Tough Guys Quotes

The American idea of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American idea of masculinity. Idea may not be the precise word, for the idea of one's sexuality can only with great violence be divorced or distanced from the idea of the self. Yet something resembling this rupture has certainly occurred (and is occurring) in American life, and violence has been the American daily bread since we have heard of America. This violence, furthermore, is not merely literal and actual but appears to be admired and lusted after, and the key to the American imagination.

All countries or groups make of their trials a legend or, as in the case of Europe, a dubious romance called 'history.' But no other country has ever made so successful and glamorous a romance out of genocide and slavery; therefore, perhaps, the word I am searching for is not idea, but ideal.

The American IDEAL, then, of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American IDEAL of masculinity. This ideal has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and f****t, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that is is virtually forbidden - as an unpatriotic act - that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood. ~ James Baldwin

Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters. In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can't I for once play that on stage? ~ Jason Isaacs

I had to drive through a very poor and largely Hispanic section of Miami to get to the apartment complex where Casey Martin had died. There were a lot of beautiful women on the sidewalks and at the outdoor cafés, a lot of tough guys and a lot of guys who weren't tough but trying to look like they were. The streets were alive with what criminally passed for music nowadays, and there were smells of cooking in the air that suggested savory tastes. Small, hole-in-the-wall shops marked one end, and some more upscale stores the other. The dividing line between the two was discernible not just by the stores, but the women.

The women and even younger girls at the lower income end seemed softer, friendlier, quicker with a genuine smile. The ones walking into the trendy places were just as pretty, more expensively dressed, but more apt to express scorn than produce a spontaneous smile. The upscale women appeared to be from a different planet. For them, everything was sexist, everything a slight. They were eternal victims, even though the entire world was in their favor. The women at the poor end fell in love, watched out for their men, while the more affluent were stand-offish and demanding, making certain any man "lucky" enough to be with them lived in the right zip code, had the right amount of bling to give them, and above all, had been properly neutered. The balls of their boyfriends and husbands - sometimes they had both - were always in their handbag, somewhere bet ~ Bobby Underwood

The rest of the family tree had a root system soggy with alcohol ... One aunt had fallen asleep with her face in the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner; another's fondness for Coors was so unwavering that I can still remember the musky smell of the beer and the coldness of the cans. Most of the men drank the way all Texas men drank, or so I believed, which meant that they were tough guys who could hold their liquor until they couldn't anymore
a capacity that often led to some cloudy version of doom, be it financial ruin or suicide or the lesser betrayal of simple estrangement. Both social drinkers, my parents had eluded these tragic endings; in the postwar Texas of suburbs and cocktails, their drinking was routine but undramatic. ~ Gail Caldwell

They won't take you seriously because you are a girl. These guys had to understand that you are just as tough as them, and you have to take them on. ~ Michelle Yeoh

She saw it over and over again in her male patients, she said - it could probably qualify as an epidemic among American men: this stubborn reluctance to embrace our wholeness - this stoic denial that we had come from our mothers as well as our fathers. It was sad, really - tragic. So wasteful of human lives, as our wars and drive-by shootings kept proving to us; all one had to do was turn on CNN or CBS News. And yet, it was comic, too - the lengths most men went to to prove that they were tough guys. ~ Wally Lamb

Tough guys toughen up when faced with adversity. So he flexes his gag reflex and steps inside. ~ Bradley Sands

The simplest way to attract a ghost was to sit quietly and open yourself up to the interactions. He'd seen those shows where a passel of tough guys ran around abandoned asylums and jails, hollering macho taunts at the spirits. There was a reason they rarely found any useful evidence or got more than a banging door for their troubles: ghosts didn't answer to shitheels. ~ Lauren M. Roy

A good name for a gang would be The Uneducated Idiot Tough Guys. ~ Demetri Martin

Isn't that petty?"
"Anna, you have not yet seen pettiness. When a couple of tough guys like the general and Lugala Tsu decide to confront each other, vistas of pettiness open up that you and I can barely comprehend. ~ Eleanor Arnason

