Horrid Quotes

No matter how horrid a person may appear on the surface, if you dig deeper, you will find some nice, unexpected little quality. ~ Brooke Astor

They say there should be no crying out. They say what they had closed should not have been reopened. They say that's why they locked you up.
They're right. I'm going to die of these words. I'm going to die of being closed in. I don't want to. It's too late. There should be no consent. But I'm not the one. I'm not the one who cries out. I'm not the one who writes. I'm another woman. She lives in my body. She doesn't have my horrid severed fingers. She loves the fields and the rivers. She loves the baskets and the cherries. She loves them so much that she wants to join them, be one with them. Her name is eternity. She's called memory. She's called death. She pursues me. She clings to me. She talks to me of former times. She talks to me of before. She settles down in me. She grows there. She invades my flesh. She takes my life. ~ Jeanne Hyvrard

Really, this horrid House of Commons quite ruins our husbands for us. I think the Lower House by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that there has been since that terrible thing called the Higher Education of Women was invented. ~ Oscar Wilde

Broken Melody

Broken melody - tear sparkling in the eye
Of a woman loved…
Please past,
Jewel lost,
A trampled dream
Lips unkissed
In the broken melody.

With silent sobs the naked shoulders shake,
Their whiteness dazzling…
Stabbed, stabbed with remorse
For the moments of mindlessness,
For her ruined fate,
For the happiness lost
In the broken melody.

Face hidden in her hands in shame,
Remorsefully the woman weeps,
With heart despairing
(A broken guitar,
A voice stifled
On lips kissed by pain
In the broken melody).
Silent he stands beside the woman weeping

Scolding tears of shame
That dim her eyes.
Some money on the table quickly lays
And goes away,
Leaving the woman lost
In the broken melody.
But when another comes, lust mounts again,

The heated blood
Pounds furiously through the veins,
Benumbing mind
… and only gasps
And grants are heard
In the horrid melody.

(Translated by R.Elsie) ~ Millosh Gjergj Nikolla (Migjeni)

I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't. ~ Dylan Thomas

How sweet and soothing is this hour of calm! I thank thee, night! for thou has chased away these horrid bodements which, amidst the throng, I could not dissipate; and with the blessing of thy benign and quiet influence now will I to my couch, although to rest is almost wronging such a night as this. ~ Lord Byron

But like all things, the business has two sides. Clean white teeth are not always wise, now are they? Par exemplum: when I was in the Congo, the only way I could identify the nigger was by the whiteness of his teeth, if you see what I mean. Horrid business. Dark as buggery, it was. And they died because of it, you see? Poor bastards. Or rather I survived, to look at it in another way, do you see? ~ Zadie Smith

The souls you have got cast upon the screen of publicity appear like the horrid and writhing creatures enlarged from the insect world, and revealed to us by the cinematograph. ~ James Larkin

One day I was particularly gloomy, and Jim asked me what the matter was. I told him my high school girlfriend (for all of two weeks) had broken up with me. He said, "Oh, that'll happen a lot." The knowledge that this horrid grief was simply a part of life's routine cheered me up almost instantly. ~ Steve Martin

The night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean; my feelings became calmer, if it may be called calmness when the violence of rage sinks into the depths of despair. I left the house, the horrid scene of the last night's contention, and walked on the beach of the sea, which I almost regarded as an insuperable barrier between me and my fellow creatures. ~ Mary Shelley

I know I hated magic for a reason," Janco said. "Congratulations. This is the first time you've had a VALID reason to hate something," Ari countered. "Remember your campaign against sand?"
"Sand! Horrid little stuff. Gets everywhere. I had a perfectly good argue
"
"Janco." Ari's voice rumbled deep in his throat.
In a heartbeat, Janco switched gears. "Well, this blood magic sounds worse than sand. ~ Maria V. Snyder

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman
Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it. ~ Julian Fellowes

I didn't sleep with Brodick," she blurted out. "I have no need for a priest."
"Yes, you did too."
"Alec, it isn't polite to contradict your elders."
"But, Mama ... "
"Hush, sweetheart."
Gillian glared at Brodick. He could easily correct this horrid misunderstanding if he would only offer a quick explanation.
He wasn't inclined. He winked at her. "I didn't know a face could get that red," he remarked.
"Do explain," she demanded.
"Explain what?" he asked, feigning innocence.
She turned to Judith. "We were camping ... and it isn't what it sounds like ... I did sleep, and when I awakened ... they were all there ... "
"They?" Iain asked.
"His soldiers."
"You slept with his soldiers too? ~ Julie Garwood

