Something Awful Quotes & Sayings

I hate it [driving] more than anything in the whole world. I'm just an awful, awful driver. I get lost, I hit things (parked cars, one moving car, a pole in my parking garage). Just when I think I got everything under control, I'll miss seeing something out of the corner of my mirror. — Rachael Leigh Cook

Once you commit to something, you just manage through each moment. And nothing truly awful happened. The voyage over was uneventful. I found work right away, just not very good work. The worst thing wasn't something terrible, it was the lack of anything wonderful. — Jaclyn Dolamore

I never liked the term mystic as applied to someone or a way of thought. It covers something very profound and an awful lot of nonsense passes as profound thought. — Louis L'Amour

No matter how awful something is, you can always sell tickets. — Augusten Burroughs

You discover something so awful, so life-changing, the only way you can cope is to jump straight into denial. — Jane Green

Everything I did in P.E. was just awful. Archery was just something that we did as a father/daughter activity, and it just kind of grew out of that, really. — Miranda Leek

Silas knew words could have power behind them. Usually it was just a sort of bad luck. He also knew, very early on, that you could never tell when that bad luck would jump up to claim its due, so it was best to be careful. Quiet was safer. He wished his parents had been quieter when they were together. Who knew what might happen when you said something awful to someone else? It was hard to take some words back. Some words stuck and you couldn't shake them off. Silence was better than those kinds of words. Silas had learned that lesson the hard way. — Ari Berk

I remember once when I was young, and I was coming back from some place, a movie or something.
I was on the subway and there was a girl sitting across from me and she was wearing this dress that was bottoned queer up right to here, she was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And I was shy then, so when she would look at me I would look away, then afterwards when I would look back she would look away.
Then I got to where I was gonna get off, and got off, the doors closed, and as the train was pulling away she looked right at me and gave me the most incredible smile. It was awful, I wanted to tear the doors open.
And I went back every night, same time, for two weeks, but she never showed up.
That was 30 years ago and I don't think that theres a day that goes by that I don't think about her, I don't want that to happen again.
Just one dance ?. — Jack Engelhard

I believe in work. If somebody doesn't create something, however small it may be, he gets sick. An awful lot of people feel that they're treading water
that if they vanished in smoke, it wouldn't mean anything at all in this world. And that's a despairing and destructive feeling. It'll kill you. — Arthur Miller

If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this 'awful' part of himself might not be as awful as he thinks, but he finds it too strange and he does not know what to do with it? We talk about what to do with the atom bomb ... But man's heart, his spirit is the deadliest thing in creation. Are not all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves which they wish, in their deep timidity, to try to preserve? Are not all of man's efforts at order an attempt to still man's fear of himself? — Richard Wright

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven. — Charles Dickens

You know, eating's much more important than most people think. There comes a time in your life when you've just got to have something super-delicious. And when you're standing at that crossroads your whole life can change, depending on which one you go into - the good restaurant or the awful one. — Haruki Murakami

As soon as someone finds out something you're insecure about or that bothers you, they will use that against you, which is awful. — Maisie Williams

There's a tolerance and this is a really big thing when it comes to really increasing the whole sense of getting something done and boosting the economy. Obviously not everything is going to be a bonanza, some things are going to be awful, but wouldn't it be great if we had a fantastic window dresser to do something with those windows on Fairfield green and those Victoria's Secret windows. I love girls in bras in panties, but these are just mannequins. Wouldn't it be great if some local artists got together and said, "Hey, Victoria's Secret, let's do something!" We need that. — Tina Weymouth

My nose, thank god, had conked out by then. Noses are merciful that way. They will report that something smells awful. If the owner of a nose stays around anyway, the nose concludes that the smell isn't so bad after all. It shuts itself off, deferring to superior wisdom. — Kurt Vonnegut

Because it's a fucking disaster to be creative when you know you're not Mozart or Keats. Dammit, I got tired of scratching around in my past. There's nothing in me to justify the pretension of creativity. This came before anything, before you, before Raquel, this is a matter of my own emptiness, my awareness of my own limits, maybe my sterility. Does what I'm saying to you seem awful? Now you want to come along and sell me an illusion, which I don't believe in but which does make me believe that either you're a fool or you underestimate my intelligence. Why don't you just leave me alone, so I can fill the emptiness in my own way? Let me see things for myself, learn if something can still grow in my soul, an idea, a faith, because I swear to you, Laura, my soul is more desolate than this rock landscape you see here ... why? — Carlos Fuentes

It seems to me that we can't explain all the truly awful things in the world like war and murder and brain tumors, and we can't fix these things, so we look at the frightening things that are closer to us and we magnify them until they burst open. Inside is something that we can manage, something that isn't as awful as it had a first seemed. It is a relief to discover that although there might be axe murderers and kidnappers in the world, most people seem a lot like us: sometimes afraid and sometimes brave, sometimes cruel and sometimes kind. — Sharon Creech

