Bad Word Quotes & Sayings

Draw every bad word you've ever called yourself on your body. Stand in the shower and pay attention to the way the words turn back into ink and disappear down the drain. — Iain S. Thomas

Elite is not a bad word, it's an aspirational one — Aaron Sorkin

Adoption, I was to learn although not immediately, is hard to get right.
As a concept, even what was then its most widely approved narrative carried bad news: if someone "chose" you, what does that tell you?
Doesn't it tell you that you were available to be "chosen"?
Doesn't it tell you, in the end, that there are only two people in the world?
The ones who "chose" you?
And the other who didn't?
Are we beginning to see how the word "abandonment" might enter the picture? Might we not make efforts to avoid such abandonment? Might not such efforts be characterized as "frantic"? Do we want to ask ourselves what follows? Do we need to ask ourselves what words come next to mind? Isn't one of those words "fear"? Isn't another of those words "anxiety"? — Joan Didion

There is probably some long-standing "rule" among writers, journalists, and other word-mongers that says: "When you start stealing from your own work you're in bad trouble." And it may be true. — Hunter S. Thompson

Obelisk?" "It's my favorite word." "Really?" "One of them, at least. Look at it." I look. "That is one straight-up, upstanding, powerful word. Unique, original, and kind of stealthy because it doesn't really sound like what it is. It's a word that surprises you and makes you think, Oh. All right then. It commands respect, but it's also modest. Not like 'monument' or 'tower.' " He shakes his head. "Pretentious bastards." I don't say anything because I used to love words. I loved them and was good at arranging them. Because of this, I felt protective of all the best ones. But now all of them, good and bad, frustrate me. — Jennifer Niven

A word about Hope House: there are places in the world where so many desperate people have lived and so many bad things have happened that the places themselves have become desperately bad. They're damp and weird and smell like foot fungus. The windows are never clean, and the linoleum curls up at the edges because it can't stand the floor. Every corner is sprayed with cobwebs and quivering shadows. When you walk into those bad places, you can feel a headache brewing between your eyebrows, a churning in your gut, a cold prickle at the back of your neck. You feel sad and angry and helpless, all at the same time. These bad places seem to hate you but, they also seem to want to keep you there very very much. — Laura Ruby

You're perfect," he said, finishing his thought as if she hadn't interrupted. "I don't care if you see dead wolves and turn into a living ice sculpture when you're having a bad day. I don't care if I have an imprint of your teeth on my shoulder. I don't care if you're ... fixed." He spat the word like it tasted bad. "I want you to be safe and happy. That's all. — Marissa Meyer

I think that I can count on the fingers of one hand the times you've actually said the word 'women' and not replaced it with an epithet referring to female genitalia."
"Hey, he's not that bad," Warren said. "Sometimes he calls them cows or whores. — Patricia Briggs

This is a very bad book you're writing," I said to myself behind my leaks.

"I know," I said.

"You're afraid you'll kill yourself the way your mother did," I said.

"I know," I said.

There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia. The sound and appearance of the word had fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Write at a pace that doesn't surpass your creative flow. Don't be hasty; don't be sloppy. Don't forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and you'll find that it is harder to make bad writing good than to make good writing better. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Take my word for it: More people will like you if you believe that people are good until proven bad. — Guy Kawasaki

JOE HELLER

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.

I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace! — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The word religion has such bad connotations for me, that it's been responsible for wars, and it shouldn't be that way at all, it's just the way the meaning of the word has evolved to me. I have to wonder what we did on this planet before religion. — Eddie Vedder

No.'
It's not a bad word.
And it is very important to use at times.
Practice saying it in the mirror.
It's empowering. — Christy Hall

Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff are the best. You won't have me ever say a bad word about them. — Christopher Michael Cillizza

A bad word triggers another in your opponent. Be ready to reap what you plant — Bangambiki Habyarimana

We make weird friends," I say instead. "I've never been into the f-word with people." "I'm privileged, then? Why me?" He thinks for a moment and then shrugs again. "You're the realest person I've ever known." "Is that good or bad?" "It's fucking awful. There's not much room for bullshit, and you know how I thrive on it. — Melina Marchetta

