Hogwash Quotes

Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I used to have a lot of superstitions, and then I realized that it was kind of hogwash. Once I let go of them, I relaxed a lot. ~ Amy Adams

What a gulf between impression and expression! That's our ironic fate - to have Shakespearean feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to be Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors. We practice alchemy in reverse - touch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash. ~ Aldous Huxley

Didn't know why I was holding my breath because I knew that the old saying of how you could hold your breath and nothing would sting you was pure hogwash. I had tried that before and it hadn't worked at all. Rowdy would have absolutely nothing to do with anything that ~ Wilson Rawls

When people are kids their parents teach them all sorts of stuff, some of it true and useful, some of it absurd hogwash (example of former: don't crap your pants; example of latter: Columbus discovered America). This is why puberty happens. The purpose of puberty is to shoot an innocent and gullible child full of nasty glandular secretions that manifest in the mind as confusion, in the innards as horniness, upon the skin as pimples, and on the tongue as cocksure venomous disbelief in every piece of information, true or false, gleaned from one's parents since infancy. The net result is a few years of familial hell culminating in the child's exodus from the parental nest, sooner or later followed by a peace treaty and the emergence of the postpubescent as an autonomous, free-thinking human being who knows that Columbus only trespassed on an island inhabited by our lost and distant Indian relatives, but who also knows not to crap his pants. ~ David James Duncan

You just keep feeding hogwash to people, and pretty soon they'll eat it. ~ Holly Near

Music is a good thing; and after all that soul-butter and hogwash, I never see it freshen up things so, and sound so honest and bully. ~ Mark Twain

The Black Hole?" Grey asked, incredulously. "Nobody quotes The Black Hole, Dresden. Nobody even remembers that one." "Hogwash. Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Perkins, and Roddy McDowall all in the same movie? Immortality. ~ Jim Butcher

I have no interest in Shakespeare and all that British nonsense ... I just wanted to get famous and all the rest is hogwash. ~ Anthony Hopkins

There's many women now who think, 'Surely we don't need feminism anymore, we're all liberated and society's accepting us as we are'. Which is just hogwash. It's not true at all. ~ Yoko Ono

By now you've probably noticed that except when safely contained by quotes, Zampanò always steers clear of such questionable four-letter language. This instance in particular proves that beneath all that cool psuedo-academic hogwash lurked a very passionate man who knew how important it was to say "fuck" now and then, and say it loud too, relish its syllabic sweetness, its immigrant pride, a great American epic word really, starting at the lower lip, often the very front of the lower lip, before racing all the way to the back of the throat, where it finishes with a great blast, the concussive force of the K catching up then with the hush of the F already on its way, thus loading it with plenty of offense and edge and certainly ambiguity. FUCK. A great by-the-bootstrap prayer or curse if you prefer, depending on how you look at it, or use it, suited perfectly for hurling at the skies or at the world, or sometimes, if said just right, for uttering with enough love and fire, the woman beside you melts inside herself, immersed in all that word-heat. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

His claim to Mars is lawyers' hogwash; as a lawyer myself I need not respect it. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Or maybe he means in a richer world the begging population is melting away. But no to that too. So maybe, perhaps, he means there aren't many 'human beings' left to look, see, and understand well enough for one to ask and one to give. Everyone busy, running, jumping, there's no time to study one another. But I guess that's bilge and hogwash, slop and sentiment. ~ Ray Bradbury

Inspiration is hogwash. My work comes directly out of my loves and hates. Muses don't whisper in my ear, and ideas don't flow over my body like a cool rain. ~ James Victore

Basically, I've reached the point where I've lost any direct relationship to any of the editors I used to have. I suspect I'll have to pay to publish this myself, and I think a lot about about putting out fifty copies. I used to think about hogwash like my legacy and silly things like that. But I feel like if I never have another book out, I've done okay, I've had like twelve or thirteen little books, and I won't be upset about this on my death bed. ~ Richard Meltzer

If the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don't read that hogwash, but rather leave it for the reptile from whom it has been fabricated. ~ Albert Einstein

Hogwash. You're just running because you're scared, because you're beginning to like it here." She swung at him, but he blocked her hand. She swung again, and he caught her wrist. "Finally I have your full attention!" He let her twist free. "At least you're looking at me instead of through me." Angel spun away and marched across the yard. She went into the cabin and slammed the door. Michael expected to see something come crashing through the window, but nothing did. ~ Francine Rivers

Knew you the second you set foot on my property, kid. Even as young as you were, how could I not? Folks want to blame someone for gals like us. "Her daddy was unkind" or "some fella broke her heart" … Hogwash. You and me've always been like this. Always a little removed. Always… dreaming.
Of higher, further, faster… more. Always more. We came into this world spittin' mad, runnin' full bore… To or from what, I ain't never been able to tell. Over the years, I've come to think of these particular traits as the shared attributes of a chosen people… the Lord put us here to punch holes in the sky.
And when the soul is born with that kind of purpose… It'll damn sure find a way. We're gonna get where we're going, you and me. Death and indignity be damned… we'll get there…
…And we will be the stars we were always meant to be. ~ Kelly Sue DeConnick

