Cop Out Quotes

Whiskey, glass, pour, toss back, glare. Repeat. "Cop out," I slurred in retaliation, pointing the empty glass at Peter.
"Don't get drunk. Fuck. I need you sober," he yelled, snatching the glass out of my hand.
"There's the problem right there. You need me sober. You need my help. You need something from me." I laughed, tossing the bottle on the sofa, ignoring the glug glug glug as it emptied over my cushions. "And I just need you."
"Need me to what?" He asked with a huff, tipping the bottle right-side up.
"Nothing. I just need you," I whispered and flopped into a nearby recliner. ~ Dani Alexander

You can accomplish amazing things with this if you have a passion and you work hard - I just think it's a cop out to say 'I wasn't born with this, so it's OK if I fail'. You can make up the difference with hard work and devotion. ~ Buck Brannaman

The vast majority of you are going to close this tab without, even for a single moment, entertaining the thought of writing something.

Step outside your comfort zone and try something new. Learning the fine rationalist art of CoZE (comfort zone expansion) is a really important life skill, and putting your writing online is a low-risk way to do that. Don't try to cop out with "I don't have any stories." Baloney. Everyone has stories; write up a memory that's important to you. And don't even try to tell me, "Oh, but I don't know how to write!" Neither did I when I started; I learned by doing. So please, set the excuses aside, put something up on the web, and share it with the rest of us. When you do, drop me a PM; I'll leave you your first review, but you have to publish something first.

Well? What are you waiting for? Seriously. Go write one sentence of a new story, write now. ~ David K. Storrs

[I] learned ... that friends are a good source of food and soul when one has not yet gotten the hang of cooking or living (as opposed to dying) alone. That nothing-not booze, not love, not sex, not work, not moving from state to state-will make the past disappear. Only time and patience heal things. I learned that cutting up your arms in an attempt to make the pain move from inside to outside, from soul to skin, is futile. That death is a cop-out. I tried all of these things. ~ Marya Hornbacher

If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up psychological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair. If I were organizing in an orthodox Jewish community, I would not walk in there eating a ham sandwich unless I wanted to be rejected so I could have an excuse to cop out. ~ Saul Alinsky

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence. ~ Richard Dawkins

I find it depressing that people think you have to be on drugs to watch [my stuff], that's a cop out, use your brain, use your imagination. ~ Noel Fielding

People want a cop-out, listen I'm a realist and I talk about motivation, talk about all the things it takes to be greater or are important to win and people want to use excuses all the time. ~ Mike Ditka

It would probably be too easy a cop out to say that just Republican males hate me. Though there's a large swath of them, for sure. ~ Lena Dunham

'Pride' is my first film with a happy ending. Before, I naively thought they were a cop-out, but now I've come to believe that happy endings and wish fulfilment are an incredibly important part of our cultural life. ~ Joe Wright

I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out, I know. I don't really want to be reincarnated. ~ Rod Serling

I'm just a journalist. I shine a mirror to the culture. I give the cop-out answer. ~ Mark Leibovich

I hope to do multiple characters throughout my life that are separate from me. I think it's a cop-out if you play yourself in everything. ~ Kat Graham

Are there any alternatives? Well, there is the hypothesis that this universe is not unique, but that all possible universes exist, and we find ourselves, not surprisingly, in one that contains life. But that is a cop-out, which dispenses with the attempt to explain anything. And without the hypothesis of multiple universes, the observation that if life hadn't come into existence we wouldn't be here has no significance. One doesn't show that something doesn't require explanation by pointing out that it is a condition of one's existence. If I ask for an explanation of the fact that the air pressure in the transcontinental jet is close to that at sea level, it is no answer to point out that if it weren't, I'd be dead. ~ Thomas Nagel

Let the hard things in life break you. Let them effect you. Let them change you. Let these hard moments inform you. Let this pain be your teacher. The experiences of your life are trying to tell you something about yourself. Don't cop out on that. Don't run away and hide under your covers. Lean into it. ~ Pema Chodron

In his book Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces, Jon Pahl argues that the consumer aspect of American Christianity is a kind of a feel-good cop-out of deeper truths. But for those who have been hurt by the church, who have been told their bodies are unacceptable in the eyes of God, or have witnessed other's pain perpetuated by religion, it is nothing of the sort. It's actually freedom. And it's freedom that has been sought and found by religious outsiders for millennia. The saints we revere like Joan of Arc and St. Francis of Assisi, were difficult nomadic outsiders who created their own religious spaces when none could be found for them. Even the model of Jesus, walking smelly and dirty in the desert with his band of fishermen, all men, was a rogue, cast out by the religious authorities. But these thoughts can be cold comfort when you are the one deemed unacceptable, deemed sinful by the very community that by its very precepts ought to love you. ~ Lyz Lenz

