Seedy Quotes & Sayings

Journalism is a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world of misfits and drunkards and failures. — Hunter S. Thompson

Now see here, Guy," said the voice, "you're not dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger pumping morons with low hair-lines, little piggy eyes and no conversation, we're a couple of intelligent caring guys that you'd probably quite like if you met us socially! I don't go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterward in seedy space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterward for hours to my girlfriend!"
"And I write novels!" chimed in the other cop. "Though I haven't had any of them published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a meeeean mood! — Douglas Adams

It was wonderful, a stunning happy ending to what began as another tragic rock & roll story, as if Bob Dylan had been arrested in Miami for jacking off in a seedy little XXX theater while stroking the spine of a fat young boy. — Hunter S. Thompson

He stopped in a seedy alley in Holborn where he jumped down from the carriage, held a muttered conference with a dirty, one-eyed old woman, and climbed back in, his arms full of grubby cloth.
She wrinkled her nose. "Phew. What the devil is all that?"
"It's a dress."
"Oh, no. I'm not putting that on. It stinks of last week's washing up."
"It smells of the people. — Y.S. Lee

I love really crappy carnivals, where you think the ride is going to break. There's something so seedy about them. — Lea Thompson

The heart also knows things, and so does the imagination. Thank God. If not for heart and imagination, the world of fiction would be a pretty seedy place. It might not even exist at all. — Stephen King

It is true money will not buy you real happiness, but as a personal preference I would much rather have an angry strangle wank in the comfort of a private jet en route to Monte Carlo, than in a broom closet in the basement of a seedy crack house in Bangkok — Ade Bozzay

I am not man or beast; I am bibliosexual, and a seedy bibliosexual who haunts the streets, laden with carrier bags held by blistered fingers, stooping under the weight of the rucksack that has brought on sciatica and a Dickensian demeanour. — Robin Ince

The class of dishonest bees which I have been describing, may be termed the "Jerry Sneaks" of their profession, and after they have followed it for some time, they lose all disposition for honest pursuits, and assume a hang-dog sort of look, which is very peculiar. Constantly employed in creeping into small holes, and daubing themselves with honey, they often lose all the bright feathers and silky plumes which once so beautifully adorned their bodies, and assume a smooth and almost black appearance; just as the hat of the thievish loafer, acquires a "seedy" aspect, and his garments, a shining and threadbare look. — L.L. Langstroth

There was no doubt in my mind that the man next to me was the same one who had been in my visions for the last six years. He was real, and he was at Luke's buying a whiskey? I almost felt cheated. For so long, I wondered what this vision was all about, feeling that it held some deeper meaning I would someday grasp. Yet, here I was at some seedy bar and the man in my dreams shows up and orders a whiskey. Now what? Save him from dying of inebriation? — L.J. Kentowski

It's about time that people forget that image of strip clubs as seedy places ... Rather, today's clubs are capital-intensive female-empowerment zones ... — Demi Moore

I know that Brighton is famously a mixture of the seedy and the elegant, but in the summer of 2001 seediness swamped elegance hands down. — Julie Burchill

It galls me that seeking out the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is the expected (if not altogether acceptable) behavior of male writers; it would surely benefit me, as a writer, if I had the courage to seek out more of the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant myself. But women who seek out such things are made to feel ashamed, or else they sound stridently ridiculous in defending themselves
as if they're bragging ... Yet there are subjects that remain off-limits for women writers. It's not unlike that dichotomy which exists regarding one's sexual past: it is permissible, even attractive, for a man to have had one, but if a woman has had a sexual past, she'd better keep quiet about it. — John Irving

Mr. Blue's way of death was fitting. He had been utterly corrupted by America, and I find it proper that his carotid artery should have been severed by flak from a jumbo-sized can of mentholated shave cream. Like James Joyce, who tried to bend and subjugate the ironmongery of the cosmos with words (wasn't it The Word Joyce was after?), Mr. Blue tried to undo the empyrean mysteries with Seedy and his red carpet, with his elevated alligator shoes, with the ardent push-ups he seemed so sure would make him outlast time's ravages, with his touching search for some golden pussy that would yield to his lips the elixir of eternal life. And like Joyce's Leopold Bloom, like Quixote, Mr. Blue had become the perennial mock-epic hero of his country, the salesman, the boomer who believed that at the end of his American sojourn of demeaning doorbell-ringing, of faking and fawning, he would come to the Ultimate Sale, conquer, and soar. — Frederick Exley

