Humour Noir Quotes

The angry mob of villagers wield camera phones, the twenty-first century equivalent of pitchforks and flaming torches. ~ Erin Kelly

Somebody should have taken him to a stationary store and pointed out the difference between an envelope and a whore. ~ Richard Brautigan

Please just admit it," said Valkyrie. "You're going to miss me, aren't you?"
"Obviously," said Skulduggery.
"Thank you."
"Like a drowning man misses the land."
"A w w w ... "
"Like a hesitant man misses the chance."
"Yeah ... "
"Like an oblivious man misses the point."
"I have a feeling you're mocking me somehow, but I can't put my finger on how. ~ Derek Landy

You go to church to respect God, not the priest. By not going to church, you disrespect God, not the priest.
- Don Camillo ~ Giovannino Guareschi

In a French accent developed through a lifetime of using English I said, 'Hello sir, I would like to row the English Channel in a bath please.'
What actually arrived in the ear of the French Navy man was, 'Hello sire, I would like to fight a condom across a bath if you please. ~ Tim FitzHigham

Sometimes in life you meet a femme fatale and you can refuse them nothing they treat you like dirt but even the dirt they dish out has a taste you can resist?
From the novel 'Adventures of a Dark Duke: The Pin ~ Russell C. Brennan

I had made an early policy decision to drink the native beer despite the undoubted horrors of the process of fabrication. On my very first visit to a Dowayo beer party, this was put severely to the test. "Will you have beer?" I was asked. "Beer is furrowed," I replied, having got the tones wrong. "He said 'yes' ", my assistant replied in a tired voice. They were amazed. No white man, at this time, had ever been known to touch beer. Seizing a calabash, they proceeded to wash it out in deference to my exotic sensibilities. They did this by offering it to a dog to lick out. Dowayo dogs are not beautiful at the best of times; this one was particularly loathsome, emaciated, open wounds on its ears where flies feasted, huge distended ticks hanging from its belly. It licked the calabash with relish. It was refilled and passed to me. Everyone regarded me, beaming expectantly. There was nothing to be done; I drained it and gasped out my enjoyment. Several more calabashes followed. ~ Nigel Barley

It bears repeating a third time: Not being funny doesn't make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humour does. ~ David Rakoff

If,"said the Dowager, after a pregnant silence," I had ever dared to speak so to my grandmother, I should have been soundly whipped and confined to my bedchamber on bread-and-water for a sennight!"
The gravity vanished from Cressy's face. "no, would you, Ma'am? How very brave your parents must have been! ~ Georgette Heyer

We're guys, and we're Werewolves, and you're talking about throwing food away? Are you nuts, woman?" - Nick ~ Justine Winter

Maple thought optimistically that human beings, on their good days, weren't much dimmer than sheep. Or at least, not much dimmer than dim sheep. ~ Leonie Swann

You have a sense of humour. I am in favor of jokes. They have political value. Jokes are a release for the cowardly and the impotent. ~ Graham Greene

She will never forgive me, I am sure; but, you know, how could I help it? John would have me go, for he vowed he would not drive her, because she had such thick ankles. I dare say she will not be in good humour again this month; but I am determined I will not be cross; it is not a little matter that puts me out of temper. ~ Jane Austen

She said I could come back to her room if I liked. 'I'll check if you've got testicular cancer,' she said without a trace of humour.

It kind of killed the mood. ~ Peter Moore

I always reminded myself that this wasn't exactly where I was meant to be, but pit stops are okay on the road of life, aren't they? ~ Lena Dunham

My great Aunt Juliet was knocked over and killed by a bus when she was eighty-five. The bus was travelling very slowly in the right direction and could hardly have been missed by anyone except Aunt Juliet, who must have been travelling fairly fast in the wrong direction. ~ Robin Dalton

Sips fuel like a mouse sipping sherry from a hypodermic needle. ~ Jeremy Clarkson

Damoder climbed slowly to his feet. 'Buy lot!' he wheedled, 'I am poor man. I sell you cheap. I am bank-Rupert! Apparently the only things that could save him from bank-rupertcy were our dollars. ~ Frank Kusy

Mac had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

In America, they have specialist mystery book stores with whole sections devoted to cat mysteries, golf mysteries, quilting mysteries. It's a hugely broad genre from the darkest noir to tales of a 19th-century vet who solves crimes, thanks to his talking cat. ~ Mark Billingham

It was Ernie Haller, who had photographed Bette Davis in Jezebel and Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, who was solely responsible for the visuals in Mildred Pierce, said Crawford. "Ernie was at the rehearsals. And so was Mr. [Anton] de Grot, who did the sets. I recall seeing Ernie's copy of the script and it was filled with notations and diagrams. I asked him if these were for special lights and he said, 'No, they're for special shadows.' Now, that threw me. I was a little apprehensive. I was used to the look of Metro, where everything, including the war pictures, was filmed in blazing white lights. Even if a person was dying there was no darkness. But when I saw the rushes of Mildred Pierce I realized what Ernie was doing. The shadows and half-lights, the way the sets were lit, together with the unusual angles of the camera, added considerably to the psychology of my character and to the mood and psychology of the film. And that, my dear, is film noir." "Mildred ~ Shaun Considine

We find the library world, like the real world, impossible to understand on a rational basis. We turn then to the outer reaches of our mind and treat librarianship with the irrationality that it deserves. While we most often turn to humour merely to enjoy ourselves, we do sometimes do so to make a point. That point is simply that the world of librarianship is ridiculous and that we should all take a far less serious view of our work. What we accomplish as librarians is not, after all, likely to change the world."
~ Norman D. Stevens ~ Peter Gellatly

