Maddening Quotes & Sayings

Not ever. Not once. You never know. You only guess. This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what's good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don't get to see the future. And if you screw up, if with your incomplete, contradictory information you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child's entire future and happiness is at stake. It's impossible. It's heartbreaking. It's maddening. But there's no alternative. — Laurie Frankel

here is nothing to see, however, and not a soul to meet. You might walk for twenty miles along this track without being able to fix a point in your mind, unless you are a bushman. This is because of the everlasting, maddening sameness of the stunted trees - that monotony which makes a man long to break away and travel as far as trains can go, and sail as far as ship can sail - and farther. — Henry Lawson

By morning, Adelaide was beginning to understand why she'd never completely understood how God worked. Given that He had made the bewildering, maddening, incomprehensible species that was man from His own image, it stood to reason that the Creator would be a complicated mass of logic never meant to be understood by the female mind. That, or the fall of man in the Garden of Eden had taken them even further off the path than she'd ever realized — Kristi Ann Hunter

The photograph dragged Maneck's eyes back to it, to the event that was once unsettling, pitiful, and maddening in its crystalline stillness. The three sisters looked disappointed, he thought, as though they had expected something more than death, and discovered that was all there was. He found himself admiring their courage. What strength it must have taken, he thought , to unwind those sarees from their bodies, to tie the knots around their necks. Or perhaps it had been easy, once the act acquired the beauty of logic and the weight of sensibleness. — Rohinton Mistry

Listen to me," he said, his voice even and intense, "and listen well, because I'm only going to say this once. I desire you. I burn for you. I can't sleep at night for wanting you. Even when I didn't like you, I lusted for you. It's the most maddening, beguiling, damnable thing, but there it is. And if I hear one more word of nonsense from your lips, I'm going to have to tie you to the bloody bed and have my way with you a hundred different ways, until you finally get it through your silly skull that you are the most beautiful and desirable woman in England, and if everyone else doesn't see that, then they're all bloody fools. — Julia Quinn

You can be just friends with people, you know," Orla said. "I think it's crazy how you're in love with all those raven boys."
Orla wasn't wrong, of course. But what she didn't realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn't all-encompassing, that wasn't blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she'd had this kind, she didn't want the other. — Maggie Stiefvater

How fabulous down was for those first minutes! Down, down, down I'd go until down too became impossible and punishing and so relentless that I'd pray for the trail to go back up. Going down, I realized was like taking hold of the loose strand of yarn on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost. — Cheryl Strayed

It is hard to say no sometimes, especially when it means disappointing someone or denying ourselves the opportunity to do something we enjoy. In today's society, the temptation to pile on more and more until we are completely overwhelmed is always present. There are more committees, more sports, more hobbies, more obligations, more distractions, more channels, more charities, and more of, well, pretty much everything than ever before. And the maddening thing is that it all sounds so good — Ruth Soukup

A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods - the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep. — H.P. Lovecraft

In 1989, my father died after a prolonged struggle with Alzheimer's disease. All four of his siblings followed him into the shadow lands of that fascinating, maddening affliction. — Charlie Pierce

Camarin and I are both baffled by the pleasure humans find with bowling. The noise is maddening, the equipment unsanitary, and the repetition boring. — Elizabeth Langston

I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my "real" life again at last. That is what is strange - that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and "the house and I resume old conversations". — May Sarton

They turned up the volume of the inner monologue, magnified qualities already present to great excess, made people so much themselves that they couldn't stand it. And how can we lose this maddening — Donna Tartt

No one had any idea, it turned out. None of the older Symphony members knew much about science, which was frankly maddening given how much time these people had had to look things up on the Internet before the world ended. — Emily St. John Mandel

I think we love bacon because it has all the qualities of an amazing sensory experience. When we cook it, the sizzling sound is so appetizing, the aroma is maddening, the crunch of the texture is so gratifying and the taste delivers every time. — Alexandra Guarnaschelli

It's really maddening out there for dark-skinned actresses in terms of the opportunities we get. There's just so much talent that is being overlooked. — Rutina Wesley

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England? — John Masefield

But here's the maddening thing about knowledge. We don't know that we don't know something until we know it. — Patty Houser

Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts [nebulous worries, jitters, and preoccupations] on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes. — Timothy Ferriss