Acting is a hard way to make a living, and there's a kind of dark, somewhat seedy side to the whole aspect of fame and celebrity that's not really something I would want for my child - or want him to want, if that makes any sense. — Pablo Schreiber

I hoped to offer U.S. intelligence agencies the opportunity to even place CIA officers in NOC (non-official cover) jobs in our company working under our Libyan contract. With agency officers in place with rock-solid "cover for status" - that's the lie that explains who you are pretending to be - and "cover for action" - that's the lie that explains what you're doing while you're there - the United States would have direct access to people in the seedy, murky underside of Libya, people whose motives and alliances were now unclear. The goals were a tall order, but don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon, because as my dad would say, you never hit high aiming low."

Excerpt From: Jamie Smith. "Gray Work — Jamie Smith

Now the Gang of McCrook was a miserable mob,
for whom robbing you blind was an everyday job.

They were known for their violence and criminal feats,
for a seedy selection of sinful deceits
from robbery, arson, and pyramid schemes,
to snatching the mascots from basketball teams.

They had once robbed a pet shop of all of its cash,
and they never - not ever - recycled their trash! — Robert Paul Weston

The media - they want to rush everything. They want to give their seedy opinions without knowing all the facts. — Jennifer Lopez

She was a tall, seedy, sad-eyed blonde who had once been a policewoman and had lost her job when she married a cheap little check bouncer named Johnny Horne, to reform him. She hadn't reformed him, but she was waiting for him to come out so she could try again. — Raymond Chandler

If you like to read, sometimes it's interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet ... Sometimes you can go looking for illumination. — Harold Brodkey

I love hotels for their solitude and comfort, but I believe a seedy one can have as much promise as a plush one. — Freema Agyeman

'Memorial Day' is about 'spring break' girls-gone-wild culture which is the seedy underbelly of our American Puritanism, the inverse side of the coin. It's also about how we forcefully exported that culture and then pretended to not know what we were doing. — Josh Fox

Lying on a ring of onion, a tomato slice exposed its seedy smile, one she remembers to this moment. — Toni Morrison

As usual, Vanderhyde's memory was sharp enough when it suited him. 'That's true. All the same, you were there.' 'Yes, I was. But I left several hours before the fire started. Not guilty, your honour.' 'Why were you there in the first place?' 'To meet a friend for a drink.' 'A seedy place for a drink.' 'Was it? You'll have to remember, Inspector, I couldn't see anything. It certainly didn't smell or feel particularly disreputable.' 'Point taken.' 'I had my memories. To me, it was the same old Central Hotel I'd lunched in and danced in. I quite enjoyed the evening. — Ian Rankin

On a September morning, just after school started, I'd gotten Diane's .44 Magnum and held it, babylike, in my lap for hours. What an indulgence it would be, to just blow off my head, all my mean spirits disappearing with a gun blast, like blowing a seedy dandelion apart. — Gillian Flynn

This dramatic, hearty flower with its deep maroon made me so happy. I was so in love with its color, and it taught me that beauty could live in a seedy area. Not only live but also be strong! — Drew Barrymore

Ten years later, while I was innocently pole-dancing at a seedy gay bar in Michigan, I bumped into Andrea. I screamed over the loud music that I wanted to introduce her to my boyfriend, and she yelled back that she wanted to introduce me to her girlfriend. Funny how all things work out, if you just give them a decade. — Tyler Oakley

She had been living like a hermit herself, in a cramped, seedy apartment in Somerville, spending long hours in the lab. All-nighters had become a regular thing. She didn't have any close friends, didn't go out on dates, didn't even go to the movies by herself. She had sacrificed a normal life in order to get a PhD, and become a scientist. — Michael Crichton

