Goddam Quotes & Sayings

Nevermind what you normally would do. Just cough up your goddam buck like everyone else. — Lawrence Tierney

Don't talk to me about rules, dear. Wherever I stay I make the goddam rules. — Maria Callas

If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet. — J.D. Salinger

We've had the goddam Ages of Faith, we've had the goddam Age of Reason. This is the Age of Publicity — William Gaddis

You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phoney stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. — J.D. Salinger

I held hands with her all the time ... that doesn't sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something. — J.D. Salinger

Don't you get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system. — Al Capone

I'm no goddam animal. I may be a stupid, fouled-up twentieth-century son of a bitch, but I'm no animal. Don't gimme that. I'm no animal. — J.D. Salinger

You know," he laughed easily, "with all the goddam drinkin' Ah've done, Ah still can't remember the taste of it unless Ah got the bottle right with me. — Norman Mailer

This is nine! Nine! This is nine! Nine! This is ten! Ten! We have killed your friends! Every friend is now dead! This is six! Six!"
[ ... ]
"Eighteen! This is now eighteen! Take cover when the siren sounds! This is four! Four!"
[ ... ]
"Five! This is five! Ignore the siren! Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room! Eight! This is eight!"
[ ... ]
"Six!' the phone screamed. 'Six, this is six, this is goddam fucking SIX! — Stephen King

Goddam life, I say, if you can't laugh you might as well laugh anyway. That's my goddam attitude, and I stick by it; this ain't a sad world unless you're sane. — Stephen King

Abhorrent and beyond inappropriate, reachable only through hours of hiking into the Realm of Really Goddam Wrong. — Sarah Wendell

It ends up with everybody at this long dinner table laughing their asses off because the great Dane comes in with a bunch of puppies. Everybody thought it was a male , I suppose, or some goddam thing. All I can say is, don't see it if you don't want to puke all over yourself. — J.D. Salinger

Some of these guys will go on walking long after the laws of biochemistry and handicapping have gone by the boards. There was a guy last year that crawled for two miles at four miles an hour after both of his feet cramped up at the same time, you remember reading about that? Look at Olson, he's worn out but he keeps going. That goddam Barkovitch is running on high-octane hate and he just keeps going and he's as fresh as a daisy. I don't think I can do that. I'm not tired -not really tired- yet. But I will be." The scar stood out on the side of his haggard face as he looked ahead into the darkness "And I think ... when I get tired enough ... I think I'll just sit down — Stephen King

Yes, I have an ulcer, for Chrissake. This is Kaliyuga, buddy, the Iron Age. Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer's a goddam spy. — J.D. Salinger

Knife fights are something that happen between the Sharks and the Jets, that's it. Everywhere else, it's not a fight, it's just someone trying to goddam kill you. — Greg Rucka

All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.
When the ride was over she got off her horse and came over to me. "You ride once, too, this time," she said.
"No, I'll just watch ya. I think I'll just watch," I said. — J.D. Salinger

So, standing here looking at you, all grown up, the question I ask is simple. In the long run, how different is a goddam hot dog from a Vienna sausage? — Charles Frazier

I don't think about politics," Rabbit says. "That's one of my Goddam precious American rights, not to think about politics. — John Updike

Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew
knew
that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? — J.D. Salinger

I was surrounded by phonies ... They were coming in the goddam window. — J.D. Salinger

Nobody who's really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies — J.D. Salinger

People gave names to things so they could tell stories about them, goddam fairy tales about children who got out alive. — Sam Lipsyte

Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it. — Stephen King

I've flown over seventy goddam combat missions. Don't talk to me about fighting to save my country. I've been fighting all along to save my country. Now I'm going to fight a little to save myself. The country's not in danger any more, but I am. — Joseph Heller

The jet is a great invention. Besides being a world shrinker, par excellence, it has much of the quality and charm of a roller coaster. And it's big. Once, years ago, on a ten-stop, cross-country air trip, I turned to the man next to me and said, quite genuinely: What keeps these big goddam things up in the air? — Vincent Price

I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone. — J.D. Salinger

In spite of their hats being very ugly, Goddam! I love the English. — Bertrand Barere

Did you know, God damn it, that Les was all for bringing a tangerine in to you last night before he went to bed? My God. Even Bessie can't stand stories with tangerines in them. And God knows I can't. If you're going to go on with this breakdown business, I wish to hell you'd go back to college to have it. Where you're not the baby of the family. And where, God knows, nobody'll have any urges to bring you any tangerines. And where you don't keep your goddam tap shoes in the closet. — J.D. Salinger

