c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Even from the beginning, that was the problem. People liked pretty things. People even liked pretty things that wanted to kill and eat them.
— Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again.
— David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Oh," the girl said, shaking her head. "Don't be so simple. People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them. You know what a monster is, young shade? Power. Power and choice. Monsters make choices. Monsters shape the world. Monsters force us to become stronger, smarter, better. They sift the weak from the strong and provide a forge for the steeling of souls. Even as we curse monsters, we admire them. Seek to become them, in some ways." Her eyes became distant. "There are far, far worse things to be than a monster.
— Jim Butcher, Ghost Story
The problem with people who say monsters don't really exist is that they're almost never saying it to the monsters." —Alice Healy
— Seanan McGuire, Discount Armageddon
Be careful in the company of monsters that you don't become one.
— Cindy Gerard, Take No Prisoners
Are you sure this isn't a nightmare? And that we won't just wake up?Yes.Because dreamers always wake up and leave their monsters behind.
— Alexandra Bracken, In The Afterlight
Then stop trying to throw logic at nightmares. Sometimes the monsters are real, Anita. Sometimes they're real and the only way to defeat them is to be the bigger monster. ~Bibiana to Anita
— Laurell K. Hamilton, Bullet
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.
— Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
You’d better tell me what you know, toad,” said Tiffany. “Miss Tick isn’t here. I am.”“Another world is colliding with this one,” said the toad. “There. Happy now? That’s what Miss Tick thinks. But it’s happening faster than she expected. All the monsters are coming back.”“Why?”“There’s no one to stop them.”There was silence for a moment.“There’s me,” said Tiffany.
— Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men
The Nephilim - the bogeyman for monsters, and all those who could be monsters.
— Cassandra Clare, Saving Raphael Santiago
The monsters are gone.""Really?" Doubtful."I killed the monsters. That's what fathers do.
— Fiona  Wallace
All monsters must die except the beautiful ones
— Cameron Jace, Snow White Sorrow
Everyone carries around his own monsters.---Richard Pryor
— Jonathan Maberry, Rot & Ruin
Yes, my dear child, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement.
— Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist
Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.
— Guillermo del Toro, The Monsters Of Hellboy II
Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?
— Charles Baudelaire
You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse.
— Alastair Reynolds, Thousandth Night / Minla's Flowers
...it is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches.
— Stanisław Lem, The Cyberiad
Unhappiness slowly creeps up on you, like a shape-shifting monster waiting in the darkness of your hallway, his bulging eyes watching your every move. The breath on his slimy tongue makes the hairs on your neck stand up.
— Kate Rockland, Falling Is Like This
One of my roommates, Rafael, he's an expert on monsters. Not that he talks about them. I can just tell. People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster
Philip doesn't let go, his eyes glinting with rage. "We're gonna survive this thing,and we're gonna do it by being bigger monsters than they are! You understand? There ain't no philosophy, there ain't no grace, there ain't no mercy, there's only us and them, and all they wanna do is eat our ass! So we're gonna fucking eat them! We're gonna chew 'em up and spit 'em out, and we're gonna survive this thing or I will blow a hole through this whole fucked up world! You follow me? You FOLLOW ME!
— Robert Kirkman
Leaves that rustled, twigs that scraped and rattled. But the thin shapes weren't falling, they were scurrying head first down the tree-trunks at a speed that seemed to leave time behind. Some of them had no shape they could have lived with, and some might never have had any skin. She saw their shriveled eyes glimmer eagerly and their toothless mouths gape with an identical infantile hunger. Their combined weight bowed the lowest branches while they extended arms like withered sticks to snatch the child. ("With The Angels")
— Ramsey Campbell, Best New Horror 22
You speak of the hand of Fatma, my friends, but you do not know the terrible power of this hand, the hand of monsters that menace you and seduce you with their subterranean access, their metallic splintering, their inhuman grotesqueness of idols.
— Georges Limbour
There were two kinds of monsters, the kind that hunted the streets and the kind that lived in your head. She could fight the first, but the second was more dangerous. It was always, always, always a step ahead.
— Victoria Schwab, Our Dark Duet
Broken people don't hide from their monsters. Broken people let themselves be eaten.
— Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters
Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
I'll investigate, but I've still got to be cautious, because a monster in one's lap isn't always a good thing.
— Jonathan Maas, The Dog That Laid Eggs
The strange thing arched its serpentine body to bring its head closer to the bear, all of its many eyes staring straight at him with alien curiosity. The thing looked at the bear. The bear looked at the thing."Oh well," said the bear. "Made a plan. Better stick to it, I suppose." And with that, mallet in paw, he leaped form the boat.
— Dave Shelton, A Boy and A Bear in a Boat
Let’s pretend it is a threat, because you need to understand that the other officers aren’t keeping me safe from you; they’re keeping you safe from me.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, Crimson Death
The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.
— Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
The monsters in our valley were destroyed that day. Only a very few survived. But that was all right, because we didn't need monsters anymore. We had become them.
— K.A. Applegate
People think it's the monsters who do bad things, but it's not. It's people like us. All the monsters ever do is live in storybooks. Or in closets. It's the humans who destroy things. Life isn't black and white, James. It's all fucking gray.
— Saffron A. Kent, A War like Ours
Every monster could be saved.
— Shannon A. Thompson, July Lightning
It"s easier to believe there's a monster under the bed if you've spent the last six months arguing with a monster.
— Chuck Klosterman, The Visible Man
Monsters are most dangerous when they're afraid
— Victoria Aveyard
I am a monster because I have too much of something.
— Megan Shepherd, The Secret Horses of Briar Hill
I'm a little monster. Cuddling is my special attack. #cuddlemonster
— Crina Popescu
Are you a monster if you kill monsters, especially if those monsters are inside your head?
— Deonté Jack
We often live next to monsters unawares.
— Christopher Buehlman, The Lesser Dead
Who ever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
— James O'Barr
I'm a little monster. Cuddling is my specail attack. #cuddlemonster
— Crina Popescu
I have learned it’s best to face down the trouble. Otherwise it will grow into a monster. We don’t have time for monsters.
— Mark Andrew Poe, Run Harry, Run
The sky grows dark over the city as Janey tells me her story. Teh beast was supposed to help their community. Something that would look good in a brochure, I suppose. But instead, it cut loose, took out in to the Williamsburg night. Janey and the kids went after it , and when they finally caught up what does it do? The thing ate a hipster.
— Daniel José Older, Salsa Nocturna: Stories
Nyx had killed a lot of people. She'd let even more die through neglect. Rhys was just one more. I'm the same person, aren't I? she thought. She had burned herself up, only to come out the other side exactly the same.Taite's signal would get out, Nyx knew. It would be soon enough to save *her*. But it would not be soon enough for Rhys. Nyx hardened her jaw. Her hands and feet were still tied. They'd stripped her of her most obvious weapons. She could just wait this out.She saw Rhys register that. But there was no shock. Just resignation. He knew her for what she was. Butcher. Monster.The same old monster.
— Kameron Hurley, The Body Project
Nobody ever thinks of himself as a villain, does he? Even monsters hold high opinions of themselves.
— Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom
The best way to cleanse the world from monsters is by not becoming one.
— Jorge P. Guerrero
Nature had been fucked with. And Mother was pissed.”... Mother Nature was funny that way. Complex. Unpredictable.And unforgiving as hell if you fucked around with her.
— Chuck Grossartm
Not all monsters are filled with darkness.' She wanted him to understand this so badly that her voice trembled.He didn't even hesitate. 'This one is.'She allowed herself a moment to admire Tommy, the way he stood so resolute, like a knight charging after the monster. He just didn't get that this fight wasn't his to wage.'Exactly so,' she finally said.Of course Tommy would think she talking to him. He exhaled as though relieved and the start of a smile eased the tension around his lips. By the time he realized that she'd spoken the words to someone over his shoulder, it was already too late.
— Carrie Ryan, Slasher Girls & Monster Boys
A monster lies in wait in me,A stew of wounds and misery,But fiercer still in life and limb,The me that lies in wait in him.
— Clive Barker
You're off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be monsters.
— Hector Barbossa
He was colossal (apparently they felt behemoth was easier to spell).
— Emily Devenport, Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 103
Good luck to you," he said, and she remembered how he had looked at her as she pinned Yah Tayyib, as if she was some kind of monster.Maybe she was.
— Kameron Hurley, God's War
But then, maybe “I don’t believe in you” is the cruelest way to kill a monster.
— Helen Oyeyemi, White is for Witching
Demons are a very human creation. You look for ways to explain evil, and instead of seeing it in yourselves, you offload the responsibility onto monsters. The monstrous exists in the mirror, not in the sulfurous depths of some fantasy world.
— Kelley Armstrong, Deceptions
I don't want your love unless you know I am repulsive, and love me even as you know it.
— Georges Bataille
She hated seeing monsters smile. Monsters should growl and snarl and be done with the pretenses.
— Faith McKay, Prophecy Girl
The power of monsters is their ability to fuse opposites, to merge contraries, to subvert rules, to overthrow cognitive barriers, moral distinction, and ontological categories. Monsters overcome the barrier of time itself. Uniting past and present, demonic and divine, guilt and conscience, predator and prey, parent and child, self and alien, our monsters are our innermost selves.
— David D. Gilmore, Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, And All Manner Of Imaginary Terrors
Only monsters could slay monsters.