My name is Nathan, just twenty-three and given to the curation of stories. I listen, retain, then polish and release them over the fire at night, when the others hush and lean forward in their desire to hear of the past. They crave romance, particularly when autumn sets in and cold nights await them, and so I speak of Alice, and Bethany, and Sarah, and Val, and other dead women who all once had lustrous hair and never a bad word on their plump lips. I can remember this is not how they were; I knew them, I knew them! Only six years have passed and yet I mythologize them as if it is six thousand. I am not culpable. Language is changing, like the earth, like the sea. We live in lonely, fateful flux, outnumbered and outgrown. — Aliya Whiteley

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

Language! And yes, crap is a bad word! — Brian P. Gallagher

Uncle Drew?"
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"Where do babies come from? — Emma Chase

Some say the word 'pop' is a derogatory word to say 'not important' - I do not accept that. If the word 'classic' is the word to say 'boring,' I do not accept. There is good and bad music. — Luciano Pavarotti

But the silent stranger could hardly have understood what was passing: she was a German who had not long been in Russia and knew not a word of Russian, and she seemed to be as stupid as she was handsome. She was a novelty and it had become a fashion to invite her to certain parties, sumptuously attired, with her hair dressed as though for a show, and to seat her in the drawing-room as a charming decoration, just as people sometimes borrow from their friends for a special occasion a picture, a statue, a vase, or a fire-screen. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In the ensuing silence, I have time to contemplate the word cute - how dismissive it is, how it's the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, Feel Bad About Yourself. — John Green

The word "sin" is just a way for a person not to take responsibility for their "bad" actions; actions that might not necessarily be evil- because evil is subjective- but are deemed evil by society. — Menna Anwar

A lot of guys in the prison think they're bad. Some of them are, but when it comes to being bad in every sense of the word, I have been bad before and I can play the role pretty good. When I killed those people, they didn't exactly stand there and not do anything. I stabbed that guy [Frykowski] fifty-one times in the chest. I stabbed him so many times in the chest that my hand was sinking into it up to my elbow. I stabbed him so hard that the handle of the knife broke off. These people don't know what bad is. I wrote the book on bad and I did it more than once. — Tex Watson

Whether it is preached from good motivation or bad, Word is what "works," not the messenger. — Paul Silway

In contrast to the notion that any publicity is good publicity, negative reviews hurt sales for some books. But for books by new or relatively unknown authors, negative reviews increased sales by 45%.... Even a bad review or negative word of mouth can increase sales if it informs or reminds people that the product or idea exists. — Jonah Berger

I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst? ... If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet
with just one person inside even
I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does. — Douglas Coupland

We do not consider the kingdom damned," Lord August said politely. "We prefer not to use that word."

"What would you call it, Lord August?" Finnikin asked. "A little magic? A slight curse? A bit of bad luck? — Melina Marchetta

I am scared like you all people, that tomorrow I will be examined, that there is chance to get something bad as a result, that I will mistake in saying a word aloud or something more worst than this... — Deyth Banger

The Jeep was parked at the beginning of the causeway when Denny got off the bus. She ignored it and started toward the island.
"Denise . . ."
Denny ignored Mr. Jones's call and kept on walking.
She heard the engine start, and soon the Jeep was rolling along beside her.
"Picked up your mail," said Mr. Jones. He handed some envelopes out the window. Denny grabbed them without a word.
"There's a letter there from some old coot named Jones," Mr. Jones said. "Looks like an apology."
Denny looked down and ruffled through the envelopes. "There is not," she said.
"No?" said Mr. Jones sheepishly. "Well, there should be. Guess he didn't get around to writing it. He feels real bad though. I know that for a fact."
Denny stopped and put her hand on her hip and stared at Mr. Jones. — Jackie French Koller