Why me?" I hear his answer in my head before he says it.
"Don't know, honey. But there's a reason for everything." Dad pats my hand. "We'll just have to wait patiently to see what it is."
As i do every time he says that or something like this, I bite back what I'd say if I could reply honestly. I don't believe there's a reason for everything, and having faith doesn't mean I'm blind. I believe people make poor choices. I believed bad things happen to good people. I believe there's evil in the world that I will never understand, but will never stop fighting. If I believe for two seconds that there was a reason behind some of the awful things that occur in this life, I wouldn't be able to stand it. — Tammara Webber

I still start to get panicky each morning before I go on television. I'll say, 'I'm in awful shape, something is wrong,' and if I start to look like I'm going off the deep end, Jimmy Straka, the stage manager, will say, 'You're all right. Calm down.' Then Bryant Gumbel will grab me by the leg or something. — Willard Scott

There's something about [pain] that excites me. If I'm feeling really awful about something, it's because I haven't experienced it before. There's something I need to learn from it. — Rachael Yamagata

Just love me, Harry. That's what I wanted to say. Love me like you used to. Like I was special instead of a cross you have to bear. Like the differences between us are good things instead of something awful. I want it to be the way it used to be when you looked at me as though you couldn't believe I was yours. Like I was the most wonderful creature in the world. I know I don't look the way I did then. I know I have stretch marks everywhere, and I know how much you used to love my breasts, and now they're halfway to my knees, and I hate this, and I hate that you don't love me like you used to, and I hate the fact that you're making me
beg! — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I'm awful dull, but I hope I've beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you! — Charles Dickens

We are born in the world because we have to learn something through whatever we're born into. Although it might be awful. That's why it's an illusion to think that we really run our lives. We don't. — Betty Parsons

I hate letting my teammates down. I know I'm not going to make every shot. Sometimes I try to make the right play, and if it results in a loss, I feel awful. I don't feel awful because I have to answer questions about it. I feel awful in that locker room because I could have done something more to help my teammates win. — LeBron James

Her name rang in Will's mind like the chime of a bell; he wondered if any other name on earth had such an inescapable resonance to it. She couldn't have been named something awful, could she, like Mildred. He couldn't imagine lying awake at night, staring up at the ceiling while invisible voices whispered 'Mildred' in his ears. But Tessa
— Cassandra Clare

It's an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important ... and to feel that you're being published by people who really don't get it and/or don't really care. — Alice Walker

I want to direct but I think I'd be bloody awful and I don't want to produce but I think I'd be a very good producer because if I believed in something I'd be able to protect it. — Christopher Eccleston

Sometimes I think that an awful lot of technology is just busy work, something we've created to help hide the fact that the human situation, the things that touch us and frighten us and move us haven't changed. — Betty Younis

I glanced up at Thomas. "We've still got Hook, right?"
"He's being held prisoner on a ceramic-lined cookie sheet in the oven," Thomas said. "I figured he couldn't jigger his way out of a bunch of steel, and it would give him something to think about before we start asking questions."
"That's an awful thing to do to one of the Little Folk, man," I said.
"I'm planning to start making a pie in front of him."
"Nice."
"Thank you. — Jim Butcher

Someone told me something recently about Sarah Palin, someone I trusted in the book business. They said, "I worked with Palin. She did an event at my bookstore, and she was really, really nice, and even more beautiful in person." I didn't want to hear that. I wanted to hear that she was awful and hideous-looking. But I thought, I have to listen to that. I have to hear that. I don't want to be the one who is going to deny anything complimentary said about somebody just because I disagree with that person. — David Sedaris

Bob summed it up best when he was on his knees at the end of the night saying, 'Don't trust in Guided By Voices.' You were there; was the show awful or something? I know it was sloppy, but they're not really that tight anyway, but was it embarrassing, was it sad? — Kim Deal

The desperate things seem to require attention, the lovely things seem to elicit celebration. If I had to choose, I would go to the awful in the hope that doing something could yield a happier result. — Jenny Holzer

This is why there is something awful about human freedom. This power to make a choice which will never cease to reverberate. — Jerome A. Miller

Q: How is it possible that humans invented something as amazing as an airplane and something as awful as a nuclear bomb? A: Human beings are mysterious and paradoxical. — Nicola Yoon

On the train on the way home, as I dissect all the ways that today went wrong, I'm surprised by the fact that I don't feel as awful as I might. Thinking about it, I know why that is: I didn't have a drink last night, and I have no desire to have one now. I am interested, for the first time in ages, in something other than my own misery. I have purpose. Or at least, I have a distraction. — Paula Hawkins

