I had never really thought about the phrase “in cold blood” before. When you (I) hear the phrase today, we (I) tend to think of a crime—violent and remorseless, cold and calculated. But really it just means dispassionate, unheated. So now I’ve thought about it.
“I acknowledge that I have written irreverently, but I did it heedlessly, or when out of temper—never in cold blood.”– Mark Twain in “I Rise to a Question of Privilege”