Words are plastic these days. Small loans made to desperate people at exorbitant interest rates are called payday advances. A cheesy hotel paired with a seedy casino is called a resort. Any assemblage of frenetic images, bad music, and incoherent plot is called a major motion picture. — Dean Koontz

There's probably some buried conservative inside of me, coming out like a little gremlin in my belly that I've suppressed. This is a sort of character I've done before: He's kind of dumb and he's kind of arrogant, and a little seedy. A little coke-y. He's gotten into the cocaine or he's had too much coffee. It's been pretty fun. Not all the songs are like that but it sort of creeps in there. — Tim Heidecker

Seedy wasn't a fair description for the place, because seeds imply eventual regrowth and renewal. — Jim Butcher

Thorne said, "I saw the village. Just over that rise."
"It didn't look charming, did it?" Colin raised a brow as he reached for the tinderbox. "I should hate for it to be charming. Give me a dank, seedy, vice-ridden pustule of a village any day. Wholesome living makes my skin crawl."
The corporal gave him a stony look. "I wouldn't know about charming, my lord."
"Yes. I can see that," Colin muttered. He struck a flint and lit the fuse. "Fair enough."
-Thorne & Colin — Tessa Dare

I met my boyfriend, a pro poker player, at a tournament. He tried to dissuade me because it's a seedy gritty world. Listen, I've played till 4 in the morning. I've played with a half million dollars on the table. — Jennifer Tilly

Sandeep Jauhar is a compelling storyteller, and Doctored gives us a fantastic tour through the seedy underworld of American medicine. — Lisa Sanders

It's sad that he doesn't know why I didn't respond to his seedy nightclub-owner gestures; it's sad that I end up convincing myself somehow that the man capable of making them is a significant and valuable figure in my life. — Nick Hornby

[The Front Page] is still full of peppy banter as it sends its seedy knights after cheap scoops. — Jay Carr

Grooming oneself with all the crazed compulsion of an under-exercised lab rat in order to hook a rich man and obtain a lush lifestyle makes a certain (albeit seedy) sense. — Julie Burchill

the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, — Arthur Conan Doyle

There is nothing more exasperating than reading in contemporary guidebooks disparagements of places that are deemed to be "seedy." Do the writers not notice that such places are invariably crowded with people? When a neighborhood is described as "seedy" by some Lonely Planet prude, I immediately head there. — Lawrence Osborne

I've had a lot of seedy side jobs. I've done it all. I've worked retail at the mall, just tons of side jobs, which I think are amazing for actors. I think everyone should have one! It helps you get more experiences, and the more experiences you have, the more you can channel into a character. — Olesya Rulin

If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations. — Willa Cather

the seedy-garish world of back-street London... restless rootless... beautiful, amoral, modern siren of doom in a jungle of dance halls, caffs and pubs. — Mark McShane

Why does everybody think that women are debasing themselves when we expose the conditions of our own debasement? Why do women always have to come clean? The magnificence of Genet's last great work, The Prisoner of Love, lies in his willingness to be wrong: a seedy old white guy jerking off on the rippling muscles of the Arabs and Black Panthers. Isn't the greatest freedom in the world the freedom to be wrong? — Chris Kraus

He'd done this hundreds of times: done a job, been drugged with a narcotic that erased his short term memory, and dumped in a seedy hole in the wall locale, where when he climbed out, he would have to figure out where he was, find a payphone, and call in for his next job. — Jennifer Arnett

Her flesh was powdery and voluptuously weary, as if tenderized by all the different beds and arms in which she had lain. Her face was as soft as the pulpy flash of an overripe banana, her breasts like two tiny bunches of grapes. She exuded a certain seedy charm, a poetry of premature corruption and decay. She breathed the air as if it burned her palate, baking her small, hot, whorish mouth. It was as if she were sucking a sweet or slurping champagne. — Dezso Kosztolanyi

Those are the kinds of roles you can really sink your teeth into. Characters with an edge. When you're playing someone who's sort of seedy, there's less limitation, there's so much space you can travel. There's room to move in. — Matt Dillon

