Best Wry Quotes & Sayings

I think at its best the American sense of humor is the same as the British sense of humor at its best, which is to be wry and ironic and self deprecating. — Simon Pegg

Was he hitting some type of werewolf midlife crisis? First, he'd left Wolf Town, and now he was envisioning a mate. What next? Bird watching? Board games? Retirement homes? — Rose Wynters

With a kind of wry envy, Hazel realized that Bigwig was actually looking forward to meeting the Efrafan assault. He knew he could fight and he meant to show it. He was not thinking of anything else. The hopelessness of their chances had no important place in his thoughts. Even the sound of the digging, clearer already, only set him thinking of the best way to sell his life as dearly as he could. — Richard Adams

This was a new recognition that perfection is admirable but a trifle inhuman, and that a stumbling kind of semi-success can be much more warming. Most of all, perhaps, these exultant yells for the Mets were also yells for ourselves, and came from a wry, half-understood recognition that there is more Met than Yankee in every one of us. I knew for whom that foghorn blew; it blew for me. — Roger Angell

James Bond is quite serious about his drinks and clothing and cigarettes and food and all that sort of thing. There is nothing wry or amused about James Bond. — Ken Follett

Those who aspire to less accomplish less. There can be no doubt. It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them." He shot Drizzt his typical wry smile. "At least he who reaches will get a good stretch, a good view, and perhaps even a low-hanging apple for his effort! — R.A. Salvatore

These books you're reading . . . I question your taste, Miss Twill."

She straightened the collar of his maroon coat. "I'll read what I please, Mr. Thane."

"I have a suggestion," he said with a wry smile, stepping away and glancing back at the sunset, which had already grown ruddier. "I have a dissertation on eighteenth-century Folding basics on interlibrary loan. It's wonderfully dry and has all its nouns capitalized. I think you'll enjoy it."

Ceony frowned. "You want me to study primitive Folding techniques?"

"Only subprimitive," he said, a smirk playing on his lips. "It never hurts to go back to basics, even if you think you know them."

"I do know them."

"Are you sure?"

Ceony paused. "Is this a hint for my test? — Charlie N. Holmberg

Contrary to pre-conceived notions and first impressions, the club was an oddly relaxed place, with friendly, polite people, all having a good time. Drugs and even cigarettes were not allowed. No one came near being drunk, or disorderly. Must be a natural high, she thought with wry amusement. Kelly said that for her, coming to the club had been a lifesaver. It was — Nikki Sex

Already known as one of America's best and wittiest poets, William Trowbridge has, in Ship of Fool, found the perfect vessel to convey his vision: comic, tender, wry, compassionate, full of insight and rueful understanding of what it means to carry on, cream pies in the face, pants falling down as the Green Weenie rampages through our foolish, beautiful lives. — Charles Harper Webb

I blew out a breath. "Dad, this is a total cluster ... um, a mess."
He flashed me a wry smile. "I think the word you were about to use is probably the best summation of the current situation. — Rachel Hawkins

Of All the Gin Joints is one part cinematic history, one part old Hollywood weirdness, and one part handy basic bar guide, with a dash of romance and more than a few wry twists. Bailey and Hemingway prove themselves very entertaining cultural mixologists. — Sam Lipsyte

It was time to take the best bits from them all and build something delicious: the spirituality of the Hindus, the community spirit and family ties of the Muslims, the ancient wisdom of the Chinese, the love of freedom and equality of the Afro-Caribbeans, the work ethic of the Jews, the bloody-mindedness and wry humour of the Australians, the blarney of the Irish, the passion of the Scots, the unorthodoxy of the Welsh, combined with our own English love of justice, fair play and democracy. Put them all together and you had a vision for the future, a direction, which Bokononism could exploit. — Bernard Hare

What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica:
Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum
And the vile squealing of the wry-neck'd fife,
Clamber not you up to the casements then,
Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces,
But stop my house's ears, I mean my casements:
Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter
— William Shakespeare

When the Council's icy fingers slide the photo of Sasha's wry smile and sleepy eyes across the table, I will nod my head like I always do. Then I will find her. I will honor the dying wish of her brother, whom I murdered, and protect her from myself. And then I will ask her out. — Daniel Jose Older

Your best men are
drunks and your worst men are
locking them
up,
your best men are killers and
your worst men are
selling them
bullets — Charles Bukowski