I would have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct, kind of old fashion tough guys, run some risk ... This guy is very much an old fashioned masculine, muscular guy, and there are political risks associated with that. Maybe it shouldn't be, but that's how it is. ~ Brit Hume

I play tough guys in movies and behaved like one in front of the press because I thought that was what a man did. ~ Tom Sizemore

And they were relieved they found me alive, well and none the worse for wear. They cared and they didn't mind who knew it, not the hotel staff and customer onlookers, the police or the paramedics. Tough guys or not, I was one of them. I wasn't Ms. Townsend anymore. I was Sadie, Rock Chick. How great was that? ~ Kristen Ashley

We couldn't generalize on the people. Some of them were known to be tough guys and they didn't say much, but some of them were kind of soft-headed, but they did that. That was an East German film. ~ James Stockdale

What's important is that you stay true to yourself. Because when you enter the real world, the most valuable thing you can bring is all your you-ness. The world doesn't need any more hot chicks or tough guys or smooth talkers - the world needs more you. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. ~ Bo Burnham

Mob guys had muscle, and where in hell do you think employers got the tough guys when they wanted to break a strike? ~ Jimmy Hoffa

The hockey I was raised on, the hockey I understand, the hockey that my dad taught me about when I was a boy was intrinsically connected with fighting. I grew up in a house where we revered tough guys. ~ Jay Baruchel

Boxer guys are very tough and they play a very tough game, but its a game. Karate guys, tae kwon doe guys, kickboxers or judo guys, they are very tough guys and a lot of heart and a lot of training, but its very specifically as a sport. It's not a fight. A fight is everything goes. ~ Rickson Gracie

Although America loved its tough guys, they weren't ready to vote for leaders who exhibited no compassion for the downtrodden and miserable, for on any given day they might constitute a majority. ~ David Baldacci

Truly tough guys never say they're tough. ~ Dean Koontz

Hollywood wants guys who can act tough - Hollywood don't want tough guys. ~ Danny Trejo

For Padilla the shared act of smoking was basically a staging of loneliness: the tough guys, the talkers, the quick to forget and the long to remember, lost themselves for an instant, the length of time it took the cigarette to burn, an instant in which time was frozen and yet all times in Spanish history were concentrated, all the cruelty and the broken dreams, and in that "night of the soul" the smokers recognized each other, unsurprised, and embraced. The spirals of smoke were the embrace. ~ Roberto Bolano

That Elvis, man, he is all there is. There ain't no more. Everything starts and ends with him. He wrote the book. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias right now. There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king. ~ Bruce Springsteen

I can think of so many tough guys that by definition it's their job to be tough and they're all in chapel. That's such a misconception and it's kind of gone out the window. Guys feel more comfortable going to chapel. I remember when I first started, guys were nervous about it and it was kind of a secret. There was still that stigma that came with it, but it's definitely been removed and (the faith movement) is definitely growing. ~ Matt Cullen

I think one of the reasons I've had success in hip-hop is that I can bring out vulnerability in people who are generally seen as tough guys. To me, when a hip-hop musician always plays tough, I find it annoying because I know they're not really like that - there's something deeper and vulnerable. There has to be, because they're human beings. ~ Skylar Grey

All those tough guys who want to scare the world into seeing them as men ... who don't know how to be a man with a woman, only abrute or a boy, who fill up the divorce courts; all those corporate raiders and rain-forest burners and war starters who want more in hopes that will make them feel better; ... are suffering from Father Hunger. They go through their puberty rituals day after day for a lifetime, waiting for a father to anoint them and say "Attaboy," to treat them as good enough to be considered a man. ~ Frank Pittman

I'm actually a softie. Tough guys get killed too early ... I've got a full head of hair and don't wear eyeglasses. ~ Mickey Spillane

