Bad Truth Quotes & Sayings

If a person is not willing to take responsibility for themselves, it does not excuse them from not taking responsibility when their bad choices affect others. — L.M. Fields

"I'm going to tell myself that you're just cranky because Chloe's at the mall with Tori, and you weren't allowed to go. I could point out that if you did go, you'd be even crankier, and you'd make everyone miserable. Especially me."
"You wouldn't have to go."
"Sure I would. I'd need to run interference when Tori asked how a new shirt looked and you told her the truth."
"I'm honest. Honest is good."
"Not when it comes to girls and clothes. You need to gauge their reaction first. If they aren't happy with it, you suggest they try something else, even if it looked fine. If they love it and it looks like hell, you say it's not bad and hope they try something else." — Kelley Armstrong

Do you know, I am putting off ending this letter as though the end would be the end of something I want to hold on to. That's not true of course - just a feeling like the quick one of hexing your trip so you couldn't go. The mind is capable of any selfishness and it thinks unworthy things whether you want it or not. Best to admit it is a bad child rather than to pretend it is always a good one. Because a bad child can improve but a good one is a liar and nothing can improve a liar. — John Steinbeck

The Rochester group [of VOTF], however, was met with some concern as they found it hard to believe my account as it unfolded before them. I feel that some people have a hard time with the truths around us, not only the sexual abuse by priests, but all bad things. I call it chosen ignorance. This modified form of ignorance is found in people who, if confronted with certain truths realize that they have to accept them and thereby acknowledge evil, and that scares them. Opening up and letting the truth in might knock them off their perceived center. It is too hard, period.
(VOTF - Voice of the Faithful - a Catholic group that wants to change the Church, keep the faith.) — Charles L. Bailey Jr.

Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or, — Nathaniel Hawthorne

A perception of this truth lies at the back of the universal human feeling that bad men ought to suffer. It is no use turning up our noses at this feeling, as if it were wholly base. On its mildest level it appeals to everyone's sense of justice. Once — C.S. Lewis

It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself. — Henry David Thoreau

You have told yourself that you have found your knight in shining armor, my brother Rick. Isn't that the truth? You met him and he fit the bill, so you have told yourself a wonderful story and, stubborn brat that you are, you have been clinging to it ever since. After all, what could be more appropriate than for Francesca Cahill, reformer extraordinaire, to fall in love with my reform-minded Republican brother? But wait! Being as this is a love story, there has to be an unhappy middle and the perfect hero isn't quite so perfect after all. For he is married. Oh, wait! It isn't that bad, after all, for as it turns out he is a man of virtue, and he really loves you, while he despises his wife! And did I forget to mention that she is vile and evil? So the story can limp along, and true love might survive after all! Does this sound at all familiar, Francesca?"
"I almost hate you," she whispered. And she felt a tear sliding down her cheek. — Brenda Joyce

Was it always my nature to take a bad time and block out the good times, until any success became an accident and failure seemed the only truth? — Lillian Hellman

Good or bad, do it as you. Too many lies and there's no truth to go back to. — Terry Pratchett

On street corners everywhere, people are looking at their cell phones, and it's easy to dismiss this as some sort of bad trend in human culture. But the truth is life is being lived there. When they smile - right, you've seen people stop - all of a sudden, life is being lived there, somewhere up in that weird, dense network. — Ze Frank

But even now, especially now, it seems to me that women have a strength about them that men never had. And I wonder how did men always get portrayed in the movies and such as the strong ones? How did it come to be that women are made to look like the weak ones who need protectin'? Truth is, it's men who need the protectin'. Really they do. Women have the strong thing inside of them and the can get through anything. They just can. They're used to pain of child birthing - pain no man knows - and some women being battered around and not treated right through all the centuries and having to learn at a real young age how to stay alive on the inside when the outside is being hurt real bad. Most all women know that. But men. Those poor men. They just don't have the inside strength the women do. It's harder for men to feel pain. — Sarah Felix Burns