Lennon's was one of the first voices I emulated when I began to sing. When we held tryouts in my pal's dad's living room for the singer in our band, I sang a Beatles song that Lennon sang. There is something about the timbre of his voice, something that it conveys, that still gets to me. The quality and the poetry of his lyrics. The wry sense of humor. And the boyishness, in the beginning. There are a great many things that touch me about him ... Lennon was, to put it in his own words, a 'working-class hero.' — Don Henley

Have you ever seen such an ugly damn cat?" Beckett had said with a wry smile. "Aren't kittens supposed to be all cute and shit?" He liked this kid. — Debra Anastasia

I will sit here but an hour or two, then leave."
I yawn. "So very long as that?"
When he answers, there is a wry note in his voice. "I do have my reputation to protect. — R.L. LaFevers

You made it then',he murmurs. 'Did you really think I wouldn't?' I ask, my heart soaring up to the sky.
He raises an eyebrow. 'I'd be lying if I said no, but that's only because I've been here since our very first kiss.
'Second', I remind him, curving my lips into a wry smile and glancing around at the shore where we kissed for the second - and the best time.
'First,' he grins. 'I knew from the start. It just took you a bit longer to catch up. — Ali Harris

You can rely too much, my love, on the unspoken things. And the wry smile. I have that smile myself, and I've learned the silence too, over the years. Along with your expressions, like No notion and Of necessity. What happens, though, when it is all unsaid, is that you wake up one morning, no, it's more like late one afternoon, and it's not just unsaid, it's gone. That's all. Just gone. I remember this word, that look, that small inflection, after all this. I used to hold them, trust them, read them like a rune. Like a sign that there was a house, a billet, a civilization where we were. I look back and I think I was just there all alone. Collecting wisps and signs. — Renata Adler

For better or worse, she was the lady Soraya. And the lady Soraya would never dream of missing the warm bulk of Casia's body between her and the hearth, or the comforting drone of Ludo's snores. Or the wry laughter of a slave ... a slave, for Azura's sake! The lady Soraya needed no one.
The lady Soraya cried herself to sleep. — Hilari Bell

Ramona chuckled as she picked up her basket and pruning shears. "You, my dear, are wasted out here where no one but the servants are subject to your wry humor and intelligence." I grinned. — L.R. Olson

The last cigarettes are smoked, the loaves are sliced,
and lest this be taken for wry sorrow,
drown the spider in wine.
you are much more than simply dead:
I am a dish for your ashes,
I am a fist for your vanished air.
the most terrible thing about life
is finding it gone. — Charles Bukowski

My other chore is to buy a tree- a thankless task. The only truly well-proportioned Christmas trees are the ones they use in advertisements. If you try and find one in real life you face inevitable disapointment. Your tree will lean to the left or the right. It will be too bushy at the base, or straggly at the top. Even if you do, by some miracle, find a perfect tree, if won't fit in the car and by the time you strap it to the rooftop and drive it home the branches are broken and twisted out of shape. You
wrestle it through the door, gagling on pine needles and sweating profusely, only to hear the maddening question from countless Christmases past: 'Is that really the best one you could find? — Michael Robotham

There is a tale of a man who found on the road a large stone bearing the words, "Under me lies a great truth." The man strained to turn the stone over and finally succeeded. On the bottom was written, "Why do you want a new truth when you do not practice what you already know? — Eknath Easwaran

Or that they believed you would not be here to inflict the consequences," said Ekaterin. Had they meant Vorkosigan to die, too? Or . . . what? "Oh, nice. That's reassuring." He bit rather aggressively into the last of his sandwich. She rested her chin on her hand and regarded him with wry curiosity. "Does ImpSec know you babble like this? — Lois McMaster Bujold

I guess as you get older you sort of see the mechanics, even with the best comedians. There's admiration for people I admire, but it's not guttural laughter. It's a wry 'Oh, well done, sir.' But I sort of miss that slightly; I miss the raw joy of comedy I used to get. — Stephen Merchant

Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit ... So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves. — Ogden Nash

I'm afraid it isn't good news. The Council seems to have gone quite mad. — Jim Butcher

I'm behaving like a pig,' she said happily. 'You always give me all the things I like best. I've never been so spoiled before.' She gazed across the terrace at the moonlit bay. 'I wish I deserved it.' Her voice had a wry undertone. 'What do you mean?' asked Bond surprised. 'Oh, I don't know. I suppose people get what they deserve, so perhaps I do deserve it.' She looked at him and smiled. Her eyes narrowed quizzically. 'You really don't know much about me,' she said suddenly. Bond was surprised by the undertone of seriousness in her voice. — Ian Fleming