As he dropped the last grisly fragment of the dismembered and mutilated body into the small vat of nitric acid that was to devour every trace of the horrid evidence which might easily send him to the gallows, the man sank weakly into a chair and throwing his body forward upon his great, teak desk buried his face in his arms, breaking into dry, moaning sobs. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

An eye-jangling assortment of spurious clan tartans, adorning every conceivable object made of fabric, from caps, neckties, and serviettes down to a particularly horrid yellow "Buchanan" sett used to make men's nylon Y-front underpants. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret. ~ Mary McCarthy

Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation. And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history-the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can't seem to keep in our collective memory. ~ Hilaire Belloc

But if there be an hereafter,And that there is, conscience, uninfluenc'dAnd suffer'd to speak out, tells every man,Then must it be an awful thing to die;More horrid yet to die by one's own hand. ~ Robert Blair

It was like staring into the face of a familiar stranger. You know, that person you see in a crowd and swear you know, but you really don't? Now she was me - the familiar stranger.

She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hair - long and straight and almost as dark as my grandma's had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth - more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But my face had never been that pale. I'd always been olive-ish, much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasn't that my skin was suddenly so white ... maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent lighting. I hoped it was the lighting.

I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness ... as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger ... more barbaric.

From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a moment - just an instant - I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother's people rejoiced. ~ P.C. Cast

Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you - well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself an exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. ~ Oscar Wilde

Throats in a dreadful silence. The infection will spread outward from that point. Old ladies will crack skulls with their deadly handbags. Cars will plunge down the crowded sidewalks. Drivers will be torn out of their cars and stomped. It will spread to all the huge cities of the world, and by dawn of the next day there will be a horrid silence of sprawled bodies and tumbled vehicles, gutted buildings and a few wisps of smoke. And through that silence will prowl a few, a very few of the most powerful ones, ragged and bloody, slowly tracking each other down. ~ John D. MacDonald

I'm the living dead. I feel no connection to any other human. I have no friends and I don't really care much about my family any longer. I feel no love for them.

I can feel no joy. I'm incapable of feeling physical pleasure. There's nothing to ever look forward to as a result. I don't miss anyone or anything. I eat because I feel hunger pangs, but no food tastes like anything I like.

I wear a mask when I'm with other people but it's been slipping lately. I can't find the energy to hide the heavy weight of survival and its effect on me. I'm exhausted all the time from the effort of just making it through the day.

This depression has made a mockery of my memory. It's in tatters. I have no good memories to sustain me. My past is gone. My present is horrid. My future looks like more of the same. In a way, I'm a man without time. Certainly, there's no meaning in my life. What meaning can there be without even a millisecond of joy? Ah, scratch that. Let's even put aside joy and shoot for lower. How about a moment of being content? Nope. Not a chance.

I see other people, normal people, who can enjoy themselves. I hear people laughing at something on TV. It makes me cock my head and wonder what that's like. I'm sure at sometime in my past, I had to have had a wonderful belly laugh. I must have laughed so hard once or twice that my face hurt. Those memories are gone though. Now, the whole concept of "funny" is dead. I stopped going to movies ~ Ahmed Abdelazeem

How silly of you to think I, of all people, would do such a horrid thing! ~ Diana Nguyen

There's a great power of imagination about these little creatures, and a creative fancy and belief that is very curious to watch ... I am sure that horrid matter-of-fact child-rearers ... do away with the child's most beautiful privilege. I am determined that Anny shall have a very extensive and instructive store of learning in Tom Thumbs, Jack-the-Giant-Killers, etc. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

I suppose the whole horrid affair began with my aunt. Horrid affairs, in my experience, often do begin with aunts. They are a familial office that should, in my opinion, be kept in check - either through some stern law or a series of robust magic spells. ~ Kyle Robert Shultz

I find a preacher of the Gospel profaning the beautiful and prophetic ejaculation, commonly called "Nunc dimittis," made on the first presentation of our Saviour in the temple, and applying it, with an inhuman and unnatural rapture, to the most horrid, atrocious, and afflicting spectacle that perhaps ever was exhibited to the pity and indignation of mankind. This "leading in triumph," a thing in its best form unmanly and irreligious, which fills our preacher with such unhallowed transports, must shock, I believe, the moral taste of every well-born mind. Several English were the stupefied and indignant spectators of that triumph. It was (unless we have been strangely deceived) a spectacle more resembling a procession of American savages entering into Onondaga after some of their murders called victories, ~ Edmund Burke