Normative Christian theology has enshrined a doctrine that obscures the truth in the scriptures. God is in a box and theologians scramble to preserve the box. It appears to be an attempt to rescue God from the shame of a creation-gone-bad. — Leo Hare

Not bad, not bad at all," Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text. — Umberto Eco

The truth is, bad things are going to happen somewhere, every single day, and today was just your turn. — Cody McFadyen

The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us. You think every soldier who picked up a cutter gun was a bad person? No. She was just doing what the soldier next to her was doing, who was doing what the soldier next to her was doing, and so on and so on. And I bet most of them - not all, but most - who made it through the war spent a long time after trying to understand what they'd done. Wondering how they ever could have done it in the first place. Wondering when killing became so comfortable. — Becky Chambers

The truth is I don't feel too bad for my age. I actually have a better shape now than I used to. — Gary Lineker

DOGMA: a political belief one is unreasonably committed to, such as the notion that freedom is good and slavery is bad.
BIAS: predeliction for a particular dogma. For example, the feminist bias is that women are equal to men and the male chauvinist bias is that women are inferior. The unbiased view is that the truth lies somewhere in between.
(an early comment on backlash, from "Glossary for the Eighties") — Ellen Willis

The truth is, I wrote a novel when I was 23. It's hideously bad. Truly rotten. — Sloane Crosley

The truth is I feel bad about calling you a whore. I don't know anything about your personal life; my judgment was based on nothing more than a general whorish vibe you give off.
You look like you'd screw any squirrel that came your way. You look like you'd even screw the knothole in that tree where you live. But this is all speculation on my part, based on nothing more than your aforementioned whorish vibe and sleazy demeanor. Maybe I'm wrong about you. If so, I apologize.
But I really don't think I am. — Michael Ian Black

No matter how much you try and make your surroundings suitable for creativity, if the enviornment inside of you isn't creatively healthy then you won't be able to make the art you want. Being in tune with yourself and your inner truth, being at peace in there, is the best way to nurture your creativity. Then you can even make a bad enviornment a good one. — Gerard Way

Being exposed to those beauty queens and Praying Mantises at the same time made me ask myself some hard questions. Would I have been so radical had I not been so fat? Could I have been one of the women on the other side parading my beauty of which I was so proud? As I stood there holding my JUDGE MEAT NOT WOMEN picket sign, I recalled all the people who had said to me throughout my life, "You've got such a pretty face." But they never finished the thought. The whole phrase is "You've got such a pretty face, too bad you're fat." But what if I weren't fat? Would I still have attacked this "Meat Parade" so fiercely? The truth is, my fat has informed my politics. And while I'd like to think I would have been just as ardent in my opposition to the objectification of women had I been thin, I'll never know for sure. — Camryn Manheim

Funny thing about guilt: There's nothing so bad that you can't add a little guilt to it and make it worse; and there's nothing so good you can't add guilt to it and make it better. Guilt distracts us from a greater truth: we have an inherent ability to heal. We seem intent on living through even the worst heartbreak... How? ... Practice. — C. Jay Cox

Davy once asked me if I thought it was better to be a has-been than a never was, but maybe it doesn't make much of a difference. In the end, people are just people, and the only things that matter are whether they are good or bad, loving or unloving, loved or unloved. — Todd Strasser

The gospel of Jesus Christ must be the bad news of the conviction of sin before it can be the Good News of redemption. The truth is revealed in God's Holy Word; life can be lived only in absolute and disciplined submission to its authority. — Charles Colson

The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic. — Charles Sanders Peirce

I had written all I was going to write, if the truth had been known, and there is nothing wrong with that. If more writers knew that, the world would be saved a lot of bad books, and more people
men and women alike
could go on to happier, more productive lives. — Richard Ford

Middle School is about as bad as it gets, and then it gets better. — R.J. Palacio

The simple truth of things is that bad dreams are far better than bad wakings. — Stephen King

The interesting thing about cities isn't what they do when people are looking," Ben says. "It's what they do when they think nobody's looking. Like, the shit the city is proud of? The shining skyscrapers downtown, the sports stadiums, the public art? You can't judge a city by that. That only tells you what the rich people are doing on a good day. It's what people do on a bad day - a bad day when there are no security cameras watching - that tells you what you really want to know. It's how people act during a blackout, a hurricane, or a siege that tells you the truth about a city. — Scott Kenemore

Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough. — T. S. Eliot

Imagine if we could all have that kind of clarity while we're here on earth. Imagine if we could all see illness and adversity as opportunities to expand our love on a soul level.

