish. — Charles Dickens

She had opened the refrigerator door and was looking at her supply of frozen microwave dinners with an expression of distaste when the doorman buzzed. Deciding to forget about dinner, something she'd done too often lately, she depressed the switch. "Yes, Dennis?"
"Mr. Payne and Mr. McCoy are here to see you, Ms. Granger," Dennis said smoothly. "From the FBI."
"What?" Jay asked, startled, sure she'd misunderstood.
Dennis repeated the message, but the words remained the same.
She was totally dumbfounded. "Send them up," she said, because she didn't know what else to do. FBI? What on earth? Unless slamming your apartment door was somehow against federal law, the worst she could be accused of was tearing the tags off her mattress and pillows. Well, why not? This was a perfectly rotten end to a perfectly rotten day. — Linda Howard

Tearing down is always easier than building up, — Charlaine Harris

I don't like to think of her as pretend Peabody anymore. The more we find out, the meaner and crazier she gets. It's like it's bad enough fake Peabody got murdered, but now fake Peabody is a dead, blackmailing asshole on top of it. It's depressing."
"Yeah, it's all really too bad for you."
"Well, it kind of is. How am I supposed to enjoy the vid now, when I'll be thinking how behind the scenes I was trying to blackmail McNab into bed, and the whole time he's in love with you? And that maybe there's a vid of the two of you all naked and sexy and - "
"Stop right there before I boot."
"Hey! Maybe there's a vid of fake Peabody and fake Roarke all naked and sexy. That would definitely make up for it. Maybe I can get a copy."
"There's going to be a vid of me tearing strips off your ass then using them to wallpaper my office. I'll make copies for everybody. Get Marlo down here. I'll start on Julian. — J.D. Robb

She remembered her hand and how to work it, tearing open his falls and the smallclothes beneath. Her breaths were coming in hot little pants now and she stared up at him as she took him into her fist. She would remember this. She'd remember this until her dying day, she promised herself.
"Ah, Eve," he groaned, his head falling back, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. He thrust once, convulsively, into her hand, and then he was lifting and spreading her legs, taking his cock out of her hand, thrusting into her.
She gasped, it was so fast. A complete possession. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Revolutionists are accused of sowing fear abroad. Every barricade seems a crime. Their theories are incriminated, their aim suspected, their ulterior motive is feared, their conscience denounced. They are reproached with raising, erecting, and heaping up, against the reigning social state, a mass of miseries, of griefs, of iniquities, of wrongs, of despairs, and of tearing from the lowest depths blocks of shadow in order therein to embattle themselves and to combat. People shout to them: "You are tearing up the pavements of hell!" They might reply: "That is because our barricade is made of good intentions. — Victor Hugo