Most Frustrating Quotes & Sayings

Should she stick with the nice, sensitive guy who treats her well (Ben Stiller), or should she roll the dice with the frustrating boho bozo who treats her like crap (Ethan Hawk)? Winona made the kind of romantic decision most people my age would have made in 1994: She pursued a path that was difficult and depressing, and she did so because it showed the slightest potential for transcendence. — Chuck Klosterman

She would love to think he was reluctant to leave her, but she realized he was waiting to make sure she got safely into the house before he drove away. Zane might be the most frustrating man on earth, a paradox she couldn't figure out, but he was the type of guy to make sure a woman was safe before he left her in the dark. Just as he was the type of man who'd chosen the best knife for her to carry to Nigeria. He was also the type to kiss a woman breathless and leave her alone and confused. With a sigh, she turned and made her way to the front door, digging for her key as she went. One sleepless night pondering Zane and this odd day definitely wouldn't be enough to figure out the mystery of the man. But, it would be a start ... — Cat Johnson

I just want a big HBO special or a network or somebody willing to get behind my work and promote it. The most frustrating thing for me is to have this successful act that resonates across the country, and the network guys just don't get it. Everyone sees it except them. I want to leave a mark. — Gary Owen

You are the most frustrating person ever! Don't you understand? It's not that I thought you were cheating on me. It's that YOU WERE MINE! Not his. MINE, EMERSON! But in your time of need, you chose someone else over me. — Kimberly Lauren

Looking and not finding is certainly one of the most frustrating ways to spend time. — Andy Rooney

The most frustrating thing for musicians who want to play stuff from the new album is when everyone goes out to buy a beer. — Joe Elliott

I think you have to make concessions in life. One of the most frustrating things about getting older is [you realize] the reason you have a plan is so you can see everything that it isn't. The plan never works. Something happens and you adjust to it and you adapt to it and you accept it and you keep going, but that's not the plan. — Torquil Campbell

And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something - it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. — Allie Brosh

It was a democracy in the truest and most frustrating and most rewarding sense of the word. Anybody could come in and say, "You know, I'm just not cool with that." We'd be like, "Who's that?" "Oh, I was just cleaning the trailers." It was nuts. — Robert Downey Jr.

I believe motherhood will be the seminal event in your life. You will find it in turns gratifying, frustrating, amazing, and overwhelming. It will be the most marvelous, challenging, vital role you'll ever play. " 'Someone once told me, "As mothers, our job is not to raise children, but to raise adults. — Lori Nelson Spielman

Am I a liberal or conservative? I'm neither. Like most Americans, I find politics very frustrating. Like most Americans, I'd like to hear from politicians the facts. That is what drives me. — Soledad O'Brien

The most frustrating part of working in TV and film is that you have to convince someone to let you make what you want; in comics you can do whatever you want and for 1% of the budget of TV and film. — Paul Scheer

I think maybe the most frustrating feeling in the world is to have something to say but not know how to put it into words. To have lived through something but not be able to get it out of you before it festers. — Alexandra Bracken

So many people imagine housekeeping to be boring, frustrating, repetitive, unintelligent drudgery. I cannot agree. In fact, having kept house, practiced law, taught, and done many other sorts of work, low and high-paid, I can assure you that it is actually lawyers who are most familiar with the experience of unintelligent drudgery. — Cheryl Mendelson

The most frustrating part of trying to direct everything is not that it alienates you from people who genuinely want to help, but that it's actually impossible. — Simon Van Booy

Once randomly aggressive behavior gets started in an organization, it tends to be contagious, rapidly spreading itself because of a built-in mammalian device for relieving stress, called redirected aggression. Stanford physiologist Robert Sapolsky describes it this way:"Numerous psychoendocrine studies show that in a stressful or frustrating circumstance, the magnitude of the subsequent stress-response is decreased if the organism is provided with an outlet for frustration. For example, the [glucocorticoid] secretion triggered by electric shock in a rat is diminished if the rat is provided with a bar of wood to gnaw on, a running wheel, or, as one of the most effective outlets, access to another rat to bite. — Richard Conniff

annoyed her, she also knew her psychiatrist's sentiment was right. She sighed. It was beyond frustrating when things you didn't like were also your reality. "Where do you want the living room furniture?" one of the movers asked. She directed him inside and showed him the dining area off the kitchen that would serve as living and dining. If it weren't for Corrine's forcing her to a table most evenings, Shaye would have eaten every meal curled up on the couch in front of a television, and now — Jana Deleon

For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics, and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty - statecraft). Because if we don't get politics right, everything else risks extinction. — Charles Krauthammer

Because I am your favourite grandson, and you love me more than all of my brothers."
"Nyet. You are the most frustrating of my grandsons. Find a good woman, marry her, have children - then you will be my favourite."
"Perhaps I shall settle for second favourite. What would that take? — Karen Hawkins