The scene was horrid, yet it had the purity of a stanza from a ballad come to life, a ballad composed about tragic events in some border hell. ~ Lucius Shepard

we were struck down as one by a virus of most vile design, whether it is natural or manmade, we do not know. In the beginning it did not take our lives firsthand, but in the darkness of women's bodies, it did its horrid work. It undermined the very fabric of life, its effects robbing the world of procreation by burning out the possibility of female existence. ~ Joe Hart

Did all the horrid little moments where girls got treated like crap somehow create a society where the horrid big moments could happen ~ Holly Bourne

Four years ago the clocks started turning back. I open my eyes and see nothing. I feel nothing below or above me. I feel the absence of things. The absence of my flesh, my bones, my body, my mind. All that is left is awareness. I see nothing but the absence of colour. It's not a black darkness. It's simply nothing. The interior of a black hole. I recall news of a black hole lingering along the edges of our solar system. All that time ago. Four years ago. When the clocks started turning back. I hear nothing. Until there is a something. A small thing. A voice. I listen. There are more voices. The sounds are human. How long has it been since I've heard a human? The sounds scratch along my now present attention. They carve into my hearing. They are horrid, wretched things. Voices screaming. Growing loud and desperate. How many voices? Billions. This is the birth of our species. We are born screaming. It's all we know to do. We have screamed for eternity. Within this empty space. ~ F.K. Preston

Scots they're either nice or they're horrid and these two are horrid. The Scots wont like that Eamon, thats bordering on racism. Its not racism its ethnic criticism Bill. ~ Eamon Dunphy

I am quite out of patience with him." Fiona Kincaid set her teacup on the small tray with a decided click. "Dougal's been in a horrid temper since he arrived."
"I like him better this way," Fiona's handsome husband retorted. "He barely said a word over breakfast."
She gave an exasperated sigh. "I'm surprised you two don't get along better, as you're very similar." Jack's flat stare made her add hastily, "In some things."
"In very few things. ~ Karen Hawkins

Did I ever tell you I went to school in America?"
"What? No."
"It's true,for a year. Eighth grade. It was terrible."
"Eighth grade is terrible for everyone," I say.
"Well,it was worse for me. My parents had just seperated,and my mum moved back to California.I hadn't been since I was an infant,but I went with her,and I was put in this horrid public school-"
"Oh,no. Public school."
He nudges me with his shoulder. "The other kids were ruthless. They made fun of everything about me-my height,my accent, the way I dressed.I vowed I'd never go back."
"But American girls love English accents." I blurt this without thinking, and then pray he doesn't notice my blush.
St. Clair picks up a pebble and tosses it into the river. "Not in middle school, they don't.Especially when it's attached to a bloke who comes up to their kneecaps."
I laugh.
"So when the year was over,my parents found a new school for me. I wanted to go back to London,where my mates were, but my father insisted on Paris so he could keep an eye on me. And that's how I would up at the School of America. ~ Stephanie Perkins

Man's own form in space - his body - was a private prison; and that it was because of this imprisoning misery - because he was hungry and overworked and went to a horrid place called home late at night in the rain, and his bones ached and his head was heavy. ~ Willem De Kooning

And I came to a hill that I never saw before. I was in a dismal thicket full of black twisted boughs that tore me as I went through them, and I cried out because I was smarting all over, and then I found that I was climbing, and I went up and up a long way, till at last the thicket stopped and I came out crying just under the top of a big bare place, where there were ugly grey stones lying all about on the grass, and here and there a little, twisted stunted tree came out from under a stone, like a snake. And I went up, right to the top, a long way. I never saw such big ugly stones before; they came out of the earth some of them, and some looked as if they had been rolled to where they were, and they went on and on as far as I could see, a long, long way. I looked out from them and saw the country, but it was strange. It was winter time, and there were black terrible woods hanging from the hills all round; it was like seeing a large room hung with black curtains, and the shape of the trees seemed quite different from any I had ever seen before. I was afraid. Then beyond the woods there were other hills round in a great ring, but I had never seen any of them; it all looked black, and everything had a voor over it. It was all so still and silent, and the sky was heavy and grey and sad, like a wicked voorish dome in Deep Dendo. I went on into the dreadful rocks. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. Some were like horrid-grinning men; I could see their faces as if they would ~ Arthur Machen