This is 1987. A girl can be whatever she wants to be." "I know," said Ray. "My mums a plumber. ~ David Bischoff

All night the angelic made me gasp for breadth and dream of drowning in sand or earth or mud. I got up, my chest still racked, but glad to be finished with the phantasms which magnify a reality difficult enough in itself. Coffee so bitter it was undrinkable. A big roar. Two big roars. No relief. The mornings only consolation was of a faecal nature. Unexpectedly and impeccably i produced a magnificent turd, so long it had to curve at the ends to fit into the bowl. I contemplated fondly the fine chubby little babe of living clay i'd just brought forth, and my zest for life returned. ~ Michel Tournier

Check-ups are, in my experience, a grave mistake; all they do is allow the quack of your choice to tell you that you have some sort of complaint that you were far happier not knowing about. ~ John Mortimer

The only reason Lenz didn't burst out laughing was because he wasn't alone; his movement - which seemed hidden now inside a second glove, the body of the injured soldier - were mockeries of themselves. Lenz felt as though he was engaged in a kind of manual labour that for him, deep down, was like manipulating shapes in clay or working a piece of wood. Any feelings of empathy were dissolved in professional expertise and in the recognition of his triumph in relation to the body lying on the stretcher. Lenz was alive, on his feet, with his reason intact, and still in control of the use of language: in that room he was the person who determined every Yes and every No - and he had long known that controlling such extreme words was a source of undisputable power.
A startled nurse was asking Dr. Lenz whether he wanted her to pass him another scalpel, one with a fine point, and Lenz replied: No. No, no. Yes, yes,yes.
Let us say that "organic craftsmanship," the most basic craftsmanship, often filled him with enthusiasm. Lenz knew that bullets or bomb shrapnel - in short, all the pieces of metal that find their way into our bodies - were only looking for what any living creature looks for: a shelter, a final home, a home where they can be left alone, where they feel secure. ~ Gonçalo M. Tavares

Twelve dead?" I said. "Jesus. ~ Dennis Lehane

Harder! Harder! Strike at it, for the gods' sake! It's a Parthian, not your grandmother! I swear if you don't put some effort into - What? ~ M.C. Scott

The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go, she went. ~ Saki

Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates. ~ Fernando Pessoa

He stopped at the gate on his way back to the temple, where Gracilis, the Twentieth's hard-case wolf hunter from the Campanian mountains, was supervising the strengthening of the defences.
'Take some men and tear down the huts along the west wall. And while you're at it, clear everything for a javelin throw in front of this gate. I want a killing ground from there to about there.'
Gracilis grinned and saluted. Like all legionaries, the only thing he liked better than fighting and drinking was destroying someone else's property. 'Should we burn them, sir?' he said hopefully. Valerius shook his head. No point in creating smoke to warn the enemy. 'Just break them up and add them to the barriers. ~ Douglas Jackson

Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days. ~ Terry Pratchett

God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth to be used in that proportion ~ Anonymous

Lainie blurted, "Hank and Kyle wanna share me. Like, at-the-same-time type of sharing me."
"Holy freakin' shit." Tanna's big gray eyes went comically wide. "They're offering you a threesome? With them?"
...
"Please tell me you said yes, Lainie."
Her gaze flew to Tanna's. "You're not appalled?"
"Hell, no. I'm jealous. ~ Lorelei James

Human Millipede 6 was the highest-grossing movie of the summer and returned Nicholas Cage to Oscar-winning status. ~ C.Z. Hazard

She's fine," said Declan, defensive. "You're fine, right?"
She gave him a look. "Peachy."
"See? Both Alex and her astounding wit have made it here intact. Her sense of humour seems to be M.I.A, but I'm pretty sure that was a pre-existing condition. ~ Jena Leigh

Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and laughter abundant. ~ Washington Irving

That money talks, I'll not deny, I heard it once: it said, 'goodbye ~ Richard Armour

As Aboriginal people we have always retained our resilience, our humour and our cultural integrity - we will always retain our dreams and a vision for the future for our people. ~ Ken Wyatt

Eton produced Society's Monsters - everyone knew that. Politicians, mostly, and occasionally people who ran banks and all the other institutions that stole the world's spoils for themselves. ~ Maureen Johnson

You think I can't get it up anymore, maybe? Lemme tell you, you eat enough garlic and it stands up every time. ~ Alberto Vitale

I wanted to remind you that you do not allow me to deliver boats, as I have been known to crash them. ~ Jennifer Echols

Hey," Shayne said through the door. "You going to stay in there all night, because we're getting tired of trying to eavesdrop from out here. Can't hear a damn thing. ~ Jill Shalvis

[Olivia:] "It's just that I was already at my calorie limit for the day before I had the liquor, and I want to go to Europe in my skinny jeans."

[Tobias:] "What the hell are skinny jeans?"

"They're the jeans that you buy that are too small so that someday you can wear them and feel awesome."

He put his fork down and stared at me, openmouthed. "There are so many things wrong with that sentence. I don't even know where to start."

"It's okay. This is advanced self-loathing. You'd have to be a woman to understand it at this level. ~ Lucy March

Beauty with brain can be reversed with stupidy with strain.. ~ Sunil Sharma

We took a bus to the nearby monastery of one of the last great Tang dynasty Chan masters, Yun-men. Yun-men was known for his pithy "one word" Zen. When asked "What is the highest teaching of the Buddha?" he replied: "An appropriate statement." On another occasion, he answered: "Cake." I admired his directness. ~ Stephen Batchelor