The world is crazy about amassing guns, bombs and wealth of humongous proportions, but it will not give knowledge a second glance!

My parents won't let me have a motorcycle, but they give me all the guns I want. I asked them for a motorcycle last Christmas and they told me I'd only kill myself. They got me this twelve-gauge instead.

And upon his return, Gherkins, who had always considered his uncle as a very top-hatted sort of person, actually saw him take from his handkerchief-drawer an undeniable automatic pistol.It was at this point that Lord Peter was apotheosed from the state of Quite Decent Uncle to that of Glorified Uncle

As time went on, we learned to arm ourselves in our different ways. Some of us with real guns, some of us with more ephemeral weapons, an idea or improbable plan or some sort of formulation about how best to move through the world. An idea that will let us be. Protect us and keep us safe. But a weapon nonetheless.

There is power in controlling something that can do so much damage-in controlling something, period.

What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind.

ArtifactAs long as I can remember you kept the rifle--your grandfather's an antique you called it-in your study, propped against the tall shelvesthat held your many books. Upright,beside those hard-worn spins, it was anotherbackbone of your pas, a remnant I studiedas if it might unlock-- like the skeleton keyits long body resembled-- some door i had yetto find. Peering into the dark muzzle, I imagined a bulletas you described: spiraling through the boreand spinning straight for its target. It did not hit methen: the rifle I'd inherited showing mehow one life is bound to another, that hardshipendures. For years I admired its slender profile,until-- late one night, somber with drink--you told meit still worked, that you kept it loaded just in case,and I saw the rifle for what it is; a relicsharp as sorrow, the barrel hollow as regret.

If we really are saying rap is an art form, then we got to be more responsible for our lyrics. If you see everybody dying because of what you saying, it don't matter that you didn't make them die, it just matters that you didn't save them.

It's all mirror, mirror on the wall because beauty is power the same way money is power the same way a gun is power.

The embrace of essential beastliness, made scientific and respectable by a reading of Darwin that may or may not have done justice to his intentions, thrilled and enthralled Western thought in certain quarters and in fact still does enthrall persons and groups that experience live in society as a barely tolerable constraint on a kind of freedom they consider a birthright. This freedom appears to have most of the essential features of a war of each against all, whether a hot war that compels them to go armed to Starbucks or to church or a cold war that makes a virtue of craftiness and guile, the ability to loot and wreck the national economy without getting caught.

I used to think it was possible for an artist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory.

I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!

You don't spread democracy with a barrel of a gun.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated fete champetre with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies.

Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.

As she'd left, I'd glanced at her gun.This time, when she'd pointed it at me, she'd flicked the safety on. If that wasn't true love, I don't know what was.

Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.

It's very dramatic when two people come together to work something out. It's easy to take a gun and annihilate your opposition, but what is really exciting to me is to see people with differing views come together and finally respect each other.

Well my gun fires seven different shades of shit, so what's your favorite color, punk?