— Imraan Coovadia, Tales of the Metric System
Couldn’t we camp down by the lakes?” Nynaeve asked, patting her face with her kerchief. “It must be cooler down by the water.”“Light,” Mat said, “I’d just like to stick my head in one of them. I might never take it out.”Just then something roiled the waters of the nearest lake, the dark water phosphorescing as a huge body rolled beneath the surface. Length on man-thick length sent ripples spreading, rolling on and on until at last a tail rose, waving a point like a wasp’s stinger for an instant in the twilight, at least five spans into the air. All along that length fat tentacles writhed like monstrous worms, as many as a centipede’s legs. It slid slowly beneath the surface and was gone, only the fading ripples to say it had ever been.Rand closed his mouth and exchanged a look with Perrin. Perrin’s yellow eyes were as disbelieving as he knew his own must be. Nothing that big could live in a lake that size. Those couldn’t have been hands on those tentacles. They couldn’t have been.“On second thought,” Mat said faintly, “I like it right here just fine.
— Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World
I’m not sure we’re quite the monsters you want us to be.
— Gavin G. Smith, A Quantum Mythology
The more monsterous humanity gets, the more nicer monsters become
— Anonymous
But such monsters as sphinxes bring forth the necessary heroes to defeat them, and because such heroes make civilization by the example of monster-taming, without the former there would be no civilization at all.
— David D. Gilmore
The real monsters are born, not made. They are the ones who watch behind friendly faces. The ones who come for the innocent trying to steal everything they have, be it their most treasured possessions, their honour or their lives. Not because they must, not because their very existence relies on it but simply because there is a thrill in it for them. To watch a man pierced by wrath and greed die a lonely death, to watch a woman pierced by lust and anger whimper away in fear. It thrills them to watch man burn and bleed. Real monsters love to turn the sound of beautiful life into many a terrified scream.
— Narayan Liu, The Masks of Monsters
As humanity becomes monstrous, monsters become nicer.
— Anonymous
Monsters were one thing. She was used to monsters, she could deal with monsters. A noise in the darkness, with nothing attached to it, was another.
— Paul Cornell, Professor Bernice Summerfield: The Dead Men Diaries
The world is chock-full of monsters.
— Rafael Yglesias, The Wisdom of Perversity
Monsters always make more trouble before they die.
— Melinda Gebbie
There are many monsters, oh, many!
— Damon Galgut
I welcome monsters into my bedand set a place for them at breakfast,leave sugar out for their coffeegoddamnI’ve always been so good at loving monsters
— Fortesa Latifi
Before you can kill the monster you have to say its name.
— Terry Pratchett, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Non-Fiction
It was possible, I saw now, to be a grotesque, to be huge and free, to wander the streets in utter freedom despite your atrocity, as long as you did it when everybody else was sealed inside their little lit boxes.Now it made sense – why monsters came out at night.
— Joshua Gaylord, When We Were Animals
Full bellies breed gentle manners. The pinch of famine makes monsters.
— Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
God didn't create monsters. Monsters created themselves.
— Karina Halle, Donners of the Dead
If they want a monster so badly they ought to be provided by one.
— Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace
He had found his monsters, and now was the time to leave them behind.
— Tim Lebbon, Alien: Out of the Shadows
On old maps, cartographers would draw strange beasts around the margins and write phrases such as "Here be dragons." That's where monsters exist: in the unmapped spaces, in the places where we haven't filled in all the gaps...
— Kelly Link
The reason Armand Gamache could go there was because it wasn't totally foreign to him. He knew it because he’d seen his own burned terrain, he’d walked off the familiar and comfortable path inside his own head and heart and seen what festered in the dark. And one day Jean Guy Beauvoir would look at his own monsters, and then be able to recognize others. And maybe this was the day and this was the case. He hoped so.
— Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder
People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster
Monsters are born of pain, and grief, and loss, and anger. Your heart is full of them.--"And?"And it makes you vulnerable.
— Jim Butcher, Summer Knight
It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry ‘Monster!’ and looked behind him
— Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
She's in the club. The hopelessly-outnumbered-and-surrounded-by-monsters club.
— M.R. Carey, The Girl with All the Gifts
Men do not fear swords...they fear monsters.
— Dracula Untold
To say that I wished I wasn't there would be a ludicrous understatement, but I'd only ever had the illusion of choice: We have to do this, Hank had said. It's for Ellis. To refuse would have been an act of calculated cruelty. And so, because of my husband's war with his father and their insane obsession with a mythical monster, we'd crossed the Atlantic at the very same time a real madman, a real monster, was attempting to take over the world for his own reasons of ego and pride.
— Sara Gruen
Monster or not, he was risking his neck to save her.
— Ilsa J Bick, Monsters
We are all monsters.
— Isabelle Rowan, Ink
I’d gone with my usual option. I was running through long tunnels filled with demons and monsters and nightmares, because it was easier than going to the gym.
