Ornery Quotes

...five minutes later she and Keane walked out to his truck. He set the cat carrier carefully in the backseat like maybe it was a ticking bomb but made her smile when he hesitated and then locked a seatbelt around it.

When he caught her watching, he shrugged. "She's just ornery enough to knock herself off the seat and die and then come back to haunt me, so I'm taking all necessary precautions. ~ Jill Shalvis

I'm going to have to watch every word I say around you." "Impossible. You talk far too much to succeed at that." "I'm not going to worry about you any longer, Karl Van der Vort. You're feeling well enough to be ornery. It just serves to prove what a fine physician I am - even if I wear red shirtwaists. ~ Cathy Marie Hake

Unconditional parental love is the indespensible nutrient for the child's healthy emotional growth. The first task is to create space in the child's heart for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parents want and love. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love - in fact, she cannot do anything, since that love cannot be won or lost ... The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative, and plain rude, and the parent still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to convey the unacceptability of certain behaviors without making the child herself feel unaccepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likable characteristics to the parent and still receive the parent's absolutely satisfying, security-inducing unconditional love. ~ Gordon Neufeld

Ain't you been listening? I'm YUSUKE URAMESHI... the same ornery dawg you've always known and loved. So I have a DEMON ANCESTOR! Big Deal! I'm still going To KICK Sensui's sorry butt! -Yusuke ~ Yoshihiro Togashi

Curran was looking at her. Not in the same way he looked at me, but he was looking. An odd feeling flared in me, hot and angry, prickling my throat from the inside with hot sharp needles, and I realized it was jealousy. I guess there was a first time for everything. "Have you seen my father?" Lorelei asked. "How is he?" "I saw him last year," Curran said. "He's the same as always: tough and ornery." I came to stand next to him. Lorelei raised her eyebrows. Her eyes widened, and a sheen of pale green rolled over her irises. "You must be the human Consort." Yes, that's me, the human invalid. "My name is Kate." "Kate," she repeated, as if tasting the word. "It is an honor to meet you." Curran was smiling at her, that handsome hot smile that usually made my day better. Pushing Lorelei into the ocean wouldn't be diplomatic, even if I really wanted to do it. "Likewise. ~ Ilona Andrews

Curiously, the righteous Pharisees had little historical impact, save for a brief time in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. But Jesus' disciples - an ornery, undependable, and hopelessly flawed group of men - became drunk with the power of a gospel that offered free forgiveness to the worst sinners and traitors. Those men managed to change the world. ~ Philip Yancey

Harold had become, over the past week, a connoisseur of silences. He was an expert at differentiating the particulars; was this a Tranquil Silence, marked by slow sighs and peaceful smiles? Or was it a Tired Silence, marked by ornery chair shifting? Or a Tense Silence, full of tight breaths and cautious glances? ~ Graham Moore

I'm sorry, I says.
Fer what? he says.
Fer always bein ... you know ... so-
Ungrateful? he says.
Yeah, I says.
Ornery?
I guess so.
Rude? Pig-headed? Violent?
I ain't violent!
Oh yes, you are. Very. But I like that in a woman.
I laugh. Yer crazy, I says.
I was fine till I met you, he says. ~ Moira Young

Well, there is rough old Albert, as ornery as any big brother a girl could have, putting his arm around Savannah and cooing to her like a repenting hound dog, and promising her she is not common nor shameful. I watched all this and thought you just never know sometimes what's in a man's heart. When you think he is all tough nails and boards he can be different on the inside. It makes me wonder about other men I know, too. ~ Nancy E. Turner

I don't pretend to be a very educated man, except maybe educated in the heart, and in being able to feel for the sorrows and fears of every ornery fellow human being. ~ Sinclair Lewis

Other days, like any redneck, I'm proud, ornery, and defiant! Who the fuck am I to think that due to my political leanings, slightly above average intelligence, and genuine compassion for all of mankind I'm somehow better than the people around me? I mean, I am--but seriously, who am I to think that? ~ Trae Crowder

Low down dirty ornery rotten skunk of a cussed mule-headed soldier! What's he want with my book anyway? And what kind of a way is that to write a congratulations? I am so mad I could walk clear to that fort and take him on single handed. ~ Nancy E. Turner

She expected the ornery tiger to get mad and snarl at her, instead he did something much worse. One side of his lips curled up in smug satisfaction, and the bastard smirked at her.

"I may no longer live in a time period where one person can actually own another person, but make no mistake, love, I do own you. Every little inch. Every breathy moan you give me when I'm playing with your pretty pussy. Every hungry kiss you give me when I'm buried deep inside you. Every beat of that stubborn heart that you swear doesn't still love me, and every inch of that fierce soul of yours… They all belong to one person. Me." - Gage ~ Jessie Lane

When I saw the sun bears at the Oakland Zoo, I immediately was drawn to them. Not to be ornery, but regarding what you said about the speaker identifying with the bear: I'm not sure it's exactly right to say that the speaker feels that the bear must share his sadness, or whatever else he is feeling. That would be classic pathetic fallacy, which is certainly generative for poetry, but here the speaker appears actually to be rejecting that idea. ~ Matthew Zapruder

Why couldn't my heart have picked him? Life would have been so much easier."
"Because hearts are ornery, sneaky little bastards, designed to cause misery. They want what they want, and they don't give a damn about what would make life easier or harder for the heart's owner." Della snapped. ~ C.C. Hunter

I haven't been out driving at this time of night in many years, much less in an unfamiliar area. These are the things that scare you as you get older. You understand night all too well, all its attendant meanings. You try to avoid it, work around it, keep it from entering your house. Your weary, ornery body tells you to stay up late, sleep less, keep the lights on, don't go into the bedroom - if you have to sleep, sleep in your chair, at the table. Everything is about avoiding the night. Because of that, I suppose that I should be scared out here in the dark, but I am finally past that, I think.
(p.204) ~ Michael Zadoorian

