Really Depressing Quotes & Sayings

I never have [suffered writer's block], although I've had books that didn't work out. I had to stop writing them. I just abandoned them. It was depressing, but it wasn't the end of the world. When it really isn't working, and you've been bashing yourself against the wall, it's kind of a relief. I mean, sometimes you bash yourself against the wall and you get through it. But sometimes the wall is just a wall. There's nothing to be done but go somewhere else. — Margaret Atwood

She glanced around at the tombstones. "You're surrounded by death here. Way too depressing. You really might want to think about getting another job."
"You see death and sadness in these sunken patches of dirt, I see lives lived fully and the good deeds of past generations influencing the future ones. — David Baldacci

I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

On one hand, I think it's natural to be curious about sexuality. But on the other hand, I think girls are caught in this terrible net of perpetual disappointment. We're not really allowed to talk about sex, or ask questions about it, or be interested in it. If we are interested and if we like it, then we're labeled as easy or sluts. If we're not interested, then we're frigid and repressed ... we're prudes. It's like, we see images of women being objectified everywhere. And then we're told to act and dress like a man at work and school, or else no one will take us seriously - even other women won't take us seriously. Basically, women are fucked."
"That's depressing. — Penny Reid

It's really so depressing to be still listed in the Social Register after all the acting I've done. — Dina Merrill

It's an exciting place to go, really. The rain, the drizzle, the cold, the depressing people, the smokes in the bath ... I don't know of anyone who has been to Blackpool and enjoyed it. — Ian Hindmarsh

If you think Hollywood is depressing and corrupt, politics is really depressing and corrupt
and fueled even more than Hollywood by money
if that's possible. — Ben Affleck

I don't know why I write really depressing songs. I'm a kind of melancholy guy, I suppose. But I figure I'm about normal. — Townes Van Zandt

I like things that start depressing and dark and end up romantic, and that's what I really loved about 'King Kong.' — Petra Haden

Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don't really think it is. — H.R. Giger

School is such an encouraging and safe environment. It's filled with idealism and just really working on your craft. When you enter the business world - where art meets commerce - it can become quite depressing. — Troy Garity

Maybe it's a little depressing to think that my vision of a perfect world is actually so messed up, but I think it means that I don't really understand what 'perfect' is. — Veronica Roth

Holly smiled weakly. Gerry would know exactly how she was feeling, he would know exactly
what to say and he would know exactly what to do. He would give her one of his famous hugs
and all her problems would melt away. She grabbed a pillow from her bed and hugged it tight.
She couldn't remember the last time she hugged someone, really hugged someone. And the
depressing thing was that she couldn't imagine ever embracing anyone the same way again. — Cecelia Ahern

I wasn't always who I am now. No one ever is. I've spent my entire lifetime becoming who I am. Finally, I'm here and I'm old. It's depressing, it really is. — Derek Landy

I'm really interested in making movies that people see: I've made a lot of independent films and it's really depressing when no one sees them. — Elizabeth Banks

These must be the most depressing words in the history of love. I tried really hard to love you. — Cath Crowley

I don't really read as much but i am reading a depressing book on the holocaust ... — Patricia Reilly Giff

Often I would hear other people ask, "When will I be normal again?"
What you don't often hear is a blunt truth: things will never be normal again. Not the "old" normal at least. You have to invent the new normal.
I knew that I needed to take an honest appraisal of my life. Were my problems really bigger than me? Of course not. That's why I remained in constant motion. Resistance to life's changes meant death. No matter how depressing and bleak my past looked, I knew that I needed to keep moving and adapting in order to survive. — Michelle Dallocchio

'Comfy,' that's one of the worst words! I just picture a woman feeling bad, with a big bottle of alcohol, really puffy. It's really depressing, but she likes her life because she has comfortable clogs. — Christian Louboutin

Everything we do really is just a little marker on the long road to death. And sometimes that's overwhelmingly depressing to me, and sometimes it makes me feel kinship and forgiveness. We've all got the same ending to the story. The way we make that story more elaborate, I got to respect. — Joss Whedon