I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried - who tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out. ~ Paul Newman

It might have felt easier if she'd been able to say that she moved across the room to him in a trance, as if he were a vampire exerting some kind of mind control. That would have been a cop-out, though. Not to mention a lie. She was exquisitely aware of every movement she made as she uncurled her legs, rose from her chair and walked slowly and carefully around the end of the coffee table towards him. She felt the wide hem of her yoga pants sway around her ankles, felt the nap of the blue-and-green area rug and then the cool smoothness of the wooden floorboards beneath her feet. She felt the way the thick sofa cushions gave beneath her as she sat beside him and the pull of gravity when his heavier weight made a deeper depression that her body rolled naturally into ... And then she felt everything. ~ Christine Warren

Mrs. Todds my English teacher gives an automatic F if anyone ever writes "I woke up and it was all a dream" at the end of a story. She says it violates the deal between reader and writer, that it's a cop-out, it's the Boy Who Cried Wolf. But every single morning we really do wake up and it really was all a dream. ~ David Mitchell

I don't believe in depression. There's no such thing. It's an invention. It's bullshit, it's a cop out. ~ John Waters

Religion, by its very nature as an untestable belief in undetectable beings and an unknowable afterlife, disables our reality checks. It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry. Because God's law trumps human law, people who think they're obeying God can easily get cut off from their own moral instincts.
And these moral contortions don't always lie in the realm of theological game-playing. They can have real-world consequences: from genocide to infanticide, from honor killings to abandoned gay children, from burned witches to battered wives to blown-up buildings. ~ Greta Christina

My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself. The benefits of her choices are massive-a long, stable marriage to a man she still calls her best friend; a family that has extended now into grandchildren who adore her; a certainty in her own strength. Maybe some things were sacrificed, and my dad made his sacrifices, too-but who amongst us lives without sacrifice? ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I'll buy metaphor, but simile's a cop-out used by scaredycats who won't commit to anything. Simile's for cowards. ~ Alan Garner

A great deal of effort has been devoted to explaining Babel. Not the Babel event
-- which most people consider to be a myth -- but the fact that languages tend
to diverge. A number of linguistic theories have been developed in an effort to
tie all languages together."
"Theories Lagos tried to apply to his virus hypothesis."
"Yes. There are two schools: relativists and universalists. As George Steiner
summarizes it, relativists tend to believe that language is not the vehicle of
thought but its determining medium. It is the framework of cognition. Our
perceptions of everything are organized by the flux of sensations passing over
that framework. Hence, the study of the evolution of language is the study of
the evolution of the human mind itself."
"Okay, I can see the significance of that. What about the universalists?"
"In contrast with the relativists, who believe that languages need not have
anything in common with each other, the universalists believe that if you can
analyze languages enough, you can find that all of them have certain traits in
common. So they analyze languages, looking for such traits."
"Have they found any?"
"No. There seems to be an exception to every rule."
"Which blows universalism out of the water."
"Not necessarily. They explain this problem by saying that the shared traits
are too deeply buried to be analyzable."
"Which is a cop out."
"Their ~ Neal Stephenson

I turned my back to her. I felt a slight burning on the back of my neck.

"Listen to me," I went on. "I never was much for fucking around, I never got much out of it. I know that everybody else does it; but it's no fun if you just do like everybody else. To tell you the truth, it bores me, It does you good to live according to your ideas, to not betray yourself, not cop out at the last minute just because some girl has a nice ass, or someone offers you a huge check, or because the path of least resistance runs by your front door. It does you good to hang tough. It's good for the soul."

I turned around to tell her the Big Secret; "Over Dispersal, I choose Concentration. I have one life - the only thing I'm interested in is making it shine. ~ Philippe Djian

Bisexuality is not so much a cop-out as a fearful compromise. ~ Jill Johnston

I hate that," I said. "It's like there's no human beings in the chain of responsibility, just things-that-happen. It's the ultimate cop-out. The system did it. The company did it. The government did it. What about the person who pulls the trigger? ~ Cory Doctorow

They did the best they could with the knowledge they had." How the fuck did people know that? They didn't have no way of knowing that. Even if they did the best they could with the knowledge they had, why the hell didn't they have better knowledge? I mean, then nobody should ever fail an exam because everyone who Wright's an exam is doing the best they can with the knowledge they have. If I don't study for geography exam then I flunk out. Can I then say wait, just like the people who get a "A" I was doing the best I could with the knowledge I had. That's not an excuse for a 6 year old with a goddamn spelling B. How the hell is it an excuse for parents in full control of a developing human mind?

