Warren Ellis · 144 pages
Rating: (35.9K votes)
“There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long— PEOPLE. No matter how big the idea they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened. It's people that kill every revolution.”
“Journalism is just a gun. It’s only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that’s all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world.”
“- You know what this is?
- Nope
- It's a bowel disruptor. And you are just full of shit.”
“I want vasopressin, washed caffeine, Jumpstart, ginkgo biloba, guarana, and any intelligence enhancer introduced in the last five years.”
“I'm sorry. Is that too harsh an observation for you? Does that sound too much like the Truth? Fuck you. If anyone in this shithole city gave two tugs of a dead dog's cock about Truth, this wouldn't be happening.”
“TRUTH comes easier when you're nine years old, too. Everything's a lot less complicated. This or that. Us or them. Truth or lie.”
“You people don't know what the truth is! It's there, just under the bullshit, but you never look! That's what I hate most about this fucking city-- Lies are news and truth is obsolete!”
“The point is, the only real tools we have are our eyes and our heads. It's not the act of seeing with our eyes alone; it's correctly comprehending what we see. Treating life as an autopsy.”
“A Kenyan man once said to me, 'You can get used to anything when money's involved.' He used to stick mice up his ass for twenty bucks at a time." -Spider Jerusalem”
“Se mi amaste, oggi vi ammazzereste tutti.”
“Do you want to eat Peyotl and human flesh on the path to spiritual enlightenment? Or just for the hell of it? Join the ancient cult of Anasazi.”
“I'm nuts about him, i've told him everything there is to tell about me, and he spends every night balls deep in me and it's GREAT, and i love him, and I look down at him when we're fucking...and it's like looking in an empty house.”
“So this zealot comes to my door, all glazed eyes and clean reproductive organs, asking me if I ever think about God. So I tell him I killed God. I tracked God down like a rabid dog, hacked off his legs with a hedge trimmer, raped him with a corncob and boiled off his corpse in an acid bath.”
“I feel...a terrible need to piss in a Christening font.”
“It's been so long, i'm afraid to get laid now! I got so much internal pressure built up that i'd probably blow a hole in a woman the size of my fist!”
“All people are scum. No matter what they look like.”
“The first hit is always yours.”
“Mr. Charismo? Surely not Tibor Charismo, the most famous man in all of England.”
“What's that?" he asked.
"A balance sheet," I said. "To keep track of your payments."
He asked whether Pop had written it or me. When I answered truthfully, he handed the paper back like the useless thing it was. "Thank you," he said. "I won't be needing this."
Which took me by surprise and set me stammering how it was proof he was making his payments, and how he should take it because it was the right and proper way to do business.
"The rules aren't the same for me as they are for you," Joseph replied, shaking his head. "Don't you know that, Will?" Which put my nose out of joint so bad that I told him he was being rude, and that I was only trying to do him a favor at no small risk to myself.
Joseph's face went blank as the cloudless sky overhead. He eyed the receipt. Said, "Thank you, Mr. William. But I can't accept." And got back on his bicycle.
"That all you got to say?" I near shouted, frustrated at how easily he'd turned my good intentions into a fool's errand. And the quickest flash of hate you ever did see danced across the dark of his eyes.
I stood there, feeling awkward and a fool. Joseph put one foot on a pedal and said, real quiet, "If you'll excuse me, I've a funeral to attend."
Only then did I notice the band of mourning black around his upper arm.
"Who died?" I asked stupidly.
Joseph's eyes were flat. "Nobody important, Mr. William. Only a Negro boy like me.”
“I changed what I could, and what I couldn't, I endured.”
“Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled, the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains—its successful maintenance against a formidable attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion, that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take by war—teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.” In”
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