c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
You have exactly 10 seconds to change that look of disgusting pity, into one of enormous respect!
— Max Bialystock
Who ever felt canary yellow and light blue are a suitable color should be tarred and feathered.
— Rae Z. Ryans, Chivalry and Malevolence
I don't think the heavy stuff is gonna come down for quite a while!” ― Bill Murray character in Cadyshack
— Mark Buff
T. Wiggett Jones: It should be illegal...to feel this rotten...without a variety of loathsome memories to cherish.Wild Wild West (TV) First Season: Night of the Grand Emir
— Michael Garrison
Yeah 220, 221 whatever it takes!" Michael Keaton character in "Mr. Mom
— Mark Buff
Dr. Loveless: Dang these pine needles. Why can't a forest be decently carpeted?Wild Wild West (TV) Second Season: Night of the Green Terror
— Michael Garrison
What do you call a rifle with three barrels?A trifle.
— Joseph Rosenbloom, Biggest Riddle Book in the World
She stops chewing and brings the chains on her wrist up to her nose and sniffs. She pulls away with a mild disgusted expression. "Definitely smells like a skank...
— J.A. Redmerski
Sorry," I said. There was little healing power in the word, but maybe the Inspectre wasn't looking to heal. Maybe he didn't want someone to fix it. It had been broken too long for me to think anything I said would actually help. It was like trying to put a Band-Aid on a shark bite. Sometimes people just needed to vent and get it out of their system.
— Anton Strout
110, 111 whatever it takes!"Michael Keaton character in Mr. Mom
— Mark Buff
Count Duchamps: It's a wonder he didn't clank when he [Jim West] when he walked. (referring to all of Jim's gadgets and weaponry)Wild Wild West (TV) Season 1Night of the Two-Legged Buffalo
— Wild Wild West TV
Damn it, I should be the only one allowed to drool over him. I found him first! Or something not as stupid.
— Nicole Christie, Falling for the Ghost of You
Shock and desire have my nerves tingling like I've been struck by horny lightning.
— Nicole Christie, Falling for the Ghost of You
It’s mind-blowing and delicious and betterthan finding a pot of gold, a unicorn, and a leprechaun who shits diamonds atthe end of a rainbow.
— Tara Sivec, Futures and Frosting
When we faced Mom, we saw she was addressing Max. "We get to know each other I'll get to hug you." "Mom!" I snapped and Mom turned to me. "I get to do it when he doesn't have a shirt on too. I'm calling it now," Mom declared.
— Kristen Ashley, The Gamble
Follow Your Dreams, Except the One Where You’re at School in Your Underwear
— Annabel Monaghan, A Girl Named Digit
As soon as a friendship passed a certain point - some obscure and secret boundary - a woman quite automatically became overwhelmed by a raging compulsion to complicate things.
— David Eddings, Magician's Gambit
My father had bought him a shirtthat said “Sure you can date my daughter.  In a completely unrelated topic,have you seen my shotgun?
— Tara Sivec, Futures and Frosting
Seduction is the art of saying what you don't do in order to do what you don't say
— Löis Lancaster
God, I’ve just figured out what’s missing – you ditched the hallowed Albermarle Teddy Bear!’ I nodded.   ‘Banished to a dark cupboard for all eternity.’ ‘You cold-hearted bastard.’ ‘Give me a hot water bottle any day.   At least they have some appreciable function.   Not like that pathetic pile of overpriced fake fur and anthropomorphic bullshit I locked in the wardrobe.’‘You have serious teddy bear issues.
— Tabitha McGowan, The Tied Man
I know something you do not know. I am not left-handed either.
— William Goldman
Can I have my ear back?" He asked irritably.She blinked."Mother, can you tell this creature here to loosen her hold?
— Anya Wylde, Penelope
He would not object, he said, to accepting a post as a librarian. But as Cecilia was unable to imagine that her father or her brother would feel any marked degree of satisfaction in giving her in marriage to a librarian, this very handsome concession on Mr Fawnhope's part merely added to her despondency.
— Georgette Heyer, The Grand Sophy
She was a former Texan - proud, loud and stubborn. But you can't really be a former Texan. You can only move out of Texas. To be a former Texan would be like growing up in Italy, moving out and being formerly Italian.
— Jeffrey Michelson, Laura Meets Jeffrey: Both Sides of an Erotic Memoir
The first of ‘Goose’s Two Laws of Survival.’ It runs thus, ‘The weak are meat the strong do eat.’ ” ... Henry grinned in the dark & cleared his throat. “The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That’s it.
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Writing is my passion, not my job. I need to write as much as I need to breathe, if not more.
— A.E. Croft
Life is a great big canvas
—  throw all tje paint you can at it.
