Words Are Like A Knife Quotes & Sayings

My fingers, which a second before had been taste buds savouring the food a little ahead of my mouth, became dirty under his gaze. They froze like criminals caught in the act. I didn't dare lick them. I wiped them guiltily on my napkin. He had no idea how deeply those words wounded me. They were like nails being driven into my flesh. I picked up the knife and fork. I had hardly ever used such instruments. My hands trembled. My sambar lost its taste. — Yann Martel

When I was much younger and lived in Claybourne's residence, Luke's
grandfather arranged an afternoon tea in the garden with a few of the
girls my age. They arrived in coaches and carriages and they were so
beautiful. Their laughter was soft and sweet, so very different from the
harsh laugher in the rookeries. I thought, 'Oh my goodness, I'm going to
be like them.'
"They hurt me that day without touching me. They taught me that
words can slice like a knife. They wanted to know about life in the
rookeries, and I made the mistake of telling them that I slept with Luke
and Jack and Jim. And sometimes at night, I still slept with Luke. They
made it into something ugly. It was really rather innocent. To lie in the
circle of someone's arms while you sleep can be very, very nice. But I
never slept with them again. Never told them why. Those girls took that
from me. And I let them. — Lorraine Heath

Confidence don't mean jack shit in the real world, sis," she once said. I feel myself finding the courage to trust those words more and more with every twist of the knife. Coincidentally, last Tuesday afternoon I was involuntarily exposed to the punch line of an old wise tale that goes something like: "There's beauty that can be found in everything." But why can't the insensitive cunt who said that ever find the courage to look in the mirror? Because poopycock, one might say. — Dave Matthes

What appears most disquieting to me in isolation is the dilemma of how to use time. There is either too much or too little of it; we either live inside painfully contracting horizons, or feel ourselves isolated in the vastness of space. I seem to have lived with the palm of my hand balanced on the tip of a knife, writing what in theory I would call the Preface to a Future Book. And the relation of time to creation should always appear like that, a ratio that describes the fullness of energy brought to a particular stage of one's life, so that each work is a preface to a stage at which one has still to arrive, the logical extension of which is death.
I live for the blaze of metaphor that unites incongruities. The red wine-stain on my page is like an intoxicant to the dance of words. It is a little ritual I undertake, this sprinkling of wine-spots on paper. — Jeremy Reed

What is that old children's rhyme, 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me'? Anyone who says that doesn't understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It's more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The synopsis looked good,
the cover looked nice,
you opened the book,
and began a new life.
You found a new home,
you met some new friends,
you kept on reading,
hoping it would never end.
You danced through the pages,
you sang out the words,
you felt all their joy,
and all their pain and hurt.

The pages cut your fingers,
the words cut your heart,
like the author had a knife,
and was tearing your soul apart.
You laughed with the characters,
and with them you cried,
you fell in love with them, too,
and with them you died,
and when the book reached its end,
and your broken heart couldn't heal,
you suddenly realized that
It's not real — Unknown

Words are like butter Rolling off my lips Cut like a knife And now I'm sinking battleships — Geri Halliwell

I am a writer ... a master of words.'Like a knife, words should be handled carefully. They can cut deeply, the wound may never heal, and the scar can remain for an eternity. — Ey Wade

What happens to a marriage when one partner ignores the other? After a short period of time bitterness begins to enter the heart. Words begin to cut like a sharp knife. Soon the animosity turns to anger, jealousy, and even worse. For many it results in separation, divorce, and hatred. But the rift can so easily be mended.All it takes is a fresh surrender that comes from your very soul.And a renewing of the vow to "love, honor, and cherish. — Benny Hinn

They're just words, he told himself, they don't matter. But he knew that wasn't completely true. The words themselves were only part of the problem; the worst part was what the words conveyed. They told everyone that Michael was someone who should be singled out because he was...sick and repulsive. He had heard those words all his life, but each time was like the first, a jagged knife cutting through innocence. He simply didn't know how much longer he could take it. — Michael Griffo

To those who value words of affirmation, criticism feels like a knife in the heart. — Paul E. White

He should have known better because, early in his learnings under his brother Mahmoud, he had discovered that long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings . . . but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern. Or so he seemed to grok. Short human words were never like a short Martian word - such as "grok" which forever meant exactly the same thing. Short human words were like trying to lift water with a knife. — Robert A. Heinlein

Moving forward quietly to Jerott's side, Adam Blacklock had heard. 'Don't you understand? The authorities are afraid of them both,' he said gently. 'Why do you supose this cordon is here, which only an unarmed girl was allowed to pass through? Lymond, loyal to Scotland, might be a threat to French power greater than even Gabriel, one of these days - Philippa!' And a wordless shout, like a cry at a cockfight, rose among the stone pillars and sank muffled into the old, dusty banners above the choir roof. For Philippa Somerville, who believed in action when words were not enough, had leaned over and snatched the knife from Lymond's left hand. — Dorothy Dunnett

Will bit at his lip. This was the last time Jem, as Jem, might ever touch him. The sharp memory went through him like a knife - of years of Jem's light tap on his shoulder, his hand reaching to help Will up when he fell, Jem holding him back when he was furious, Will's own hands on Jem's thin shoulders as Jem coughed blood into his shirt. Listen to me. I am leaving, but I am living. I will not be gone from you entirely, Will. When you fight now, I will be still by you. When you walk in the world, I will be the light at your side, the ground steady under your feet, the force that drives the sword in your hand. We are bound, beyond the oath. The Marks did not change that. The oath did not change that. It merely gave words to something that existed already. — Cassandra Clare

He watched Attolia out of the corner of his eye. She was still cool, like a breath of winter in the warm evening air, but in the last few days he had begun to sense a subtle humor in her chilly words. When Gen had complained earlier that evening that Petrus, the palace physician, should stop fussing over him like a worried old woman, Attolia had asked, archly,"And me as well?"
"When you stop fussing," Gen had said, slipping to his knees beside her couch, "I will sleep with two knives under my pillow."
Allolia had looked down at him and said sharply, "Don't be ridiculous."
Only when Eugenides laughed had Sounis realized her implication: If she ever turned against Eugenides, a second knife wouldn't save him. He almost swallowed the olive in his mouth unchewed. — Megan Whalen Turner

I love you more than anything else in this world. That's why your words were like a knife stabbing me in the heart. That's why you have to die, too. — Keigo Higashino

The money The girl stiffened at something she heard in his voice, something jagged and sharp, like words torn by the blade of a knife. — Billie Letts

Everyone lives in two worlds," Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studied her letters. "There's the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren't. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought - in an inscape - every idea is a fact. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history. Creative people, like writers, and Henry Rollins, spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thoughtworld. S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together. Your bike. My tiles. Those are our knives. — Joe Hill

And you, Ronan," Niall said. He always said Ronan differently from other words. As if he had meant to say another word entirely - something like knife or poison or revenge - and then swapped it out for Ronan's name at the last moment. "When you were born, the rivers dried up and the cattle in Rockingham County wept blood. — Maggie Stiefvater

Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often - will it be for always? - how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, 'I never realized my loss till this moment'? The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again. They — C.S. Lewis