— Jim Butcher, Skin Game
I don't remember a single monster before I met you.' he'd told Amphibian. 'Now they seem to be all over the place.''You mean there wasn't anything you were afraid of?' the Amphibian had asked him.'lots.''What did they look like?'It was a funny question.'They didn't look like anything. They were ideas,' Tom told him. 'Like not being able to pay rent, or being lonely.''That's the most terrifying thing I've ever heard.' the Amphibian replied.
— Andrew Kaufman, All My Friends are Superheroes
The world is as I always intuited it to be: weird, fractured and full of monsters.
— Charlie Human, Apocalypse Now Now
Sanji: That's right he's a rubberman Chopper: What do you mean?Sanji: I mean he's a monster
— Sanji
I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones.
— Teju Cole, Open City
The less you knew, the fewer monsters you’d attract,
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
There are no monsters, Doctor,' she spluttered.Yeah, There are,' he said. 'Some of them are just better at hiding than others. And then there are the ones we wouldn't know if we saw them.
— Steve Lyons, Doctor Who: The Stealers of Dreams
All of the monsters in my head were created by people who thought they could make me a porcelain doll marionette of their own design.
— Jennifer Megan Varnadore
Damn this human who had come into her life and made himself so important to her
—  had made coming to terms with her inner monster that much more difficult to bear.
I pictured love as a big hairy giant with a dead fish in his mouth. Grizzly bear claws and his heart half out of his chest cause it’s too big and the lungs have to fit. He never stops walking. Over mountains. Through the desert. On top of icy lakes. Past huge cities. And he hunts and kills for you and always comes back with plenty to eat.
— Adam Rapp, The Children and the Wolves
Everywhere that we looked, were objects & artifacts reminiscent of a bygone age. of war & destruction, of mankind's determination to rule his neighbour, to prove how mighty he and his people are, yet a romance of days past that I am drawn to like a soul lost and hearing his lovers cries to him
— Rob Shepherd, Life with Boris Karloff!
Tis true, Dr. Buzzard, that a silver bullet must be of the largest and heaviest sort to travel with any amount o’ range or accuracy. But after yon hellhound took no notice o’ my challenge or my first discharge, I said what was fitting with lead buckshot well-washed with silver that I’ve got from the most particular little shop in Birmingham. It didn’t like it.
— Rob S. Rice, Darkness in the Mirror
Once I knew what I was doingI was there and with it
— I had the total knowing.I Googled God and orgasmedAt the amount of Gods andMonsters out there posted about.
You make them sound human.""Aren't they? A lot of monsters are human."She couldn't argue with that.
— Jeyn Roberts, Dark Inside
She was torn between the impulse to run and the urge to curl up like a pill bug, close her eyes, tuck her head beneath her arms, and play the game of since-I-can't-see-monsters-monsters-can't-see-me.
— Holly Black, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Monsters are very real. But they're not just creatures. Monsters are everywhere. They're people. They're nightmares...They are the things that we harbor within ourselves. If you remember one thing, even above remembering me, remember that there is not a monster dreamt that hasn't walked once within the soul of a man.
— C. Robert Cargill, Dreams and Shadows
Monsters can live inside a person. Sometimes, they know about it. More often, they don’t. The monster makes them feel safe, or at the very least, better. As long as you know it’s there, you can co-exist with it. Give it what it wants, and it will return the favor. Other times, the monster takes over.Bares its teeth.
— Nikki Rae, Sunshine
Their bodies lay flatly on the rocks, and their eyes regarded him with evil interest: but it does not appear that Mr. Fison was afraid, or that he realized that he was in any danger. Possibly his confidence is to be ascribed to the limpness of their attitudes. But he was horrified, of course, and intensely excited and indignant at such revolting creatures preying upon human flesh. He thought they had chanced upon a drowned body. He shouted to them, with the idea of driving them off, and, finding they did not budge, cast about him, picked up a big rounded lump of rock, and flung it at one.And then, slowly uncoiling their tentacles, they all began moving towards him - creeping at first deliberately, and making a soft purring sound to each other.
— H.G. Wells
Monsters almost always are culture's way of working out their fears.
— Catherynne M. Valente
I’m always looking for the monster. Not even just in horror. I want them in everything. Just give me the monsters. Logical conclusions don’t satisfy. Monsters satisfy, absolutely.