Quadruple crap. Why couldn’t I control myself? Why did he have this effect on me? “Are you compelling me right now?”To my surprise, his smile held an edge of sadness. “That would give you a much needed excuse, but I am afraid I am not.”Curse my body for reacting to his. As long as I kept him out of my heart, I would be okay.“I think it a bit too late for that, my dear.”“You’re using old man speak again.” I made a face. “It’s creepy.”He chuckled. “I’ll try to remember that, but I haven’t been around humans much in the past hundred years. It’s hard to keep up with the changes in common dialect.”“Let’s keep on topic, Jett. You were going to teach me how to control my mind.
— Christie Rich, Genesis
Q and Beanpole and I giggled at the way our math teacher, Mr. Sung-Li, wore four pencils in his shirt pocket in case he was suddenly attacked by a multiplication problem or something.
— Alan Sitomer, The Rise of the Dorkasaurus
...the concept of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself...suffice it to say here that it took almost no time for a wily serpent to sell Adam and Eve on a shiny apple from the Tree of Knowledge, at which point they became not only the first humans but also the first marketing demographic, and God expelled them from the Garden of Eden for being total consumerist dupes. (p. 40)
— BikeSnobNYC, The Enlightened Cyclist: Commuter Angst, Dangerous Drivers, and Other Obstacles on the Path to Two-Wheeled Trancendence
Another example of getting flack from the boys is what happened when Jack Black dumped me. That’s right. I fucked Jack Black. Okay, we went out only two or three times, but that’s a relationship in my book. And by the way, this is my book.
— Kathy Griffin
The ark was like a portable computer hard drive and Noah was a one-man Geek Squad, and he dumped God's most important files onto it before he zorched the virus-ridden computer that was the world.
— BikeSnobNYC, The Enlightened Cyclist: Commuter Angst, Dangerous Drivers, and Other Obstacles on the Path to Two-Wheeled Trancendence
I have a constant hungry bum. It's like my own venus fly trap
— Monica Merrill Mylet, No Laughing Allowed
I cannot see you anymore. Your ego spans higher than the Himalayas.” Sutara
— Eleni Papanou, Unison
Malory! You've got a chipmunk on your pussy!
— Tamara Thorne, The Sorority: Samantha
My mouth was dry. Whispers carried on the wind as the maids around me bunched together in small groups, hysterical, morbid. I thought: who will clean the mess?
— A.E. Croft, The General's Assistant
We’re automatons in a symphony conducted by a lunatic and performed by blind idealists.” Damon
— Eleni Papanou, Unison
Two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.
— Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins
My dad had once told me, crimson-red deep in “the talk,” that with sons, all he had to worry about was one penis, but with a daughter, he had to worry about everyone else’s.
— Nicole  Williams, Crash
See? That’s it,” he said, waving his hand. “That’s part of what makes us so great, Luce. I’m crazy. You’re crazy. Together, we make our own brand of crazy.
— Nicole  Williams, Clash
His attention caught, her companion raised his eyes from the book which lay open beside him on the table and directed them upon her in a look of aloof enquiry. 'What's that? Did you say something to me, Venetia?''Yes, love,' responded his sister cheerfully, 'but it wasn't of the least consequence, and in any event I answered for you. You would be astonished, I daresay, if you knew what interesting conversations I enjoy with myself.
— Georgette Heyer, Venetia
Everyone was going crazy, like they’d just witnessed the birth of Jesus and the invention of electricity at the same time. Jude was a rock star, their savior, and they were paying him homage.
— Nicole  Williams, Crash
We were encouraged to propose safetyprevention suggestions, and write them all down— locking doors, walking or exercising with a friend, wearing shoes that don’t hinder running. Erin’s suggestion of “Avoid assholes” was popular.
— Tammara Webber, Easy
I’ve had a lot of food but if you don’t jiggle me too much you can have your wicked way with me.
— Samantha Young, An On Dublin Street Christmas
An Irishman walks into a pub,” she begins and the bar went silent. “The bartender asks him, ‘What'll you have?’” Her Irish accent was spot on. “The man says, ‘Give me three pints of Guinness, please.’ The bartender brings him three pints and the man proceeds to alternately sip one, then the other, then the third until they're gone. He then orders three more.“The bartender says, ‘Sir, no need to order as many at a time. I’ll keep an eye on it and when you get low, I'll bring you a fresh one.’ The man replies, ‘You don't understand. I have two brothers, one in Australia and one in the States. We made a vow to each other that every Saturday night we'd still drink together. So right now, me brothers have three Guinness stouts too, and we're drinking together.’“The bartender thought this a wonderful tradition and every week the man came in and ordered three beers.” January’s playing and voice became more solemn, dramatic. “But one week, he ordered only two.” The crowd oohed and ahhed. “He slowly drank them,” she continued darkly, “and then ordered two more. The bartender looked at him sadly. ‘Sir, I know your tradition, and, agh, I'd just like to say that I'm sorry for your loss.’“The man looked on him strangely before it finally dawned on him. ‘Oh, me brothers are fine - I just quit drinking.