A wry smile crossed Havens' lips. Pork here in an overwhelmingly Muslim population was a stupid thought, even for self-talk.
OK, turkey bacon. — J.T. Patten

Win or lose, the crows always laughed
the hard, old jaded laughter that came of looking at the world with a black and practiced eye. From the less skillful the laugh might have hinted of despair, or silliness, like the magpies', but the crows were masters of the wry outlook, and Viv never heard them but what she followed their expert lead and laughed along
they knew the secret of black, that it could not be made blacker, and if neither could it be made lighter, it could still be made funnier. — Ken Kesey

I love the wry motto of the Paleontological Society, meant both literally and figuratively, for hammers are the main tool of our trade: Frango ut patefaciam - I break in order to reveal. — Stephen Jay Gould

Five years off my life ...
I wondered with a wry smile, would people be immortal if they didn't have kids? — Malorie Blackman

Believe it or not, I've never been the most popular person at any party." She tried for a wry smile and almost managed it.

He shook his head. "That's only because you hide from people. You don't let them get to know you. Claire, if you let them see who you really are, every person in that room would adore you. — Noelle Adams

Blindly, Grace pushed away from the velvet-lined wall...

Right into the path of a giant as tall and as hard as an oak.

A firm hand caught her about the waist as strong fingers captured her wrists. She blinked the sting of unshed tears from her eyes to find herself entangled not with an oak, but with a man possessed of dark brown hair and dangerous golden eyes. A wry smile curved his lips as the orchestra began the opening strains of a waltz. — Erica Ridley

Jay Wexler is my kind of writer
a weird one, and a wry one, and one who isnt afraid to act silly in a sort of bait-and-switch that, to the readers surprise, moves him as much as it makes him laugh. Like all the best comedians, Wexler is clearly nursing a heart that the world broke a long time ago. Ed Tuttle is a book that cant decide what it wants to be when it grows up, but as with most cases of arrested development, theres something very serious going on behind all the antics. Plus, there are pictures. — Ron Currie Jr.

The Dark Ages are alive and secretly thriving like a herpes infection among us. — Juliette Fay

Ildiko clutched his arm, unwilling to have him leave her side. "I enjoy your touch, Brishen."

The stiffness eased from his shoulders. He gave her a wry look and pressed his palm to the pale expanse of skin just below her collarbones. His hand rose and fell in quick time to her breathing. "I believe you, but this tells me you fear it as well."

She winced. "Your teeth are so...sharp."

"They are, but I'm not careless, wife. And if, for some unfathomable reason, I accidently bite you, you're welcome to bite me back."

His attempt at humor worked, and Ildiko chuckled. "Brishen - " She offered him a toothy grin. "These wouldn't do much damage."

He traced the line of her collarbones with the rough pads of his fingers, their dark claws a whisper of movement across her flesh. "You have obviously never been badly bitten by a horse. — Grace Draven

I will give you a little hint," Emma said with a wry smile. "A whore's trick, but a good one. It's a part that you're playing, like a grand actress on the stage. It isn't you. It has nothing to do with you. You're simply using your body in service to something necessary. You can smile and flirt and dance and pretend you're someone entirely different, and it won't matter. You, the real you, will still be safe inside. — Anne Stuart

Vegard and Riston's job today was to guard and protect me. And considering that I was in a tower room in the Guardians' citadel, it looked like a pretty plum assignment. I mean, how much trouble could a girl get into under heavy guard in a tower room? Notice I didn't ask that question out loud. No need to rub Fate's nose in something when I'd been tempting her enough lately.
Phaelan had generously his guard services as well, just in case something happened to me that my Guardian bodyguards couldn't handle. Phaelan's guard-on-duty stance resembled his pirate-on-shore-leave stane of leaning back in a chair with his feet up, but instead of a tavern table, his boots were doing a fine job of holding down the windowsill. I don't know how I'd ever felt safe without him. — Lisa Shearin

