Awful Truth Quotes & Sayings

It would almost be easier to have woken up and found that everything about her life was a lie, instead of just this one awful truth. — Debra Ginsberg

The awful truth was that Jim was happy: not in some bland, superficial way - fixed Kodak smiles under the bluest of skies - but in his deepest self. This kind of happiness was less a state, he realised, than a form of honesty: a sense of essential rightness. — Laura Barnett

Back in the late '90s, I put together a humorous newsmagazine program called 'The Awful Truth' for Bravo. We helped one guy get an organ transplant whose insurance company had refused to pay. I thought, if we could save a guy's life in a 10-minute segment on cable, what could we do if we devoted a whole movie to a whole bunch of people? — Michael Moore

This morning, you have a choice. You can lay in the dark replaying the awful events of the week, or you can turn the light on and read God's Word-His truth-which is the best thing to do when lies are swarming and painful thoughts are attacking like a bunch of bloodthirsty mosquitoes. — Lysa TerKeurst

I fought angrily against seeing particular types of poetic organization because it seemed awful to see my own life and these actual events in that way. But when you put forth an intention into the universe to speak a certain truth and narrate a certain period of your life, you start to see the sorts of symmetries that you are not usually supposed to be able to see until you are on your deathbed and your life flashes before your eyes. And you see exactly why everything happened. And even the most painful things you've ever been through can seem unbearably beautiful. — Joanna Newsom

There is a kind of sense of truth and reconciliation that is non-formalized, but it's understood and accepted. Haitians are Haitians and there is an inherent loyalty that forgives an awful lot. — Sean Penn

It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be ... — Bob Dylan

There are times when a satisfying lie is better than the awful truth. — Colleen Helme

Grace never ignores the awful truth of our depravity; in fact it emphasizes it. The worse we realize we are the greater we realize God's grace. — Randy Alcorn

Humans are unique in this world in that, as opposed to all other animals, they have developed a consciousness so advanced that it has one awful byproduct: they are the only creatures aware of their own mortality. This truth is so terrifying that from a very early age humans bury it deep in their unconscious, and this has turned people into red-blooded machines, fleshy factories that manufacture meaning. — Steve Toltz

Here where we are concerned not with the dogma of Scripture and the Corycian cavern only, but in very truth with the awful secrets of the Divine Majesty (namely, why he works in the way we have said), here you smash bolts and bars and rush in all but blaspheming, as indignant as possible with God because you are not allowed to see the meaning and purpose of such a judgment of his. — Martin Luther

You must think I'm an awful ruler. One of those spoiled, selfish queens who cares more for her own reputation than the welfare of her people. — Marissa Meyer

How sad it was, Carmen thought, that you acted awful when you were desperately sad and hurt and wanted to be loved. How tragic then, the way everyone avoided you and tiptoed around you when you really needed them. Carmen knew this vicious predicament as well as anyone in the world. How bitter it felt when you acted badly to everyone and ended up hating yourself the most. — Ann Brashares

Do you love him?"
"I wish people would stop asking me that," Celia muttered under her breath.
"What people?"
"Gran." She swallowed. "Mr. Pinter."
"Mr. Pinter?" Minerva echoed with decided interest.
"It's not what you think," Celia protested. "I hired him to find out the truth about my suitors, so he wanted to know if I was in love with any of them."
Minerva arched one eyebrow. "And why should he care?"
"That's what I said. And ever since, he's been baiting me in front of them and telling me awful things about them to blacken them in my mind."
"Even Lyons?" Minerva said.
"Well, no. I mean, I'm sure you've heard about the madness in the duke's family, but beyond that, Jackson hasn't found a single thing-"
"Jackson?"
Celia colored. "Mr. Pinter." When Minerva kept staring, she added sullenly, "We've been in each other's pockets because of the investigation. That's all. — Sabrina Jeffries

Sometimes, though, I feel that pushing books is a whole lot like pushing medicine. Think of books as pills. I have pills that cure ignorance and pills that cure boredom. I have pills to elevate moods and pills to open people's eyes to the awful truth: uppers and downers as they were. I sell pills to help people find themselves and pills to help them lose themselves when they require escape from the pressures and anxieties of life in a complex society ... — Tom Robbins

It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world. Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity; it brings out the old raiding, oppressing, murderous instincts; the rage for revenge, for power, the lust for bloodshed. The longing for freedom takes the form of crushing the enemy- there is always the enemy!- into the earth; and where and who is the enemy if there is no visible establishment to attack, to destroy with blood and fire? Remember all that oratory when freedom is threatened again. Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty. — Katherine Anne Porter

