Words Are Like Knives Quotes & Sayings

It's not until she sits up and wipes her eyes that I realize she's crying. My words are like knives; they cut into the people I love. It will be worse if you touch her, I think, a worse lie. But I ignore this thought, shifting down the bench to put my arm around her - my daughter - and as I do, she weeps openly, pressing her face against my damp shirt. — Adam Haslett

I'm always wary of beautiful women who carry knives." The chief laughed. "The wise words of someone who has experienced the wrath of one such lady and has a story I would like to hear." "I promise when this is over, the story is all yours." So long as I wasn't dead first. — Steve McHugh

If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep inflicted lacerations never heal - cutting injuries and insults of serrated and poison-dripping edge - so, too, there are consolations of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and for ever to retain their echo: caressing kindnesses - loved, lingered over through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven cloud foreshadowing Death himself. — Charlotte Bronte

Words were his weapon of choice, and he used them like knives. — Sydney Landon

I am yours," she whispered. The words cut like knives, barely out of her mouth before he stole them, sealing them with his own lips. — Kiersten White

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

When he spoke, his words seared through the air like so many knives, clipped as topiary, crisp as biscuits. — Terry Pratchett

Well, it kind of hurts when the kind of words you write
And kind of turn themselves into knives
And don't mind my nerve you can call it fiction
'Cause I like being submerged in your contradictions, dear
'Cause here we are, here we are
Although you were biased, I love your advice
Your comebacks they're quick and probably
Have to do with your insecurities
There's no shame in being crazy depending on how you take these
Words they're paraphrasing this relationship we're staging
And it's a beautiful mess, yes, it is
It's like we're picking up trash in dresses — Jason Mraz

The voice was calm and infinitely tender. He didn't understand the words, because unconsciousness still wrapped his mind in layers of blackness, but he heard the voice, felt it, like something warm touching his skin. It made him feel less alone, that tiny, dim contact. Something hard and vital in him focused on the contact, yearning toward it, forcing him upward out of the blackness, even though he sensed the fanged monsters that waited for him, waiting to tear at his flesh with hot knives and brutal teeth. He would have to endure that before he could reach the voice, and he was very weak. He might not make it. Yet the voice reached out to him, pulling at him like a magnet, lifting him out of the deep senselessness that had held him. — Linda Howard

It may seem from a cursory look at the news that the streets are a battleground, a deadly arena of fists, guns and knives. In fact armed attacks are not at all common, though they are serious enough to merit attention when they do happen. Lesser levels of violent assault are more frequent, but even these are not as likely as many people think.
The perception of constant street violence derives mainly from the fact that it gets reported while its absence does not. Headlines like 'nobody got stabbed today' would not sell a lot of newspapers, so we are told about incidents that do happen and never hear about the millions of people who go about their business unharmed. To illustrate that, look at this page. The words stand out but there is a lot more white space between and around them. You do not notice it because it is not brought to your attention. So it is with violence - a lot more people do not encounter violence than do. — Martin J. Dougherty

Words are like knives ... If you use it the wrong way it transforms into a bad weapon. — Gosho Aoyama

The Child Angel
Let your life come amongst them like a flame of light, my child,
unflickering and pure, and delight them into silence.
They are cruel in their greed and their envy,
their words are like hidden knives thirsting for blood.
Go and stand amidst their scowling hearts, my child,
and let your gentle eyes fall upon them like the
forgiving peace of the evening over the strife of the day.
Let them see your face, my child, and thus know the
meaning of all things, let them love you and love each other.
Come and take your seat in the bosom of the limitless, my child.
At sunrise open and raise your heart like a blossoming flower,
and at sunset bend your head and in silence
complete the worship of the day. — Rabindranath Tagore

Most people are quite dense. They like little white houses with big stained-glass churches and prefer to do their killing with looks and words behind one another's backs."
He paused.
"Welcome to my house. No secrets allowed. Here we all do our killing with guns and axes and knives. It's more bloody than what most people are accustomed to, yes, but it's far less brutal. — Ted Dekker

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 promised him something," I answer softly. I don't want to admit what he already knows. That there's more going on between me and Morpheus than I ever let on.
"A promise, huh? How romantic." His words slash like knives. He's become a master at wielding more than a brush since he's been here. "So that's why you've crashed our little paradise. To keep your promise to Morpheus."
I wince. "No. I came to rescue you both. You have every right not to believe me ... to be mad at me. I know this has been hell. This place ... it's broken you."
"I was broken before that." His tortured expression delivers the allegation - thanks to you and bug-rot - better than his voice ever could. — A.G. Howard

Iehuda allowed his mind to follow, across the map of the wide world, across the empires and kingdoms that fought and tried to rule and subdue each other. And he imagined what might happen if these words traveled from mouth to mouth, from mind to mind, from one city to the next to the next, if this simple message- love your enemy- were the accepted creed of all the world. He did not see how it could happen.
"If one man went against it," he said at last, "the whole thing would be broken. In a world like that, a world of peace, a world of soft people with no knives, one man could destroy everything."
"Then we cannot rest until every man has heard it. Think," said Yehoshuah softly, "what shall we use up our lives for? More war, like our fathers and their fathers, more of that? Or shall we use ourselves for a better purpose? Is this not worth your life? — Naomi Alderman

My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flowers, or bridges. — Sandra Cisneros

Mystery always there in my words, now these are knives and will shine like Swords
-Samar Sudha — Samar Sudha

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