The truth is, we can achieve this clarity. We simply need to see and appreciate the cords of light and love that bind us, in good times and in bad, in this life and the next. We need to honor the light between us. — Laura Lynne Jackson

Here is the truth, Darrel. She is not at the end. She is at the beginning. Her fear has not become greater; it has become less and less until now, her fear is gone altogether. And she is not experiencing something bad that gets worse until there is nothing at all ... she is experiencing something incredible that gets better, until there is everything." Jones looked down at the woman and lightly touched her head. "Before this woman was ever born, when she was warm and snug inside her mama's belly, she kicked and twisted, moving this way and that. For months — Andy Andrews

So don't ask no questions. Too much truth can be bad. — Carolee Dean

The truth is that good and bad coexist; sour and sweet coexist. They aren't really opposed to each other. — Pema Chodron

If the truth contradicts deeply held beliefs, that is too bad. — Hans Eysenck

The truth of God's love is not that He allows bad things to happen, it's his promise that he will be there with us
when they do. — Janette Oke

You can love a bad book for its haplessness or pomposity or gall, if you have that starveling appetite for things human which I devoutly hope you never will have. "The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." There are pleasures to be found where you would never look for them. That's a bit of fatherly wisdom, but it's also the Lord's truth, and a thing I know from my own long experience — Marilynne Robinson

But believe me, there is beauty in it still. Truth. The light of freshness is buried in us and in every moment we breathe. It is there. Sometimes we are so encrusted, so rotted over with misery, bad situations, that we can't see it. Feel it. But it is there. — Alexs D. Pate

I think what's happened, Marlee, is that you've realized the world isn't an addition problem. We tell kids that sometimes. We pretend the world is straightforward, simple, easy. You do this, you get that. You're a good person and try your best, and nothing bad will happen. But the truth is, the world is much more like an algebraic equation. With variables and changes, complicated and messy. Sometimes there's more than one answer, and sometimes there is none. Sometimes we don't even know how to solve the problem. But usually, if we take things step by step, we can figure things out. You just have to remember to factor the equation, break it down into smaller parts. — Kristin Levine

The good thing about kids is that they'll tell you the truth, straight-up, no strings attached, no holds barred honesty. The bad thing about kids is that they'll tell you the truth, straight-up, no strings attached, no holds barred honesty. — C.M. Stunich

There is no good day or a bad day, but our perception makes it so. — Debasish Mridha

Truth is always wilder than fiction. Hold on to your hats and enjoy this page turning
look inside the world of sports betting from a good girl gone bad for love.
Laura Atchison, Author of What Would A Wise Woman Do? — Laura Atchison

Do you understand, mortal?" Eanrin said. "We Faerie know it's the spirit that counts, and all else is malleable. Beauty or ugliness; brawn or frailty; height or lack thereof
these appearances can be exchanged with scarcely a thought! But the truth ... now, that's another issue. The truth of the thing, the person behind what you perceive with any of your paltry five senses ... Creature of dust, it's the truth that counts! And you'll rarely find more truth than in Faerie tales."
With those words, the golden man dwindled into the golden cat, and try as he might, the Chronicler could perceive him as nothing else. But he was still Eanrin, and he smiled, pleased with himself.
"That wasn't a half-bad monologue. Do you find yourself inspired to new heights of ambition? — Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Since you always lived inside your own head, you were much better at seeing the truth about others than you ever were at seeing yourself. So you navigated your life with the help of others who held up mirrors for you. People praised your good qualities and criticized your bad habits, and these perspectives - often surprising to you - helped you to guide your life. So poorly did you know yourself that you were always surprised at how you looked in photographs or how you sounded on voice mail. In this way, much of your existence took place in the eyes, ears, and fingertips of others. And now that you've left the Earth, you are stored in scattered heads around the globe. Here in this Purgatory, all the people with whom you've ever come in contact are gathered. The scattered bits of you are collected, pooled, and unified. The mirrors are held up in front of you. Without the benefit of filtration, you see yourself clearly for the first time. And that is what finally kills you. — David Eagleman