I think for the foreseeable future, the truth is going to be awful and funny all at the same time. — John Hodgman

In my mind my obituary is done.It is done and it is right. It tells the truth and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I'm remembered at all. Remember the truth. that is all that matters — James Frey

There is something more than violence that Nasheenians taught me, and that is the awful brutality of speaking absolute truth. I propose that we begin to unmask ourselves. We speak the truth of ourselves. We tell them just how many of us there are. — Kameron Hurley

You're after perfection,'Matt said.
'Is that so awful?'
'No, it's not, but if you aim for perfection, you've got to be ready to take the consequences of not getting it and one of those is ending up with no one. — Tim Relf

Heartbreak is awful, but truth be told, if you have never had your heart broken, then you aren't fully living. I want you to ask yourself this question because I want you to bask in the fullness of life. And in order to feel life - to experience life - you need to take risks. When you open your heart, you risk having it broken; or stated more accurately it will be broken. But do it anyway; open yourself up. If you don't, you will never know what it means to live, to love and to be with others. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

I raise my glass to the Awful Truth,
Which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth,
Except to say it isn't worth a dime,
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice,
And it's once for the Devil and once for Christ — Leonard Cohen

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. — Anne Rice

The founders of the United Nations sought to replace a world at war with a world of civilized order. They hoped that a world of relentless conflict would give way to a new era, one where freedom from violence prevailed ... But the awful truth is that the use of violence for political gain has become more, not less, widespread in the last decade. — Ronald Reagan

Truth can be awful and even excruciating, but once it's released, it's like a bird that's been caged too long who finally flies to freedom. I felt a little like that. Free — Ilsa Madden-Mills

It didn't matter much what Dwayne said. It hadn't mattered much for years. It didn't matter much what most people in Midland City said out loud, except when they were talking about money or structures or travel or machinery - or other measurable thins. Every person had a clearly defined part to play - as a black person, a female high school drop-out, a Pontiac dealer, a gynecologist, a gas-conversion burner installer. If a person stopped living up to expectations, because of bad chemicals or one thing or another, everybody went on imagining that the person was living up to expectations anyway.
That was the main reason the people in Midland City were so slow to detect insanity in their associates. Their imaginations insisted that nobody changed much from day to day. Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of awful truth. — Kurt Vonnegut

That voice that talks badly to you is a demon voice. This very patient and determined demon shows up in your bedroom one day and refuses to leave. You are six or twelve or fifteen and you look in the mirror and you hear a voice so awful and mean that it takes your breath away. It tells you that you are fat and ugly and you don't deserve love. And the scary part is the demon is your own voice. — Amy Poehler

Glorify a lie, legalize a lie, arm and equip a lie, consecrate a lie with solemn forms and awful penalties, and after all it is nothing but a lie. It rots a land and corrupts a people like any other lie, and by and by the white light of God's truth shines clear through it, and shows it to be a lie. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'. — Paul Murray

When the Lord Jesus Christ comes to purge His threshing floor, He shall punish all who are not His disciples with a fearful punishment. All who are found impenitent and unbelieving - all who have held the truth in unrighteousness - all who have clung to sin, stuck to the world, and set their affection on things below - all who are without Christ. All such shall come to an awful end. Christ shall burn up the chaff! — J.C. Ryle

The truth is, yes, you were... altered for many years. But I think the worst thing you could do is pretend like it never happened. It did. Sometimes, terrible, awful things happen to people, things you can't predict or wish for differently that happen just the same. But you can't let them consume you. You can't wish it away. All you can do is pray you've learned from it, that it's made you stronger, and that you will move on. I bought this dress because it's beautiful, but also because it's you. I felt like if you wore it, embraced who you are and what you've been and done... it will help you move on. — Heather Lyons

The truth to reconcile these truths he found in the experience of men, which the men of his generation must have realized far beyond others, that pain and error have their purpose and their use: they are steps of the ladder of knowledge: God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. A great and lonely thinker. Only — Edith Hamilton

When you hate someone you used to love, and you think he's done something awful - he probably has. — E. Lockhart

I clasped his face in both hands as I kissed him. "You don't know how I need you, how I love you, how I always have," I whispered in his ear. Maybe he would find me more charming on account of what's befallen me - the unexpected horror I've seen, the inevitable pain I've endured. It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to our colours, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit. — Anne Rice