Maybe I just didn't want it to be Benny because he really loves her, and if I was wrong about that, it'd be depressing. Who wants to be depressed?"
"Poets," Eve decided. "You have to think they must."
"Okay, other than poets. — J.D. Robb

How many demons and people are enslaved here? (Jericho)
Define slavery. (Asmodeus)
Kept against their will. (Jericho)
Good definition. Counting me? (Asmodeus)
Why not? (Jericho)
Probably a couple of million ... you know it's really hard to count to a million, plus they're always dying and new ones are coming in. I tried to count once, but it got really depressing so I stopped. The constant adding and subtracting. Not my forte, really. (Asmodeus) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You can take a picture of New York and one person looking at it will think it looks really depressing, frightening; and someone else will look at it and think of all the fun things you can do in New York. I think songs are kinda like that. — Elliott Smith

JASON: 'Intended wings.' How depressing.
MICHAEL: Yes. Makes them into suicides, really, the pigeons.
JASON: No - no, it doesn't. It could mean the wings were 'intended' to carry them upwards, out of the darkness, but they were defective in some way, these wings, so the pigeons aren't suicidal, not at all, just badly equipped for flying. Like the rest of us. — Simon Gray

I know some people are like "I'm depressed and I'm a struggling artist" and that really works for some people, but that doesn't work for me. I have to be really happy, even when I'm writing my depressing songs; I have to come through that stage before I can write. I have to be in a good place. I'm a positive person. — Charli XCX

It was depressing, very depressing. I worried about how I would make a living. I didn't want to stay on the farm. It didn't offer the challenge I wanted and yet, without a college education, I felt that I was really out of luck. — Clyde Tombaugh

It is depressing to have to point out, yet again, that there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say. Being asked to apologise for saying something unconscionable is not the same as being stripped of the legal right to say it. It's really not very f-cking complicated. Cry "free speech" in such contexts, you are demanding the right to speak any bilge you wish without apology or fear of comeback. You are demanding not legal rights but an end to debate about and criticism of what you say. When did bigotry get so needy? — China Mieville

There's a certain kind of neurological makeup that goes along with being a writer, and having been in the room with a few other writers at the same time, it's rather wearing to be around. And it does - there is a kind of hypervigilance about it. Unfortunately it's got disadvantages. If you turn that hypervigilance on yourself and, for instance, whether or not you have a pimple on the end of your nose, it can get really depressing. — David Foster Wallace

What art should be about,' they will say, 'is revealing exquisite and resonant truths about the human condition.' Well, to be honest - no, it shouldn't. I mean, it can occasionally, if it wants to; but really, how many penetrating insights to human nature do you need in one lifetime? Two? Three? Once you've realised that no one else has a clue what they're doing, either, and that love can be totally pointless, any further insights into human nature just start getting depressing really. — Caitlin Moran

I'm not saying that I made a film to make young people feel great, not such a simple message, but I really felt that I will not go back to do something depressing. I had to make something happy and funny, and show that there are always many ways to continue - even when you're feeling ugly, or you are forgotten by your parents. — Lukas Moodysson

I hate the whole concept of comfort! — Christian Louboutin

I find myself going out less and less. When you're 22 and see older people start to do that, it's depressing, but once you hit 30, you think, 'Wow, I've been working all week - it might be really nice to stay in!' — Josh Radnor

I really don't like going out. I don't like restaurants because I don't like the idea of someone, a waitress, being responsible for my evening. I like seconds, and more, and lots of conversation, and I've always hated the idea that in a restaurant an evening just ends. I find that incredibly depressing. — Amy Sedaris

People who get implants, it's so depressing, you know ... People - I don't know. The route of that, you know, maybe they want more love or attention, or what it is, but they always go for the most obvious place, you know? Here ... Well if you really want more attention, why not get them in your eyes? And then move you eyes down to where you nipples used to be, put you breasts up on your head, EVERYBODY will pay attention! — Dylan Moran