Often the truth is in front of your face, but your eyes and heart are so full of lies that you can't see it. — Shannon L. Alder

What makes fantastic declarations believable is, in part, the vehemence with which they're proffered. Again, in the world of spirituality as well as of pop psychology, intensity of personal belief is evidence of truth. It is considered very bad form - even abuse - to challenge the veracity of any personal testimony that might be offered in a twelve-step group or on a talk show, unless the testimony itself is equivocal ... Whatever sells, whatever many people believe strongly, must be true. — Wendy Kaminer

Well Joe, the truth is that you're not a bad guy, but you have been a bit mysogynistic and homophobic. So your punishment is to make you walk the earth as a homosexual ghost buggering your old mates and aquaitances. — Irvine Welsh

The truth is in California you can't build a new manufacturing facility, and businesses are leaving in droves because of bad government policy. — Carly Fiorina

- I was an American citizen too; a citizen who had to watch his step, a citizen who had to distrust the police and the government, public opinion, and even the history taught in schools. It was odd that such negative thoughts would invigorate me. But knowing the truth, no matter how bad it was, gave you some chance, a little bit of an edge. — Walter Mosley

In order to be truly free, you must desire to know the truth more than you want to feel good. Because, if feeling good is your goal, then as soon as you feel better you will lose interest in what is true. This does not mean that feeling good or experiencing love and bliss is a bad thing. Given the choice, anyone would choose to feel bliss rather than sorrow. It simply means that if this desire to feel good is stronger than the yearning to see, know, and experience Truth, then this desire will always be distorting the perception of what is Real, while corrupting one's deepest integrity. — Adyashanti

Hard times only feel bad. In truth, they serve us so very well. They make us tougher. They connect us to our dormant potential. Yes, they make us feel uncomfortable. Yes, they create confusion within our minds and provoke fear within our hearts. But the reality of the matter is that the conditions that challenge us the most are the very conditions that lead to our greatest growth. And to our most fulfilling achievements. — Robin S. Sharma

I'm partial to the truth, Lo. Good, bad or indifferent. (Vane) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

As soon as he had her safe again in his arms he broke down and kissed her. Helen was so stunned she stopped crying before she had a chance to start and nearly fell out of the sky. Still the
better flyer, Lucas caught her and supported her as they tumbled on the wind, holding and kissing each other as he tumbled on the wind, holding and kissing each other as he guided them safely back down to the catwalk. As their feet touched down, the light inside the lighthouse switched on
and projected the shadows of their embracing figures out onto the choppy waves of the ocean.
"I can't lose you," Lucas said, pulling his mouth away from hers. "That's why I didn't tell you the whole truth. I thought if you knew how bad it was you'd send me away. I didn't want you to give up hope. I can't do this if you give up on us."
(Starcrossed) — Josephine Angelini

A friend who attended a prestigious MBA program once told me about the business ethics course he took there. The professor counseled honest business practices for two reasons. First, if you lie or cheat you may be caught, and that would be bad for business. Second, if people in the company know they ae working in an honest business, that will boost morale ... "Tell the truth
because it's to your own advantage," was the counsel. What happens, however, when you inevitable come to situations in which telling the truth would cost you dearly? What happens when telling a particular lie would be stupendously advantageous to you? — Timothy Keller

Falsehood of a good man is better than truth of a bad one. — Raheel Farooq

I think we all have the same spirituality deep inside and we grow to learn more about it all the time, and we try very hard to become better people as we grow. We search all the time for the truth. We learn more about the world and we can't have thoughts like, "We are better than them" or "They are not good enough for God". This is very bad way of thinking, you know? — Jon Anderson