I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday. That was a lie. I told them that because if you agree to an interview you have to say something, and it plays better if it's something at least half-clever. Also, I didn't want to sound like a workaholic dweeb (just a workaholic, I guess). The truth is that when I'm writing, I write every day, workaholic dweeb or not. That includes Christmas, the Fourth, and my birthday (at my age you try to ignore your goddam birthday anyway). And when I'm not working, I'm not working at all, although during those periods of full stop I usually feel at loose ends with myself and have trouble sleeping. For me, not working is the real work. — Stephen King

When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody. — J.D. Salinger

Hold onto one thought: You're not important. You're not anything. Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddam steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. — Ray Bradbury

Oh, Christ. Word stuff, paper stuff, and that's neither words nor paper in that goddam little coffin, that's my son, my kid, my little dirty gap-toothed boy with the torn britches and the scabs on his knees, and he wasn't ever intended to ride thunder and bridle lightning, no man is. Pulp heroes were all made of wood and they could do it, but Dan's human and soft and easily broken. He hasn't any business there, no man has. — Mike Resnick

It is no longer an organism that functions but a BwO that is constructed. No longer are there acts to explain, dreams or phantasies to interpret, childhood memories to recall, words to make signify; instead there are colors and sounds, becomings and intensities (and when you become-dog, don't ask if the dog you are playing with is a dream or a reality, if it is 'your goddam mother' or something else entirely). — Gilles Deleuze

For a psychoanalyst to be any good with Franny at all, he'd have to be a pretty peculiar type. I don't know. He'd have to believe that it was through the grace of God that he'd been inspired to study psychoanalysis in the first place. He'd have to believe that it was through the grace of God that he wasn't run over by a goddam truck before he ever got his license to practice. He'd have to believe that it's through the grace of God that he has the native intelligence to be able to help his goddam patients at all. I don't know any good analysts who think along those lines. But that's the only kind of psychoanalyst who might be able to do Franny any good at all. If she got somebody terribly Freudian, or terribly eclectic, or just terribly run-of-the-mill - somebody who didn't even have any crazy, mysterious gratitude for his insight and intelligence - she'd come out of analysis in even worse shape. — J.D. Salinger

I'm the one flunking out of this goddam place, and you're asking me to write you a goddam composition. — J.D. Salinger

There's only one rule I know of - Goddam it, you've got to be kind. — Kurt Vonnegut

I am incomparably, incredibly, overwhelmingly glad to be home. I've never been so goddam lonesome in my life. — John Steinbeck

Andy says, I don't understand how they can give loans to people who want to spend two weeks lying on the sand at the goddam Jersey shore and then turn down a woman with three kids hanging on by her fingernails. — Frank McCourt

She gave life a meaning.
She was art, dressed like a painters pallet, bright and unaware of how goddam beautiful she could be turned into; with the right touch, her smile was the brush and her story was the canvas. — Nikki Rowe

His counterpart at Chevy, a man named Bill Holler, had once gathered all of his regional salesmen around a brand-new model, opened the door, looked at them all long and solemnly, and then slammed the door as hard as he could. "Boys," he announced, "I've just slammed the door on the best goddam car in the world" - and a huge cheer went up. — David Halberstam

I took two important phone calls while in the shower today because I'm a goddam professional. — AJ Lee

If you can't read a simple goddam sign and follow one simple goddam instruction then get your fat butt the hell out of here. — Garrison Keillor

A hero is a goddam stupid thing to have in the first place and a general block to anything you might wanta accomplish on your own. — Lester Bangs

In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He'll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can't figure out whether the hero's laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff - a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And I'm not lazy, whatever else I am. I'll tell you everything. — Jim Thompson

American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar (a British advertising man with a proper education can make magazine copy for ribbed condoms sound like the Magna goddam Carta), but it has its own scruffy charm — Stephen King

Too goddam many lawyers mixed up in this. Run the sonsobitches out. If they resists shoot 'em, that's what I says to the Governor, but they're all these sonsobitches a lawyers fussin' everythin' up all the time with warrants and habeas corpus and longwinded rigmarole. My ass to habeas corpus. — John Dos Passos

Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell. — J.D. Salinger

When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck. — J.D. Salinger

I dreamed one night that I had 17 holes-in-one and one two, and when I woke up I was so goddam mad. — Ben Hogan

I come from a whole goddam family of inventors," said Will. "We had ideas for breakfast. We had ideas instead of breakfast. We had so many ideas we forgot to make the money for groceries. — John Steinbeck

You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques. The guys that are on the basketball team stick together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that
belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month Club stick together. — J.D. Salinger

You know what she said? She says nobody gets a nervous breakdown just from the war and all. She says you probably were unstable like, your whole goddam life. — J.D. Salinger