The resolution of the Phoenix Saga was one of the most frustrating experiences that I think any of us ever had, but I also think it was the right move. The decision, three years later, to undo the Phoenix Saga with the resurrection of Jean was less so, but that's in my opinion. — Chris Claremont

I started to see the bigger picture of things: Islam was not relegated to the tiny, sometimes frustrating and seemingly arbitrary details of practice, but rather entered the larger picture of spirituality and worship that contextualized my womanhood. In order to be able to derive these logical conclusions about my religion, I had to go back to the basics and understand the very fundamental principles upon which it was founded: justice, social equality, racial equality, financial equality, and, possibly most important of all, gender equality. Thus began my lifelong love affair with Islamic feminism. — Amani Al-Khatahtbeh

I can line up these moments of violence, precariously as dominoes. Sometimes I worry they will all fall; knocking each other down, knocking me down. Sometimes they do. Violence left me hollow. It left me enraged. It left me desperately needing to leave a body I couldn't trust. But most frustrating of all, violence left me too wounded to claim the space I needed in order to find fulfillment in the arms, heart, and body of a queer relationship. — Jennifer Patterson

Susannah, I love you, but you are the most frustrating woman in the world. For once in your life, don't argue. Just do it. — Meg Cabot

That's an aspect of this business which can be very frustrating and aggravating. Most of what is written about you is wrong and so much of what does get printed is often about personal things that you don't want to have other people read about. — Winona Ryder

Trying to please people or trying to conform must have been the most frustrating season I went through. — Carol Wambui Ngabura

The editing process, for me, is both the most fun and the most frustrating. It's the most fun because you get to see it actually piece together. But if one thing is off, it can be frustrating trying to figure out exactly what it is that's bumping you, so you try a hundred different things. — Scott Foley

The most frustrating thing for me as a singer is that people have pinpointed me as an actress who suddenly woke up one day and decided that I wanted to sing. — Marla Sokoloff

For many people, one of the most frustrating aspects of life is not being able to understand other people's behavior. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When I started doing 'The City' in 1990, most papers ran it the width of the page, 10 inches or so. It was great! I had lots of room to draw and write. It was the golden age of weekly comix. Today, most run my strip half that size. I just try to make it legible. It's very frustrating. — Derf

My high school years were fun and frustrating, typical of the teen years. The most important accomplishment was meeting my wife, Ruth. — Alan J. Heeger

Literature has to remain frustrating - to withhold something, remain incomplete - or it's not literature anymore, but rather entertainment, edification or interpretation. That's literature's USP: staying unresolved, keeping its most vital messages unspoken, creating a zone of noise where everything and nothing is said at the same time. — Tom McCarthy

It is at once the most overwhelmingly frustrating and exasperating task and the most joyous and rewarding experience to make human beings out of children. — Neil Kurshan

The most frustrating thing is that I want to always buy the best thing, the thing that does the most stuff. — Jerry Zucker

I think Dante would agree with you. Even though Beatrice married someone else and died young, Dante loved her his entire life. The love was a part of him, because to him, Beatrice was ideal. He barely knew her, had only met her twice, but yet he truly claimed to love her. Can anyone tell me why?"No one spoke up. Carmine sighed exasperatedly. This lesson was becoming frustrating to sit through. "Because he really loved the person she made him. It has just as much to do with how he felt as it did with who she was.""You're right," Mrs. Chavis said. "Dante said of her, 'she has ineffable courtesy, is my beatitude, the destroyer of all vices and the queen of virtue, salvation.' To him, she was his savior, the epitome of good. She rid him of his evil, made him feel worthwhile. That, we could argue, may be what he loved most of all. — J.M. Darhower

I wanted to say, for the love of God, if you want freedom, can't you see it's not anywhere outside of you? Say you have it, and you have it! Act as if it is your's, and it is! Richard, what is so damned hard about that? But they didn't hear, most of them. Miracles - like going to auto races to see the crashes, they came to see miracles. First it's frustrating and then after a while it just gets dull. I have no idea how the other messiahs could stand it — Richard Bach

As children, we are taught what I call Emotional English. This is an emotional language we are taught in our homes, and just like our spoken language, the emotional language we speak most fluently as adults is the one we learned as children. What we are taught about interacting emotionally with each other and the world is modeled for us by our families, and is what we will grow up doing. No matter how frustrating , damaging, and frightening it is, we will perpetuate the examples of our parents and family
unless we can learn new ones. The tricky thing is that a person can go to school to learn a new language, we can find classes anywhere, in any town, but how do we learn a new emotional way of relating to our lives, loved ones, and most important, to ourselves? — Jewel