— Fisher Amelie, Thomas & January
John and I have made this stuff our hobby, in the way that an especially attractive prisoner makes a hobby out of not getting raped. Jesus, that’s a terrible analogy. I apologize. What I’m saying is that it’s self-preservation. We didn’t choose this, we just have talents that makes us the equivalent of that new guy in the cell block who has a slim, hairless body and kind of looks like a woman from behind, and has an incredibly realistic tattoo of boobs on his back. He may have no desire at all to ever even touch a penis, but it’s going to happen, even if it’s just in the process of frantically slapping them away. Jesus, am I still talking about this? [John—please delete the above paragraph before it goes off to the publisher].
— David Wong, This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It
You stick a bunch of drunken murderers together, ain't long before some turn to thieving, then to lying, then to bad language, and pretty soon to sobriety, raising families and making an honest living.
— Joe Abercrombie, Red Country
He shifted his attention back to me and leaned in closer. “I told you to behave. I don’t want to have to arrest you ever again.”“Um . . . okay.”I felt him slide something under my hand. He leaned in even closer, his mouth by my ear, and whispered, “Although I wouldn’t mind handcuffing you.”Oh. My. God.
— Robyn Peterman, How Hard Can It Be?
I am (thank God!) constitutionally superior to reason.
— Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
Do you follow the wrestling? Most people think it's illegal, but you can watch it there. Ruby and Python are on display this evening.
— Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17
One should never marry a man who doesn't own a decent set of scissors.
— Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Here's my using dickwad in a sentence. Greg is such a dickwad, he locks his car in the Pagoda Pizza parking lot. (No. That isn't a real Vocab word.)
— A.S. King, Please Ignore Vera Dietz
If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it.
— Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
Albert Camus did not know he was summing up modern photojournalism when he wrote:"Will I kill myself or have a cup of coffee
— Sacha Hartgers
If the ties that bind ever do come looseIf forever ever ends for youIf that ring gets a little too tightYou might as well read me my last rights.
— The Band Perry
Put it on your forehead and you'll feel better in no time!
— Alfred F. Jones Hetalia
I took your name when I took those vowsI meant 'em back then and I mean 'em right now.
— The Band Perry
--he stopped and eyed Bill Corso--"if you choose to just sit here like a bored jungle gorilla, you will have to write out this quote as many times as you can during the next hour.
— A.S. King, Please Ignore Vera Dietz
Kalina remained paralyzed in her seat. “Oh, crap. Aaron was a vampire.” She straightened up. Remain calm, Kalina. Breathe. “You're not going to eat me, are you?”“No,” said Stuart. “Not all vampires feed on humans. I choose not to. I drink Vampire Wine.”“Vampire Wine.” Kalina put the pieces together. “Jaegar...I thought he was kidding...”“And Aaron drank Vampire Wine, too. To avoid succumbing to temptation. To avoid drinking blood whenever he got too...excited....”Kalina's eyes widened. “So you mean...”“Vampire Wine wasn't the problem, Kalina. It was the only solution.
— Kailin Gow, Pulse
Always take a compliment, even if it’s not yours
— Benny Bellamacina, Philosophical Uplifting Quotes and Poems
You gotta want it.
— Bill Murray
Spider or gum? Spider or gum? I thought quickly trying to come up with a believable excuse when I blurted out, “I swallowed a spider!” What? I swallowed a spider? What the hell is wrong with me?!
— Melissa Aragon, Unexpectedly Out of Focus
Yes, I know this narrative is crowded with beautiful women - Mrs. Pearson, Mrs. Maycott, Mrs. Lavien, Mrs. Bingham. We might form a cricket team of beautiful women. I cannot help it if they are the ones who excite my notice and so trouble myself to describe.
— David Liss, The Whiskey Rebels
you don't know until you know!
— Ruth Lizana-Jackson
I threw my hand over my mouth and blurted out the first best excuse I could come up with, “Morning breath!
— Melissa Aragon, Unexpectedly Out of Focus
There's a place for farts, and there's a place for sharts.
— J.E. Haldeman
Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Damned
How many kids are in the Graveyard?""A bunch.""Who sends your supplies?""George Washington. Or is it Abraham Lincoln? I forget.""How often do you receive new arrivals?""About as often as you beat your wife.
— Neal Shusterman, UnWholly
There lived a redheaded man who had no eyes or ears. He didn’t have hair either, so he was called a redhead arbitrarily. He couldn’t talk because he had no mouth. He had no nose either. He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, he had no back, he had no spine, and he had no innards at all. He didn’t have anything. So we don’t even know who we’re talking about. It’s better that we don’t talk about him any more.
— Daniil Kharms, Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings
Every gay man out there has at least one man-crush in his past that totally shriveled his nads into raisins and sent him screaming off into the night.
— T.A. Webb, Second Chances
You spit in this?""Yup."Chris shrugged. "As long as you're honest.
— R.L. Mathewson, Tall, Dark & Lonely
This isn't sex."I blinked. "Oh. Then what is it?""An emergency!"I started to argue and then thought twice about it. Considering what Mircea would do to Pritkin if he ever found out about this...Yeah. Emergency sounded good.