We have such a terrible, terrible misconception of science. We think it involves the definite, the precise, the known; it is a horrid series of gates to an unknown as vast as the universe; which means endless. ~ Anne Rice

when it is but it ain't

Some of us love badly.
Sometimes the love is the type of love that implodes.
Folds in on itself. Eats its insides.
Turns wine to poison.
Behaves poorly in restaurants.
Drinks. Kisses other people.
Comes back to your bed at 4am smelling like everything outside.
Asks about your ex. Is jealous of your ex.
Thinks everyone a rival.

Some of us love others badly, love ourselves worse.
Some of us love horrid, love beastly.
Love sick love anti light.
Sometimes the love can't go home at night,
can't sleep with itself, cannot contain itself,
catches fire, destroys the stomach,
strips buildings, goes missing.
Punches. Smashes heirlooms.
Tells lies. The best lies. F*s around.
Writes poems, impresses people.
Chases lovers into corners.
Leaves them longing. Sea sick.
Says yes. Means anything but.
Tricks the body.
Kills the body.
Dances wild
and walks away, smiling. ~ Yrsa Daley-Ward

This is a horrid generalization, so I'll probably get hate mail from stockbrokers. I would have been forced to get back to work, and would have been less accustomed to being in touch with my feelings and allowing my feelings to drive my decisions and behavior. ~ William Mapother

His slender hands curled into fists. "You don't want to change? Do you have any idea what I've been through for you? Why do you think I keep coming back to that horrid, dirty, decaying world of yours? Because you changed me! It makes me sick to think of how I have shifted away from what I should be!"
I leaned back, terrified of the pure fury in his face.
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and releasing all the tension from his facial muscles, returning them back to the mask of perfection. "But this is irrelevant. When I get back to where I am supposed to be, my connection to eternity will be restored and flawless. I will be restored. And you will be connected, too, and we have forever to - "
"Whoa, whoa, stop right there, psycho. I'm not coming with you."
He got that infuriating smile, that one that all faeries have that says they know more than you ever will and you can't even begin to function on the same plane as them but isn't it cute that you think you have any right to consider yourself a rational creature. It was a condescending head pat in smile form.
"Evelyn," he said, his golden voice trying to pull me in closer. "I love you. ~ Kiersten White

Did you ever feel a creeping,
That awoke you from your sleeping,
That made your pulses flutter and bristled all your hair;
While a horrid stealthy crawling
Prevented you from calling,
And something seemed to tell you that a ghost was coming there? ~ Amelia B. Edwards

You point out that war is only a symptom of the whole horrid business of human behavior, and cannot be isolated. And that, even if we abolish war, we shall not abolish hate and greed. So might it have been argued about slave emancipation, that slavery was but one aspect of human disgustingness, and that to abolish it would not end the barbarity that causes it. But did the abolitionists therefore waste their breath? And do we waste ours now in protesting against war? ~ Rose Macaulay

Kids should speak to each other. They're horrid to each other online, they bully each other - they should shut up and stop it. The problem with social media is there is too much freedom. It's too much, too young. ~ Cara Delevingne

At heart they hate their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for everything they have not, and for all they most crave and never can attain. Let us pity them, my chieftain, for even though we die at their hands we can afford them pity, since we are greater than they and they know it ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

It is horrid to smirk. ~ Helen Fielding

A body slammed against the glass, his face and palms pressed to the surface. It was a horrid sight. His pupils were red and crazed, his face extremely pale and dirty. Dark red blood was smeared across his cheeks and chin. The man stood still for a moment, just watching us with his crazy eyes. Something reanimated him. He slid his palms down the clear, clean glass, leaving a trail of bloody streaks. ~ Rose Wynters

Or ugsome, a late medieval word meaning loathsome or disgusting? It has lasted half a millennium in English, was a common synonym for horrid until well into the last century, and can still be found tucked away forgotten at the back of most unabridged dictionaries. Isn't it a shame to let it slip away? ~ Bill Bryson

I thought bridesmaid's dresses were supposed to be horrid and ugly to make the bride more stunning," I joked to her in a whisper.
"Yeah right, you marry a gorgeous actor and you want me to show up in a Goodwill special? No way sister! There are bound to be other single, gorgeous actors around, and I intend to land one of them for myself. Or get laid at the very least." ... ~ Chasta Schneider