I think it would be exhausting and depressing, to write, to watch and to live, if it was just focused on drama. It's heavy. Also, I think the humor really highlights the pathos and the struggle. You can slam it up against drama, and it makes both shine. — Jenji Kohan

I went through a whole phase when I was younger of being obsessed with Tolstoy and Kafka and Camus, all those really, beautiful, dark depressing books. — Jessica Pare

At some point, I went to the studio and nothing happened. It can be really depressing to sit there and wait for the inspiration that doesn't come. I had to start recording rough song ideas before going to the studio. I did that at home whenever I had a good idea. — Apparat

When you say 'failure,' that seems really dramatic, but a lot of failure is just really depressing and mundane. I remember the first time I ever played a concert in Italy. I played a venue that held 900 people, and I think five people showed up. It wasn't a big, 'John Carter of Mars' type failure. It wasn't dramatic; it was just depressing. — Moby

I don't really like hospitals that much. People are sick; sometimes it can be depressing. There's people going through a lot of pain in there. It has that funny smell. — Mekhi Phifer

Imagination can't create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions ... So when we thing we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don't you think it's depressing? — Tony Kushner

Personally, I was never more passionate about manga than when preparing for my college entrance exams. It's a period of life when young people appear to have a great deal of freedom, but are in many ways actually opressed. Just when they find themselves powerfully attracted to members of opposite sex, they have to really crack the books. To escape from this depressing situation, they often find themselves wishing they could live in a world of their own - a world they can say is truly theirs, a world unknown even to their parents. To young people, anime is something they incorporate into this private world.
I often refer to this feeling as one yearning for a lost world. It's a sense that although you may currently be living in a world of constraints, if you were free from those constraints, you would be able to do all sorts of things. And it's that feeling, I believe, that makes mid-teens so passionate about anime. — Hayao Miyazaki

What happened in the 80's was that all the men died of AIDS. That was a particularly depressing time because so many people passed away and it was a very desperate and lonely time, so I think a lot of people felt that we were somehow, unreceived. Not only by the disease but also by the public image of the disease. It really gave homophobia a real shot in the arm and changed the way people viewed gays, queers. It became an entirely different atmosphere. — Margaret Cho

Indeed, an astoundingly small proportion of arguments 'for free speech' and 'against censorship' or 'banning' are, in fact, about free speech, censorship or banning. It is depressing to have to point out, yet again, that there is a distinction between having the legal right to say something & having the moral right not to be held accountable for what you say. Being asked to apologise for saying something unconscionable is not the same as being stripped of the legal right to say it. It's really not very f-cking complicated. Cry "free speech" in such contexts, you are demanding the right to speak any bilge you wish without apology or fear of comeback. You are demanding not legal rights but an end to debate about and criticism of what you say. When did bigotry get so needy? This assertive & idiotic failure to understand that juridical permissibility backed up by the state is not the horizon of politics or morality is absurdly resilient. — China Mieville

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school! — Maxine Kumin

I hope to God I don't win an Oscar tomorrow night. It would really depress me if I did. I really don't deserve it. It wasn't that important a part anyhow. — Dustin Hoffman

Those who see the cosmic perspective as a depressing outlook, they really need to reassess how they think about the world. Because when I look up in the universe, I know I'm small but I'm also big. I'm big because I'm connected to the universe, and the universe is connected to me. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I've always found paintings of nudes depressing because they can't compete with photographs. The grainiest photograph of some girl, a blurry Polaroid - you'd rather look at that than the Venus de Milo, because you think, Wow, that's really somebody ... This camera really was in front of this real naked lady. — John Currin

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

People like to say that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. There tends to be a whispered reverence around the expression, as if it has magical healing powers. Better to be hated than ignored by that angry ex of yours; better to be hated than ignored, generally.

Otherwise, you may spend your life staring straight down the barrel of the opposite of love.