— Karen Chance, Curse the Dawn
Asshole," Ephraim muttered as he turned back around.Chris chuckeled. "Is that really any way to talk to your favorite child?""You're not my favorite," Ephraim argued, but they both knew that was bullshit. "I don't have any favorites.""Puhlease," Chris said. "You fucking adore me...
— R.L. Mathewson, Without Regret
I'm OK with being single, but I'm not OK when the time comes where I have to move my furniture around and to change the high ceiling light balls...
— Hiroko Sakai
I'm used to desperate, buddy. Desperate's my factory default. But thanks anyway.
— Carolyn Crane, Mind Games
If somebody tells me what to do, I will do my best not to do it.
— Hiroko Sakai
Why in the name of God do you wear these ugly ass granny panties? I swear it looks like you could parachute from the Dallas Lincoln Plaza with these and have a nice soft landing! Why don’t you get on the internet and apply your online shopping skills while purchasing some panties that do not look like they came from your Grans drawer?
— Kathryn Perez, Love and Truth
Imogen was a bright girl naturally, but she had read so many novels that her brain was completely turned.
— Susan Coolidge, What Katy Did
Madam, I have just come from a country where people are hanged if they talk.
— Leonhard Euler
How come I have too many things to do all the time...??
— Hiroko Sakai
That's how hospitals get you. You go in to visit and before you know it they got a camera stuck up your butt and they're looking' to find poloponies.
— Janet Evanovich, Notorious Nineteen
...clearly, we're supposed to be together. If this were the internet, seventeen-year-old girls would be writing slash fiction about us as we speak.
— Vaughn R. Demont, Lightning Rod
How's the blood-stream, my dear, invaluable little woman? How's the blood-stream?"..."It's quite comfortable, sir...I think, sir, thank yo
— Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan
Nature" doesn't really have intentions, per se. Nature is a drunk waking up from a weekend bender, ambling through a messy kitchen in a pair of mismatched slippers, seeing its car in the neighbor's pool and saying, "Ah good. It was dirty. Just the thing.
— Pat Connid, The Vault Matrix: Book 1
Writing is a lonely pursuit. The only thing working is imagination and hands.The only difference between writing and masturbation is one is presumably intended for a mass audience.
— Mark  Bell
I love fortune readings! because when I get in troubles, if the reading says that I am in a lucky day, I can think my troubles are just some kind of mistakes, and if the reading says that I am in the unlucky day, I can think that my troubles are just because of my bad luck. Either ways, I can know the reason of my troubles.
— Hiroko Sakai
...Anand, look at the back of my hands. No hair. The sign of an advanced race, boy. And look at yours. No hair either. But you never know. With some of your mother's bad blood flowing in your veins you could wake up one morning and find yourself hairy like a monkey
— V.S. Naipaul
When you paint late at night, drinking beer or wine or both, you gotta be very careful to watch what you are doing...
— Hiroko Sakai
Locavore?" But before he could answer, I figured it out. "Someone who eats food produced locally? As opposed to locovore, someone who eats crazy people?
— Mari Donne, The Boys and the Bees
yes, i have dated Salvador Dali guy when i was a high school girl. he was a great lover. but i had to dump him because he stole my inspiration of bent clock*~* .... who cares...
— Hiroko Sakai
...I gotta burn these scales... sigh*
— Hiroko Sakai
His eyes, green with yellow sparks, and with elongated pupils like a cat’s, made his grandmother gasp and say: ‘Jesus! He has the devil’s eyes!
— Olga Núñez Miret, The Man Who Never Was
Adelina knew perfectly well who the father was, but she worked hard to forget it, and by the end of her life she would insist that Jesús was her child and hers only.
— Olga Núñez Miret, The Man Who Never Was
I have no clue. I have ovaries; therefore, I repel all things mechanical.
— M. Leighton, Down to You
I like stories about supervillains. They teach children that you can accomplish great things even when the whole world is against you.
— G.D. Falksen
If you had a piece of coal, we could hold her down, shove it up her ass, and come collect a big, fat diamond in a few days.
— M. Leighton, Down to You
Weather forecast for tonight: dark.
— George Carlin
Vegtables, what food eats before it becomes food.
— David Weber, Out of the Dark
He’s sort of a homeless horse,” I said.“I’m leaving for the airport in two seconds, and I won’t be back for a couple days. You can put the horse in the garage, but I don’t want that horse in my apartment.”“Who would put a horse in an apartment? That’s dumb.”“Where’s the horse staying now?”“My apartment.”“I can always count on you to brighten my day,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.
— Janet Evanovich, Plum Lucky
I mean, shit, what Latino family doesn't think it's cursed?
— Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
What's the point of using words nobody knows or can say comfortably?
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other's arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Talk about insanity. Being attracted to deVries was like a month saying, "Hey, let's go check out that awesome bonfire".
— Cherise Sinclair, My Liege of Dark Haven
Time passed quickly. Constant did not move.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., The Sirens of Titan
Talk about insanity. Being attracted to deVries was like a moth saying, "Hey, let's go check out that awesome bonfire".