Algernon. The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility! Jack. That wouldn't be at all a bad thing. Algernon. Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don't try it. You should leave that to people who haven't been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers. — Oscar Wilde

Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It has no reason to fear the truth. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. They can. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand. A propaganda that lies proves that it has a bad cause. It cannot be successful in the long run. — Joseph Goebbels

He could offer her nothing but the truth. "You will make mistakes. You will make decisions, and sometimes you will regret those choices. Sometimes there won't be a right choice, just the best of several bad options. I don't need to tell you that you can do this - you know you can. I wouldn't have sworn the oath to you if I didn't think you could. — Sarah J. Maas

I look at the human sciences as poetic sciences in which there is no objectivity, and I see film as not being objective, and cinema verite as a cinema of lies that depends on the art of telling yourself lies. If you're a good storyteller then the lie is more true than reality, and if you're a bad one, the truth is worse than a half lie. — Jean Rouch

The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,' he said. 'It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men - it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone - the noblest man alive or the most wicked - has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God. — Gregory David Roberts

It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion. — Leo Tolstoy

Sometimes, you can be more than enough for someone, but they choose not to be in your life. Always remember that Satan works hard to keep people miserable by feeding their fears, so they stay in their comfort zone. The truth is some people value what is predictable, more than chemistry. — Shannon L. Alder

In truth, the cinema as a delivery system obviously has its days numbered. And that's not a bad thing. When you can buy any book in the world on your iPad, or off Amazon, you don't go the public library. The public library becomes about homeless gentlemen sleeping in chairs. — William Monahan

It's complicated. I think when bad things happen - whether someone dies or people argue or split up - you get to a point where it's just too hard to go back. There's so much lost. So many versions of the truth. So many versions of how things might've turned out differently. We all long for what could have been. For some people, it's just easier to move forward and try to forget. — Sarah Ockler

On the line beside Describe your family, I wrote, "Bad."

What is your favorite subject in school? "None."

List three of your favorite activities. "Soccer, ballet, and fighting."

Two of those favorite activities were lies but one of them was the truth.

I am fond of fighting. — Barbara O'Connor

In truth, it's usually failure, disappointment, and frustration that motivate people to reexamine that which they've taken for granted. It's rare to find big change without significant bad news ... In that sense, the pain of failure creates the largest opportunities for progress. — Judith M Bardwick

No doubt Pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul. — C.S. Lewis

To ensure that we are leading with our feet firmly planted on the soil of what is, we must live by the seven commandments of current reality:
Thou shalt not pretend.
Though shalt not turn a blind eye.
Thou shalt not exaggerate.
Thou shalt not shoot the bearer of bad news.
Thou shalt not hide behind the numbers.
Thou shalt not ignore constructive criticism.
Thou shalt not isolate thyself.
Attempting to lead while turning a blind eye to reality is like treading water: It can only go on for so long, eventually you will sink. As a next generation leader, be willing to face the truth regardless of how painful it might be. And if you don't like what you see, change it. — Andy Stanley

Truth is neither joyful nor sad, neither good nor bad. It is simply truth. — Robert Ludlum

Same thing for the bad guy. People were really after this guy Radovan Karadicz. But I came up with a combination of several people, who then became The Fox. That's who Simon Hunt and Duck are after. I did that so I could have freedom with what The Fox said and did, so that I didn't have to be stuck. Certain things I wanted to stay to the truth. Certain things I changed, and certain things are the facts. — Richard Shepard

She told me, "I sexualize men. You can't just be afraid of men that sexualize women when I do practically the same thing, and I'm a woman." I told Lily the honest fucking truth. "You can't physically overpower a fucking man the way that a man can overpower you." It doesn't matter who's thinking about sex. We all are. It matters who's in a position of dominance. Who has the chance to abuse that - and it's mostly men. Bad fucking men. — Krista Ritchie