All writing is by the grace of God. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. In these sentences that you show me, I can find no beauty, for I see death in every clause and every word. There is a fossil or a mummy character which pervades this book. The best sepulchers, the vastest catacombs, Thebes and Cairo, Pyramids, are sepulchers to me. I like gardens and nurseries. Give me initiative, spermatic, prophesying, man-making words. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Like the librarians of Babel in Borges's story, who are looking for the book that will provide them with the key to all the others, we oscillate between the illusion of perfection and the vertigo of the unattainable. In the name of completeness, we would like to believe that a unique order exists that would enable us to accede in knowledge all in one go; in the name of the unattainable, we would like to think that order and disorder are in fact the same word, denoting pure chance.
It's possible also that both are decoys, illusions intended to disguise the erosion of both books and systems. It is no bad thing in any case that between the two our bookshelves should serve from time to time as joggers of the memory, as cat-rests and as lumber-rooms. — Georges Perec

Your generation is suffering from what for lack of a better word I shall call over-debunk. There was a lot of debunking that had to be done, of course. Bigotry, militarism, nationalism, religious intolerance, hypocrisy, phonyness, all sorts of dangerous, ready-made, artificially preserved false values. But your generation and the generation before yours went too far with their debunking job. You went overboard. Over-debunk, that's what you did. It's moral overkill. It's like those insecticides Rachel Carson speaks of in her book, that poison everything, and kill all the nice, useful bugs as well as the bad ones, and in the end poison human beings as well. In the end, it poisons life itself, the very air we breathe. That's what you did, morally and intellectually speaking. Yours is a silent spring. You have overprotected yourselves. You are all no more than twenty, twenty-two years old, but yours is a silent spring, I'm telling you. Nothing sings for you any more. — Romain Gary

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order. — Frank Lloyd Wright

If you have only a little capital and are young today, there are fewer opportunities than when I was young. Back then, we had just come out of a depression. Capitalism was a bad word. There had been abuses in the 1920s. A joke going around then was the guy who said, 'I bought stock for my old age and it worked - in six months, I feel like an old man!' "It's tougher for you, but that doesn't mean you won't do well - it just may take more time. But what the heck, you may live longer." — Charlie Munger

She barely notices when I say that I am going on to Toronto to visit my grandparents. Except to remark that they must be really old. Not a word about Alister. Not even a bad word. She would not have forgotten. Just tidied up the scene and put it away in a closet with her former selves. Or maybe she really is a person who can deal recklessly with humiliation. — Alice Munro

Till the last moment they dress a man up in peacock's feathers, till the last moment they hope for the good and not the bad; and though they may have premonitions of the other side of the coin, for the life of them they will not utter a real word beforehand; the thought alone makes them cringe; they wave the truth away with both hands, till the very moment when the man they've decked out so finely sticks their noses in it with his own two hands. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

That's not a bad word ... hate and war are bad words, but fuck isn't. — Judy Blume

Time has to be converted, then, from chronos, mere chronological time, to kairos, a New Testament Greek word that has to do with opportunity, with moments that seem ripe for their intended purpose. Then, even while life continues to seem harried, while it continues to have hard moments, we say, "Something good is happening amid all this." We get glimpses of how God might be working out his purposes in our days. Time becomes not just something to get through or manipulate or manage, but the arena of God's work with us. Whatever happens - good things or bad, pleasant or problematic - we look and ask, "What might God be doing here?" We see the events of the day as continuing occasions to change the heart. Time points to Another and begins to speak to us of God. We — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Beldin sighed. "Since you're going to be such a spoilsport for this, Pol, I found a
group of sheephenders below the snow line."
"Shepherds, uncle," she corrected.
"It means the same thing. If you really look at it, it's even the same word,"
"Shepherd sounds nicer."
"Nicer." He snorted. "Sheep are stupid, they smell bad, and they taste worse.
Anybody who spends his life tending them is either defective or degenerate. — David Eddings

When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And "propaganda" got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words so we found the words "public relations". — Edward Bernays

Worst is a bad word," I said to him, "and I hope you do not live to see it. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Elizabeth Sarah Kowalski!"
"Whoa," Evan said in a low voice. "How bad does a word have to be to get you middle-named during dirty Scrabble? — Shannon Stacey