— Victor LaValle, Big Machine
What if it turns out there really are witches and vampires and werewolves living right here alongside us? After all, what better disguise could there be than to get your image enshrined in the culture of the mass media? Anything that's described in artistic terms and shown in the movies stops being frightening and mysterious. For real horror you need the spoken word, you need an old grandpa sitting on a bench, scaring the grandkids in the evening: 'And then the Master of the house came to him and said: "I won't let you go, I'll tie you up and bind you tight and you'll rot under the fallen branches!"' That's the way to make people wary of anomalous phenomena! Kids sense that, you know–it's no wonder they love telling stories about the Black Han and the Coffin on Wheels. But modern literature, and especially the movies, it all just dilutes that instinctive horror. How can you feel afraid of Dracula, if he's been killed a hundred times? How can you be afraid of aliens, if our guys always squelch them? Yes, Hollywood is the great luller of human vigilance. A toast–to the death of Hollywood, for depriving us of a healthy fear of the unknown!
— Sergei Lukyanenko, Twilight Watch
I cannot be assured ofexactly what I createdbe it madness and monsteror beauty and light.
— Stephanie Hemphill, Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein
I can turn into anything," he said with emphasis. "Even another werewolf." When Daisy blinked back at him, too dumbfounded to speak, Talent laughed, heartily. She'd been correct. He was devastating when he truly smiled. "Haven't you learned, woman? You've fallen off the map. Here there be monsters.
— Kristen Callihan, Moonglow
Monsters’ can help us by giving a tangible form to our secret fears. It is less widely appreciated today that ‘wonders’ such as the unicorn legitimize our hopes. But all imaginary animals, to some degree all animals, are ultimately both monsters and wonders, which assist us by deflecting and absorbing our uncertainties . It is hard to tell ‘imaginary animals’ from symbolic, exemplary, heraldic, stylized, poetic, literary, or stereotypical ones. What is reality? Until we answer that question with confidence, a sharp differentiation between real animals and imaginary ones will remain elusive. There is some yeti in every ape, and a bit of Pegasus in every horse. Men and women are not only part angel and part demon, as the old cliché goes; they are also part centaur, part werewolf, part mandrake, and part sphinx.
— Boria Sax, Imaginary Animals: The Monstrous, the Wondrous and the Human
Human beings are no damn good,” he said. “We are even worse than animals. We like ...”He trailed off, cleared his throat, but his voice hardly reached a whisper.“We like monsters,” he said.
— Victor LaValle, Big Machine
Solomon breathed a sigh of relief ever so slightly, thankful that the cricket had not been eaten. Not that he was concerned for the cricket being eaten. No, he was simply relieved that the voice in the closet, which could be a monster, had not eaten it. If the voice had eaten the cricket, that meant that he was a monster that eats things in the night, and Solomon too could be eaten. Being eaten by a closet monster was perhaps the scariest thing that could happen to an elephant, not to mention a cricket, as far as Solomon was concerned.
— Michael Delaware, Scary Elephant Meets the Closet Monster
This was in the good old days, when monsters were fantasy.
— Hollis Seamon, Somebody Up There Hates You
Mais c'est renfantillage - this is childishness!' we heard de Grandin pant as we closed in and sought a chance to seize his skeleton-like antagonist. 'He who fights an imp of Satan as if he were human is a fool!'("The Man In Crescent Terrace")
— Seabury Quinn, The Mummy Walks Among Us
You have to stop crying, and you have to go kick some ass.
— Lady Gaga
Living in a place like this, she must have learned how to see all the monsters that can hide a person.
— Lauren DeStefano, Fever
It’s really kind of… well, beautiful, in a way. Even the monsters, once you get to know ‘em. We’re all beautiful.
— Peter Watts, Starfish
Art, like Nature, has her monsters
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
How different this world to the one about which I used to read, and in which I used to live! This is one peopled by demons, phantoms, vampires, ghouls, boggarts, and nixies. Names of things of which I knew nothing are now so familiar that the creatures themselves appear to have real existence. The Arabian Nights are not more fantastic than our gospels; and Lempriere would have found ours a more marvelous world to catalog than the classical mythical to which he devoted his learning. Ours is a world of luprachaun and clurichaune, deev and cloolie, and through the maze of mystery I have to thread my painful way, now learning how to distinguish oufe from pooka, and nis from pixy; study long screeds upon the doings of effreets and dwergers, or decipher the dwaul of delirious monks who have made homunculi from refuse. Waking or sleeping, the image of some uncouth form is always present to me. What would I not give for a volume by the once despised 'A. L. O. E' or prosy Emma Worboise? Talk of the troubles of Winifred Bertram or Jane Eyre, what are they to mine? Talented authoresses do not seem to know that however terrible it may be to have as a neighbour a mad woman in a tower, it is much worse to have to live in a kitchen with a crocodile. This elementary fact has escaped the notice of writers of fiction; the re-statement of it has induced me to reconsider my decision as to the most longed-for book; my choice now is the Swiss Family Robinson. In it I have no doubt I should find how to make even the crocodile useful, or how to kill it, which would be still better.("Mysterious Maisie")
— Wirt Gerrare, Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others
...all these epic battles and monsters lately - but love is a tiny world and I prefer a more personal style...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Believing in God and turning into Monsters.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Being a pumpkinhead is great.""Your HEAD is a PUMPKIN.