Well, of course, you can't expect people to rearrange their minds in five minutes. And I'm not good at this. And I don't want to do it. It's a bore, anyway. Unfortunately I know what will happen if I keep on; I'll say that if we are going to talk about these things, let us please talk about them seriously and our fake Britisher will say that he always takes pretty girls seriously and then I'll say I don't you cut off your testicles and shove them down your throat? and then I'll lose my job and then I'll commit suicide. I once hit a man with a book but that was at a feminist meeting and anyway I didn't hit him really, because he dodged. I have never learned the feminine way of cutting a man down to size, although I can imagine how to do it, but truth to tell, that would go against what I believe, that men must live up to such awful things. — Joanna Russ

With all his soul he wanted to sweep her to him and tell her everything was going to be all right. To erase that awful bleakness from her face and with his two strong arms reshape the world for her, to make everything all right. But he had learned long ago the futility of racing from the truth. — Leigh Bristol

The creation of man whom God in his foreknowledge knew doomed to sin was the awful index of God's omnipotence. For it would have been a thing of trifling and contemptible ease for Perfection to create mere perfection. To do so would, to speak truth, be not creation but extension. Separateness is identity and the only way for God to create, truly create, man was to make him separate from God Himself, and to be separate from God is to be sinful. The creation of evil is therefore the index of God's glory and His power. That had to be so that the creation of good might be the index of man's glory and power. But by God's help. By His help and in His wisdom. — Robert Penn Warren

What is awful is that there were always reasons to do one thing and not another, but these reasons disappear. You don't remember them. They just go, and you're left with what you did or didn't do, and this idea that you didn't do enough. The truth isn't always so easy. You can't think yourself back into that place that made everything how it was. — Richard House

She shuddered and wrapped her arms across her chest. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks, and the pain in her throat swelled to an unbearable lump. The awful truth fell across her. He didn't want her. She'd only wanted to tell him how much she cared about him - about them - but he'd pushed her away. . . . — Jody Hedlund

Leaning her silly, beautiful, drunken head on my shoulder, she said, "Oh, Esther, I don't want to be a feminist. I don't enjoy it. It's no fun."
"I know," I said. "I don't either." People think you decide to be a "radical," for God's sake, like deciding to be a librarian or a ship's chandler. You "make up your mind," you "commit yourself" (sounds like a mental hospital, doesn't it?).
I said Don't worry, we could be buried together and have engraved on our tombstone the awful truth, which some day somebody will understand:
WE WUZ PUSHED. — Joanna Russ

Memory is that trick by which we see the awful events of the past loom over the good, like mountains over mouse. We don't recall life as it was. Instead, we remember what was different, frightening, or strange, and we turn our lives into the fun-house mirror images of the truth. — Jamie Kain

Because of GLHR's crusades ... we're beginning to learn the awful truth about workers around the world who are slaving away their lives in sweatshops, who are denied the right to join or form a union in order to fight back and provide a better life for their families. — John Sweeney

This one truth, that the few people you adore will die, is plenty difficult to absorb. But on top of it, someone's brakes fail, or someone pulls the trigger or snatches the kid, or someone deeply trusted succumbs to temptation, and everything falls apart. We are hurt beyond any reasonable chance of healing. We are haunted by our failures and mortality. And yet the world keeps on spinning, and in our grief, rage, and fear a few people keep on loving us and showing up. It's all motion and stasis, change and stagnation. Awful stuff happens and beautiful stuff happens, and it's all part of the big picture. — Anne Lamott

Another thing that happens in the movies: They all have these dramatic crises where everything looks bleak and you think the couple will never, ever get back together. But then they realize they can't live without each other, and in the end they live happily ever after.
It's all a lie. When you hate someone you used to love, and you think he's done something awful-he probably has.
You're not going to love him again.
He's not going to apologize, or come back to you.
He probably doesn't even ever think about you at all, because he's too busy thinking about someone else. — E. Lockhart

You were wrong, Gram," I said softly, tone emotionless because I was resigned to the awful, lonely truth of it. "Love doesn't save our souls. It kills them. — R.K. Lilley

I think there was an awful lot about him that I thought I knew, but the truth was I was just coloring in the missing parts with colors I liked. — Craig Johnson

The truth can be very funny in an awful way, especially as it relates to greed and hipocrisy. — Kurt Vonnegut

I have come to believe there is nothing in the lives of human beings more terrifying than war and nothing more important than for those of us who have experienced it to share its awful truth. — Ron Kovic

It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse: a recorder to make the book that would be scripture in the new world; a preserver to comfort and save those selected to be the first generation; an accuser to remind them why they suffer; and a destroyer to revoke the promise of survival and redemption, and to teach them the awful truth about furious sheltering grace. — Chris Adrian