If you give me the five hundred dollars right now, I'll let you do
whatever you want to me," she whimpered.
"Why are you being such a hard ass, Jeni?" he said with a wry
smile. He took her hand and slid it down the front of his bare torso. His
abdominal muscles rippled under her hand. Then he slid her hand over
his erection. His cock twitched at the feel of her hand. "You know you
want me to fuck you."
"Then cough up the money, Hamilton!" Though her voice regained
its edge, her body was seconds away from crumbling. She wanted nothing
more than him buried deep inside her. She ached for him. — Jessica Jayne

I want everything,' she replied with a faint, wry smile. 'You know, I said that once to a friend of mine, and he told me that the real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it. — Gregory David Roberts

I find her [Frances Trollope] simply delightful, even in her prejudices and cantankerousness. It is a gift to an author to find a funny, wry, perceptive contemporary observer to whom the subject matter seems almost as different and alien, and requiring as much struggling to understand, as it did to me. — Charles R. Morris

I was sorry he had not a cat, or a young dog, or better still, an old dog. But all he had to offer in the way of dumb companions was a pink and grey parrot. He used to try and teach it to say, Nihil in intellectu, etc. These first three words the bird managed well enough, but the celebrated restriction was too much for it, all you heard was a series of squawks. — Samuel Beckett

Mr. Schmidt had screamed at me in New York: LOSER! You English Loser ... I suppose he thought it was the most grievous insult he could hurl. But such a curse doesn't really have any effect on an English person - or a European - it seems to me. We know we're all going to lose in the end so it is deprived of any force as a slur. But not in the USA. Perhaps this is the great difference between the two worlds, this concept of Loserdom. In the New World it is the ultimate mark of shame - in the Old it prompts only a wry sympathy. — William Boyd

You let the cops in. Thy've brought in a ram to take down the front door. A white chick in an evening gown will settle the cops faster than a brother with guns. — Faith Hunter

What New England is, is a state of mind, a place where dry humor and perpetual disappointment blend to produce an ironic pessimism that folks from away find most perplexing — Willem Lange

She calmly raised the stun gun to her lips as if blowing away imaginary smoke. With a wry smile, she acknowledged the group of women gathered in her living room to witness her in-home presentation. "And that, ladies, is how you keep from becoming a statistic. — Stu Summers

He eyed her cart with wry amusement. You either have a lot of very little flashlights, or a busy vibrator. — Jill Shalvis

Kat had a thing for dandelions. She couldn't keep her fingers off them when we'd been training with the onyx. From the moment those yellow weeds started poking through the ground, she'd snap them up and pop their heads off.
A wry grin tugged at my lips as I skidded to a stop in front of the windowless door. Demented Kitten. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Come now, gentlemen." Ashton's steely tone stopped the two men. "Do we need to solve this in a ring?"
"I wouldn't recommend that," Godric said with a wry grin. "But if it does come to it, I'll stake ten pounds on Charles."
Both Cedric and Charles shared cautious looks with one another before declining, perhaps in part because none of the others would take that bet. Ashton dropped his hand when he seemed satisfied that Cedric would not resume trying to kill Charles. Lucien gave a sigh of relief. He had no desire to jump between his friends. Charles was a champion boxer and Lucien didn't want a blackened eye simply because he'd try to impose peace. If Ashton wished to risk his face, that was entirely up to him.
Jonathan, who had lingered at the edge of the group, suddenly spoke up. "Is this how all of your League meetings go? Perhaps we might focus ourselves back on the real problem and the importance of protecting the ladies."

-His Wicked Seduction — Lauren Smith

She had never heard the word 'intellectual' used as a noun before she went to Barnard, and she took it to heart. It was a brave noun, a proud noun, a noun suggesting lifelong dedication to lofty things and a cool disdain for the commonplace. An intellectual might lose her virginity to a soldier in the park, but she could learn to look back on it with wry, amused detachment. An intellectual might have a mother who showed her underpants when drunk, but she wouldn't let it bother her. And Emily Grimes might not be an intellectual yet, but if she took copious notes in even the dullest of her classes, and if she read every night until her eyes ached, it was only a question of time. — Richard Yates

Ethel said: "Lloyd, there's someone here you may remember-"
Daisy could not restrain herself. She ran to Lloyd and threw herself into his arms. She hugged him. She looked into his green eyes, then kissed his brown cheeks and his broken nose and then his mouth. "I love you, Lloyd," she sad madly. "I love you, I love you, I love you."
"I love you, too, Daisy," he said.
Behind her, Daisy heard Ethel's wry voice. "You do remember, I see. — Ken Follett