That's not what I meant! What happened?"
He shrugged. "I told the truth."
"Adrian!"
"I'm serious. She asked me what my greatest strength was. I said getting along with people."
"That not bad," I admitted.
"Then she asked me what my greatest weakness was. And I said, 'Where should I start.'"
"Adrian! — Richelle Mead

The thing I understood least of all was that knowledge led to despair and damnation. Our spiritual mentor had not said that those bad books had given a false picture of life: if that had been the case, he could easily have exposed their falsehood; the tragedy of the little girl whom he had failed to bring to salvation was that she had made a premature discovery of the true nature of reality. Well, anyhow, I thought, I shall discover it myself one day, and it isn't going to kill me: the idea that there was a certain age when knowledge of the truth could prove fatal I found offensive to common sense. — Simone De Beauvoir

When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head. Then, like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, this ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness. You keep studying the dim shape of it, as if the original form will magically emerge. This blank spot in my past, then, spoke most loudly to me by being blank. It was a hole in my life that I both feared and kept coming back to because I couldn't quite fill it in. — Mary Karr

I'm not for pretending that bad stuff doesn't exist, and a passion for justice and truth is a libertarian trait. But the idea of liberty should also reveal new forms of beauty in the world, astonishing evidence of order without dictate, lovely examples of innovation without planning, and other magical things. Surely these deserve some attention too. — Jeffrey Tucker

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

I am aware that many regard me as an anti-sports character person, but the truth is that the country's economy by then was in bad shape. Tanzania being among the highly indebted countries, I had to give sports the least prominence during my first term, while setting priorities in revitalising our economy. — Benjamin Mkapa

I've done it all and you look at me like I'm somehow a good person and it makes me want to tear my fucking hair out because it's all a lie. The truth is that I'm not the good guy. I'm the fucking bad guy, — T.M. Frazier

Things are bad,they are,and they'll get much worse for ya soon,thats the truth.But down the road a piece,you'll be fightin' true and good.I can tell you're not a bloody sissy. -Newt — James Dashner

They say I was a bad Batman, that it was my fault, that I buried the franchise. But the truth is, it was a big project. I was pretty intimidated in that world. I did the best I could in the situation I was given. — George Clooney

When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers. — Mark Twain

Oh, I'm not worried about him,' returned Bill. 'He's gone. It's not any more complicated than that. Honestly, if I admit it, it's me that I feel bad for.' He walked away from me and looked out toward the south. 'There's nothing like having a parent die to make you realize how alone you are in the world,' he added. — Hope Jahren

One entry was entitled: "About God":
"This thought has been ascribed to Voltaire: If God did not exist, mankind would have invented Him. I find more truth in the reverse: If there really is a God, then we should seek to forget Him, to raise up men who will to do good for goodness' sake, not out of fear of punishment for their bad deeds. How can someone give alms to a poor man with a clean heart when he believes, and has an interest in believing, that there is a God who keeps score in heaven, who looks down and nods in approval? — Henrik Pontoppidan

Already? How can this be?" I would ask, shattered by the terrible truth that I needed a three-ring binder and some #2 pencils. It's not that school was a bad thing. Summer was just so much better. — Barbara Kingsolver

You're probably wondering why there's never any good news.
I mean, I've been doing this job a few months now. I've been soaking up the paper every week, same as you, and watching the same newsfeeds as you. I got the same list burned into the front of my head as you. Death. Horror. Bad sex. Living nightmares. Each day a little further down the spiral.
There's never any good news because they know you.
I mean, here's the top of today's column that I discarded: I had a really good time last night down the bar with my assistant and some cheerfully doomed sex fiends of our acquaintance.
No one ever sold newspapers by telling you the truth; life just ain't that bad. — Warren Ellis

Sometimes when I see a bad performance and people still clap ... I wonder if they're clapping because they liked what they saw or because they're happy it's over? — Kanye West

How could anybody confuse truth with beauty, I thought as I looked at him. Truth came with sunken eyes, bony or scarred, decayed. Its teeth were bad, its hair gray and unkempt. While beauty was empty as a gourd, vain as a parakeet. But it had power. It smelled of musk and oranges and made you close your eyes in a prayer. — Janet Fitch