Everything in life has some good in it. And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more
it's sad, but that's the truth. — Banana Yoshimoto

Oh, how long were the days of a man.
When he strode upon the broken land.
He sailed as far as a man could steer.
And he never wished to lose his fear.
For the fear of man is a thing untold.
It keeps him safe, and it proves him bold!
Don't let fear make you cease to strive,
for that fear it proves you remain alive!
I will walk this broken road,
and I will carry a heavy load!
So come at me with your awful lies,
I'm a man of truth and I'll meet your eyes! — Robert Jordan

I suppose I could let bygones be bygones, forgive and forget, yadda yadda. But where's the fun in that? These pretty little bitches got everything I ever wanted, and now I'm going to make sure they get exactly what they deserve. Does that make me sound awful? Sorry, but as every pretty little liar knows, sometimes the truth's ugly-and it always hurts.
I'll be watching ...
Mwah!
-A — Sara Shepard

I have to expend an awful lot of energy actively undoing the impact of my name. Understandably, people assume that I have at least some connection to Iran. The truth is that I don't. I have very little knowledge about the culture, the language, the history. I've never been to Iran. I've never even been inside a mosque. — Said Sayrafiezadeh

How awful a knowledge of the truth can be. — Douglas Preston

I had written a book of short stories which was published under the title of "Uncle Tom's Children". When the review of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awful naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears. — Richard Wright

...there was no escaping the monsters, not even on this island, no bigger on a map than a grain of sand, protected by mountains of fog and sharp rocks and seething tides. Not anywhere. That was the awful truth... — Ransom Riggs

Couldn't stand that she saw right through what I did to her - the shame I felt when she didn't cry or shout and I figured out I'd been trying to trick her into changing her mind about me because I couldn't just tell her the truth. I loved her. Every day, every hour, every single fucking awful minute, I loved her. — Robin York

Truth is truth to the end of reckoning. What was that from? Measure for Measure? But perhaps, truth was asleep until the end of reckoning. There was going to be an awful lot of reckoning when the time came. — Kate Atkinson

The sinner I was expecting was guilty of pride, lust and spiritual despair, not merely of sloth and ineptitude. This was the diary of a nobody. So I nearly censored January to June 1933 in the interests of Grandpa's glamour as a Gothic personage. But in truth this is what we should be exposed to - the awful knowledge that when they're not breaking the commandments, the anti-heroes are mending their tobacco pipes and listening to the wireless. — Lorna Sage

All right, Chris, you've given me a breather. I'm prepared for
anything.
And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you
haven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself." I kissed him quickly on
the lips, and told him to go on, to hit me with his knockout blow.
"Really, Chris, I know you must have something perfectly awful to tell
me-so out with it. Keep holding me as you tell me, and I can stand
anything you have to say. — V.C. Andrews

To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth-intellect ually and emotionally-and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us. — Chris Hedges

I want to tell her that because I want her to be happy. But I also know it's not true. And part of loving someone, part of being the recipient of trust, is telling the truth even when it's awful. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

Calvin: Somewhere in Communist Russia I'll bet there's a little boy who has never known anything but censorship and oppression. But maybe he's heard of America, and he dreams of living in this land of freedom and opportunity! Someday, I'd like to meet that little boy ... and tell him the awful TRUTH ABOUT THIS PLACE!! Calvin's Dad: Calvin, be quiet and eat the stupid lima beans. — Bill Watterson

The life of the hero of the tale is, at the outset, overshadowed by bitter and hopeless struggles; one doubts that the little swineherd will ever be able to vanquish the awful Dragon with the twelve heads. And yet, ... truth and courage prevail and the youngest and most neglected son of the family, of the nation, of mankind, chops off all twelve heads of the Dragon, to the delight of our anxious hearts. This exultant victory, towards which the hero of the tale always strives, is the hope and trust of the peasantry and of all oppressed peoples. This hope helps them bear the burden of their destiny. — Gyula Illyes

Why do you need that thing?" September asked. "None of the airports back home have them."
"They do. You just can't see them right," Betsy Basilstalk said with a grin. "All customs agents have them, otherwise, why would people agree to stand in line and be peered at and inspected? We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say, lines on maps are silly. Where you live, the awful machinery is smaller, harder to see. Less honest, that's all. Whereas Rupert here? He's as honest as they come. Does what it says on the box. — Catherynne M Valente