As a member of the audience I don't like it that I can't see what's going on in the eyes and in the face and in the most subtle responses of a performer when I'm more than a few rows back. I find it very frustrating. — Daniel Day-Lewis

I'm sure it's one of the most frustrating aspects of human experience for all of us, that when we tell someone who's hurt us that they've hurt us, they tend to react with anger because they feel guilty, and we know we also get angry when we feel guilty. — Joshua Oppenheimer

One of the most frustrating words in the human language, as far as I could tell, was love.
So much meaning attached to this one little word. People bandied it about freely, using it to
describe their attachments to possessions, pets, vacation destinations, and favorite foods. In the
same breath they then applied this word to the person they considered most important in their
lives. Wasn't that insulting? Shouldn't there be some other term to describe deeper emotion? — Alexandra Adornetto

These days, I've been trying to classify my thoughts into two categories: "Things I can change," and "Things I can't." It seems to help me sort through what to really stress about. But there I go again, over-planning and over-organizing my over-thinking! I write songs about my adventures and misadventures, most of which concern love. Love is a tricky business. But if it wasn't, I wouldn't be so enthralled with it. Lately I've come to a wonderful realization that makes me even more fascinated by it: I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to love. No one does! There's no pattern to it, except that it happens to all of us, of course. I can't plan for it. I can't predict how it'll end up. Because love is unpredictable and it's frustrating and it's tragic and it's beautiful. And even though there's no way to feel like I'm an expert at it, it's worth writing songs about
more than anything else I've ever experienced in my life. — Taylor Swift

The most frustrating thing to me is when I tell people I work on 'Friday Night Lights,' they'll say, 'Oh, I hear that's a really good show.' They never watched it. — Jason Katims

The power of mistakes enables us to reframe creative blocks and turn them around ... The troublesome parts of our work, the parts that are most baffling and frustrating, are in fact the growing edges. We see these opportunities the instant we drop our preconceptions and our self-importance. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

I think when you get interested in antiques, the most frustrating thing is that books don't have enough photos. When you go to a flea market or garage sale, you see lots of things you've never seen before and you have no idea what the price is going to be or should be. — Judith Miller

Your own family resemblances are a frustrating code, most easily read by those who know you least. — Barbara Kingsolver

I've been to almost every country in the world, and the most frustrating thing for me has been that my schedule has always been so busy that there's so little time before and after performances to explore where I'm visiting. — Andrea Bocelli

We are probably the most frustrating band to soundcheck because we always go off on jams and our sound-man is sitting there going: "oh god, I don't want to interrupt this, but ... we've got to get things moving along ... " We're just easily distracted because we want to be writing all the time! — Theresa Wayman

As no one knew much about my mental illness, a lot of people had the attitude that I had the capability to 'kick it' and get better instantly. This was the most frustrating attitude for me. — Andy Behrman

The most frustrating thing is picking up a script and loving the roles in it except the female ones ... It's really annoying and something I've striven to change in the industry. — Margot Robbie

Most of the stuff I've written has never even gotten made. It's par for the course. It's a great living, but it also gets very frustrating. — Scott Aukerman

The single most frustrating and saddening aspect of human life is its shocking brevity. — Sean DeLauder

Being a hero to someone, even if it is a dog, is a feeling like no other. Though it can be frustrating, it can be the most rewarding thing to give someone a second chance at a happy life. — Elizabeth Parker

The most frustrating things is when you read something that has so much potential, but there are other little red flags where you think, I don't know that I would see eye-to-eye with the people making this film. And that is the worst environment to enter, and absolutely not worth the risk. — Anna Kendrick

Writing a complete novel is time consuming, frustrating, nerve wrecking, and most of the time your work is under valued, under appreciated, and taken for granted. So why do authors do it? Because not writing at all, feels far worse. — Carl Henegan

One of the most frustrating parts about songwriting for me is production, but it makes me want to get better at it and ends up being one of the most rewarding parts of it. — Brendon Urie

For most governors, we find the United States Senate or the United States Congress very frustrating at the slow pace in which they act. There doesn't seem to be a lot of discipline and organization to what they do. — Dave Heineman

Mark Waugh, the most fluent and aesthetically pleasing batsman of his generation but also one of the most frustrating to watch. Often, when he appeared to be a class above the rest and to have the bowling at his mercy, he would play a lazy shot to what appeared, more often than not, an innocuous delivery. And just like that his innings would be over. To make matters worse, he didn't seem to care; he would nonchalantly wander off the field. No shaking of the head or staring back at the pitch to apportion blame. His fans had to learn to accept 30s and 40s instead of centuries and 150s. His concentration, some would say his interest, never seemed to be there in the Test arena. Despite playing some match-winning Test innings, Waugh was never quite able to shake the 'lackadaisical' tag. — Sean Ehlers