I could just barely see the dark curve of his shoulder, and something about the shape it made, the gesture it suggested, filled me with a sort of fierce, awful affection. — Maggie Stiefvater

years. I kept remembering all the times I'd teased her or called her father a fornicator or simply made fun of her behind her back. Just when I was feeling awful about the whole thing and imagining how I would ever be able to avoid Carey for five hours, she turned and faced me again. She had a slight smile on her face. "I'd love to," she finally said, "on one condition." I steadied myself, hoping it wasn't something too awful. "Yes?" "You — Nicholas Sparks

Pilate turned on his heel and said, "What is truth?" As much as to say, "I am the procurator of this part of the country. All I care for is money." "What's truth?" I do not think he asked the question, "What is truth?" as some preach from it, as if he seriously desired to know what it really was, for surely he would have paused for the Divine reply and not have gone away from Christ the moment afterwards. He said, "Pshaw! What's truth?" Yet there was something so awful about the Prisoner, that his wife's dream, and her message - "See that you have nothing to do with this just Person," all worked upon the superstitious fears of this very weak-minded ruler. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If you see me with my face all black, don't be frightened. If you see me flapping wings like a bat's, as big as the whole sky, don't be frightened. If you hear me raging ten times worse than Mrs. Bill, the blacksmith's wife - even if you see me looking in at people's windows like Mrs. Eve Dropper, the gardener's wife - you must believe that I am doing my work. Nay, diamond, if I change into a serpent or a tiger, you must not let go your hold of me, for my hand will never change in yours if you keep a good hold. If you keep a hold, you will know who I am all the time, even when you look at me and can't see me the least like the North Wind. I may look something very awful. Do you understand? — George MacDonald

Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn't mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn't mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves. — Ryan Holiday

You remember that saying, 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life?' There's something awful about that saying. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet - so deadly sad - that to read one line of it would dissolve any courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by. — Charlotte Bronte

Was this what it felt like to do something unselfish? The sensation was weird. Uncomfortable, yet ... not awful. Like liquor that tasted like shit but went down smooth. — Larissa Ione

Each of the actors need to have their justification for saying something awful. You want everyone to have a positive and negative thing. Even a positive thing needs to have darkness in it. It needs to have depth. — M. Night Shyamalan

I could not stop something I knew was wrong and terrible. I had an awful sense of powerlessness. — Andrei Sakharov

I don't think about that day the crazy lady tried to shoot Abby but got you instead. It was an awful day. When it does cross my mind, I turn it around and think about something nice, like Abby's pussy. I just take a deep breath and picture it in my mind. It's my happy place. — Sophie Oak

There was a special Nolan idea about the coffee. It was their one great luxury. Mama made a big potful each morning and reheated it for dinner and supper and it got stronger as the day wore on. It was an awful lot of water and very little coffee but mama put a lump of chicory in it which made it taste strong and bitter. Each one was allowed three cups a day with milk. Other times you could help yourself to a cup of black coffee anytime you felt like it. Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.
Neeley and Francie loved coffee but seldom drank it. Today, as usual, Neeley let his coffee stand black and ate his condensed milk spread on bread. He sipped a little of the black coffee for the sake of formality. Mama poured out Francie's coffee and put the milk in it even though she knew that the child wouldn't drink it. — Betty Smith

I am a bull. I am Taurus. My will is awful. If I like something, there is nothing else. I was a pain in the neck. I still am a pain in the neck. — Elsa Peretti

I wasn't able to be that person for you, and I did a terrible thing. I feel awful about it. But there was something wrong between us from the start, as if we'd done the buttons up wrong. — Haruki Murakami

It was Henry's nature to listen, and many times during the week he would say, 'Gosh, I'm awful sorry to hear that, ' or 'Say, isn't that something? — Elizabeth Strout

Here I am, a product of something really vicious, product of the Atlantic slave trade. And yet, I give nary a thought to some of the awful things happening right now in the world. — Jamaica Kincaid

Non-Masons stay pretty much in the dark about What Goes On, though now and then something jumps out, exposes itself, jumps giggling back again, leaving you with few details but a lot of Awful Suspicions. Some — Thomas Pynchon

I want to tell you something." He placed her palm against her cheek, rough with stubble. "In my life, I've been with women I didn't care about and women I cared a great deal about. But I've never been with a woman who makes me feel the way you do." He lowered his head and whispered against her lips, "Sometimes when I look at you, it's hard to breath. When you touch me, I don't care about breathing." He kissed her slow and sweet, and with each press of his lips and touch of his tongue, her heart swelled and ached. It was wonderful and awful and brand-new. Then he pulled back to say, "I don't know how this is all going to work out, but I want to be with you. You are important to me. — Rachel Gibson