I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel. — Florence Nightingale

The confinement she feels is spreading, becoming intolerable, because in a hostile mind limitations grow to a maddening degree. Moreover, God had strongly warned, "You shall surely die." But the woman now softens it to ". . . lest you die." Now that her view of the consequences is less alarming, Satan springs on that very point: — Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

Let me get this straight," Nina said. "You haven't kissed me because the setting isn't suitably romantic?"
"This isn't about romance . A proper kiss, a proper courtship. There's a way these things should be done."
"For proper thieves?" The corners of her beautiful mouth curled and for a moment he was afraid she would laugh at him, but she simply shook her head and drew even nearer. Her body was the barest breath from his now. The need to close that scrap of distance was maddening.
"The first day you showed up at my house for this proper courtship, I would have cornered you in the pantry," she said. — Leigh Bardugo

Are you gonna put your shirt back on?" she blurted out.
Chase froze, looking over his shoulder at her with the most maddening smile. "Why? Is this bothering you?"
"I just ... " Andie sputtered, floundering through her response. "I mean, what if we get pulled over or something?"
"If we get pulled over, this could only work in your favor," he said, running his hands over his chest.
Andie tried to stifle a laugh. "My God, you're insufferable. — Priscilla Glenn

Just, you know, you can't put bread in a cold oven. You know, you've got to take your time. You've got to heat it up. So that's what, that's what I like to do with my music. I like to build it, and build it into a maddening, exciting crescendo. — Isaac Hayes

Very few writers understand the complex history and maddening social order of the Mississippi Delta. For Steve Yarbrough, though, it's home turf. He is wickedly observant, funny, cynical, evocative, and he possesses a gift that cannot be taught: he can tell a story. — John Grisham

It's very intense to go back to the past and revive work that I've already experienced and moved forward from. It's like seeing an old girlfriend - awkward at times, nostalgic at times and downright maddening and embarrassing. — Barry McGee

He kept asking Kay and others for an assessment of "trends" that foretold what the future might hold for the company. During one maddening session, Kay, whose thoughts often seemed tailored to go directly from his tongue to wikiquotes, shot back a line that was to become PARC's creed: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."60 — Walter Isaacson

Her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. — Thomas Hardy

Be yourself
Matthew Clairmont. Complete with your sharp vampire teeth and your scary mother, your test tubes full of blood and your DNA, your infuriating bossiness and your maddening sense of smell. — Deborah Harkness

Tears glinted in her eyes. "I want no secrets between us, Silas."
"No secrets," he echoed, his mouth near the gentle curve of her ear. "Then you should know I can hardly breathe for thinking of you. You're the most maddening lass I've ever known, and every day without you near is an agony to me." Taking her face between his hands, he moved to kiss her, but the sound of approaching horses gave him pause. — Laura Frantz

The app saved three minutes of my time. But in the process, it cut a neighborhood business out of the economic equation. And, in a way, I had cut off myself from the inconvenient, maddening, but all-too-necessary messiness of human interaction. — Nick Bilton

Perhaps in time, Ella, the words we have lost will fade, and we will all stop summoning them by habit, only to stamp them out like unwanted toadstools when they appear. Perhaps they will eventually disappear altogether, and the accompanying halts and stammers as well: those troublesome, maddening pauses that at present invade and punctuate through caesura all manner of discourse. Trying so desperately we all are, to be ever so careful. — Mark Dunn

And how can we lose this maddening self, lose it entirely? Love? Yes, but as old Cephalus once heard Sophocles say, the least of us know that love is a cruel and terrible master. One loses oneself for the sake of the other, but in doing so becomes enslaved and miserable to the most capricious of all the gods. — Donna Tartt

Free thyself from the mighty attraction-
The maddening wine of love, the charm of sex.
Break the harp! Forward, with the ocean's cry! ... — Swami Vivekananda

Empty-page staring again tonight. It's maddening. I suppose people who don't write (like the Connollies) imagine anything that can be though can be expressed. Well, I don't know. I can't do it. It's this sort of thing that makes me belittle the whole business: what's the good of a 'talent' if you can't do it when you want to? What should we think of a woodcarver who couldn't woodcarver? or a pianist who couldn't play the piano? Bah, likewise grrr. — Philip Larkin