If you don't study for the exam you fucking fail and if you don't study for parenting you fucking fail. You don't get to say that you did the best you could with the knowledge you had. Fuck that. That's a bullshit cop-out. You goddamn will study. It's a little more important raising a child than passing a spelling B when you're 6 goddamn years old. You goddamn will study and if you don't study youre more culpable. ~ Stefan Molyneux

Succeeding in business and failing at home is a cop-out. For no success in the workplace will ever make up for failure at home. ~ Howard G. Hendricks

I can't imagine it. It doesn't feel like a believable future. Which feels like a cop-out. Because who wants to end up with a future that was always believable? ~ David Levithan

That's got to be a ten blowjob movie, at least. ~ K.C. Burn

Karma is not a cop-out. The esoteric meaning of karma is that you are who you are, because of what you have done and who you have been. ~ Frederick Lenz

But here I am at this moment, a thirty-four-year-old geek, and against my will and against my reason (although, okay, not against my character), I still want that fucking Cinderella story for myself.
More than an amazing, no-one-else-on-the-planet-knows-this secret.
More than anything else.
I want that happily-ever-after ending I imagined, as a teen, I'd get someday. That daydream I held on to as my prize for surviving those sucky years of adolescence.
Dammit, I deserve that ending.
It's just that, if I'm truly honest with myself, I can no longer tell if it's Sam, specifically, I want or if it's the nearly two-decade-old fantasy featuring him as the heroic lead.
So, at the last second, I cop out. ~ Marilyn Brant

Setting goals that have already been achieved is a cop-out. ~ Gerry Lindgren

I don't know if I am cut out to playing a bad character or not - I really should give it a shot. I would like to play the voice of a baddie, but that's really just a cop-out! ~ Lindsay Lohan

Being judgmental about your own behavior is actually another cop-out because it makes you feel as though you're doing something virtuous. ~ Barbara Sher

A misconception that really pisses me off is that therapy is a hippy-dippy cop out for those who are too weak to deal with their problems. [...] It takes enormous amounts of mental effort to arrive at a place where you can ask for help, and even more to believe your problems are valid and warrant being taken seriously by a third party. ~ Ruby Elliot

No, it was too much. The line between madness and masochism was already hazy; the time had come to pull back ... to retire, hunker down, back off and "cop out," as it were. Why not? in every gig like this, there comes a time to either cut your losses or consolidate your winnings - whichever fits. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I know a lot of actors talk about the importance of wardrobe, and it always seems like it's kind of a cop-out, maybe, because it seems like a minor detail to some people. But I think it's hugely important. ~ Anna Faris

It would be nice to report she lived happily ever after till the end of her days. But such cheap, cop-out one-liners belong to other uncomplicated fairy tales. ~ Jennifer Silverwood

I just think it's a cop out, going into rehab and walking out and saying 'Ah, I've been to rehab. ~ Tony Iommi

Yet early on in the marriage I found myself
despite all my self-promises
drifting into the role of wife: focusing on the renovations of the apartment, doing silly little domestic things instead of writing, using the wife role as cop-out from my work, my work which had always involved me in so much controversy and which some part of me longed to retreat from ... Even when I was forty-seven, full of my own power, my own identity, something in me wanted to escape from the fray and dwindle into a wife. It seemed to comfy, so safe. ~ Erica Jong

I'm a bitch because I can't be bothered trying anymore. Not when my efforts are rewarded with being treated like trash. Someone to be used, fucked and tossed out the morning after. My entire attitude might be seen as a cop-out, but I was so fucking tired of clawing my way out of the shit pile. People get to a point where they can't take anymore. Hope, faith and all that ... I've learnt the hard way just to let it go. Some people don't get their happy ending, no matter how deserving they are or aren't. Real life's a bitch and so am I. ~ Anonymous

I hate when a movie just sort of ends and is so open-ended you feel like it wasn't finished. I appreciate leaving things up to the interpretation of the audience and letting them make decisions about where things will go in the future - but the director has to make a decision; otherwise it is sort of a cop-out. ~ Zach Gilford

It always bothers me to see people writing RIP when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop out. To me, RIP is the microwave dinner of posthumous honours. ~ Lou Reed