He reached out, opened the glove compartment, and took out a gun. It was a Smith & Wesson .38 five-shot special. It looked a lot like my gun.
"I stopped by your apartment this morning and picked this up for you," Ranger said. "I found it in the cookie jar."
"Tough guys always keep their gun in the cookie jar."
"Name one."
"Rockford."
Ranger grinned. "I stand corrected. ~ Janet Evanovich

In my experience, growing up in Brooklyn and all that, the real tough guys didn't act tough. They didn't talk tough. They were tough, you know? I think about these politicians who try to pose as tough guys - it makes me laugh. ~ Pete Hamill

After doing two years in prison, trust me, I've seen a lot of tough guys pray. They're not just praying for themselves; they're praying for their family and the people they've let down. ~ Ja Rule

There are no tough guys in wrestling. ~ Randy Savage

I liked to imagine there was that kind of softness inside even the toughest of tough guys. In that regard, I guess I'm like most other women. I like the idea of these bad boys having soft nougat centers. Of course, not all men are like that. You brek them open, expecting nougat, and you end up with something disgusting like coconut. That's something that needs to be understood from the get-go. Some men are just assholes. Period. ~ Jennifer Becton

Living ain't easy, loving's twice as tough. ~ Bobby Vee

One of the biggest problems this country has is that people think a law is a law only if they agree with it. And if they don't, it's all right to kick guys like Joe out of the service and bomb abortion clinics because there's a higher law at work. ~ Jennifer Crusie

It's been a pretty tough day," he said. "No sense making it worse with a salad. ~ Susan Juby

It's hard to find a good guy ... all girls know that guys don't think with their brains. ~ Miley Cyrus

I don't want to be known as the Aerosmith chick, but it's fun to put on the boots and makeup and act like a tough girl. ~ Alicia Silverstone

There are a lot of designers who think they understand technology and a lot of technology guys who think they understand design. But to put them together and make it robust and repeatable for the mass market? It's an art. ~ Tony Fadell

My father tried to give me the sex talk once, and he chickened out. He walked into my room and went, 'Adam - uh, don't kiss guys.' ~ Adam Ferrara

Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it's a small price to pay for living a dream. ~ Peter McWilliams

In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify the individual tax code. This will be a tough job, but members of both parties have expressed an interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them. ~ Barack Obama

So you must be the guys she was talking about." "Really?" Katz said. "What'd she say?" "Oh, nothing," he said, but he was suppressing a small smile in that way that makes you say: "What?" "Nothing. It was nothing." But he was smiling. "What?" He wavered. "Oh, all right. She said you guys were a couple of overweight wimps who didn't know the first thing about hiking and that she was tired of carrying you." "She said that?" Katz said, scandalized. "Actually I think she called you pussies." "She called us pussies?" Katz said. "Now I will kill her. ~ Bill Bryson

Wheaties was the big sponsor in those days (1940s). They sponsored almost all the baseball games in the majors and the minors. That was a lot of Wheaties. I think there were twenty-four boxes in a case and some of these guys were hitting twenty-five and thirty home runs a season. We had a dog in those days named Blue Grass and the players used to give us their Wheaties for him. Blue Grass loved Wheaties and so did I. ~ Ernie Harwell

I thought marriage was tough. Golf's like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel! It's a psychological game that gets into your blood. ~ Sylvester Stallone

Hi shook his head. The guy's not a rocket scientist. Or a rock scientist. He's dumb, is what I'm saying. ~ Kathy Reichs

You are not just an ordinary woman. You are strong-willed. You push yourself to the limits. You make your own plans. You're not afraid to go out of your comfort zone. You pursue your passions.You take on tough challenges and treat them as your life's greatest adventures. ~ Joena San Diego

Do you guys even realize that you're not really playing ultimate?" Megan asked. "I looked it up online and you're doing it entirely wrong."
"We're doing it McGowan style," Doug replied with a knowing nod.
"What does that mean?" Megan asked.
"It's football with a Frisbee," Finn told her. "And at the end of the game we like to high five a lot and make barking noises. No one knows why or when we started it; we just did. ~ Kate Brian