— Cherise Sinclair
You are an old pig!'one of them said to the other. 'And that is worse than being a young one.
— Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished, sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.
— Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
Aw, come on, admit it—you feel like Cinderella, don’t you?” “No, Darren, I don’t. And do you know why?” “No, sugar, you tell me why.” “Because I’m a man. I’ve got a big fat one and I like to fuck other guys.” Darren was laughing over the phone now, and it made Reece grin. “And Ben isn’t a prince, he’s a cop. A big, sexy cop who fucks like a machine. He’s a man. I’m a man. We’re men.” He nodded sharply. “Now fuck off. I’m arranging flowers.
— L.A. Gilbert, Witness
He never did get right all the way again. And every once in a while he'd come down all bitey.
— Jonathan Maberry, Flesh & Bone
None are so busy as the fool and knave.
— John Dryden
Are you certain they never cut your member off?" Tormund gave a shrug, as if to say he would never understand such madness. "Well, you are a free man now, but if you will have the girl, best find yourself a she-bear. If a man does not use his member it grows smaller and smaller, until one day he wants to piss and cannot find it.
— George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
Believe in something, and let that something be yourself.
— Harley Brooks, Riley's Pond
There's no such thing as a sane woman.
— Andrew Sturm, The Kirkwood Project
One of the classier features of this home was the padded toilet seat. It was high-mileage puffy brown vinyl-colored foam and made that weird sigh when you sat down on it. I'm not a germaphobe or anything like that, but it is weird to think about all the ass time this seat had seen before we moved in. This is a horrible invention. What's the plan? You want to create a toilet seat so comfortable that you can fall asleep while you're taking a shit? You're going to show up late for work or end up like Elvis.
— Adam Carolla
Mother said we had reached the Age of Reason and had to be good now. We must have because we wanted Willy Starr instead.
— Marie Clair, Undone: Odette, Elle & me
When life gives you lemons, put your lipstick on!
— Dana Page
If you can't beat them and don't care to join them, Then " FU*K THEM".
— Katraina L Flowers
I had an aunt named 'abnormal Shauna' once. But she passed away in an unfortunate cliff-top interpretative dance and fireworks accident.
— Joshua Donellan, Zeb and the Great Ruckus
Why, you boggle-eyed, flap-tongued, drag-bellied offspring of unmentionable algae! You seething little leprous blotch of bat-nibbled fungus! You cringing parasite on the underside of a dwarfish and ignoble worm!
— Lewis Padgett, A Gnome There Was
An oldtimer is a person who's had many interesting experiences, some of them true.
— Bob Gilluly, One man's Montana: Bob Gilluly's best newspaper yarns, Great Falls Tribune, 1983-1999
When you argue with someone, you always argue at the level of the person with the lowest level of intelligence. You never argue up.
— Spuds Crawford
He was rather a low sort of pony. The fact is, he had been originally jobbed out by the day, and he never quite got over his old habits. He was clever in melodrama too, but too broad--too broad. When the mother died, he took the port-wine business.''The port-wine business!' cried Nicholas.'Drinking port-wine with the clown,' said the manager; 'but he was greedy, and one night bit off the bowl of the glass, and choked himself, so his vulgarity was the death of him at last.
— Charles Dickens
There were two books I remember changing my life as a introverted, bookish 14 year old. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. One was set in a fantastic world, populated by outlandish characters,tired prose, foul monsters, evil incarnate and a message about losing one's humanity. The other book was about hobbits.
— Christopher Odell Homsley
I may be a burglar...but I'm an honest one, I hope, more or less.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Certainly no one has ever died of an unrequited passion—it's usually the ones that are requited that get people in trouble.
— Mercedes Lackey, Four & Twenty Blackbirds
To-morrow I will begin," thought Katy, as she dropped asleep that night. How often we all do so! And what a pity it is that when morning comes and to-morrow is to-day, we so frequently wake up feeling quite differently; careless or impatient, and not a bit inclined to do the fine things we planned overnight.
— Susan Coolidge, What Katy Did
‎What a blight that woman is. Do you happen to know why? I lean toward a malignant fairy at her christening.
— Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Daddy had a strict rule about firearms. Anything we killed we had to eat. No amount of barbecue sauce would make a hairy guy like you palatable.
— Diane Kelly, Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure
Jessamine blew out her cheeks in exasperation. "I think you ought to let me take poor Tessa into town to get some new clothes. Otherwise, the first time she takes a deep breath, that dress will fall right off her."Will looked interested. "I think she should try that out right now and see what happens.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
We took a right at the fork, heading farther north. The charred houses continued. To the right, a large sign nailed to an old telephone post shouted DANGER in huge red letters. Underneath in crisp black letters was written:IM-1: Infectious Magic AreaDo Not EnterAuthorized Personnel OnlyA second smaller sign under the first one, written on a piece of plastic with permanent marker, read:Keep out, stupid.“We aren’t going to keep out, are we?” Ascanio asked.“No.”“Awesome.