People always say that you can't please everybody. I think that's a cop-out. Why not attempt it? 'Cause think of all the people you will please if you try. ~ Kanye West

[P]ower, terrible, unprecedented power, and with it came the unavoidable choice that had faced every power-junkie since time began: to have the sheer gall to fake being something greater than a man, or cop-out on the millions who had poured a part of themselves into your image and be something less. ~ Norman Spinrad

Saying something is "meant to be" is a cop out. It's a way for people to deal when they screw up or when life hands them a bowl of shit stew. The things that are meant to be are the things we can't control, the things we don't cause, the things that happen regardless of who or what we are. Like sunsets and snow-fall and natural disasters. I've never believed hardship or suffering was meant to be. I've never believed relationships were meant to be. We choose. In large part, we choose. We create, we make mistakes, we burn bridges, we build new ones. ~ Amy Harmon

Silly cop, I don't need your help; I have a werewolf on retainer. ~ Kevin Hearne

You know that look a cop gives you when he's so confused that he doesn't even know how to respond? If you don't know that look, it means you haven't had enough fun in your life. ~ Tucker Max

You got a cop under five feet tall, what if he's gotta plant evidence on a high shelf? What then? What if he's gotta chase a suspect onto a ride at Disneyland? ~ Greg Giraldo

The Nixon administration kept a nasty eye on our show ... Cops would come by - often just in time to see the act they wanted to see. ~ Dick Cavett

No cop was ever born who isn't a sucker for a finely-executed hi-speed Controlled Drift all the way around one of those clover-leaf freeway interchanges. Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side when he sees the big red light behind him ... and then we will start apologizing begging for mercy. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop-heart. The thing to dowhen you're running along about a hundred or so and you suddenly find a red-flashing CHP-tracker on your trail what you want to do then is accelerate. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

A good cop, a smart cop, closes cases and locks up the bad guys. ~ J.D. Robb

Once I became a cop and it's like when I got back into drumming; if I focus on something I become that, so I became a cop. ~ Eric Hernandez

The other day my twelve-year-old says to me, I don't feel like I'm with you right now. You're in the car with me, you're checking your e-mail, you're not listening to me, I don't feel like I'm with you. And I say, You know what? That was your mother's gripe, too. And she was right. And you're also correct. When you cop to something, you get to the next level. In this case, the next level is: I just learned something from my twelve-year-old. ~ Bob Saget

I've never been arrested. I've been stopped, searched and had a gun put to my head by the Chicago cops. ~ Tim Meadows

People don't know where to place me. Terry Gilliam used me as a quirky cop in 'Twelve Monkeys', and then he hired me again to be an effeminate hotel clerk in 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. Another time, I was shooting this indie film 'The Souler Opposite' and six days a week, I'm playing this big puppy dog, then I come to the 'NYPD Blue' set and become this scumbag. ~ Christopher Meloni

The secret to writing is just to write. Write every day. Never stop writing. Write on every surface you see; write on people on the street. When the cops come to arrest you, write on the cops. Write on the police car. Write on the judge. I'm in jail forever now, and the prison cell walls are completely covered with my writing, and I keep writing on the writing I wrote. That's my method. ~ Neil Gaiman

Bosch had no answer for that. But he was now coming to a full understanding of what Gilmore was doing. It was important for him and the department to conclude and be able to announce that Brasher was shot during a struggle for control of her gun. It was heroic that way. And it was something the department public relations machine could take advantage of and run with. There was nothing like the shooting of a good cop - a female rookie, no less - in the line of duty to help remind the public of all that was good and noble about their police department and all that was dangerous about the police officer's duty. ~ Anonymous

There's a really classic cliche every time you switch the TV on - you see cops arguing. I have spent a day a week for many years in the presence of police and I have never seen them argue. It's a military hierarchy. They do what they're told. There's no bickering. ~ Peter James

I fought hard for such a framing at the Conference of the Parties 6 in The Hague in 2000, but was opposed not by the usual suspects - industrial interests and OPEC - but rather by those who were more "green" - World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, and European Green Party delegates. I was dumbfounded. Why didn't they want to support a plan to both keep carbon in the forests and get a double bonus of biodiversity protection? The debates were heated. I thought the argument against it - no baseline for additionality - was legitimate, but not an insurmountable obstacle. Baselines are negotiable, and protecting primary forests should at least have been on the agenda. The passion of the opponents seemed totally misplaced. One evening during COP 6, I went to the environment NGOs' tent for a reception. In this more informal setting, ~ Stephen H. Schneider