Obviously, there's the seedy side of the strip club world and pole dancing. But, pole dancing, as an art form, is really beautiful. It's been hyper-sexualized because it's associated with strippers, but if you think about it, just in terms of other kinds of dancing, they're using an instrument to create these amazing dance forms. — Megalyn Echikunwoke

I don't go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterward in seedy space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterward for hours to my girlfriend! — Douglas Adams

Although Ryan hardly knew the person whose breath was playing over his cheek any better than he had mere seconds before, the simple exchange of names - or initials - had raised the bar for the encounter from anonymously seedy to merely impulsive. He'd always admired impulsiveness, though he'd never successfully cultivated the tendency in himself. Impulsive people seemed to get what they wanted. And if not, they looked like they had a lot of fun trying. — Jordan Castillo Price

Afterward she felt seedy and sexy and disheveled and filled with despair. — Liane Moriarty

Everybody wanted me to be rich and famous on my art. And I said no to all the commercials and all the seedy offers. — Philippe Petit

Living indoors without fresh air quickly poisons the blood and makes people feel tired and seedy when they don't know why. For myself, I sleep out of doors in winter as well as summer. I only feel tired or seedy when I have been indoors a lot. I only catch cold when I sleep in a room. — Robert Baden-Powell

The Florida in my novels is not as seedy as the real Florida. It's hard to stay ahead of the curve. Every time I write a scene that I think is the sickest thing I have ever dreamed up, it is surpassed by something that happens in real life. — Carl Hiaasen

The good television of today is probably better than the best television of the old days. The bad television of today is worse. It is not only bad, it is damaging, meretricious, seedy and cynical. — John Humphrys

Finally, the physical damage Osama and friends can do us - terrible as it has been thus far - is as nothing as to what he is doing to our liberties. Once alienated, an "unalienable right" is apt to be forever lost, in which case we are no longer even remotely the last best hope of earth but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are kept in line by SWAT teams and whose way of death, not life, is universally imitated. — Gore Vidal

When we got off the streetcar at Times Square, it was somewhat of a letdown. Newspapers were blowing about the road and pavement, and Broadway looked seedy, like a slovenly woman just out of bed. — Charlie Chaplin

Smoke hung heavy in the air. Will's eyes stung. His throat.
His nose. And the crackling. God, the crackling fire was like the devil laughing.
Vera was in that house.
Mikey gripped his arm. "Hold on, Will - "
Will lunged forward. "Vera - "
"Whoa, Will." Mikey's grip tightened. "Stop."
"The hell I will. Vera - "
"Billy?" One of the cops approached him. Said a bunch of
words. Helped Mikey hold Will back.
Vera was in that house.
Vera, her trusty wooden body, her frets, her new strings. Vera,
who'd had his back everywhere from Pickleberry Springs to
Nashville to New York to LA, from seedy bars to stadiums.
Vera, who'd helped him write his first song. His last song.
Every song in between. — Jamie Farrell

I remember the old Times Square from when I was younger, and there was a seedy thrill to it. Some of that is gone, which I have a little bit of nostalgia for. — Janeane Garofalo

I was like the roadie, I was carrying gear, checking things in at airports, making sure they had flowers backstage and interfacing with promoters who were sometimes really nice and sometimes a little seedy. It was a great apprenticeship, to be in the music industry. — Annie E. Clark

We can't stop trying til we break up our minds, til the sun drips blood on the seedy young knight. — David Bowie

I hadn't realized until I covered the police beat just how seedy crime is. — Jessica Savitch

Strange, isn't it, that warfare has come down to fencing with complicated toys that only a few seedy scholars can make or understand. — Herman Wouk

The most abiding memory of visiting Lucian Freud's studio were his eyes, with the gimlet gaze of a Hooded Falcon. But he made for very relaxing company, quick to be amused at the world and his own peccadilloes. He enjoyed the seedy squalor of his rooms in a posh house in the most desirable part of Holland Park, and living up to his persona as an oddball bohemian. — Charles Saatchi