You drink root beer while you watch an NBA game? You are an American wannabe, aren't you?"
"That is perhaps the most horrid thing you could say to an Englishman."
"Worse than French wannabe?"
"Well, there is that. ~ Shannon Hale

X.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried - "La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!"
XI.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing. ~ John Keats

Discipline. That's what fathers believe in. We must spank the children immediately before they try to kill you again. In fact, we should kill them.
Wendy: Father. I agree that they are ... perfectly horrid, but ... kill them and they should think themselves ... important.
The Lost Boys: So important, Peter.
Curly: And unique.
Wendy: I, propose something far more dreadful. Medicine. The sticky, sweet kind.
The Lost Boys: Kill us, Peter. ~ J.M. Barrie

As a rich man sees no reason for rejoicing in a meager gift of bread until a turn of events leaves him impoverished, so the sinner finds no joy in salvation until the horrid nature of his sin is revealed and he sees himself as wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. ~ Paul David Washer

I find that I really hang back; but I must take my horrid plunge. ~ Henry James

[Letter to William Ward, 11 July 1878]
Dear Boy,
Why don't you write to me? I don't know what has become of you.
As for me I am ruined. The law suit is going against me and I am afraid I will have to pay costs, which means leaving Oxford and doing some horrid work to earn bread. The world is too much for me.
However, I have seen Greece and had some golden days of youth. I go back to Oxford immediately for viva voce and then think of rowing up the river to town with Frank Miles. Will you come?
Yours
Oscar ~ Oscar Wilde

And not one of you is to use the N-word that horrid woman said tonight to Sal. I swear I wish people were forced to make a list of names and recite them every time they use that word. "A list of the names of every black man, woman, and child hated,beaten, killed for the color of their flesh. It should be law - by God, it should be law - that if you say that word, you must then say their names. "No one wants to say one word and then realize it means so many more. ~ Tiffany McDaniel

Proper deformity shows not in the fiend
So horrid as in woman. ~ William Shakespeare

One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple - children are made to feel that they must "give themselves up" if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse - loss of one's own mind.
Surrender is neither control nor morbid dependency and cannot be made contingent upon giving away one's "soul"; nonetheless, the person surrendering opens completely to the moment, and runs the risk of being deeply hurt. Sadly, in our society this is not uncommon and frequently serves to harden or embitter a person toward life in general. Or, on the other had being deeply hurt in the act of surrender can lead to angry and painful "cries for help." When this occurs there is an insatiable and wrathful desire to be cared for as a child is cared for and the horrid fear of loss of independence. ~ Christopher S. Hyatt

We are divorced, North from South, because we have hated each other so. If we could only separate politely, and not have a horrid fight for divorce. ~ Mary Boykin Chesnut

A horrid alcoholic explosion scatters all my good intentions like bits of limbs and clothes over the doorsteps and into the saloon bars of the tawdriest pubs. ~ Dylan Thomas

Was truly a great advantage. I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, - a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, - and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. ~ Frederick Douglass

I can't think what made him so horrid. Perhaps it was because he had been so very nice and kind all the earlier part of the day, and now he had to have a change. This is called reaction. One notices it now and then in oneself. Sometimes when one has been extra good for a longer time than usual, one is suddenly attacked by a violent fit of not being good at all. ~ E. Nesbit

Well, you know that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity - like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was justly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you - you so remote from the night of first ages could comprehend. ~ Joseph Conrad

It was weird how life worked. It was sad how people treated one another. It was horrid how people didn't see the loss of another. Life truly was screwed up ~ Aparajita Yadav

No, you must let me say it. It's not a simple thing, you see. I loved you even before I met you. I loved the idea of you,'she said quietly. 'And to think you existed all this time. And it only took that horrid moment when everything went wrong for the both of us for our paths to finally cross. I would fall off that cliff again and again for the promise of you. ~ Sophia Nash

Yet heaven bless thee, my dearest Justine, with resignation, and a confidence elevated beyond this world. Oh! how I hate its shews and mockeries! when one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking with the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed. They call this retribution. Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge. Yet this is not consolation for you, my Justine, unless indeed that you may glory in escaping from so miserable a den. ~ Mary Shelley