Long. Not interesting. Coffee?" "No thanks. I'm trying to cut back." "I thought coffee was a prerequisite for being a cop." "That's donuts. What do lawyers eat?" "Each other. ~ Robert Dugoni

I've always been, in games, the bad guy. If there was ever cops and robbers I was always a robber. ~ Jake M. Johnson

Eve: What is it about asking you Catholic questions that gets you all jumpy?
Roarke: You'd be jumpy, too, if I asked you things that make you feel the hot breath of hell at your back.
Eve: You're not going to hell.
Roarke: Oh, and have you got some inside intel on that?
Eve: You married a cop ... you married me. I'm your goddamn salvation. ~ J.D. Robb

I just want to spend the rest of today and tonight with the only girl who makes my heart race."
And that was exactly what Trinity did. She calmed me and excited me all at once. I was a tattooed, buzzed haircut, cop who gave off a badass cocky feel, but inside, this woman made me feel like a lost boy seeking the security only she could give. It was still so unbelievable how one smile or a simple touch from her could make me feel whole.
"Yes," she whispered. "You should definitely spend the night with me."
She tossed me a mischievous smile and I couldn't help but feel relief that my fiery girl had returned. ~ C.A. Harms

Dont shave,I like it..It helps with one of my new fantasies."
"Yeah ?"Zack shifted a little to the center on top of him for maximum pleasure."What new fantasy is that ?"
Lucy grinned,the sleepiness in her smile melting into guile."The one about the innocent schoolteacher and the vicious,uncivilized cop.Want to play ?"
"Sure."Zack ran his hands up her back."Who do you want to be ?"
"I,of course will be the innocent schoolteacher"Lucy batted her eyes at him.
"Which makes me the cop.All right you have the right to remain naked."
Lucy laughed. ~ Jennifer Crusie

There is a cop who is both prowler and father:
he comes from your block, grew up with your brothers,
had certain ideals. ~ Adrienne Rich

He crossed his arms stiffly over his chest. "Oh yeah," he said, with a pleased nod. "Bad cop is ready."

-Oscar ~ Marissa Meyer

1) Never trust a cop in a raincoat.
2) Beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway.
3) If asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will never ask you again.
4) Never give your real name.
5) If ever asked to look at yourself, don't look.
6) Never do anything the person standing in front of you can't understand.
7) Never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I always thought that the badge a cop has was more like the shield that Captain America has. It's an obvious sign of good and something you'll protect other people with, but it will also protect you. ~ Judd Nelson

It's like they want to shut rappers down. They want to silence us. The Supreme Court says it's OK for a white man to burn a cross in public. But nobody wants a black man to write a record about a cop killer. ~ Ice-T

I am very gender fluid and feel more like I wake up every day sort of gender neutral. I cop a fair bit of flack for going from 'such a babe to such a boy.' ~ Ruby Rose

It dawned on him that he really could be a cop if he wanted to, and it dawned on him that he'd had this revelation while eating a donut, and it that wasn't a sign, he didn't know what was. ~ Doug Dorst

It's funny, I was talking to somebody who writes for a cop show, and he was saying how they aren't allowed to acknowledge Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, just because it has to be able to play forever. ~ Hannah Simone

Now scarcely a week goes by without a news story about the cops swooping down on some adolescent prowler who is as skilled at breaking into computer systems as defense contractors are at breaking into the Federal budget. ~ Russell Baker

You remember Donnie Brasco? It's the most notorious undercover movie ever; it's so street and so real. If you ever imagined yourself doing cop work, you imagined yourself getting pushed to that limit - seeing the furthest you can push yourself while still upholding the law. ~ Manny Montana

Killing a cop just because he's a cop, that'll happen. And that should happen. And there's nothing inhuman about it at all. It's survival. It's the most human thing in the world. ~ Bernardine Dohrn

If you want to be a cop, it's not for everybody, no question about it, but there's no place like New York City. ~ Raymond Kelly

He didn't say
he was a lawyer...
I said he was."

And the cop says
"Uh… ~ Hosho McCreesh

He could think only of the girl and the child. He was certain she had been ready to change her mind, had needed only the command, I, a priest of God, adjure thee, and the grace to hear it - if only they had not forced him to stop where she could witness "God's priest" summarily overruled by "Caesar's traffic cop." Never to him had Christ's Kingship seemed more distant. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

Yes, it leads people to believe that they have more information than our cops, but then, at some point, before you know it, you're both caught up. Everybody, when they're watching the who-dun-it shows, is making guesses in the first five minutes anyway. We just kind of give them what they want. ~ Kristin Lehman