A word about apologizing: It's hard to do it without digging yourself in deeper. It's also scary and that's why we avoid the pain. We want so badly to plead our case and tell our story. The bad news is that everybody has a story. Everyone has a version of how things went down and how they participated. — Amy Poehler

A lot of churches and church people give God a bad name. There's a scripture in the Bible that says the traditions of men make the word of God of none effect. That's so true. All our religious rituals dilute the reality of who God is and make a lot of people not want to have anything to do with Him. I had to learn to reject 'Churchianity' and not Christianity. — Sherri L. Lewis

I am very bad at expressing tender sentiments. The very word 'love' frightens me. — Jules Verne

So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'"
Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead. — Dorothy Parker

Always having to have the last word is a bad trait. Pisses people off. — Laurell K. Hamilton

I don't know why people are so reluctant to say they're feminists. Could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word? — Ellen Page

A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning; or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. — George Orwell

When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign - a bad sign mostly for literature. But it is also a bad sign when they don't want to hear the word mentioned. — Italo Calvino

John McCain from the very beginning has been unflinchingly loyal to Sarah Palin. He has never thrown her under the bus. He has never conceded it was a bad decision to pick her. He has never ever said a bad word against her. — Rachel Maddow

I know for me, going back the person I've bad-mouthed or lied to is absolutely humiliating! But isn't it interesting that "humiliating" has the same root word as "humility"? Part of humility is taking responsibility for my sin and asking forgiveness even when it doesn't feel good. God wants to heal and restore your relationships, but it's not easy. — Chip Ingram

The vampires start to close in. "shouldn't we stand back to back or something?" Clary said.
"What? Why?"
"I don't know. In movies that's what they do in this kind of ... situation."
Jace laughs, "You, you are the most-"
The most what?" Clary demands indignantly.
Jace: Nothing. This isn't a situation okay? I save that word for when things get really bad."
"Really bad? This isn't really bad? What do you want, a nuclear-"
The windows exploded inward in a shower of broken glass. Through the shattered windows came dozens of sleek shapes, four footed and low to the ground, their coats scattering moonlight and broken bits of glass.
Wolves.
"Now, this," said Jace, "is a situation — Cassandra Clare

As a songwriter, I try not to be sloppy; same with the music. You can be very lean, very efficient, so you're not wasting a lot of time getting' to the point. You're saying it with as pure a word or phrase as you can. That's the part that was craft. You refine and refine and refine. Maybe that's why the songs still hang on, because they're very pure. For one thing, they're very short. "Bad Moon Rising" is like 2 minutes and 12 seconds. I would try to do everything as quickly and with as little extra as possible. It was a challenge. — John Fogerty

You got your cheese, I hope? You won't mind a word of advice? Eat it. Don't put it in a plastic bag in the fridge and save it for visitors; before you know where you are it'll have swollen to three times its size and smell like a chemical factory. You'll open the bag and be putting your face into a bad marriage. — Julian Barnes

Not one word about proposals, no matter how much she pushes," I told my friends. "No matter what she says or how loud she cries, don't try to throw that up as a distraction."
Gabriel's lips twitched. "I don't think it's going to be that bad. It's one woman against five supernatural creatures ... And Zeb."
"You laugh because you haven't heard my mother's thirty-minute verbal dissertation on appropriate seasonal flower choices. We're better off letting her yell at us for being dirty, premarital fornicators. — Molly Harper

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

Cancer. The word meant the same to me as tsunami or piranha. I had never seen them; I wasn't even quite sure what they were, but I knew they were bad and I knew in many cases they were deadly. — Natalie Palmer

There is not a scrabble word for how bad I feel." -We Were Liars — E. Lockhart

And then Zach said a really bad word, but I doubt DeeDee noticed because it was in Farsi — Ally Carter

What?"
"I said, Are you dangerous?"
I wasn't sure I heard her correctly. "Who? me? No, I'm not dangerous at all."
"You promise?"
"Sure."
"All right, then," she said. "You can get in."
And that was how I met the unsinkable, irrepressible, wholly undeniable Kikumi Otsugi, a woman who believed in bad men, but not bad dishonest men. I had given her my word of honor that I would not harm her, and she was satisfied. — Will Ferguson