They got that way, Garraty had noticed. Complete withdrawal from everything and everyone around them. Everything but the road. They stared at the road with a kind of horrid fascination, as if it were a tightrope thay had to walk over an endless, bottomless chasm. ~ Richard Bachman

That is a horrid temptation to put before a man who is forbidden to make vigorous movements," he said.
"Is it really?" she said. "No wonder Miles did not approve. He looked daggers at me."
"Maybe his face froze that way," Rupert said. "He was looking daggers at me a few hours ago. Do you think he suspects?"
"I think he knows ," she said.
"I'm glad I don't have a sister," he said. "I should have to get over my aversion to killing people."
-Rupert and Daphne ~ Loretta Chase

. . .In a heartbeat, you will fall right into that novel, that poem, the story that you are most in love with right now. When you learn to be able to decide in the moment to take breaks from your internal voices - even though it's only for a split second - you will be taking your first baby steps toward the full-out exhilaration of living in the midst of the wholly realized writer's life.

Then all the negatives - yes, even your cherished writer's block ego trip - will fade into background noise, then you will find silence, and your story will take over. Before you know it, you will be working calmly and clearly for hours, rather than for a couple minutes.

1 hour, not 1 second, 2 hours, not 2 seconds, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours of allowing your mind to come to rest from the horrid, every day, mental chatter we lock ourselves up with - a time to anchor within the natural spaciousness that you already know instinctively, know from deep within will make you feel full inside. . . . ~ Terry Kennedy

Tell me, love, what I can't explain:
Should I spend this short, horrid time
with thoughts only, and alone
know no love and give none?
Must one think? Won't he be missed? ~ Ingeborg Bachmann

I begin to cry as my walls of my resolve break down. I don't know how long I can hold on. The pain is horrid and I curl into myself wrestling with a wish to die and a wish to live. Both have their perks. Only one will release me from this agony. ~ Celia Mcmahon

It's always been pride. The History of the Mayfair Witches was pride. But this came to me wrapped in the mysteries of science. We have such a terrible, terrible misconception of science. We think it involves the definite, the precise, the known; it is a horrid series of gates to an unknown as vast as the universe; which means endless. And I knew this, I knew but I forgot. That was my mistake. ~ Anne Rice

When I watched American Idol, I always thought Simon was the most realistic. Simon's like, It was absolutely horrid. That's what they tell in the music industry. ~ Toni Braxton

There was a little girl,
When she was good, she was very, very good.
But when she was bad, she was horrid. ~ Jun Mochizuki

A girl can have the face of an angel but have a horrid sort of heart. ~ Franny Billingsley

Really, Agatha, you might have told me."
"Told you what?" Mairelon said. "That my ward was once a street thief? I didn't think it was a secret."
"A street thief?" Letitia wrinkled her nose and looked at Kim with disfavor. "How horrid."
"I think it is the most romantic story I have ever heard", Miss Matthews said with conviction. ~ Patricia C. Wrede

In completing your civilization, the causes changed, but you maintained the custom: no longer did you sacrifice victims to gods athirst for human blood, but to laws, which you deem sage because you found in them a specious reason to indulge your former habits, together with the semblance of a justice which was, at bottom, nothing other than the desire to preserve those horrid practices which you could not abjure. ~ Marquis De Sade

I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degradation left in the world. ~ Charles Dickens

I've confessed to everything and I'd like to be hanged. Now, if you please.

I don't mean to be difficult, but I can't bear to tell my story. I can't relive those memories - the touch of the Dead Hand, the smell of eel, the gulp and swallow of the swamp. How can you possibly think me innocent? Don't let my face fool you; it tells the worst lies. A girl can have the face of an angel but have a horrid sort of heart.

I know you believe you're giving me a chance - or, rather, it's the Chime Child giving me the chance. She's desperate, of course, not to hang an innocent girl again, but please believe me: Nothing in my story will absolve me of guilt. It will only prove what I've already told you, which is that I'm wicked. Can't the Chime Child take my word for it?

In any event, where does she expect me to begin? The story of a wicked girl has no true beginning. I'd have to begin with the day I was born.

