Quotes About Control

His displeasure! I am sure I have displeased him, he thinks. Look how he steamed and glared, that day I took a holiday. Look how he pawed the ground and rolled his eyes. This is what Henry does. He uses people up. He takes all they give him and more. When he is finished with them he is noisier and fatter and they are husks or corpses.

Christophe says, 'You are not sad, sir?' 'No. I am not sad. I am not allowed to be. I am too useful to be sad.

As a wife she must obey him: women must obey, even queens.

The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun. Not from castle walls, but from countinghouses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus, not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.

I could have told him what I wanted, and threatened him. But I encouraged him; I did it so that he would be complicit.

A man's power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.

When you are so unhappy you don't know how to accomplish anything, then to have control over your body becomes an extreme accomplishment. You make of your body your very own kingdom where you are the tyrant, the absolute dictator.

Well, I think, by definition, all power has limits.

In every country today, there is politics. It may be authoritarian politics, but there is politics.

People are quick to make monuments of anything they live long enough to control.

You shouldn't rely on others to help you determine what's good and what's bad. In no time at all, you'll simply be under someone else's control.

He had seen the banning of books, music and films, the closure of theaters and cinemas, the outlawing of football, and all the other countless ways in which the Libyan dictatorship, like a crazed jealous lover, infiltrated every aspect of public and private life.

In the days when I was ambitious I worked out a very pretty little plan for conquering the whole earth and rearranging things as they ought to be; and when, in the end, everything became so good it almost began to be boring, then I was going to stuff my pockets with as much money as I could lay hands on and creep away, vanish in some cosmopolis and sit at a corner cafe and drink absinthe and enjoy seeing how everything went to the devil as soon as I wasn't on the scene any more.

What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.

If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying.

Show your power by appearing powerless.

The more powerful you become, the more others will find ways to master you. They'll do it through those you love and those you hate. They will find the bit and the bridle that fits your mouth and will make you yield.

You can break a thing, but you cannot always guide it afterward into the shape you want.

I kissed him on the mouth, and then I threatened to kiss him some more if he didn't do exactly what I wanted.

Whoever controls the king, controls the kingdom

Remember that I'm still a monster. I can listen to you scream and cry and beg and I still won't let you out.

When there is a lot of power concentrated in one place, there are plenty of scraps to fight over. If the Court isn't busy drinking poison, then it's drinking bile.

She suddenly understood why she had let him kiss her in the diner, why she had wanted him at all. She wanted to control him. He was every arrogant boyfriend that had treated her mother badly. He was every boy that told her she was too freaky, who had laughed at her, or just wanted her to shut up and make out. He was a thousand times less real than Roiben.

I'm going to take off your gag. And if you try to bite me or grab me or anything, I'll hit you with this thing as hard as I can as many times as I can. Understood?