When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot? — Kathleen Norris

Again, Syd had that feeling, the past as an echo, repeating itself as it faded. The poor had longed for Jubilee to save them from the powerful, and now the one-time patrons longed for the Machine to do the same. Every revolution believes it can return something that had been lost, but nothing is ever the same. The only thing that endures are people. Syd saw that clearly now, and perhaps so too did Marie. You could serve a revolution, an idea that ended up an echo if itself, or you could serve people, with their maddening contradictions. You couldn't serve both. You had to choose. — Alex London

The waltz allowed him to get just close enough to her to detect that maddening scent of lemons, and he inhaled it as if it would save his life. — Julia Quinn

With Thy wine-cup waving high, With Thy maddening revelry, To Eleusis' flowery vale, Contest Thou - Bacchus, Paean, hail! — Anonymous

We've been shooting the last two weeks with a lot of vampires. I don't want to give away too much, but if you've read the books, it's the standoff with lots of vampires in play. There's like 70 people going through the works at once. It's a little maddening, but fun. We shot pretty much the ending of the two movies the other day. — Peter Facinelli

I miss you in the maddening noise of crowd,
I hear your laughter at my folly with sweet indifference,
I miss you like a frozen tear finding its course,
I miss you in your presence inside me,
I miss you in every breath I take. — Debatrayee Banerjee

The sweetness of the blackberries revealed itself incompletely, changing and deepening until it dissolved from the back of the tongue with the maddening hint of a greater remainder. He was left with a question he could not phrase, and a galaxy of tiny seeds that tantalized the tongue. — Chris Cleave

Actually, Elizabeth realized, when he laughed like that, he did look quite handsome. His dark brown hair and his eyes, so light a brown as to seem almost gold in color, were not quite as nondescript as she'd once thought. Maybe the giggling young ingenues weren't completely daft. Despite his maddening tendencies to be deliberately obtuse and tease her relentlessly, he had a certain charisma. — Emma Wildes

Victim mentality only creates helplessness, the most maddening, miserable and upsetting of mental states. In fact, it is commonly reported that nothing triggers madness like a sense of helplessness. It is a cousin of paranoia, a sense that the world is out to get you, that there is some opposition, some rivalry between you and the world. This is a warped, twisted mentality that offers no benefits, and, more importantly, is manifestly false. — Armstrong Williams

To have the beginning of a truly great story, you need to have a character you're completely and utterly obsessed with. Without obsession, to the point of a maddening addiction,there's no point to continue. — Jennifer Salaiz

My head cleared, and suddenly I had heart to fight again, to ignore pain and damage, to fight! I swear I saw myself, face purpled from strangling, the rich blood streaming and soaking and the smell so maddening. — Robin Hobb

Nothing is more maddening than being questioned by the object of one's interest about the object of hers, should that object not be you. — Iris Murdoch

No matter how much I wanted all those things that I needed money to buy, there was some devilish current pushing me off in another direction
toward anarchy and poverty and craziness. That maddening delusion that a man can lead a decent life without hiring himself out as a Judas Goat. — Hunter S. Thompson

There was the loud noise of water, as ever, something eternal and maddening in its sound, like the sound of Time itself, rustling and rushing and wavering, but never for a second ceasing. The rushing of Time that continues throughout eternity, this is the sound of the icy streams of Switzerland, something that mocks and destroys out warm being. — D.H. Lawrence

But if you are a sufficiently great and important person, it is necessary that you should be spared small annoyances. If a fly settles on your forehead again and again, maddening you by its tickling--what do you do? You endeavour to kill that fly. You have no qualms about it. You are important--the fly is not. You kill the fly and the annoyance ceases. Your action appears to you sane and justifiable. Another reason for killing a fly is if you have a strong passion for hygiene. The fly is a potential source of danger to the community--the fly must go. So works the mind of the mentally deranged criminal. — Agatha Christie

Being a parent is one of the best, stressful, guilty, rewarding, sad, happy, frustrating, cherished, disgusting, fun, ridiculous, time consuming, joyful, maddening, worrisome, hectic, magical, nostalgic, second guessing, warm, cuddly, thing one can spend the rest of their life doing. I wouldn't have it any other way! — Brenda Lochinger

I'm an American male, Lowenstein," I said, smiling. "It's not my job to be open." "What exactly is the American male's job?" she asked. "To be maddening. To be unreadable, controlling, bull-headed, and insensitive," I said. — Pat Conroy