Pilate turned on his heel and said, "What is truth?" As much as to say, "I am the procurator of this part of the country. All I care for is money." "What's truth?" I do not think he asked the question, "What is truth?" as some preach from it, as if he seriously desired to know what it really was, for surely he would have paused for the Divine reply and not have gone away from Christ the moment afterwards. He said, "Pshaw! What's truth?" Yet there was something so awful about the Prisoner, that his wife's dream, and her message - "See that you have nothing to do with this just Person," all worked upon the superstitious fears of this very weak-minded ruler. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

They used to call it the 'Great War'. But I'll be damned if I could tell you what was so 'great' about it. They also called it 'the war to end all wars' ... 'cause they figured it was so big and awful that the world'd just have to come to its senses and make damn sure we never fought another one ever again.
That woulda been a helluva nice story.
But the truth's got an ugly way of killin' nice stories. — Max Brooks

I didn't tell him that I'd put his awful stories in boxes and stacked them on a shelf at the back of my mind. I could hear a quieter version of them still, from their dark place, through all the other business that occupied my brain, but I wouldn't unlid those boxes until I was ready to hear [his] stories again as they wanted to be heard. — Lauren Wolk

Ronan said, "A piece of Cabeswater. A piece of a dream. It's what I asked for. And this is ... this is what I think it should look like, probably." Adam felt the truth of it. This awful and impossible and lovely object was what a dream was when it had nothing to inhabit. Who was this person who could dream a dream into a concrete shape? No wonder Aglionby bored Ronan. — Maggie Stiefvater

Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth. — Kurt Vonnegut

My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries. — Ellen Willis

I think an awful lot of the diplomatic problems that exist in the world come from people assuming that their society is the one with a purchase on truth. — Andrew Solomon

The truth was, I didn't feel sorry for Billy. He teased a dog and got his fingers bitten off. Fuck him. Fuck everybody. And fuck you, Amy, for somehow getting me to tell you this. Sure, yeah, I felt bad about it, Your Honor. And that day years ago when I heard about the kids shooting up the school in Colorado I shook my head and said it was a tragedy, an awful tragedy, but inside I was thinking the look on the jocks' faces when they saw the guns must have been fucking priceless. So, yeah, as far as you know, I felt just as bad about Billy as a good person would. And I'll never, ever tell you otherwise. Never. — David Wong

Jefferson referred to the Federalists as madmen: "Their leaders are a hospital of incurables, and as such entitled to be protected and taken care of as other insane persons are."84,85 Still, there was hope - for to Jefferson, where there was freedom, there was always hope. "The times have been awful," he said, "but they have proved a useful truth that the good citizen must never despair of the commonwealth." Priestley — Jon Meacham

The truth was that life was as short and brutish and mean as ever. "But people didn't have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so, too, did the happiness of the people grow. They were all employed full — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Only a fool takes offense at the truth, Jessamine. They are awful, of that there is no question. But they are also very charming. Purveyors of unspeakable suffering and indescribable delights. Performers of murders and miracles! You might grow to like them, if you got to know them as I do. But why has your beloved Crabgrass ventured into this garden of horrors, I wonder? — Maryrose Wood

Hope is a terrible thing, she said. Is it? Yes, it keep you living in another place, a place which doesn't exist. For some people it's better than where they are. For many it's a relief. From life, she said. A relief from life? Is that living? Some people don't have a choice. No and that's awful for them. Hope is better than misery, he said. Or despair. Hope belongs in the same box as despair. Hope is not so bad, he said. At least despair has truth to it. — Susan Minot

The insistence on complete certainty about the full details of global warming-the most serious threat we have ever faced-is actually an effort to avoid facing the awful, uncomfortable truth: that we must act boldly, decisively, comprehensively, and quickly, even before we know every last detail about the crisis. Those who continue to argue that the appropriate response is merely additional research are simply seeking to camouflage timidity or protect their vested interest in the status quo. — Al Gore

There is a truth that everyone knows but you. Each of us has it; no one is immune. Not a secret, not a scandal, but something simple and obvious to everyone else. It can be as simple as losing weight, or as difficult as leaving a husband. How awful, to sense that everybody knows the thing that would change your life, and yet no one is friend enough to tell you! You are left to guess, all by yourself. Until that moment comes when it reveals itself to you, and of course this revelation always comes a moment too late. — Andrew Sean Greer

But people didn't have to pay as much attention to the awful truth. As the living legend of the cruel tyrant in the city and the gentle holy man in the jungle grew, so, too, did the happiness of the people grow. They were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud. — Kurt Vonnegut

I cling to the fantasy that I could have done something more creative. Like actually writing a script, or writing a book. But the awful truth is that I ... probably can't! — Hugh Grant