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone. — Terry Pratchett

A lot of people asked me if it was frustrating not having a clear specific diagnosis, but I didn't mind, I just chose the most optimistic diagnosis. — Karen Duffy

Here, then, is our situation at the start of the twenty-first century: We have accumulated stupendous know-how. We have put it in the hands of some of the most highly trained, highly skilled, and hardworking people in our society. And, with it, they have indeed accomplished extraordinary things. Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields - from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. That — Atul Gawande

the most frustrating feeling in the world is when your mind wants to continue to fight, but your body has become incapable of — Ashley Jade

Though the evidence suggests that most people are caught up on this frustrating treadmill of rising expectations, many individuals have found ways to escape it. These are people who, regardless of their material conditions, have been able to improve the quality of their lives, who are satisfied, and who have a way of making those around them also a bit more happy. Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored, and they can take in stride anything that comes their way. Perhaps their greatest strength is that they are in control of their lives. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Here by far the most frustrating gumption trap is inadequate tools. Nothing's quite so demoralizing as a tool hang-up. Buy good tools as you can afford them and you'll never regret — Robert M. Pirsig

You know, it gets frustrating, because you know in your heart where you were and what you said, and then people doubt you. And that's what bothers me the most. -Valeen Schnurr of the Columbine massacre — Dave Cullen

One of the suckiest and most frustrating facts of life is that sometimes relationship just end, often without reason. I truly believe that sometimes both men and women simply run out of love, even when there was a lot of it in the beginning — Greg Behrendt

It's been by turns frustrating and fascinating and wonderful beyond imagination. If what I suspect is true, it's one of the most important milestones in human history to acknowledge that we are not alone in the universe. — Steven M. Greer

For those of us with introverted tendencies, many think that hard work and good results is what matters most. It would be great if that were the case, but it's wrong to believe that to be true. Superb performance on the job is important, but if you don't have a supportive network, you're in for some big disappointments. We speak to people continuously who suffer from the missing component of good networking in their career path. Those people find that their missed opportunities or promotions are demoralizing and certainly frustrating. — Dorothy Tannahill-Moran

I think maybe the most frustrating thing in the world is to have something to say but not know how to put it into words. — Alexandra Bracken

If you have a sense of irony or humour, you're usually cut down, as you're usually distorted or misinterpreted. So it does lead to us being slightly more dour and staid and predictable than would otherwise be the case, which I personally find quite frustrating - because if you don't laugh occasionally in my job, you cry most of the time. — David Blunkett

Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-87): The worst financial investment I ever made was spending so much time in government. The most satisfying personal investment I ever made was spending so much time in government, frustrating as it could be. — Anonymous

You know when you get the whisper of a melody in your head, or the murmur of a song? And you have the gut feeling that if you could just hear the rest of it, just capture the music" - the need an ache as frustrating as it was piercing - "you'd have something fucking amazing?" Noah nodded. "Yeah well, that's what it feels like with Molly." The most compelling whisper of his life. "I'm not about to walk away from that. — Nalini Singh

People do get mad at me for falling asleep sometimes, and it's the most frustrating thing. I can't help it. — Kurt Vile

A marriage bound together by commitments to exploit the other for filling one's own needs (and I fear that most marriages are built on such a basis) can legitimately be described as a "tic on a dog" relationship. Just as a hungry tic clamps on to a nourishing host in anticipation of a meal, so each partner unites with the other in the expectation of finding what his or her personal nature demands. The rather frustrating dilemma, of course, is that in such a marriage there are two tics and no dog! — Larry Crabb

The universal law is that the most frustrating thing will always happen, no matter how unlikely. — Joe Abercrombie

It's frustrating - not that I expect to be the same person I was 10 years ago, but I do expect to do certain things. In all honesty, my body for the most part feels really good. But at this point of my career, I have to rely on different parts of my game, knowing how to take some short cuts when you can. — Sheryl Swoopes

So here we have found a means of a) alienating even the most flexible and patient Palestinians; while b) frustrating the efforts of the more principled and compromising Israelis; while c) empowering and financing some of the creepiest forces in American and Israeli society; and d) heaping ordure on our own secular founding documents. When will the Justice Department and the Congress and the Supreme Court become aware of this huge and rank offense, which is designed to bring us ever nearer to holy war? — Christopher Hitchens

He's the most complex, frustrating, fascinating man I've ever known. I've yet to find a way of controlling the attraction he holds for me, or even the proper label for it. Is it physical? Hunter's very compelling physically. Is it intellectual? His mind has such odd twists and turns, it takes all my effort to follow them. — Nora Roberts

Fly-fishing for wild trout on quiet waters must be one of the toughest and craziest ways to catch fish ever invented by man, as well as among the most frustrating and humiliating. — John D. Voelker