If I have found my journey to be a maddening tangle of wandering 'rabbit-trails,' a labyrinth of incessantly circular passages to nowhere and back, and a plethora of assorted 'dead-ends' fraudulently disguised as paths of great promise, it can only be because I have mindlessly exchanged God's compass for mine. Therefore, it would appear that another exchange might be in order. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Mom, mom, mom, mom! A yowl rose from my gut, my bowels, my womb, raw as a birth cry but with no hope in it, a maddening howl, a roar, the water a wailing wall shattering around me. Unsyllabled, thoughtless, the cry rose from the oldest cells in my body. I hadn't known grief could be so primal, so crude. The violence shook me. When it stopped, I fell to my knees in the shower, and the water called to the water in me; I wanted to melt, to run down the drain and under the city to the creek and then to the river thirty miles away. Mom, mom, mom, mom! — Lorna Crozier

Does she make you laugh?" He thought about this. "She laughs a good deal when I'm about," he allowed. Did Colin Eversea really want to be laughed at rather than with his entire life? He was the most maddening person she'd ever met, but his humor contained angles; he used it both to deflect and persuade. And if one could see around it, one would see into vulnerability. — Julie Anne Long

Rye touched her face tenderly. The effort to control himself was maddening. "I love you so much and someday I want this to be right and special. — C.L. Clark

They continued on to London, and she's there, safe and sound, waiting for you.'
'You can't know for sure.' Piers swung up into the carriage.
'You will never know for sure if she's dead or alive unless you keep her near you all the time,' Sebastian said with perfect, if maddening, accuracy. — Eloisa James

I hope I never smell the smell of apples again!" said Fili. "My tub was full of ut. To smell apples everlastingly when you can scarcely move and are cold and sick with hunger is maddening. I could eat anything in the wide world now for hours on end - but not an apple! — J.R.R. Tolkien

But I wanted less. I wanted so very much less. And while there were tiny bubbles of "is this what you really want?" all along, I was in denial about it until about forty-five minutes ago. Pretty led to bicker, bicker led to divorce, and divorce led to bitter. I didn't want pretty, then separated. I didn't want bitter; I wanted forever. I wanted swoony, sparky, maddening, sexy love. And if we were going to fight, we'd fight, not bicker. Bickering's the worst. — Alice Clayton

Shall we not, then, lay down a law, in the first place, that boys shall abstain altogether from wine till their eighteenth year, thereby teaching that it is wrong to add fire to fire, as through a funnel, pouring it into their body and soul before they proceed to the labor of life, thus exercising a caution as to the maddening habits of youth. — Plato

Angels should never be exposed to the dire darkness of despair in the tunnel of cosmic nothingness, and although I never believed such maddening thoughts; I couldn't help but feel spiritual in her presence. — Bruce Crown

On my hike my brain was left to wander. That was often maddening because it was tedious and monotonous sometimes, but then my the mind would take over, and that's when I'd start hearing the music in my head or thinking deeply about people I know or things that I didn't even know I remembered anymore. Those thoughts would be there. I wouldn't have had them otherwise. — Cheryl Strayed

Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings; I know that God is good! — John Greenleaf Whittier

Bloomberg does not support the measure to silence the useless and maddening car alarm: he would rather impose himself on people than on mechanical devices. — Christopher Hitchens

The voice of madness, for instance, is barely a whisper in the babbling history of art because its realities are themselves too maddening to speak of for very long - and those of the Teatro have no voice at all, given their imponderably grotesque nature. — Thomas Ligotti

I loved them in the way one loves at any age - if it's real at all - obsessively, painfully, with wild exaltation, with guilt, with conflict; I wrote poems to and about them; I put them into novels (disguised of course); I brooded upon why they were as they were, so often maddening, don't you know? I wrote them ridiculous letters. I lived with their faces. I knew their every gesture by heart. I stalked them like wild animals. I studied them as if they were maps of the world - and in a way, I suppose they were." She had spoken rapidly, on the defensive ... if he thought she didn't know what she was talking about! "Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self. — May Sarton

Damn it, Emerson, just stop!" he yelled. "Stop pretending you don't care. Why won't you let me in? Why won't you let me care about you? Because for some maddening reason, I do! — Kimberly Lauren

The Numerati too, are grappling with towering complexity. They're looking for patterns in data that describe something almost hopelessly complex: human life and behavior. The audacity of their mission is almost maddening. They're going to figure out who we're likely to vote for, who we want to work with, perhaps even who we're best suited to love, all from the statistical patterns of data? It's the height of presumption, and it leads to humbling disappointments. Like the trees growing in the forests of Minnesota, we confound those who try to categorize us, and we do it most of the time without even trying. Life is complex. — Stephen Baker