On a second note, though, I have something to say about pain. There are lots of kinds of pain. Pain of smashing your fingers in a car door, pains of loosing a baby, pain of failing a test. But in their own little ways, these pains are all agonizing. Which is sad, and yet, happy, if you really think about it. If we never lost our car keys, or stepped in gum, or had a bad hair day, what kind of people would we be? In a word? Boring. We wouldn't be passionate; we wouldn't know it was exciting to get pregnant, or score an A on a final. So that's why, today at least, I am grateful for pain. Because it's part of what makes me the whacky, goofy, jaded, person that I am. Peace. — Alysha Speer

Koinonia is often translated by the word "fellowship," but that is too thin a word for many of us (especially those with memories of bad potluck dinners in the fellowship hall). Koinonia is a rich word that refers to shared life lived in intimate community. It is sharing one another's joys and burdens. It is walking together in the details of daily life. Apart from a deep experience of koinonia, our corporate worship gathering too easily devolves into a kind of individual spectator experience that we all happen to have in the same time and place week after week. — Barry D. Jones

Nothing saves the day so much as a good word. And nothing has been misused as often. There is power in a word, whether we read it, speak it or hear it. And we command and are commanded by the word. We scatter, we call forth, and we comfort. Words are tools, weapons, both good and bad medicine-but very beautiful when used lovingly. The word, or ka ne tsv in Cherokee, is power to help heal, or make sick people sicker by negative talk around them. The word gives confidence when it builds rather than destroys. Relationships have been shattered beyond repair by a run-away mouth. Prosperity has been dissolved by talking lack. Until we listen to our own voices and how we talk, we would never guess how we use our words. — Joyce Sequichie Hifler

It was a different sense of isolation from what he normally felt in Japan. And not such a bad feeling, he decided. Being alone in two senses of the word was maybe like a double negation of isolation. In other words, it made perfect sense for him, a foreigner, to feel isolated here. The thought calmed him. He was in exactly the right place. — Haruki Murakami

Each day becomes as a learning environment that provides an unexpected teachings:
. Everything you see is an opportunity to learn.
. Every word you hear is an opportunity to learn.
. Good or bad decisions you make each day are the opportunity to learn. Every experience you come across becomes a lesson of the day. Every failure you encounter can be your teacher. — Euginia Herlihy

But if these unavoidable separations cause you a measure of pain, they also increase your longing for her, and perhaps that isn't a bad thing, you decide, for you spend your days in the thrall of breathless anticipation, agitated and alert, counting the hours until you can see her and hold her again. Intense. That is the word you use to describe yourself now. You are intense. Your feelings are intense. Your life has become increasingly intense. — Paul Auster

The self is who we truly are, but the persona or mask (the word comes from the Latin for an actor's mask) is the face we turn to the world in order to deal with it. A persona is absolutely necessary, but the problem is that we often become identified with it, to the detriment of our self, a dilemma that the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre recognized in his notion of mauvaise foi, or "bad faith," when one becomes associated exclusively with one's social role. — Gary Lachman

That's why it is so dangerous to use infatuation as a sign to pursue a relationship. If you and I don't know the difference between infatuation and love, we are destined to make some of the dumbest and most regrettable decisions we'll ever make. These bad decisions come with heavy and painful price tags. So you see, it's imperative in this tricky business of "falling in love" that we take the time to clearly define what we mean by the word "love." The investment will pay off handsomely. We can actually learn how to avoid future relational baggage and how to recognize authentic love relationships when we clarify two crucial issues: (1) what love is, and (2) what the difference is between love and infatuation. — Chip Ingram

I always thought that "humanist" was a good word long before I understood that anyone thought it was a bad word. — Gloria Steinem

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

A word may become so defiled by bad use that it will take a century before it can be purifed, and brought into use again. — Olive Schreiner