Remember when I said all guys talk to their friends about sex?
Well, we do.
But no guy talks to his friends about sex with his girlfriend. Ever. ~ Emma Chase

You think this is some sort of comedy going on here?" Collins gave him his tough stare.
A little red spark flared in Barabas's eyes. "Excuse me." He struck with preternatural quickness and yanked a five-foot snake from the counter, an inch away from Tsoi's elbow. Tsoi jumped, clearing half the room in a single bound. The snake body flailed in my lawyer's fist. Barabas jerked the snake to his mouth and bit its neck.
"Jesus Christ!" Collins took a step back. Tsoi clamped her hand over her mouth.
Barabas spat the head onto the counter. "Pit viper - my favorite. Where were we? Ah, yes. You were trying to intimidate me. I apologize for the interruption. Please, resume your staring. ~ Ilona Andrews

Well, my epic freedom moment was short-lived, because I realized my cell phone was dead. I walked down the road to a gas station and asked if I could use the phone. I called Tracy and told her where I was and asked her to pick me up. When Tracy arrived I hopped in the car and the very first thing I said to her was "I gotta get home. I have to print out some TV guides and I need to write a letter to some of the guys in there." She started laughing and when she could compose herself enough to talk said, "My sisters and I all said we guarantee Noah is going to come out of jail with new friends. He's going to be friends with everybody."
I got home and immediately wrote a letter to Michael Bolton. I put my email address at the bottom. I printed out TV guides. I printed out crossword puzzles. I even printed a couple of pages of jokes and riddles and whatever would be fun to read and do and folded them up and put them in an envelope. All that was left to do was to write the address, put a stamp on the envelope, and put it in the mailbox. I put the envelope in the car in between the seat and the center console to take to the post office.
I must have been distracted or had to do something else because the envelope sat there for months. Every so often I would look at it and go, Oh crap, I haven't sent that yet. And then at some point I spilled something on it so I knew I would never send it now. I threw it out.
To this day I'm worried that one day I'm going to be at the ~ Noah Galloway

Peter pushed off from the roof and stalked a few feet away, his back to her. "Please tell me this is all some kind of a sick joke."
"It's the truth. All of it. That's why hunters are after me."
"How did they find out?" Peter asked, swiveling toward her now.
"I think Beck ratted me out. I went to his house this morning and told him what had happened. He was furious, Peter. I've never seen anyone that angry."
"Duh! Now there's a surprise," her friend replied sarcastically. "I saw the way he looked at you at your dad's funeral. Of course he'd be mad. You're about the only one on the planet who doesn't realize how he feels about you."
"He never said anything," she retorted.
"Hey, we guys don't blurt out that kind of stuff," he replied. "It's against the man code. Beck may never have said how he felt, but everything he did for you should have been a big clue. I mean, come on, how slow are you?"
She glowered at her friend. "I figured he was doing it because of my father."
"Maybe, but the guy is really into you, Riley."
"No way. If he'd liked me, he wouldn't have blown me off and - "
"Ancient history, girl!" he countered. "You were, what, fifteen? Your dad would have torn him apart if he'd touched you. Beck had no other choice."
"He didn't have to be so mean."
"God, will you listen to yourself?" Peter retorted.
"You have no idea how much he hurt me," she shot back.
"Give it up, will you? You're my best friend, but ~ Jana Oliver

The word "marriage" lingered in Guy's ears, too. It was a solemn word to him. It had the primordial solemnity of holy, love, sin. It was Miriam's round terra cotta-coloured mouth saying, "Why should I put myself out for you?" and it was Anne's eyes as she pushed her hair back and looked up at him on the lawn of her house where she planted crocuses. It was Miriam turning from the tall thin window in the room in Chicago, lifting her freckled, shield-shaped face directly up to his as she always did before she told a lie, and Steve's long dark head, insolently smiling. ~ Patricia Highsmith

A charming eccentric, a piece of blank paper on which the electorate could write its message: You other guys are so wasted that we decided to elect this fool for two years instead. ~ Stephen King