You think my feelings toward you apathetic? You think you bore me?"
"Don't I?"
He shook his head slowly, continuing toward her, stalking her in the small space.
"No.God knows you are infuriating . And impulsive ... " Her back came up against the wall, and she gave a little squeak, even as he advanced. "And altogether maddening ... " He placed one hand to her jaw, carefully lifting her face to his, feeling the leap of her pulse under his fingertips. "And thoroughly intoxicating ... " The last came out on a low growl, and her lips parted, soft and pink and perfect.
He leaned close, his lips a fraction from hers.
"No ... you are not boring. — Sarah MacLean

She had no idea how right - and how wrong - she was. My conflicted feelings about her were maddening. I was in love with her; couldn't imagine a life without her in it — Jamie McGuire

The fact that there is no right or wrong is what I think is maddening. I can think you're a phenomenal actor, but the guy next door can think you're a horrible actor, and neither of us is wrong and neither of us is right. It's just a matter of opinion. — Mila Kunis

There is something maddening about mediocrity that calls forth the worst in those who are forced to deal with it. — Moss Hart

The value of work, and of always learning something new, and what it takes to achieve excellence. I really believe in those things that you have to dedicate yourself and spend time, that excellence is elusive. It's a little maddening, to try to have that level of discipline in your life, and I don't succeed all the time. But I do try. — Ben Affleck

Somewhere nere Ogallala, about six hours into that majestic, maddening prairie, I realize that half an hour has passed since I've seen a vehicle in either direction.
Oh, I think, as I finally see a pair of headlights draw nigh in the eastbound lane, so this must be where the West begins. — Lily Burana

She is both my madness and my sanity.

She is the calm quiet eye of my storm.

She is the whisper in the maddening din.

She is a rare mix of dirty mind, exquisite beauty, curves that make your hands ache, deep heart and mischief that you want for your own.

She is peace in the shape of a woman. — Kirk Diedrich

People say that I am always serious and depressing, but it seems to me that the English are never serious - they are flippant, complacent, ineffable, but never serious, which is sometimes maddening. — Anita Brookner

Wherever you go, there you are. Your emptiness goes with you. Maddening. Things that help: writing, reading, water, walks, forgiving myself every other minute, practicing easy yoga, taking deep breaths, and petting my dogs. These things don't fill me completely, but they remind me that it is not my job to fill myself. It's just my job to notice my emptiness and find graceful ways to live as a broken, unfilled human ...
If there's a silver lining to the emptiness, here it is: the unfillable is what brings people together. I've never made a friend by bragging about my strengths, but I've made countless by sharing my weakness and my emptiness. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Snow. White, white, white, soft and clean, and maddening shapes, with the whole world in them. — Alfred Stieglitz

The maddening thing for someone with a Western scientific turn of mind is that it's not what's in your pack that separates the quick from the dead. It's not even what's in your mind. Corny as it sounds, it's what's in your heart. — Laurence Gonzales

March is such a maddening bundle of contradictions, brutal strength wrapped around a vulnerable core. The way he used to need me scared me to death - and now I'm afraid he'll never need me again.
I'm just never satisfied, am I? — Ann Aguirre

Some venues are better run than others. Sometimes it's just maddening to deal with full dinners being served in front of your face. You can have a good or bad show anywhere. — Todd Barry

I haven't had a lot of good, soft things in my life," he said against my forehead. "Not since my family sent me away. Apart from being your sire and feeling that pull to you, it's that goodness, that softness and warmth, along with the resolve and strength in you, that I love. Being turned hasn't taken that from you. If someone were going to design the perfect mate for me, it would be you. Even when you infuriate me with your pigheaded stubbornness and your temper and incredible lack of anything resembling self-preservation - "
"Stop describing me please."
"You're the most fascinating, maddening, adorable creature I've ever met," he said, sighing and pushing my hair out of my eyes. "So, when I seem possessive or I'm raving like a lunatic, it's just that part of me is still very afraid that I'll lose that - that I'll lose you. I love you. — Molly Harper