Acceptance is approval, a word with a bad name in some psychologies. Yet it is perfectly normal to seek approval in childhood and throughout life. We require approval from those we respect. The kinship it creates lifts us to their level, a process referred to in self-psychology as transmuting internalization. Approval is a necessary component of self-esteem. It becomes a problem only when we give up our true self to find it. Then approval-seeking works against us. — David Richo

Tharn. It was a good word for a bad state of mind. — Stephen King

In fact there is only your own instinct?
Not instinct, Hastings. Instinct is a bad word. It is my knowledge-my experience-that tells me that something about that letter is wrong- — Agatha Christie

Sequestration, sequestation - however you pronounce that word - and gridlock aren't all that bad. — Nelson Peltz

GOVERNOR. And then I must call your attention to the history teacher. He has a lot of learning in his head and a store of facts. That's evident. But he lectures with such ardor that he quite forgets himself. Once I listened to him. As long as he was talking about the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was not so bad. But when he reached Alexander of Macedon, I can't describe what came over him. Upon my word, I thought a fire had broken out. He jumped down from the platform, picked up a chair and dashed it to the floor. Alexander of Macedon was a hero, it is true. But that's no reason for breaking chairs. The state must bear the cost. — Nikolai Gogol

America was founded by puritans and like it or not the anti-pleasure dogma of those buckled-shoed killjoys still pervades our collective unconscious like an I-max shot of Dennis Franz's naked hairy cop ass. Hence, anything enjoyable is automatically forbidden and bad and in our panic to avoid it at all cost we become obsessed with it ... like dressing up in a pink teddy and a pair of ugboots and repeatedly screaming the word 'VERBOTEN!' into a conk shell balanced on the back on a miniature pony ... Oh, I see.. That would just be me. — Dennis Miller

I played softball at George Washington University and then I played professionally for the Mid-Michigan Ice. I had a couple of tryouts with the US Olympic Team but I don't know if I have a word to describe how bad one of the tryouts was. It was the worst tryout in the history of tryouts. It was that bad. So I totally bombed it and thought my chances of being an Olympian were over. — Elana Meyers

The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer's [review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the prehistoric origins of reviewing in Zoilism - a kind of pelting of pretentious literature with dung, lest the writers get above themselves; it is to the novelist what the gown of humiliation was to the Roman politician - a salutary ordeal. Less grandly, bad reviews are fun, so long as you are not the author. There is, it must be admitted, a kind of furtive blood sport pleasure in seeing a novelist suffer. You read on. Whereas most of us stop reading at the first use of the word 'splendid' or 'marvellous' in a review. — John Sutherland

I have a bad habit of dropping verbal pellets to get a reaction, like Ursula LeGuin's "A novelist's business is lying" (that particular one got a lot of attention on Facebook), or, "Why is it that Christians hate the word 'sex'? — Chila Woychik

Neither of us says the word love, not once. It would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck. — Margaret Atwood

Be honest, how hideous do I look?"
He took another step back and pursed his lips.
"That bad, huh?" I muttered.
No, no Bella. Actually ... " He seemed to be struggling for the right word. "You look ... sexy."
I laughed out loud. "Right."
Very sexy, really. — Stephenie Meyer

Words are like seeds, I think, planted into our hearts at a tender age. They take root in us as we grow, settling deep into our souls. The good words plant well. They flourish and find homes in our hearts. They build trunks around our spines, steadying us when we're feeling most flimsy; planting our feet firmly when we're feeling most unsure. But the bad words grow poorly. Our trunks infest and spoil until we are hollow and housing the interests of others and not our own. We are forced to eat the fruit those words have borne, held hostage by the branches growing arms around our necks, suffocating us to death, one word at a time. — Tahereh Mafi

The Fuhrer himself was the target of the fourth leaflet: "Every word that comes from Hitler's mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is at bottom accursed." This leaflet ended with the words "We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace. — Russell Freedman

And then there's me, terribly afraid to step out of the box and date someone different. Afraid to get hurt in a different, more complex way - by somebody who I actually trust and care about. My biggest fear. Nice guy was a bad word to me because I feared that lurching-stomach feeling of losing someone I love. Nice meant future, and the future was always uncertain. — Alida Nugent