— Ilona Andrews
For it was intelligence that was the thin line between endearing rapscallion and idiot bastard. - Éibhear the Contemptible
— G.A. Aiken
But instead I am applying for a job as an elf. Even worse than applying is the very real possibility that I will not be hired, that I couldn't even find work as an elf. That's when you know you're a failure.
— David Sedaris, Holidays on Ice
Ooooohh, I heard you had an STD, but I thought it was just a rumor. Does it really burn?" - Moose in reference to Jadyn's "burning bush" -
— Jillian Dodd, That Wedding
But you want to know about the influence of books on my life, and as I’ve said, there was only one. Seneca. Do you know who he was? He was a Roman philosopher who wrote letters to imaginary friendstelling them how to behave for the rest of their lives.. Maybe that sounds dull, but the letters aren’t – they’re witty. I think you learn more if you’re laughing at the same time.
— Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Where would Jesus be if no one ever wrote the gospels?
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
I'd spent five minutes looking at Twitter once and felt I'd wandered into a poker game where everyone immediately displayed their hands against the cool green of the felt.
— Jeff Abbott
He thought moving to a small town would allow him to find a way to get along to some extent but people were just plain idiots.
— Christine Feehan, Magic in the Wind
ELVIS & MARILYN:The deader they get -the more money they make.
— Chocolate Waters
Today, Aaron decided, he would begin to grieve in earnest. He would walk the lonely beach, mocked by gulls, uncaring, his every step a stately rebuke to the malign forces that had blighted his fate. His was the tragedy of a man who couldn't have his own way, and he intended to make known his anguish in the solemn solitude that only a stretch of sand, a suspiring sea, and a beetling cliff could provide.
— Joseph Caldwell, The Pig Did It
A Man can Live two Weeks without Food,go two days without Water,and two minutes without Air,and apparently,an entire lifetime without a BRAIN.
— Walter Thomas Jr
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, unless it is the burning bush, in that case the value of your bird just went up!!
— Neil Leckman
If a book falls in the woods and nobody read it, was it ever written?
— Neil Leckman
You could have heard a bee fluff
— S.W. Lothian, The Golden Scarab
DISARM ALL RAPISTSBut what will we doWith their legs?
— Chocolate Waters
The problem with at-home IQ tests is that too many people wouldn't understand the results. Calling customer service is a bad sign.
— Iimani David
And there you sit, gloating over what you have done, as if you were a martyr or a public benefactor -- as complacent and smug and misunderstood as a princess from the moon forced to herd goats!
— Hope Mirrlees
On a cooler sun on a primordial earth: "I later learned that biologists, when they are feeling jocose, refer to this as the 'Chinese Resaturant Problem'--because we has a dim sun.
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
[To my enemy:] Some are great, some are born great, some have greatness thrust upon them! And then there's you.
— Reginald Dipwipple
I have always pictured accupuncture like falling into a box of sewing needles, and then standing up refreshed and free of pain.
— Neil Leckman
I’m going to strip my way through plumber’s school. What do you think of the stage name Fine-Ass Frankie?
— Rebecca Murphy, Plucking Cupid's Bow
I admit I once threw caution to the wind....It doesn't fly well!!
— Neil Leckman
It's Salvation. When Jen told me I had a vision. A vision Rena. I think I saw the blessed mother smiling and she was hold ing a loofa.[In regards to moving out of dorms and having three bathrooms between 4 roomates]
— Nora Roberts, Blue Smoke
And I remind you of your mother now? I have got to look into a manlier cologne.
— Cassandra Clare
Democracy was supposed to champion freedom of speech, and yet the simple rules of table decorum could clamp down on the rights their forefathers had fought and died for.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
And I'll have you know that if you hurt my son again, if he so much as sighs sadly over his coffee, I will hire a man, a Russian, probably, to hunt you down and rip all that shiny black hair from your head, then break your skinny arms and legs, and set you on fire, and then put you out with a hammer. And should there be children from your beastly rutting, I shall have the Russian man cut them to tiny pieces and feed them to Madame Jacob's dog. because, although he may be only a worthless, simpleminded, libertine artist, Lucien is my favorite, and I will not have him hurt. Do you understand?
— Christopher Moore, Sacre Blue
Evolution is a theory with more holes than a Dutch dam of swiss cheese.
— Eoin Colfer
...I like the way Chee kept God magical, sorta like Santa Claus when you're a kid. More priests should take this approach, because there is a frickin' reason why Santa Claus is more popular than Jesus nowadays.
— Matthew Quick, Sorta Like a Rock Star
Any day above ground is a good day.