My heroes are guys like Frank Capra and Elia Kazan and Coen brothers and Terry Gilliam, more so than a lot of bass players at this point in my life. So I've always been an old-film nut and have very much enjoyed doing videos over the years. ~ Les Claypool

It bothers me when I hear these reporters and jocks get on TV and say: 'Oh, no guy can come out in a team sport. These guys would go crazy.' First of all, quit telling me what I think. I'd rather have a gay guy who can play than a straight guy who can't play. ~ Charles Barkley

I have to constantly tell my personnel staff, 'Hey guys, we're still a good staff even though we're allowing good players to go play for other people,' ~ Ozzie Newsome

I have a thing for evil bald bad guys. The Kurgan is too sexy. ~ Ernest Cline

Gore Vidal, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, all these guys talk about how the United States became a national security state after World War II. I agree with that thesis. Essentially there's this bipartisan foreign policy elite who've been calling the shots for the last few decades and they're clearly still in control regardless of how clownish or absurd or stupid they demonstrate themselves to be. There's no shaking their orthodoxy. ~ Michael Hastings

The 99 Cent Only Store is calling itself your Valentine's Day headquarters. Guys, if that's your Valentine's Day headquarters, you can also call the garage your new home. ~ Jay Leno

Playing Chelsea is as tough a test as you'll get in Europe these days. ~ Michael Carrick

You have to be tough-skinned and willing to accept criticism, and at the same time, just try to do music that you like and you are proud of and not just whatever you think it's going to take to get you on the radio. ~ Alan Jackson

As a general rule, I didn't like guys who styled their hair like they just woke up. Messiness should never be a goal. It should be a consequence. ~ Veronica Rossi

Larry Fitzgerald is one of the hardest-working guys I've ever seen. We spent some time training in Minnesota last offseason, and to see what he does to get better, he has to be the best. ~ Kerry Rhodes

Broadway is a tough, tough arena for singing. ~ Julie Andrews

Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid. ~ John Wayne

Thinking it'll be tough, one forwent the test;
while other took it but studied hardest.
Thinking it might rain, one canceled his trip;
while other pushed through, with raincoat equipped.

Thoughts of hindrance make you not negative,
it's in the kind of reaction you'll give.
If the negative's way is just to quit,
the positive's style is find ways round it. ~ Rodolfo Martin Vitangcol

Most of the real bad guys in the world are people like you and me; they're not stupid, and you can't smell their horns. ~ Rutger Hauer

Let me meet Poet, too, but mainly Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers. A guy who paints things like that is a guy I could fall for. Really fall for ~ Cath Crowley

Plus, when you get in tough situations, like the bases loaded and nobody out, you never give in. ~ Dwight Gooden

Larry Walker paved the way for guys like me. ~ Jason Bay

Ponyboy, I asked the nurse to give you this book so you could finish it. The doctor came in a while ago but I knew anyway. I keep getting tireder and tireder. Listen, I don't mind dying now. It's worth it. It's worth saving those kids. Their lives are worth more then mine, they have more to live for. Some of their parents came by to thank me and I know it was worth it. Tell Dally it's worth it. I'm just going to miss you guys. I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything's new, dawn. It's just when you get used to everything that it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep that way, it's a good way to be. I want you to tell Dally to look at one. He'll probably think you're crazy but ask for me. I don't think he's ever really seen a sunset. And don't be so bugged over being a greaser. You still have a lot of time to make yourself be what you want. There's still lots of good in the world. Tell Dally. I don't think he knows.
Your buddy,

Johnny ~ S.E. Hinton

Guys are like purses,Cute, full of crap, and totally replaceable. ~ Lucy Miller

If you love your dad, it's tough when he dies. If you don't like your dad, it's tough when he dies. Because you lose that guy. Whatever you didn't get, you miss. And what you did get, you miss. ~ Jimmy Iovine

Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes. ~ Bette Davis

We have some fast guys out there. It's always fun to compete with each other at practice in the outfield. It's going to be a fun year out there. ~ Andrew Stevenson