She gave me the big freeze when I said hello that day, though. I had a helluva time convincing her that I didn't give a good goddam where her dog relieved himself. He could do it in the living room, for all I cared. — J.D. Salinger

You're a goddam funny kid, Clivey," he said. "I got sixteen grandchildren, and there's only two of em that I think is gonna amount to duckshit, and you ain't one of em - although you're on the runner-up list - but you're the only one that can make me laugh until my balls ache. — Stephen King

Love is no rose. It's a goddam weed that digs its roots in deep, there's no hope of getting it out. - Nina Valance, human novelist married to a telekinetic (circa 1977) — Nalini Singh

Goddam. Aren't you something else. — Augustus Waters The Fault In Our Stars

Dad-a-jum, dad-a-jiggers, goddam lobsters bit off your fingers, King said, and actually laughed. — Stephen King

Most of what bein human's about is making choices and payin the bills when they come due. Some of the choices are pretty goddam nasty, but that don't give a person leave to just walk away from em ... In a case like that, you just have to make the best choice you can n then pay the price. — Stephen King

That was where he wanted to be if he had to be there at all, instead of hung out there in front like some goddam cantilevered goldfish in some goddam cantilevered goldfish bowl while the goddam foul black tiers of flak were bursting and booming and billowing all around and above and below him in a climbing, cracking, staggered, banging, phantasmagorical, cosmological wickedness that jarred and tossed and shivered, clattered and pierced, and threatened to annihilate them all in one splinter of a second in one vast flash of fire. — Joseph Heller

This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don't mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one. — J.D. Salinger

All these handsome guys are the same. When they're done combing their goddam hair, they beat it on you. — J.D. Salinger

Well, we can skip childhood because I didn't have any. Not one goddam moment on the Good Ship Lollipop. — Joan Crawford

I'm just interested in finding out what the hell goes. I mean do you have to be a goddam bohemian type, or dead, for Chrissake, to be a real poet? What do you want - some bastard with wavy hair? — J.D. Salinger

He struck his temples with his fists and screamed: 'Haven't you ever seen a goddam DC converter? You can get them at Radio Shack for three bucks! Are you seriously trying to tell me you couldn't have made a simple DC converter when you can make your tractor fly and your typewriter run on telepathy? Are you?
'Nobody thought of it!' she screamed suddenly. — Stephen King

This ain't a war ... It's a goddam whorehouse. — John Dos Passos

One morning while drinking coffee with Amos, Daniel Haws looked up suddenly, as if feeling the boy's eyes on him, and said:
"Tryin' to burn holes starin' like that?"
"Guess I was just resting my eyes on you so as not to look at your wallpaper," Amos gave a sour apology.
Daniel closed the book he was reading, a volume of Rhodes's history of the United States, and took a careful look at the kitchen wallpaper.
"Yes," he admitted, "that wallpaper is goddam ancient. — James Purdy

Life is a goddam mess ... but you wouldn't want to miss it! — Joseph Mitchell

But that's alright because now everything'll be alright & we'll soothe the forever boys & girls & before we're thru we'll find a name for this Goddam Golden Eternity & tell a story too — Jack Kerouac

Girls with their legs crossed, girls with their legs not crossed, girls with terrific legs, girls with lousy legs, girls that looked like swell girls, girls that looked like they'd be bitches if you knew them. It was really nice sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books. Guys that are very boring - But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I don't understand boring guys. I really don't. — J.D. Salinger

Leaving senior year like:
its hard to leave to you leave, then its the eased goddam thing you've ever done. — John Green

That goddam stunted, red-faced, big-cheeked, apple-cheeked, curlyheaded, midget assed, , google-eyed, undersized, grinning, buck-toothed rat!!" Yossarian sputtered.
~ Catch-22 — Joseph Heller

Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won't let them because there's nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking. Same thing with kids. Keep 'em busy or they might start thinking. — Frank McCourt

The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding — J.D. Salinger

Know what I think?" said Perry. "I think there must be something wrong with
us. To do what we did."'
"Did what?"
"Out there."
Dick dropped the binoculars into a leather case, a luxurious receptacle initialed
H. W. C. He was annoyed. Annoyed as hell. Why the hell couldn't Perry shut up? Christ
Jesus, what damn good did it do, always dragging the goddam thing up? It really was
annoying. Especially since they'd agreed, sort of, not to talk about the goddam thing.
Just forget it.
"There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that,"
Perry said.
"Deal me out, baby," Dick said. "I'm a normal." And Dick meant what he said.
He thought himself as balanced, as sane as anyone - maybe a bit smarter than the
average fellow, that's all. But Perry - there was, in Dick's opinion, "something wrong"
with Little Perry. — Truman Capote