Oceanic malaise. I never saw anyone reading anything more demanding than a comic book. I never heard any youth express an interest in science or art. No one even talked politics. It was all idleness, and whenever I asked someone a question, no matter how simple, no matter how well the person spoke English, there was always a long pause before I got a reply, and I found these Pacific pauses maddening. And there was giggling but no humor - no wit. It was just foolery. — Paul Theroux

The public had been forced to see [by Kant's writings] that what is obscure is not always without meaning; what was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make vigorous use of this privilege; Schelling at least equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel. It became the instrument of the most ponderous and general mystification that has ever existed, with a result that will seem incredible to posterity, and be a lasting monument of German stupidity. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The inability of Americans to value intellect is, to me, maddening. If someone possesses physical beauty they will not be cloistered or hidden in dark shadows. No, they are expected to be a source of pleasing scenery to others. We are not frightened in this country by beauty. We celebrate it, as we should. But what about beautiful brains, the kind that create amazing worlds out of nothing but thoughts, that can find a way to intricately bond elements of our lives that common wisdom tells us are inert? Why should anyone hide this intellect ever? No. Fuck boring financiers like Warren Buffett...there is no such thing as unnecessary beauty, physical or intellectual. — Stuart Rojstaczer

Of course I could have done things differently. I could stop fucking thinking about you and obsessing over you and fucking wanting you for just long enough to do my fucking job - that's what I could do differently."
[ ... ]
"Have you any idea what every day here is like for me? I can't eat, I can't focus, I can't sleep. I spend my nights frozen in one position, afraid to move in case I accidentally do all the things I really, really want to do. I want to do them so much that just having you look at me is a kind of torture. Just being near you, just getting a hint of that maddening marzipan scent that's all over your hair - — Charlotte Stein

Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. — Cheryl Strayed

Do you have any idea how maddening it's been envisioning you in the lingerie that matches those shoes?"...
"Corbin, I'm serious."
"I'm sure you are but that is my final offer. Take it or leave it and if you chose the latter, I will let this home sit empty and fall into disrepair until you finally come around."
I closed my eyes and sighed, "That's really not fair."
"Anything is fair when I'm trying my level best to get you to fall in love with me...."
I kissed him gently on the lips and walked away from him but just as I reached the hall, I turned back to see him watching me. "Oh, and if we're NOT playing fair, then maybe you should know I'm not wearing any underwear. — Brynn Myers

It's one of the maddening perversities of human psychology that we only notice we're alive when we're reminded we're going to die, — Tim Kreider

But I don't shut up and I don't die.
I live
and fight, maddening
those who rule my country.
For if I live
I fight,
and if I fight
I contribute to the dawn. — Otto Rene Castillo

Every woman I've had a relationship with has found this maddening; the fact that I will talk about anything on the stage, and reveal all this stuff, and yet when I'm at home, I clam up and won't discuss anything intimate or personal. — Jarvis Cocker

What I need in order to stay creative and centered is a certain amount of distance from the maddening crowd. You cease to be your best self if you're running too fast. — James Redfield

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

I wish I were out of doors - I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free ... and laughing at injuries,not maddening under them! — Emily Bronte

Oh, I'm burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free ... and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? — Emily Bronte

This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decision on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands. Who trusts you to know what's good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don't get to see the future. And if you screw up - if with your incomplete contradictory information you make the wrong call - nothing less than your child's entire future and happiness is at stake. It's impossible. It's heartbreaking. It's maddening. But there's no alternative."

"Sure there is," she said.

"What?"

"Birth control. — Laurie Frankel

I think that's created a healthy environment. The comparisons to 'ER' were maddening and there was this assumption that the two of us were looking at each other with rage and resentment, which was also not the case. — Adam Arkin

It was a maddening image and the only way to whip it was to hang on until dusk and banish the ghosts with rum. — Hunter S. Thompson

I loved - but those I loved are gone;
Had friends - my early friends are fled:
How cheerless feels the heart alone
When all its former hopes are dead!
Though gay companions o'er the bowl
Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul,
The heart - the heart - is lonely still. — George Gordon Byron

Jeff Chu's pilgrimage across America to discover his own place as a gay man in the Christian church as well as attitudes about being gay and Christian across denominations is at once timely, smart, poignant, disturbing, inspiring, and maddening. It's essential reading for anyone who cares about the rights of the LGBTQ community to be treated as equal citizens at every level, including the religious-which means it should be essential reading for everybody. — Donna Freitas