I asked my doctor how many more years I have left and he said, 'You're too ornery to die.' ~ Jimmy Piersall

Two things happen when you get to be old. One, you gather experience and knowledge. You learn from your mistakes, and thereby offer wisdom to others. The second thing that happens is that you grow forgetful, ornery and senile, and when you offer advice, well, you sometimes just don't know what you're talking about. Often it's hard for everyone-including me-to know the difference. ~ Camron Wright

Day blame ornery youngins. ~ L.Douglas Muncy

You tell me that yes, I can do it. I know.
And I may do it, if I so choose.
You tell me that no, I cannot. I say, Oh?
I shall do it, since you refuse! ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

A girl," Red whispered. "She'll be as beautiful and ornery as her mama. ~ Mary Connealy

She shot him a look.

"What?" he asked.

"Where's my journal? I want to jot this down for posterity."

Huh?

He lifted a confused brow and she smirked, ornery light glinting in her amber brow.

"You just spoke, like what? A whole four sentences? Not to mention there were a few adjectives thrown in there. That must be some sort of record. It should be memorialized accordingly, don't you think? She batted her lashed.

Jesus, the woman was too much. ~ Julie Ann Walker

Brooke stared in surprise. "You brought me lunch?"
"I was in the neighborhood."
She checked out the label on the bag. "DMK is twenty minutes from here."
"I was in that neighborhood, and now I'm here," he said in exasperation. "Seriously, woman, you are impossible to feed." He strode over and set the bag on her desk. "One cheeseburger with spicy chipotle ketchup and a side of sweet potato fries - chosen specifically for a certain spicy and sweet girl I know - and a green dill pickle for your eyes. So there." He crossed his arms over his chest.
Brooke studied him. "You seem very ornery right now."
"As a matter of fact, I am."
"Why?"
"I don't know," he huffed. "Just ... eat your Brooke Burger. Stop asking so many questions. Sometimes a guy just wants to buy a girl lunch. Any objections to that? Good. Enjoy your Sunday, Ms. Parker."
He strode out of her office, gone as quickly as he'd appeared.
Brooke stared at the doorway and blinked. ~ Julie James

Well, you never can tell with a twister. They are as mean, as ornery, and as unpredictable as an unhappy woman. ~ John Joseph Adams

What insanity causes a king abandon the comforts of his kingdom and willfully discard the privileges of royalty in order to save an ornery and rebellious people who have spent a lifetime rejecting him? We have yet to understand that such an action is nothing of insanity. Rather, it is everything of love. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The world is just as concrete, ornery, vile, and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me. ~ Ralph Ellison

I suppose she's right. It's like a metaphor for life: No one wants an ornery old goat, but we can't resist opening the door ayway. We can't keep from hoping. ~ Lauren Myracle

The paleoclimate record shouts to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth's climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges. ~ Wallace Smith Broecker

Junior, stop being orner." It's what Mama used to say to us when we were little, and I say it to Junior out of habit. Daddy used to say it sometimes, too, until he said it to Randall one day and Randall started giggling, and then Daddy figured out Randall was laughing because it sounded like 'horny'. About a year ago I figured out what it was supposed to be after coming across its parent on the vocabulary list for my English class with Miss Dedeaux: 'ornery'. It made me wonder if there were other words Mama mashed like that. They used to pop up in my head sometime when I was doing the stupidest things: 'tetrified' when I was sweeping the kitchen and Daddy came in dripping beer and kicking chairs. 'Belove' when Manny was curling pleasure from me with his fingers in mid-swim in the pit. 'Freegid' when I was laying in bed in November, curled to the wall like I was going to burrow into another cover or I was making room for a body to lay behind me to make me warm. ~ Jesmyn Ward

The crowd started going crazy. Like even crazier than when Romeo got up from the hit. I was clinging to the railing, wondering if I would like prison, when Ivy sighed. "I swear. You have all the luck."
Confused, I glanced around. Romeo was jogging toward us, helmet in his hands. Quickly, I glanced at the big screen and it was showing a wide shot of me clinging onto the rails and him running toward us.
When he arrived, he slapped the guard on his back and said something in his ear. The guard looked at me and grinned and then walked away.
Romeo stepped up to where I was. At the height I was at one the railing, for once I was taller than him.
"You're killing me, Smalls," he said. "I had to interrupt a championship game to keep you from going to the slammer."
"I was worried. You didn't get up."
"And so you were just going to march out on the field and what?"
God, he looked so… so incredible right then. His uniform stretched out over his wide shoulders and narrow waist. The pads strapped to his body made him look even stronger. He had grass stains on his knees, sweat in his hair, and ornery laughter in his sparkling blue eyes.
I swear I'd never seen anyone equal parts of to-die-for good looks and boy-next-door troublemaker.
"I was going to come out there and kiss it and make it better."
He threw back his head and laughed, and the stadium erupted once more. I was aware that every moment between us was being broadcast like some ~ Cambria Hebert

Lucky Tyler: "Yeah, you're here, looking more like the preacher's wife come calling than an overnight alibi. Who's gonna believe I tumbled you?" The devil in him was kicking up his heels, goading him to say things he knew damn well would rub her the wrong way. But he felt he was justified in being ornery. He didn't particularly like her attitude either.
Devon Haines:"What did you expect me to wear? A negligee?"
Lucky Tyler: "I
~ Sandra Brown

Mary Jane she set at the head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was - and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, and said so - said 'How do you get biscuits to brown so nice?' and 'Where, for the land's sake, did you get these amaz'n pickles?' and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know. ~ Mark Twain