The Chorus Line:
A Rope-Jumping Rhyme

we are the maids
the ones you killed
the ones you failed

we danced in air
our bare feet twitched
it was not fair

with every goddess, queen, and bitch
from there to here
you scratched your itch

we did much less
than what you did
you judged us bad

you had the spear
you had the word
at your command

we scrubbed the blood
of our dead
paramours from floors, from chairs

from stairs, from doors,
we knelt in water
while you stared

at our bare feet
it was not fair
you licked our fear

it gave you pleasure
you raised your hand
you watched us fall

we danced on air
the ones you failed
the ones you killed — Margaret Atwood

I should have let you kill him."

Silence.

"You're nodding, aren't you?"

"I didn't say a word."

"Bastard," Hadrian grumbled.

"You know the worst thing?"

"I've got a pretty long list of bad things right now, and I'm not sure which one I would put on top. So I'll bite. — Michael J. Sullivan

As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men. — Thomas Paine

Do other dads not end their phone calls with existential despair? Because that's what my dad does. Papa ends most of his calls with me the way you might close a conversation with someone you want to menace. "Anyway," he'll say, "I'll be here. Staring into the abyss." Or, when I have given him good news, "The talented will rule and the rest will perish in the sea of mediocrity." Or, when I have given him bad news, "I am for for everything that happens to you, as everything is my fault." He never ends with anything that couldn't one day be construed as a tragic yet comic last word. — Scaachi Koul

The problem with the word "vagina" is that vaginas seem to be just straight-out bad luck. Only a masochist would want one, because only awful things happen to them. Vaginas get torn. Vaginas get "examined.".. No. Let's clear this up right now - I don't actually have a vagina. I never have. I, personally, have a cunt. Cunt is a proper, old, historic, strong word, and it doubles up as the most potent swear word in the English language. Yeah. That's how powerful it is, guys. If I tell you what I've got down there, old ladies and clerics might faint. I like how shocked people are when you say "cunt." Compared to this, the most powerful swear word men have got out of their privates is "dick," which is frankly vanilla. In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing and/or weak - menstruation, menopause, just the sheer, simple act of calling someone "a girl" - I love that "cunt" stands on its own, as the supreme, unvanquishable word. — Caitlin Moran

the One whom we most need to behold has made himself known. He has traced with a fine hand the lines and contours of his face. He has done so in his Word. We must search for that face, though babies continue to cry, bills continue to grow, bad news continues to arrive unannounced, though friendships wax and wane, though both ease and difficulty weaken our grip on godliness, though a thousand other faces crowd close for our affection, and a thousand other voices clamor for our attention. By fixing our gaze on that face, we trade mere human glory for holiness: — Jen Wilkin

I'm a fan of the word selfish. Self. Ish. When I say I have gotten a lot more self-ish, I mean I am less concerned with what people think of me. I'm not worried about how I'm perceived. Selfish has always gotten a bad rap. You should do for you. — Matthew McConaughey

It's just too bad they have to die. They're totally bangable, you know?" "Bangable," Taylor mouthed in disgust. She wanted to show this boy another meaning for the word bang, and it involved his head against a steel door. — Libba Bray

I've never heard my dad say a bad word about anybody. He always keeps his emotions in check and is a true gentleman. I was taught that losing it was indulgent, a selfish act. — Hugh Jackman

There is no golden rule of dating, except to make sure that it engages both of you; too many people go to a cinema for a first date and of course don't say a word, that's a bad thing! — Steven Hill

We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as disaster, which is Greek for "bad star," influenza, Italian for (astral) "influence"; mazeltov, Hebrew - and, ultimately, Babylonian - for "good constellation," or the Yiddish word shlamazel, applied to someone plagued by relentless ill-fortune, which again traces to the Babylonian astronomical lexicon. According to Pliny, there were Romans considered sideratio, "planet-struck." Planets were widely thought to be a direct cause of death. Or consider consider: it means "with the planets," evidently a prerequisite for serious reflection. — Carl Sagan