In truth, in the fairy-tale version of bailing out Lehman, the next domino, A.I.G., would have fallen even harder. If the politics of bailing out Lehman were bad, the politics of bailing out A.I.G. would have been worse. And the systemic risk that a failure of A.I.G. posed was orders of magnitude greater than Lehman's collapse. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

I don't like any shows very much, if you want to know the truth. They're not as bad as movies, but they're certainly nothing to rave about. In the first place, I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do. Some of the good ones do, in a very slight way, but it's not in a way that's fun to watch. And if the actor's really good, you can always tell he knows he's good, and that spoils it. — J.D. Salinger

A nuclear bomb is a man's way of saying, 'I'm gonna fuck up the earth.' A woman would never make a nuclear bomb. They would never make a weapon that kills. They'd make a weapon that makes you feel bad for a while ... That's why there should be a woman president, there would never be any wars. You know this, it's the truth. There would never be a war; just every twenty-eight days: some severe negotiations. — Robin Williams

Good things don't happen to "good people"; good things happen to happy people. — Vivian Amis

I was beginning to understand something I couldn't articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I don't know. I understood the enormous risk of telling the truth, how the telling could result in every level of hell reigning down on you, your skin scorched to the bone and then bone to ash and then nothing but a lingering odour of shame and decomposition, but now I was also beginning to understand the new and alien feeling of taking the risk and having the person on the other end of the telling, the listener, say:
Bad shit at home? You guys are running away?
Yeah, I said.
I understand, said, Noehmi. — Miriam Toews

You may thank God you didn't want to be an actor, Tom, because you would have been a very bad one. You worked it out at Thanksgiving, I guess, when you were all together. And it's working smooth as butter. I see Will's hand in this. Don't tell me if you don't want to."
"I wasn't in favor of it," said Tom.
"It doesn't sound like you," his father said. "You'd be for scattering the truth out in the sun for me to see. Don't tell the others I know." He turned away and then came back and put his hand on Tom's shoulder. "Thank you for wanting to honor me with the truth, my son. It's not clever but it's more permanent. — John Steinbeck

Lieutenant Trotta wasn't experienced enough to know that uncouth peasant boys with noble hearts exist in real life and that a lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written. — Joseph Roth

When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal. — Barack Obama

Nothing, in truth, can ever replace a lost companion. Old comrades cannot be manufactured. There is nothing that can equal the treasure of so many shared memories, so many bad times endured together, so many quarrels, reconciliations, heartfelt impulses. Friendships like that cannot be reconstructed. If you plant an oak, you will hope in vain to sit soon under its shade.
For such is life. We grow rich as we plant through the early years, but then come the years when time undoes our work and cuts down our trees. One by one our comrades deprive us of their shade, and within our mourning we always feel now the secret grief of growing old.
If I search among my memories for those whose taste is lasting, if I write the balance sheet of the moments that truly counted, I surely find those that no fortune could have bought me. You cannot buy the friendship of a companion bound to you forever by ordeals endured together. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I found myself remembering the day in kindergarten when the teachers showed us Dumbo, and I realized for the first time that all the kids in the class, even the bullies, rooted for Dumbo, against Dumbo's tormentors. Invariably they laughed and cheered, both when Dumbo succeeded and when bad things happened to his enemies. But they're you, I thought to myself. How did they not know? They didn't know. It was astounding, an astounding truth. Everyone thought they were Dumbo. — Elif Batuman

God begins the process of perfecting us from the moment we are converted from unbelief to faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit regenerates us. He give us a new heart with a new set of holy desires (Ezek. 36:26). He transforms our stubborn wills. He opens our hearts to embrace the truth rather than reject it. He enables us to believe rather than doubt. He gives us a hunger for righteousness an a desire for Him. And thus the new birth transforms the inner person. From that point on, everything that occurs in our lives - good or bad - God uses to move us toward being like Christ (Rom. 8:28-30). — John MacArthur Jr.