— Justin Robinson, City of Devils
Life would be perfect if monster would stop farting.
— David Chuka, Billy and the Monster who Loved to Fart
A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.
— Colson Whitehead
Who are the real monsters?
— Beth Revis, Shades of Earth
The torment of love can transform people into wretched monsters
— Mathias Malzieu, La Mécanique du cœur
Are you the only human in the world then? And all of the rest of us monsters?
— Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and bit her bottom lip. I found it to be such an erotic gesture that it aroused me. My eyes began making love to her in the dark. Unseen hands passed over her curves, quietly descending...trembling at her great beauty. I didn't even know her, but I wanted her. My gaze danced over her every curve, from her nose and lips, to her breasts and hips, surreptitiously. She had no idea of my thoughts. Shadow sex.
— Rae Hachton, Frankie's Monster
He looks at Mr. Vacanti and the man looks back at him with somehow gentle eyes. It surprises David to see the man has gentle eyes. It surprises him, even at thirty-seven, to discover that monsters can have gentle eyes. Something is terribly wrong with a world where monsters are allowed to have gentle eyes.
— Ryan David Jahn, Good Neighbors
If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness. (Monseigneur Bienvenu in _Les Miserables_)
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
there's plenty of blame to go around.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Nico wasn't sure whether to kick himself or Will Solace. If he hadn’t been so distracted bickering with the son of Apollo, he would never have allowed the enemy to get so close.
— Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate of an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote.
— Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
What trouble have you brought to my doorstep, Beka?" she asked."I don't see where blaming me for things that began months ago will be useful," I replied.
— Tamora Pierce, Bloodhound
You blame me for this, don't you?" he says."I don't need to. You're doing a better job.
— Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca
No one loves the messenger who brings bad news.
— Sophocles, Antigone
No one will ever blame you for trying to get it right.
— Lorii Myers, Make It Happen, A Healthy, Competitive Approach to Achieving Personal Success
To recongnize that the treachery of one member of a house does not taint all born within it
— Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen
Rationally speaking, blaming one's behavior on alcohol or drugs is like blaming the ladder by which you descended into a pit, or the staircase that took you down to a cellar, for what you found there.
— Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale
Exploration! Exploring the past! We students in the camps seminar considered ourselves radical explorers. We tore open the windows and let in the air, the wind that finally whirled away the dust that society had permitted to settle over the horrors of the past. We made sure people could see. And we placed no reliance on legal scholarship. It was evident to us that there had to be convictions. It was just as evident as conviction of this or that camp guard or police enforcer was only the prelude. The generation that had been served by the guards and enforcers, or had done nothing to stop them, or had not banished them from its midst as it could have done after 1945, was in the dock, and we explored it, subjected it to trial by daylight, and condemned it to shame.
— Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
I started wondering if God really existed. The world seemed too empty and lonely for there to be a God in it. But I figured he must exist because I kept blaming everything on him.
— The Hippie, Snowflake Obsidian: Memoir of a Cutter
we choose for our selves what's right or wrong... but when we make mistakes we blame someone else(parents)
— Meena Khan
Continuing to play the victim is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Blaming others for your station in life will indeed make you a victim but the perpetrator will be your own self, not life or those around you.
— Bobby Darnell, Time For Dervin - Living Large In Geiggityville
The Auditors fluttered anxiously. And, as always happens in their species when something goes radically wrong and needs fixing instantly, they settled down to try to work how who was to blame.
— Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
A victim is someone who blames it all on someone else. Why give all the power to someone else and leave yourself powerless?
— Christina Moss
They came to the high stone shaft with the face of Sul; they descended to the terrace below. And here Caradog waited, leaning on his silver-tipped rod and eying the horizon, until the delicate slip of the new moon moved out from behind the shoulder of Mount Damyake, with the mysterious, shadowy ghost of the old moon cradle inside it, like an egg inside its egg cup."Now it is time," he
— Joan Aiken, The Stolen Lake
Many have blamed the gasoline shortages and long lines at filling stations in 1973 on the Arab Oil embargo of that year. However, the shortages and long lines began months before the Arab oil embargo, right after price controls were imposed.
— Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy
Blame is something that is shared and denied in equal measures.
— Patrick Ness, Release
That drew a laugh from Jessamy, but he said, after a moment: “You had better flay me. It was my fault—all my fault!”“I was wondering how long it would be before you contrived to convince yourself that you were to blame,” said Alverstoke caustically. “I haven’t the slightest wish to know how you arrived at such an addlebrained conclusion, so don’t put yourself to the trouble of telling me!