At least Lars was curious about the appeal of jazz to black folk; for most observers, such ponderation is akin to contemplating why gorillas like bananas. The attractiveness of jazz to the nonblack is well documented in publicly funded documentaries where experts speak of jazz in the past tense. They look authoritatively into the camera and ingratiate themselves with the Man by saying things like, "White people were hearing something in jazz that says something deeply about their experience. I'm not sure that it would have been this way if we were not a country of immigrants ... so many people felt kind of displaced ... I think that was part of its amazing appeal, was how it spoke to feeling out of sort and out of joint and maladjusted."
What hogwash. Does my fondness for classical music make me well adjusted? Besides, people who are really fucked up don't turn to jazz; they turn to heroin, opium, whiskey, and Vonnegut. ~ Paul Beatty

Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash. ~ Leo Burnett

The other scary beauty of life, which I probably should have expected to discover in all of this, was how heightened circumstances, such as overlapping tragedy and success, sharpen your vision and shorten your patience for baloney and hogwash. ~ Tig Notaro

My rich Diana. Fly me to the moon with you. Dance among the stars.
Treacle. Romantic hogwash. Derivative. Unworthy.
My rich Diana. I hate you, hate you, hate you. Hate you, hate.
"Do it," he said. ~ Dean Koontz

You can speak with a twang and still not say a thang. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If that ain't the biggest bucket of hogwash, I don't know what is," he antagonized. "Hell, more'n likely, after she rode that damn horse to the ground, you jumped into her saddle for a long, hard ride. ~ Charlotte McPherren

That's the rankest psychologism, and was conclusively revealed as hogwash by Gottlob Frege in the 1890s! ~ Sheldon Cooper

Some critics argue that a tsunami of hogwash has already rendered the Web useless. I disagree. We are indeed inundated by online noise pollution, but the problem is soluble. ~ Howard Rheingold

God is Dipa's alibi. Why can't criminals be frank about what they're up to? All this disgusting idealistic hogwash - it makes one vomit. ~ Aldous Huxley

In the name of feminism, we denied some essential aspects of our authentic selves. While feminism should have been nothing if not a celebration of our own unique characteristics, we insisted that we had no unique characteristics ... that gender differences were hogwash, and a feminine woman was nothing more than a plaything for men. ~ Marianne Williamson

The importance of English word order is also the reason that the idea that you can't end a sentence with a preposition is utter hogwash. In fact, it would be utter hogwash anyway, and anyone who claims that you can't end a sentence with up, should be told to shut. It is, as Shakespeare put it, such stuff as dreams are made on, but it's one of those silly English beliefs that flesh is heir to. ~ Mark Forsyth

Jesus shouldn't have died so early and then he could have got twice as much across. They killed him and then twisted so many of the best things he said. Human hands started messing it all up and now so much of religion is hogwash. ~ Jimi Hendrix

Phoebe stared up at Mr. Ravenel with narrowed eyes. He was standing too close to her, his head and shoulders blocking the sunlight. "You should know that looming over me like that doesn't intimidate me," she said curtly. "I grew up with two very large brothers."
He relaxed his posture instantly, hooking his thumbs in his trouser pockets. "I'm not trying to intimidate you. I'm taller. I can't help that."
Hogwash, Phoebe thought. He knew quite well he'd been standing over her. But she was secretly amused by the sight of him trying so hard not to appear overbearing. "Don't think I couldn't cut you down to size," she warned.
He gave her an innocent glance. "Just as long as you do it by hand."
The smart-aleck remark surprised a laugh from her. Insolent rascal.
West Ravenel smiled slightly, his gaze holding hers, and for a moment her throat tinged sweetly at the back, as if she'd just swallowed a spoonful of cool honey. ~ Lisa Kleypas

They taught him how to milk cows and now they expected him to tame lions. Perhaps they expected him to behave like all good lion tamers. Use a whip and a chair. But what happens to the best lion tamer when he puts down his whip and his chair.
Goddamnit! It was wrong. He felt cheated, he felt almost violated. He felt cheated for himself, and he felt cheated for guys like Joshua Edwards who wanted to teach and who didn't know how to teach because he'd been pumped full of manure and theoretical hogwash. Why hadn't anyone told them, in plain, frank English, just what to do? Couldn't someone, somewhere along the line, have told them? Not one single college instructor? Not someone from the board of Ed, someone to orientate them after they'd passed the emergency exam? Not anyone? Now one sonofabitch somewhere who gave a good goddamn? Not even Stanley? Not even Small? Did they have to figure it out for themselves, sink and swim, kill or be killed?
Rick had never been told how to stop in his class. He'd never been told what to do with a second term student who doesn't even know how to write down his own goddamn name on a sheet of paper. He didn't know, he'd never been advised on the proper tactics for dealing with a boy whose I.Q. was 66, a big, fat, round, moronic 66. He hadn't been taught about kids' yelling out in class, not one kid, not the occasional "difficult child" the ed courses had loftily philosophized about, not him. But a whole goddamn, shouting, screaming class ~ Evan Hunter