Hard Bitten Quotes & Sayings

I didn't expect to find much visible trace of the American war in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are too hard-bitten to dwell on it, and they've sanded away all but the outcroppings of history - the museums, the memorials. — Evan Osnos

imagine the desert
mothers, with hair tangled
tighter than their theology
and breasts that flowed milk
and mystic wisdom. they
knew how to draw the singing
sigils in the sand, how to dig
rough and bitten fingers
into desiccated dirt for water
to wet the lips of their young.

women of hips and heft, who
learned how to burn
beneath the wild and searing
sun, who made loud love
against the star-flecked threat
of night, who knew that strength
is not always a matter of muscle.

imagine your ancestresses,
the prophetesses of the arid
lands, before these starched
traditions and pews too hard
to pray from, who bled true
ritual and birthed their own fierce
souls at creation's crowning -- — Beth Morey

But hard bitten cynicism leaves one feeling peevish, and too much of it can do lasting damage to your heart. — Julie Powell

Even though the medical and dental tests of the day before had been horrific, Will thought the first day of real treatment was far worse due to the duration; the torture lasted the entire day. During the afternoon session, they had to insert a rubber mouthpiece because he'd bitten his lip several times, and continually ground his teeth together. He struggled so hard that his head bolts had bled, the blood trickling down his face in streams. — Shane Stadler

Gabe clucked his tongue. "He's probably not the only one," he said, glancing at me. "Trouble does seem to find you, Kitten. — Chloe Neill

Lots of you know me as a lone, hard-bitten columnist, prone to lurking on deserted rocky promontories while searching for my muse. — Cynthia Heimel

Blending hard-bitten realism with long-view optimism, Obama said that every 20 or 30 years brings a new cycle of pessimism in America. — Ron Fournier

The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it. — Tahir Shah

Dark thought started to slip into my mind, despite all my efforts to keep them out. What was the use of anything? We were born, we lived a few years, grew old, and then died. What was the point of it all? All those people in the County and the wide world beyond, living their short little lives before going to the grave. What was it all for? My dad was dead. He'd worked hard all his life, but the journey of his life had had only one destination: the grave. That's where we were all heading. into the grave. Into the soil, to be eaten by worms. Poor Billy Bradley had been the Spook's apprentice before me. He'd had his fingers bitten off by a boggat and had died of shock and loss of blood. And where was he now? In a grave. Not even in a churchyard. He was buried outside because the Church considered him no better than a malevolent witch. That would be my fate too. A grave in unhallowed ground. — Joseph Delaney

Daisy was starting to feel like the kind of cop you only ever see in movies: tough, hard-bitten, and perfectly ready to buck the system; the kind of cop who wants to know whether or not you feel lucky or if you're interested in making his day, and particularly the kind of cop who says "I'm getting too old for this shit." She was twenty-six years old, and she wanted to tell people she was too old for this shit. She was quite aware of how ridiculous this was, thank you very much. — Neil Gaiman

I admire hard-bitten, wisecracking realism of Ida Lupino and the film noir heroines. I'm sick of simpering white girls with their princess fantasies. — Camille Paglia

Sullivan may have a heart of coal, but I bet he looks really good in orange. And stripes. Rawr. - Lindsey — Chloe Neill

We are accustomed in England to chalk in rolling downs, except where bitten into by the sea, but elsewhere it is riven and presents cliffs, and these cliffs are not at all like that of Shakespeare at Dover but overhang, where hard beds alternate with others that are friable. — Sabine Baring-Gould

Here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded. Here is some dual life that is not as the common. She was bitten by the vampire when she was in a trance, sleep-walking, oh, you start. You do not know that, friend John, but you shall know it later, and in trance could he best come to take more blood. In trance she dies, and in trance she is UnDead, too. So it is that she differ from all other. Usually when the UnDead sleep at home," as he spoke he made a comprehensive sweep of his arm to designate what to a vampire was 'home', "their face show what they are, but this so sweet that was when she not UnDead she go back to the nothings of the common dead. There is no malign there, see, and so it make hard that I must kill her in her sleep. — Bram Stoker

Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader. — William Zinsser

I thought crocodiles lived under my bed and if my feet hung over the side, they'd get bitten off. So I slept in a ball. I think I still do actually." Oh God. Shut up. Shut up. "Out of habit, I mean, not crocodiles. I d-don't think that anymore. Obviously."

He was quiet a moment. And then, faintly accusingly, "You know that's adorable, don't you?"

I tripped hard over adorable and couldn't think how to answer. So I said nothing at all, and merely enjoyed my few minutes in a dangerous puddle with a man who maybe thought I was adorable. — Alexis Hall

I was always playing the hard-bitten drunk. — Sally Kellerman

Carried to its final extreme, the logical end of this type of reaction to life is suicide. The hard-bitten kind of person is always, as it were, a partial suicide; some of himself is already dead — Alan Watts

Give others a chance to talk ...
A lovely little girl was holding two apples with both hands.Her mum came in and softly asked her little daughter with a smile: my sweetie, could you give your mum one of your two apples? The girl looked up at her mum for some seconds, then she suddenly took a quick bite on one apple, and then quickly on the other. The mum felt the smile on her face freeze. She tried hard not to reveal her disappointment. Then the little girl handed one of her bitten apples to her mum, and said: mummy, here you are.This is the sweeter one.
No matter who you are, how experienced you are, and how knowledgeable you think you are, always delay judgement. Give others the privilege to explain themselves. What you see may not be the reality. Never conclude for others. — Anonymous

Hard-bitten had a double meaning: bitten hard by life, like her, or clamping meanly down on other people. But, as though belying his thoughts, she said, "I hope your days are good."
"If only. My eyes, you know, are like Swiss cheese, the doctor says. I see through the holes. — Edward Hoagland

It took me almost two thousand miles in the woods to see I had to do some hard work that wasn't simply walking - that I needed to begin respecting my own body's boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me.

Moving forward, I wanted rules.

First - when I felt unsafe I'd leave, immediately. The first time, not the tenth time. Not after a hundred red flags smacked in wind violently, clear as trail signs pointing the way to SNAKES. Not after I'd been bitten - the violation. If I wasn't interested, I would reject the man blatantly. — Aspen Matis