You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world. — J.D. Salinger

I rub the ears of my dog, my stupid goddam ruddy great dog that I never wanted but who hung around anyway and who followed me thru the swamp and who bit Aaron when he was trying to choke me and who found Viola when she was lost and who's licking my hand with his little pink tongue and whose eye is still mostly squinted shut from where Mr. Prentiss Jr. kicked him and whose tail is way way shorter from where Matthew Lyle cut it off when my dog - my dog - went after a man with a machete to save me and who's right there when I need pulling back from the darkness I fall into and who tells me who I am whenever I forget. — Patrick Ness

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. It's staggering how you jump straight the hell into the heart of a matter. I'm goosebumps all over ... By God, you inspire me. You inflame me, Bessie. You know what you've done? Do you realize what you've done? You've given this whole goddam issue a fresh, new, Biblical slant. I wrote four papers in college on the Crucifixion - five, really - and every one of them worried me half crazy because I thought something was missing. Now I know what it was. Now it's clear to me. I see Christ in an entirely different light. His unhealthy fanaticism. His rudeness to those nice, sane, conservative, tax-paying Pharisees. Oh, this is exciting! In your simple, straightforward bigoted way, Bessie, you've sounded the missing keynote of the whole New Testament. Improper diet. Christ lived on cheeseburgers and Cokes. For all we know he probably fed the mult - — J.D. Salinger

You sat around this fucking place moping like a damn child for the last six days. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're having your goddam man-period right now. — Danielle Jamie

She is a writer, what the fuck do you expect from her other than passion, truth and goddam soul? — Nikki Rowe

On top of everything else," he said immediately, "we've got 'Wise Child' complexes. We've never really got off the goddam air. Not one of us. We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound. At least I do ... it's impossible for me to keep my mouth shut. — J.D. Salinger

You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you ever move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessations from all hankerings.' It's this business of desiring, if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line - in one damn incarnation or another, if you like - you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to - be God's actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? — J.D. Salinger

Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. — J.D. Salinger

My big trouble is, I always sort of think whoever I'm necking is a pretty intelligent person. It hasn't got a goddam thing to do with it, but I keep thinking it anyway. — J.D. Salinger

He summoned all his willpower and reined it in, promising himself he would drink just as much as he goddam wanted once he had his forty in - a pretty amazing number, when fifty percent of city cops retired after twenty-five and seventy percent after thirty. Only now that he has his forty, alcohol no longer interests him much. He forced himself to get drunk a few times, just to see if he could still do it, and he could, but being drunk turned out to be no better than being sober. Actually it was a little worse. — Stephen King

You maniacs! You blew it all up! Goddam you all. Goddam you all to hell. — George R. Taylor

Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm oversexed or anything like that - although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They're always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle. — J.D. Salinger

Shit!" Evelgold added.
"What?" Hook asked, alarmed.
"I just stepped in some."
"That's supposed to bring you luck," Hook said.
"Then I'd better dance in the goddam stuff. — Bernard Cornwell

People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting goddam sick of it. — J.D. Salinger

Turn the goddam music up! My heart feels like an alligator! — Hunter S. Thompson

Look at 'em,' he said. 'Goddam fools.' 'Who?' said Ginnie. 'I don't know. Anybody. — J.D. Salinger

You would think he was somebody the way he carries on. My God, he's from Spartanburg. Spartanburg of all the pitiful places. The upcountry. The goddam, no-count upcountry. — Pat Conroy

Aw I don't wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys.' ...
But you'll miss all that, just for some old wine.'
There's wisdom in wine, goddam it!' I yelled. 'Have a shot! — Jack Kerouac

Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused? It was the Goddam sense of having a self. — Luke Rhinehart

I don't even like old cars. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake. — J.D. Salinger

You should've heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would've puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn't funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play in the goddam closet. — J.D. Salinger

Lawyers are alright, I guess - but it doesn't appeal to me", I said. "I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't. — J.D. Salinger

They say that age kills the fire inside of a man, that he hears Death coming, he opens the door and says, "Come in, give me rest!" That is a pack of goddam lies. — Anthony Quinn

I don't even like old cars. I mean, they don't even interest me at all. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human — J.D. Salinger

Christ, it's embarrassing--I start thinking about this goddam poem I sent her when we first started goin' around together. 'Rose my color is. and white, Pretty mouth and green my eyes.' Christ, it's embarrassing--it used to remind me of her. She doesn't have green eyes--she has eyes like goddam sea shells, for Chrissake. — J.D. Salinger