If Eldric were to tell the story, he'd likely begin with himself, on the day he arrived in the Swampsea. That's where proper stories begin, don't they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

But this isn't a proper story, and I'm telling you, I ought to be hanged. ~ Franny Billingsley

A Horrid History of Christmas: Horrible Happening & Frightening Festivities Bristol Murders Cornish Murders (with John Van der Kiste) Dorset Murders Hampshire Murders Herefordshire Murders More Bristol Murders More Cornish Murders (with John Van der Kiste) More Hampshire Murders More Somerset Murders (with John Van der Kiste) Murder by Poison: A Casebook of Historic British Murders Oxfordshire Murders Shropshire Murders Somerset Murders (with John Van der Kiste) West Country Murders (with John Van der Kiste) ~ Nicola Sly

I told him exactly what had happened and he listened with seeming impassiveness, but his nostrils twitched and his eyes blazed as I told how the ruthless hands of the Count had held his wife in that terrible and horrid position, with her mouth to the open wound in his breast. It interested me, even at that moment, to see that whilst the face of white set passion worked convulsively over the bowed head, the hands tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair. ~ Bram Stoker

It wasn't enough to push open the doors. You had to change minds. How could girls truly make their mark if their role models were houseplants, if their fashions scarcely allowed them to breathe? If any expression of opinion on any subject was considered by young men to be a threat? And even more so, how could they escape the basic fact that no matter how horrid the boys were, the young women still wanted to please them - because what choice had they, really? Where could they go besides back to their own homes, where they would rest under the heavy thumbs of their own mothers, or into the home of a man - with the hopes that this man would be indulgent, like Papa, and not oppressive or cruel, like so many others? ~ Elizabeth Letts

This was to be my last trip. Sailing great distances was dangerous, and not very profitable in today's world. I walked down the worn wooden step to the captain's cabin, the creaking of the ship keeping time with my steps. Opening the door I found him bent over an old map.
"Where are we captain?" I asked, hoping it was close to home.
"See this spot, where it says "Here there be monsters"?" he said pointing to an image of a horrid beast.
"Certainly, but you and I both know such creatures don't exist!!"
The captain laughed, and looking up at me with an evil glint in his eye said, "Who's talking about sea monsters?". As he spoke the skin from one corner of his mouth fell loose, exposing a yellow reptilian skin beneath.
"What?" I yelled, and as I turned to run for the cabin door I heard screams and loud moans coming from the deck, and the crew quarters below.
I felt fetid breath on the back of my neck, "Aye matey, here there be monsters ~ Neil Leckman

A low, angry growl hit Jatred's ears like a hammer. He turned and saw a massive figure crashing its way through the snow. Although he'd only seen the drawings of the Winter monsters, he knew it was a Garhanan. There was nothing pleasing in the way the creature looked, smelled, or sounded. Even its movements were horrid. A flat nose sat in the middle of the meaty face. The Garhanan's bushy white brows stuck out, shading small beady eyes. Its arms were muscular and swung down past its strong knees. The back, chest, and thighs were colossal too. The beast's whole body was covered in white, sparse, long fur.
"Great," Jatred snarled, his jaws clenching. He tried not to show how much Garhanan scared him. ~ A.O. Peart

He's in the right, he's in the right!" she muttered; "of course he always is in the right, he is a Christian, he is magnanimous! Yes, a mean, horrid man! And no one but I understands or will understand it, and I cannot explain it. They say he's a religious, moral, honest, and wise man, but they do not see what I have seen. They do not know how for eight years he has been smothering my life, smothering everything that was alive in me, that he never once thought I was a live woman, in need of love. They do not know how at every step he hurt me and remained self-satisfied. Have I not tried to love him, tried to love my son when I could no longer love my husband? But the time came when I understood that I could no longer deceive myself, that I am alive, and cannot be blamed because God made me so, that I want to love and to live." … "And he knows it all; knows that I cannot repent of breathing, of loving, knows that nothing but lies and deception can come of this arrangement, but he wants to continue to torture me. I know him; I know that he swims and delights in falsehood as a fish in water. But no! I will not give him that pleasure, come what will. I will break this web of lies in which he wishes to entangle me. Anything is better than lies and deception! ~ Leo Tolstoy

She gave a little sob deep in her throat.

'Call it a prophecy, call it a prediction, call it fate - call it what you will. I fought against it hard enough, God knows. But the evidence of my own eyes, my own ears, my own senses, is too much for me. And the time's too short now. I'm afraid to take a chance. I haven't got the nerve to bluff it out, to sit pat. You don't gamble with a human life. Today's the 13th, isn't it? It's too close to the 14th; there isn't time-margin enough left now to be skeptical, to keep it to myself any longer. Day by day I've watched him cross off the date on his desk-calendar, drawing nearer to death. There are only two leaves left now, and I want help! Because on the 14th - at the exact stroke of midnight, as the 15th is beginning -'

She covered her face with both arms and shook silently.

