Words Can Break You Down Quotes & Sayings

When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a break requires - now or down the line - that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can however, determine who pays for lunch. — Warren Buffett

It is time," said the Lord Pilot, "to see this calamity to its end." Spoken in Archaic English: the words uttered by Thomas Clarkson in 1785, at the beginning of the end of slavery. "I have set my will against this disaster; I will break it, or it will break me." Ira Howard in 2014. "I will not share my universe with this shadow," and that was the Lord Pilot, in an anger hotter than the nova's ashes. "Help me if you will, or step aside if you lack decisiveness; but do not make yourself my obstacle, or I will burn you down, and any that stand with you - — Eliezer Yudkowsky

You saw a ghost, didn't you?" he said.
To my relief, I managed to laugh. "Hate to break it to you, but
there's no such thing as ghosts."
Huh."
His gaze traveled around the laundry room, like a cop searching
for an escaped convict. When he turned that
piercing look on me, its intensity sucked the backbone out of me.
What do you see, Chloe?"
I -I-I don't s-s-s-"
Slow down." He snapped the words, impatient. "What do they
look like? Do they talk to you?"
You really want to know?"
Yeah."
I chewed my lip, then lifted onto my tiptoes. He bent to listen.
They wear white sheets with big eye holes. And they say 'Boo!'" I
glowered up at him. "Now get out of my
way."
I expected him tosneer. Cross his arms and say, Make me, little girl.His lips twitched and I steeled myself, then I realized he was smiling.Laughing at me.
He stepped aside. I swept past him to the stairs. — Kelley Armstrong

They mutilate they torment each other
with silences with words
as if they had another
life to live
they do so
as if they had forgotten
that their bodies
are inclined to death
that the insides of men
easily break down
ruthless with each other
they are weaker
than plants and animals
they can be killed by a word
by a smile by a look — Tadeusz Rozewicz

What are you looking to do?" Aaron asked as we walked into his workroom.
"Nothing too complicated," I said, displaying my wrist. "I want Bailey's name on my wrist."
Aaron exhaled slowly. "Are you sure? The Johanssons don't play when it comes having their women's names on their wrists. It's forever shit for them. That's how I knew Cooper wasn't fucking around with Farah."
"Bailey's mine, but I can't find a way to make her truly believe. When I try, it feels like just words. I know her name on my wrist is a word too, but maybe it's one that she'll know means forever."
"Fair enough. Just know once the Johansson boys see her name on your wrist, it's like you've gotten on one knee and proposed. Trust me that Bailey and Jodi will be talking wedding dates behind your back. If you lose interest or cheat or break it off, it's not going down softly. The shit will hit the fan."
"The only way Bailey gets rid of me is to put me in the ground. — Bijou Hunter

I always get muscle aches in my eyes after a few hours of reading," she said. "Doesn't matter what. The closeness does it. All these words in your face, one at a time and filling your periphery. I love reading, but there's a limit.
"There are times," she went on, "when I don't leave my apartment for days. I read for hours without a break and feel like all I want to do is stand in a field and look as far as I can in any direction. I want a view, but I don't want to see anything. I just want something like an eye stretch."
"Why not just shut your eyes?" I asked. "What's the difference?"
"Closing my eyes is too much like nearness, like reading. It's black and it's in your face, sort of crowding you. Gazing down a prairie road stretches me and the muscles in my eyes. I don't necessarily want to see anything. Just look out. — Ryan Knighton

Listen to anything and take it apart again. Spectrum analysis, in my head. I can break down chords, and timbres, and words too into all the basic frequencies and harmonics, with all their different loudnesses, and listen to them, each pure tone, but all at once. — Thomas Pynchon

He pulled the knitting away from her, throwing it in the grass, then sank down on his knees in front of her, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his head in her lap. He was shaking, she realized, and the tears were pouring down her face, onto him, as she stroked his long, silken hair and cried.
She didn't care what it sounded like - the hiccupping noises, the choking sobs.
Her own body was shaking, racked by the final release, and he sat back on his heels and pulled her out of the chair, into his arms, holding her so tightly that a weaker woman might break, whispering to her in Japanese, sweet, loving words, letting her cry.
She was a strong woman, and her tears, so long denied, only made her stronger.
His heart was pounding against hers, his hands firm and tender, pushing the hair away from her tear-drenched face. When he kissed her she couldn't breathe, and she didn't care. — Anne Stuart

I don't believe in writer's block. Who can function working seven days a week at at job. It's the same with writing. Take a break and let the words come to you. It rarely comes if you force it and if it does, you'll probably regret what you wrote down on paper. — Lillian R. Melendez

You're still here stitched into me, like threads in a sweater. Feeding me words that break me down and piece me back together, all at once. Tightening your grip, reminding me that I'm not alone. I never was. None of us ever are. You are still here stitched into the words on these walls. Every last one. — Tamara Ireland Stone