But I think that's bullshit. Nonsense print copy for a paper towel. A sound bit e to needlepoint on a throw pillow. Could indifference really be worse than hate? How depressing to think we could be spending most of our days surrounded by people who feel something worse than hate toward us. — Julie Buxbaum

I'd been an actor my whole life, since I was a kid. And then, I quit for awhile and went to university. When I wanted to start acting again, I couldn't get a job, and that was really depressing. So, I realized, at that time, that I have to take responsibility for my own creativity. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Just don't do things that depress you. I realized if it depresses me, then I just don't want to get close to it. If it brings me down, I just really can't get into it. — John Currin

The very fact that the planet is probably unsustainable with all that we've done to it and are doing to it, it's an appalling piece of evidence. It shows our complacency, our lack of passion or inclination to be authentic and really understand our true values. It's consistently depressing, but nevertheless, we carry on. — Annie Lennox

It's really funny - when I'm depressed or I'm having a hard time, I'll write really fun stuff. And then when I'm really happy, I write really depressing stuff. — Kathleen Hanna

I don't like to think of her as pretend Peabody anymore. The more we find out, the meaner and crazier she gets. It's like it's bad enough fake Peabody got murdered, but now fake Peabody is a dead, blackmailing asshole on top of it. It's depressing."
"Yeah, it's all really too bad for you."
"Well, it kind of is. How am I supposed to enjoy the vid now, when I'll be thinking how behind the scenes I was trying to blackmail McNab into bed, and the whole time he's in love with you? And that maybe there's a vid of the two of you all naked and sexy and - "
"Stop right there before I boot."
"Hey! Maybe there's a vid of fake Peabody and fake Roarke all naked and sexy. That would definitely make up for it. Maybe I can get a copy."
"There's going to be a vid of me tearing strips off your ass then using them to wallpaper my office. I'll make copies for everybody. Get Marlo down here. I'll start on Julian. — J.D. Robb

I took religion much too seriously, however, and its overall effect was depressing. I would have really liked to discard it, but somehow I couldn't. — Jack Dee

I know when something is done and when it isn't. There's been times working on movies when they [moviemakers] lock in a release date and so you're stuck to that schedule. But sometimes you're still editing and you feel like you're not really done, but they're sort of releasing the movie anyway - that's kind of depressing. — Rob Zombie

Do you ever get really excited about life and then realize it's just the caffeine? It's really depressing, but that just means you need more coffee." -- Janet Tomalin, Mahogany Slade — Stephen Robinson

I don't really do sad, depressing songs. — Olly Murs

The sour aura of dissatisfaction that seeped through the walls, along with the even less appetizing smell of boiled cabbage, was really quite depressing. Ursula wanted her refugees to be soulful and romantic - fleeing for their cultural lives - rather than the abused wives of insurance clerks. Which was ridiculously unfair of her. — Kate Atkinson

When you're choosing furniture for your home that's supposed to express who you are, what you are also saying is you want other people to infer what you want them to infer. What if they see something different? Wouldn't it be really depressing if you're trying to be bohemian and instead they see you as Rush Limbaugh? — Sheena Iyengar

The moon taught me that only madness is pure. Once I'd made a start without it, my life was trodden territory, never really mine. At first I found this depressing, a sense of loss I could barely feel but which sapped me. In time I grew used to the feeling, which made it possible to bring more feet into my impure mind to track things up. If I couldn't go back, I might as well go forward. I — Catherine Ryan Hyde

It was such a depressing time. I didn't look very depressed, maybe, but it was really dire. I made a conscious decision not to stop, but it could have gone the other way. — Zaha Hadid

She had some appreciation for folks with a greed for sensation. Who were determined to "squeeze the orange" and press fresh experience from every day. But that way lay burnout. There were only so many experiences, really- a depressing discovery in itself., and surely you were better off trying to replicate the pleasing ones as often as possible. — Lionel Shriver

I think that chain stores in general are really super depressing and I think it really sucks the life out of a city such as San Francisco. — Chicken John