'Yes?' urged McManus. 'Yes?'

'He's become convinced - oh, and almost I have too - that at exactly midnight on the 14th he's to die. Not just die but meet his death in full vigor and health, a death rushing down to him from the stars he was born under - rushing down even before he existed at all. A death inexorable, inescapable. A death horrid and violent, inconceivable here in this part of the world where we live.'

She took a deep, shuddering breath, whispered the rest of it. 'Death at the jaws of a lion.' ("Speak To Me Of Death") ~ Cornell Woolrich

In Taiji, the town was malefic and the people could be horrid, but the cove's most demanding challenges were personal ones: How do you survive your own sadness? ~ Susan Casey

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. ~ Anonymous

Tell me, Peppone, what other talents do you have besides erasing undesirables?"
"I enjoy a fair bit of sneaking, sir. I also enjoy pilfering and killing as a professional courtesy."
"What a delightfully horrid urchin you are."
"Thank you, sir. ~ Michelle Franklin

The obscene and vulgar stories in the Bible are as repugnant to our ideas of the purity of a Divine Being, as the horrid cruelties and murders it ascribes to Him are repugnant to our ideas of His justice. ~ Thomas Paine

The fear of death has been raised too much and set up on high, especially by preachers, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness over the heads of the Israelites; but not with so good excuse as that symbol had, for this fear has not been curative, I think, nor made into pleasant or graceful shape, but rather a horrid spectacle, to affright people. For that men can be frightened into piety has been one of the legacies of religion which barbarous ages have bequeathed us plentifully. ~ James Vila Blake

Broken leaves flew into the air from the violence of his thrashing, and the gore and blood kept pouring from the black hole in his belly and from his mouth - surely enough blood for ten men, a sight horrid enough to make God Himself weep - and suddenly, his boots stopped running and his form stilled and then ... Death caught him. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

He had ceased to believe in the efficacy of alms; it was not sufficient that one should be charitable, henceforth one must be just. Given justice, indeed, horrid misery would disappear, and no such thing as charity would be needed. ~ Emile Zola

But you will not spare a drop of pity because I am rich? We have death in our gilded courts, too. We have disease and cruelty, and not a breath of air or freedom. You cannot say our lives are easy, any more than I can say yours is. They are lives, and so they are HORRID! ~ Stefan Bachmann

Dearest Charles
I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start ... I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe. I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits. Love or what you will. S. ~ Evelyn Waugh

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. ~ Thomas Paine

Back in the days when American billboard advertising was in flower [said Hemingway], there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, Spit Is a Horrid Word-but Worse on the end of Your Cigar, and Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste. You don't get creative writing like that any more. ~ A. E. Hotchner

This was the Evangelical Revival that now began to take hold on the propertied class, who, frightened by what was happening in France, were anxiously mending their fences, spiritual as well as political. To escape rationalism's horrid daughter, revolution, they were only too willing to be enfolded in the anti-intellectual embrace of Evangelicalism, even if it demanded faith and good works and a willing suspension of disbelief. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Look, I owe you a kind of explanation. I know you probably think I'm a horrid bitch from the plant Schizophrenia, but I'm honestly not trying to mess with your head. I'm just messing with my own head and I seem to have dragged you along the ride. I think you're nice to me and that scares the fuck out of me. Because when a guy's a jerk or an asshole, it's easier because you know exactly where you stand. Since trust isn't an option, you don't have to get all freaked out about maybe having to trust him. Right now I am thinking about ten things at the same time, and at least four of those things have to do with you. If you want to leave right now and drive home and forget my name and forget what I look like, I wouldn't blame you in the least. But what I'm trying to say is that if you did that I would be sorry. And not just sorry in an I-apologize-I'm-so-sorry way, but sorry in a sad-that-something-that-could've-happened-didn't way. That's it. You can go now. Or we could stay for Where's Fluffy when Toni's set is over. I think they're playing a surprise show here tonight. ~ Rachel Cohn

In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk! ~ Charles Baudelaire

And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it - it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice? ~ Upton Sinclair

The Gauls derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the North; their rustic manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite, and their horrid appearance, equally disgusting to the sight and to the smell. ~ Edward Gibbon