Have you ever turned to the end of a horror novel to see if the hero made it out of the darkness and into the light? If you have ever done this, I have three simple words which I feel it is my duty to convey: SHAME ON YOU! It is low to mark your place in a book by folding down the corner of the page where you left off; TURNING TO THE END TO SEE HOW IT CAME OUT is even lower. If you have this habit, I urge you to break it . . . break it at once! — Stephen King

We have to be more careful," she said. "I don't have the time or energy for a broken heart." He felt a squeeze in his chest. "I wasn't planning to break your heart, Kate." Her eyes fell to the floor before rising back to his. "Nobody ever does." A fist tightened in his gut as he watched her retreat. He stood there for a long time, her words hitting hard, sinking deep. She'd been let down by a lot of people, and his name wasn't going to be added to the list. — Denise Hunter

I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being ... Art is its own excuse, and it's either Art or it's something else. It's either a poem or a piece of cheese. — Charles Bukowski

I remember Cannae," she said, raising her head, "when we thought all was lost. Carthage had defeated us, and there were those who gave up hope. Yet we survived, by our fortitude, and by believing that we should endure. There are times, Marcus, when courage is all you have."
I looked down at the stone floor, chastened into silence by her cold, stern words. This was her way, as it had always been. It was the Roman way. Grief was an indulgence; and though she surely suffered, her suffering was for her alone. It seemed hard, but she had come from a hard family, brave men and brave women who through the generations had survived by facing down hardship and loss. Of all her long line of ancestors, she was not going to be the one to break.
And nor, I decided, was I. — Paul Waters

The word "knowledge" itself, we like to break it down into two different words, "know" and "ledge." You've got to know the ledge. Know the limitation of things. Know where they go, know where they start from. We say knowledge is the basic foundation of the universe. But everything is first based on something being known. Then, when it's known, then it can be manifested. — RZA

With all due respect to lawyers, it's wonderful that you have this intricate knowledge. You break down words to the nth degree. And sometimes I find it rather disgusting. And it goes on and on. — Sonny Bono

... so many ticks steadily around the clock. My heart beats ferociously, as if to say it will not digest this leaving. But you are gone. I could never look into your tormenting eyes again. You mock me with each word you choose ... . of the millions of words in the English tongue you could have chosen ... you select the one's that break me down. — Coco J. Ginger

Why would a white caribou come down to Beaver River, where the woodland herd lives? Why would she leave the Arctic tundra, where the light blazes incandescent, to haunt these shadows? Why would any caribou leave her herd to walk, solitary, thousands of miles? The herd is comfort. The herd is a fabric you can't cut or tear, passing over the land. If you could see the herd from the sky, if you were a falcon or a king eider, it would appear like softly floating gauze over the face of the snow, no more substantial than a cloud. "We are soft," the herd whispers. "We have no top teeth. We do not tear flesh. We do not tear at any part of life. We are gentleness itself. Why would any of us break from the herd? Break, apart, separate, these are hard words. The only reason any of us would become one, and not part of the herd, is if she were lost. — Kathleen Winter

Some people manage their writing by saying, 'I need to get 2,000 words written today,' others by saying, 'I will write for X hours.' Not me. I start with a plan for the book, break it down into scenes, and I know what scenes need to get written each day. If the scene takes more words than I thought, so be it. — Ramez Naam

I can fake a smile. I can force a laugh. I can dance and play the part of that's what you ask. Give you all I am. But I am only human. I bleed when I fall down. I'm only human I crash and I break down. Your words in my head. Knives in my heart. You build me up and then I fall apart. — Christina Perri

If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it.
I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil
and its head bent low with patience.
The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish,
and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.
Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds' nests,
and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves. — Rabindranath Tagore

Please don't give me words; give me a hug. Don't tell me that I'm holding up so well; break down with me and admit our shared wretchedness. Don't feign some bright mountaintop; walk with me through the dark valley where neither of us can utter a word. — Robert Dykstra

When words don't add up in love, it is because of six possible reasons:
1. They are afraid to tell you the truth because you will leave them.
2. They enjoy being a liar or playing people because of ego reasons and/or control.
3. They don't know the truth themselves.
4. They are undecided.
5. They refuse to let their guard down and be vulnerable because you or someone else have hurt them tremendously.
6. You are not being told all the information because of a break down in communication. — Shannon L. Alder

I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak when they come into the room and find their mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a feather, or a shred of chintz. I need a howl; a cry. When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words. Nothing neat. Nothing that comes down with all its feet on the floor. None of those resonances and lovely echoes that break and chime from nerve to nerve in our breasts making wild music, false phrases. I have done with phrases. — Virginia Woolf