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”