Quotes About Control

Great anger is more destructive than the sword

Political correctness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

We all believe we are in complete control. When really, we do not know the beginning, middle or end.

I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them any time I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control.

It doesn't matter where you come from. There's nothing you can do about it, so don't waste your energy thinking about it. What matters is where you're going. And that, mate, is something you can control.

Rule Number Three, and Four and Five and about a dozen more: you do not go with the flow in this job. You make the flow go with you.

If someone rescues you, they own you. Not because you owe them—you can sort that, with enough good favors or bottles of booze dressed up in ribbons. They own you because you're not the lead in your story any more. You're the poor struggling loser/helpless damsel/plucky sidekick who was saved from danger/dishonor/humiliation by the brilliant brave compassionate hero/heroine, and they get to decide which, because you're not the one running this story, not any more.

Today Henry would be running a banana republic with serious border issues and a dodgy nuclear-weapons program.

Frightened people are obedient–not just physically, but intellectually and emotionally.

Most people have no reason to know how memory can turn rogue and feral, becoming a force of its own and one to be reckoned with.

What-if-maybe crap is for weak people. It belongs to the ones who don't have the strength to make actual situations go their way, so they have to hide away in daydreams where they can play at controlling what comes next. And that makes them even weaker.

He wants to punch something, but he knows that would do nothing but bust his knuckles. Having that much sense makes him feel old.

Plenty of people have told me—and several of them even meant it as a compliment—that I have a God-given talent for fucking with people's minds; and what you can do to strangers is nothing compared to what you can do to your very own family.

This watching through cool intent eyes and delicately adjusting one factor or another till a man's fundamental instinct for self-preservation cracks, is savagery in its most pure, most polished and most highly evolved form.

Even at moments like this, there is a limit to how weird I am prepared to appear.

Like I told Richie, cause and effect isn't a luxury. Take it away and we're left paralyzed, clinging to some tiny raft lurching wild and random on endless black sea. If my mother could go into the water just because, then so could theirs, any night, any minute; so could they. When we can't see a pattern, we fit pieces together until one takes shape, because we have to.

ready to start pushing. What-if-maybe crap is for weak people. It belongs to the ones who don't have the strength to make actual situations go their way, so they have to hide away in daydreams where they can play at controlling what comes next. And that makes them even weaker.

The tricky shiver in the air was a reminder: everything you believe is up for grabs, every ground rule can change on a moment's whim, and the dealer always, always wins.

The place felt like a weapon expertly crafted to strip you of all humanity, hollow you to a shell creature that would do anything it was told for the slim chance of someday getting out into the living world again.

We're ruled by venal little usurpers, all of us, and they make meaninglessness everywhere they go.

You just give me one more good reason," Angela said to the house from the road, "and when I am finished with you, I will burn you to the fucking ground. Don't think I won't.

A guard is as much a prisoner as those he keeps from freedom.

He who loses his head, loses,

Most people don't care who's in charge as long as someone is.