— Robert Gerus
The streak of bleach in my hair is as obvious as ever. Am I really going out in public like this? I push my hair backward and forward a few times - but I can't hide it. Maybe I could walk along with my hand carelessly positioned at my head, as if I'm thinking hard. I attempt a few casual, pensive poses in the mirror."Is your head all right?"I swivel round in shock to see Nathaniel at the open door, wearing a plaid shirt and jeans."Er...fine," I say, my hand still glued to my head. "I was just..."Oh, there's no point. I bring my hand down from my hair and Nathaniel regards the streak for a moment."It looks nice," he says. "Like a badger.""A badger?" I say, affronted. "I don't look like a badger.""Badgers are beautiful creatures," says Nathaniel with a shrug. "I'd rather look like a badger than a stoat.
— Sophie Kinsella, The Undomestic Goddess
A reputation for money is almost as negotiable as money itself.
— John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
One thing that's good about procrastination is that you always have something planned for tomorrow
— Gladys Bronwyn Stern
Society teaches us that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The bill of rights informs us that we have the right to keep it to ourselves.
— Brian Randleas
If we loved Steve Aylett, really loved him in the way that he deserves, a selfless love that genuinely wanted nothing save his happiness and comfort, we'd lobotomise him.
— Alan Moore
I don't need new boots I got bluchers back down home. Eff the effing bluchers I'll buy you new adjectival effing elastic sided boots.
— Peter Carey
I can't get her pregnant! I'm just thirteen. You have to be a man to get a girl pregnant.
— Scylar Tyberius, Sebastian the Great
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
— Mark Twain
Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.
— Anne Frank
It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt,It lies behind stars and under hills,And empty holes it fills,It comes first and follows after,Ends life, kills laughter.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
There are different kinds of darkness,” Rhys said. I kept my eyes shut. “There is the darkness that frightens, the darkness that soothes, the darkness that is restful.” I pictured each. “There is the darkness of lovers, and the darkness of assassins. It becomes what the bearer wishes it to be, needs it to be. It is not wholly bad or good.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury
What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time takes it all. Time bares it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.
— Stephen King
I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness.
— Franz Kafka
Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
When you spend so long trapped in darkness, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury
Ten years of shadows, but no longer. Light up the darkness, Majesty.
— Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows
Even as a child, she had preferred night to day, had enjoyed sitting out in the yard after sunset, under the star-speckled sky listening to frogs and crickets. Darkness soothed. It softened the sharp edges of the world, toned down the too-harsh colors. With the coming of twilight, the sky seemed to recede; the universe expanded. The night was bigger than the day, and in its realm, life seemed to have more possibilities.
— Dean Koontz, Midnight
I mean only that I hope they find darkness or paradise without fear of it, if they can.
— Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
When you look up/ Do you see the blue sky of what might be / Or the darkness of what will never be? / Do you see me?Kami Garcia/Margaret Stohl
— Kami Garcia, Beautiful Darkness
People often believed they were safer in the light, thinking monsters only came out at night. But safety – like light – is a façade.
— C.J. Roberts, Captive in the Dark
To fight evil, you have to understand the dark.
— Nalini Singh, Heart of Obsidian
How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!
— Stefan Zweig, The Burning Secret and other stories
The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.
— Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.
— Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux
I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Darkness approaches from outside.I feel no light inside me strong enough to resist it.
— Christopher Pike, The Last Vampire
Darkness... When everything that you know and love... is taken from you so harshly... all you can think about is anger, hatred, and even revenge... and no one can save you.
— Masashi Kishimoto
The Russian soul is a dark place.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
This is not written for the young or the light of heart, not for the tranquil species of men whose souls are content with the simple pleasures of family, church, or profession. Rather, I write to those beings like myself whose existence is compounded by a lurid intermingling of the dark and thelight; who can judge rationally and think with reason, yet who feel too keenly and churn with too great a passion; who have an incessant longing for happiness and yet areshadowed by a deep and persistent melancholy—those who grasp gratification where they may, but find no lasting comfort for the soul.
— B.E. Scully
What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.
— Justin Cronin, The Passage
We sometimes choose the most locked up, dark versions of the story, but what a good friend does is turn on the lights, open the window, and remind us that there are a whole lot of ways to tell the same story.
— Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
Darkness always had its part to play. Without it, how would we know when we walked in the light? It’s only when its ambitions become too grandiose that it must be opposed, disciplined, sometimes—if necessary—brought down for a time. Then it will rise again, as it must.
— Clive Barker, Abarat
Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold.
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
— William O. Douglas, The Douglas Letters: Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas
To keep Velaris safe, to keep Mor and Amren and Cassian and Azriel and… Rhys safe.I said to Lucien, low and quiet and as vicious as the talons that formed at the tips of my fingers, as vicious as the wondrous weight between my shoulder blades, “When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.”A pulse of surprise, of wicked delight against my mental shields, at the dark, membranous wings I knew were now poking over my shoulders. Every icy kiss of rain sent jolts of cold through me. Sensitive—so sensitive, these Illryian wings.Lucien backed up a step. “What did you do to yourself?”I gave him a little smile. “The human girl you knew died Under the Mountain. I have no interest in spending immortality as a High Lord’s pet.”Lucien started shaking his head. “Feyre—”“Tell Tamlin,” I said, choking on his name, on the thought of what he’d done to Rhys, to his family, “if he sends anyone else into these lands, I will hunt each and every one of you down. And I will demonstrate exactly what the darkness taught me.”There was something like genuine pain on his face.I didn’t care. I just watched him, unyielding and cold and dark. The creature I might one day have become if I had stayed at the Spring Court, if I had remained broken for decades, centuries… until I learned to quietly direct those shards of pain outward, learned to savor the pain of others.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury
I’m not afraid of the darkness outside. It’s the darkness inside houses I don’t like.