— Georgette Heyer, Frederica
Refuse to blame yourself for not being 'good enough
— John Mark Green
You’ll never learn anything or impress anyone by making excuses and diverting blame.
— Frank Sonnenberg, Follow Your Conscience: Make a Difference in Your Life & in the Lives of Others
Why must we hide, Behind walls built high?N' blame our lives, On him, her, I?
— Kari L. Greenaway, He Had You at Belief
He blamed every fucker available excepting, of course, the one who was actually to blame, the one sitting in his saddle and getting colder, hungrier, and more lost with every unpleasant moment. ‘Shit!’ he roared at nothing.
— Joe Abercrombie, Red Country
Rights begin where love ends. Shall we argue over who is the most to blame?
— Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries
Engaged Audience Members are receptive to the messages of dangerous speech and to condoning group-targeted harm, but are not hardliners. For example, they may be easily influenced by charismatic leaders who promise to resolve their grievances, or be receptive to blame narratives. This could be any member of society, but certain types of people (based on demographic or other characteristics) may be disproportionately engaged.
— Rachel Hilary Brown, Defusing Hate: A Strategic Communication Guide to Counteract Dangerous Speech
People do blame you for the things they do to you.
— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
This focusing outward...painful as it was, saved her from a more intolerable examination.
— M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans
It’s the way I walk through the world, carrying that fear, that the beloved will go, will die, and that I will be the one to blame.
— Nick Flynn, The Ticking Is the Bomb: A Memoir
Life don't care 'bout sorry's," Will says. "Bad things happen, and you can't let 'em harden you. Whatever happened to yer pa, it ain't yer fault, Nate, and you gotta let it go.
— Erin Bowman, Vengeance Road
Due to our act of Personal Irresponsibility, illegal businesses are set-up, our neighbourhoods are not secured and the economy directly and indirectly takes a big hit. The government alone cannot be blamed for this, because this is our neighbourhood and if we cannot take care of our immediate surroundings, then we are clearly not carrying out our responsibilities and we don’t have any business blaming someone else.
— Sunday Adelaja
. . . nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see, for the state in which things are . . .
— Charlotte Brontë, Shirley
Beaten armies always shout, "TREASON!
— John Taliaferro, All the Great Prizes : The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt
Israelis cannot be blamed for the conflicts and civilians casualties nor do the Palestinians. We can argue endlessly about it, the only one that can be blamed for this lasting battle is the Saudis fueling the conflicts for enduring their supremacy in the Arab world.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Blame is the coward’s retreat.They think it frees them, but it confines them… Blame is also the coward’s warden.
— Steve Maraboli
Integrity and blame can never be friends.
— Charles F. Glassman, Brain Drain   The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life
... the rules of transcendence insist that you will not advance even one inch closer to divinity as long as you cling to even one last seductive thread of blame.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
I reckon that blaming people fixes nothing. You're the only person who is going to sort you out. No-one else really can - or really cares, enough. That's what Nepalis know - better than anyone. That's our Western disease. Don't take responsibility. Take on a lawyer!
— Jane Wilson-Howarth, Snowfed Waters
The only person to blame for your situation is you.
— Fennel Hudson, A Meaningful Life - Fennel's Journal - No. 1
All blame is a poor stance, if you perchance upon it.
— Kamini Arichandran
My point," Jason said, "is that blaming each other isn't going to solve anything. That's how the Romans and the Greeks got divided in the first place.
— Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus
Blaming the woman for the loss of a child is like blaming the soldier for the loss of his life in battle.
— Katherine Longshore, Brazen
The best way to avoid becoming a scapegoat is to find one.
— Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros
Being the bearer of bad news is a terrible thing; sometimes you don't know if you'll have the words, the delicacy,the strength. You think of the person on the other side: how you're about to bring their world crashing down with a single phone call and deep inside them they'll hate you because their sorrow will just be searching for someone to blame. Then what do you say? That you're sorry? Sorry for what? They'll hate you even more because they'll know you're not sorry like they are. They'll know you haven't been destroyed like they have.
— Emma Abdullah, The Blue Box
Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36). Severe mental illness has been likened to drug addiction, prostitution, and criminality (37,38). Unlike physical disabilities, persons with mental illness are perceived by the public to be in control of their disabilities and responsible for causing them (34,36). Furthermore, research respondents are less likely to pity persons with mental illness, instead reacting to psychiatric disability with anger and believing that help is not deserved (35,36,39)."World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20.PMCID: PMC1489832Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illnessPATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON
— Patrick W. Corrigan
She knew there were words so terrible you heard them with your whole body. Guilty. And there were voices to say them. She knew there were people you might almost trust who would hear them, too, and be amazed, and still not really hear them because they know they were not the ones the words were spoken to.
— Marilynne Robinson, Lila
The longer you blame the mirror, the longer you throw away the power to change what it is reflecting.
— Steve Maraboli
If you think everything is someone else's fault, you'd be wrong. If you think everything is your fault, you're also wrong. Assigning blame can keep you stuck in the problem. Move on to solutions.
— Sue Fitzmaurice
When you blame others you are effectively proclaiming that you are only response to stimuli.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
How can God allow this to happen? How can our predecessors allow this to happen? How can YOU allow this to happen? We could all blame everyone else for the problems of the past that brought us the present, but that doesn't do us any good. The past has already been written, and there's nothing you can do about it. The only thing you can do is concentrate on making it a better place today. Be the present example by following your heart and not worrying what others are doing.
— Jason Micheal Ratliff
Stop blaming and start being!
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
JD/Dr Cox: The second you start blaming yourself for people's deaths, there's no coming back.
— Bill Lawrence
Perfectionist parents seem to operate under the illusion that if they can just get their children to be perfect, they will be a perfect family. They put the burden of stability on the child to avoid facing the fact that they, as parents, cannot provide it. The child fails and becomes the scapegoat for family problems. Once again, the child is saddled with the blame.
— Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
Scared people don’t really mean what they say, they’re just looking for ways to rationalize everything so they have someone or something to blame. They need to have a reason for what’s happening because when they have that they can take comfort in knowing it’s out of their control.
— Chris Dietzel, The Man Who Watched The World End
To fundamentally solve a problem, we must understand it's cause. In that I mean the chain of actions or circumstances that led to the problem--rather than only the immediate cause, which serves only to place blame.
— Charlie Herrick
You must not blame us scientists for the use which war technicians have put our discoveries.
— Lise Meitner
There are only do and don’t
—  can or can’t is just an excuse.
Why do women always do this? Why are they so eager to blame themselves when someone treats them like sh*t? A guy would take a cheese grater to his tongue before admitting he screwed up.
— Emma Chase, Tangled
When discouraged some people will give up, give in or give out far too early. They blame their problems on difficult situations, unreasonable people or their own inabilities.When discouraged other people will push back that first impulse to quit, push down their initial fear, push through feelings of helplessness and push ahead. They’re less likely to find something to blame and more likely to find a way through.
— Steve Goodier
Blame the economy, blame bad luck, blame my parents, blame your parents, blame the Internet, blame people who use the Internet.
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
No Blame: The most liberating and empowering day of my life was the day I freed myself from my own self-destructive nonsense.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
There has to be blame and there has to be reasons and there has to be answers and if nobody can adequately accept the blame and give a sufficient reason and provide an answer, the love, no matter how strong it is, the family, no matter how tight it is, the life, no matter how good it is, will always buckle, then snap, then drown completely under the pressure of itself, the reality of the mistrust, and the weight of its own history, because if there are no answers, the blame and the guilt become stronger than the love and those two things together become a force that no amount of love can ever break down and overcome.
— Jason Myers, Dead End
Perhaps it was as well that she had been unconscious for four weeks. She had missed the aftermath, the SO-1 reports, the recriminations, Snood and Tamworth's funerals. She missed everything...except the blame. It was waiting for her when she awoke...
— Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair
The weakest nations always blame others for their failures.
— M.F. Moonzajer
As the man left and became gone the fault wailed after him, heartbroken. Yelling back at him all the ways he and it belonged to one another.
— Rosca Marx, The Laughing Maggot
The victim mindset produces a delusion of fault and blame that blinds you from the simple truth of cause and effect.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
When something horrible happens, it's human nature to want to blame it on someone. We want someone to be held accountable, even though sometimes things just happen.
— Meg Cabot, Abandon
You will never become who you want to be if you keep blaming everyone else for who you are.
— Habeeb Akande
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the blame
— Josh Stern
A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.
— Anonymous
It is a happy talent to know how to play.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
— Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
Pumpkin, stop rubbing your ass against me. We gotta go! I don’t have time to do you now. Prioritize, woman.
— Kylie Scott, Play
Kelley. Your name is Kelley, isn't it?" He didn't wait for her confirmation. "Yes. Well. Tell me...that bit just now...was that from Dante's Inferno?"Uh...no," Kelley stammered. Her face felt hot.Really?"I'm in for it.Are you sure?" he continued. "Because it most certainly wasn't from this play. And it bloody well sounded like hell.
— Lesley Livingston, Wondrous Strange
Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!It seems she hangs upon the cheek of nightLike a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear,Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.So shows a snowy dove trooping with crowsAs yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
— William Shakespeare
Sure you do. Everyone wants to play. They’re just afraid of looking stupid. But you know what’s stupid? Not trying. So just…try.
— Victoria Scott, The Collector
Oh, yeah. You're the best," I grinned back at him."Pumpkin, hello. Of course I am!
— Kylie Scott, Play
I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play...
— Meher Baba