— Shelagh Delaney
From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest.Darkness, you know, is relative.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
Darkness promotes speech.
— Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night
There is only what you want and what happens. There is only grabbing on and holding tight in the darkness.
— Lauren Oliver, Hana
The only darkness we should allow into our lives is the night, for even then, we have the moon.
— Warsan Shire, Our Men Do Not Belong To Us
And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
The very life of any creature is a quick-fading spark in fathomless darkness.
— Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
And in his heart, I think, he's now learned what I came to believe, which is, as I've said all along, that the sun may burn brightly, and the faces of children may be plump and achingly sweet, but in the air we breathe, in the water we drink and in the food we share, there will always be darkness in this world.
— Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!
Darkness dwells within even the best of us. In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reins.
— Dean Koontz, Strange Highways
The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to to forget all that. Don't you agree? Two-thirds of earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see with the naked eye is the surface: the skin.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Darkness shields as much as it threatens.
— R. Scott Bakker, The Judging Eye
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feetWhen far away an interrupted cryCame over houses from another street,But not to call me back or say good-bye;And further still at an unearthly height,A luminary clock against the skyProclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.I have been one acquainted with the night.
— Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost
Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence. I know that my trunk rose from his warmth, but that's all, because my branches hardly move at all near the ground, and just wave a little in the wind.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
When he laughed in his throat, the butterfly laughed at me too. It's obscene fluttering corrupted me into darkness.
— Kazuya Minekura, Stigma
You start with a darkness to move throughbut sometimes the darkness moves through you.
— Dean Young
No matter how dark the room gets I can always see. It looks emptier when I put the lights on so I don't do it if I can help it. Brightness disagrees with me: it hurts my eyes, wastes electricity and encourages moths, all sorts of things. I sit in the dark for a number of reasons.
— Janice Galloway, The Trick Is to Keep Breathing
In the stillness of headstones,Darkness is my blanket.And forever is my song.In the arms if stone angels, I'm not afraid.Because finally and completely,I belong.
— Jordan Dane, In the Arms of Stone Angels
The secret to being unafraid of the darkness is to challenge the darkness to fear you, to raise your eyes sharp to those few souls who stagger by, daring them to believe that you are not, in fact, more frightening than they are.
— Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
I love to chase my shadow to feel how it rests in the dark.
— Munia Khan
We enjoy the night, the darkness, where we can do things that aren't acceptable in the light. Night is when we slake our thirst.
— William Hill
Sometimes it takes a walk through the darkness
—  to totally appreciate the light
There must be darkness to see the stars.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
You have not realized yet that both of you are mine, have you?
— D.S. Wrights, The Beast and Me
His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.
— Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
How can you fall in love at first sight when you can't even see?
— Melinda Cross
From the world of darkness I did loose demons and devils in the power of scorpions to torment.
— Charles Manson
Of course there always will be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. Sometimes it seems like a cat, the panther with its moon mad gait or a tiger with stripes of ash and eyes as wild as winter oceans. Sometimes it's the curve of a wrist or what's left of romance, still hiding in the drawer of some long lost nightstand or carefully drawn in the margins of an old discarded calendar. Sometimes it's even just a vapor trail speeding west, prophetic, over clouds aglow with dangerous light. Of course these are only images, my images, and in the end they're born out of something much more akin to a Voice, which though invisible to the eye and frequently unheard by even the ear still continues, day and night, year after year, to sweep through us all.
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Even the brightest magnesium flare can do little against such dark except blind the eyes of the one holding it. Thus one craves what by seeing one has in fact not seen.
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Poor sleepers should endeavor to compose themselves. Tampering with empty space, stirring up echoes in pitch-black pits of darkness is scarcely sedative.("Out Of The Deep")
— Walter de la Mare, Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall. The girl's face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact. She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
...somewhere, on some subterranean level, her darkness and his may have connected.
— Haruki Murakami
Life brings darkness so many times, and we feel down in this phase of darkness. But the true value of darkness only realizes when we face the darkness, until we look some sunshine within the darkness.
— John Magoss
The reason why darkness terrifying for us, he reflected, is that there remains in us the instinctive fear the primitive man had when there was as yet no light.
— Shūsaku Endō, Silence
We always protect our heads, our faces,' he commented as he followed a half-step behind and to her left. It's pure instinct; to shield the eyes. The irony is that the blind have no eyes to protect, and suffer most of their injuries on their legs. But instinct can be blind, too.
— Melinda Cross