How long have you been sitting in the darkness? You forget. You know you're getting hard to be with and you're crying every time you turn around. Oh my crazy baby, try to hold on tight. Oh my crazy baby, don't put out the light. And your hands are shaking something awful as your worries crawl around inside your clothes. — Joan Osborne

Loneliness. Sometimes that awful feeling causes you to do something stupid. — Natsuo Kirino

Marvin thought of his bowel movements as BMs, a phrase he'd heard an army doctor mutter once. His BMs were turning against him, turning violent in a way. He and Eleanor went through the Dolomites and across Austria and nipped into the northwest corner of Hungary and the stuff came crashing out of him, noisy and remarkably dark. But mainly it was the smell that disturbed him. He was afraid Eleanor would notice. He realized this was probably a normal part of every early marriage, smelling the other's smell, getting it over and done with so you can move ahead with your lives, have children, buy a little house, remember everybody's birthday, take a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, get sick and die. But in this case the husband had to take extreme precautions because the odor was shameful, it was intense and deeply personal and seemed to say something awful about the bearer.
His smell was a secret he had to keep from his wife. — Don DeLillo

A stranger can see in an instant something in you that you might spend years learning about yourself. How awful we all are when we look at ourselves under a light, finally seeing our reflections. How little we know about ourselves. How much forgiveness it must take to love a person, to choose not to see their flaws, or to see those flaws and love the person anyway. If you never forgive you'll always be alone. — Stephen Elliott

My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell. — Anne Lamott

The stillness of the calm is awful. His voice begins to grow strange and portentous. He feels it in him like something swallowed too big for the esophagus. It keeps up a sort of involuntary interior humming in him, like a live beetle. His cranium is a dome full of reverberations. The hollows of his very bones are as whispering galleries. He is afraid to speak loud, lest he be stunned; like the man in the bass drum. — Herman Melville

I felt this awful obligation to be charming or at least have something to say, and the pressure of having to be charming (or merely verbal) incapacitates me. — Peter Cameron

When I was a kid, I hated being talked to as a kid. I don't know if all kids feel that way, but I seem to remember awful things in the crib, something like people doing baby talk in the crib and sticking their big, fat faces in there and scaring me. So I always talk to kids as if they were a person. — Michael Feldman

There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow
the latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I have an awful memory, and I have a great memory. Meaning that, if I'm trying to remember something, I can't remember it. But my recall is fantastic. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

She's an awful woman," said Hermione in a small voice. "Awful. You know, I was just saying to Ron when you came in . . . we've got to do something about her." "I suggested poison," said Ron grimly. — J.K. Rowling

How come you like Josh so much anyway? All he does is sit around drinking overpriced coffee and bitching about how awful things are"
"He cares about the world."
"If he cared about the world, he'd donate the ten thousand dollars he must spend on coffee every year to charity. That would be doing something. — Elizabeth Scott

Do you ever get the feeling that something awful might happen?' James asked me ... I sat up. 'I'm the awful thing that happens. — Maggie Stiefvater

People come up to me in supermarkets and demand humour. And the less amusing I am, the more they piss themselves. So I say, "I'm doing my shopping, mate, OK?" and the guy will be on the floor in hysterics. Quite odd. Eventually I do have to say something funny so I usually go for something pathetic like, "It's a nice place to shop but I wouldn't like to live here!" and they roar again. Wet themselves. I'm lucky though that I am not massively famous, I can get the Tube without much bother. Must be awful being the Beckhams. — Steve Coogan

This is the worst day of my life'. I groaned and put my head in my hands.
'You can't possibly know that. You might have something really awful going to happen to you later on. All your children burned to death or your nose cut off in a revolving door'. — Victoria Clayton

I started to write before I went to SUNY Purchase music conservatory. As an audition I submitted what I now think are really awful songs, but I guess they saw something in them. — Regina Spektor

And when Jace was ten years old, Valentine killed him. Michael,
I mean."
"That sounds like something he would do," said Luke. His tone was neutral, but there was something in his voice that made Clary look at him sideways. Did he not believe her?
"Jace saw him die, " she added, as if to bolster her claim.
"That's awful," said Luke. "Poor messed-up kid. — Cassandra Clare

I've long considered becoming a writer to be the death of nightmares. For me at least, since I started writing I hadn't had any. Something really terrible or awful happens in a dream and you wake up and think, awesome, and reach for a pen and paper. — Logan Kain

Well, it's nice to get something right for a change. You don't know how irritating it is - missing things the way I have been. I feel so useless. So ... normal." She cringed in horror of the word.
"I can't imagine how awful that must feel. Being normal? Ugh. — Stephenie Meyer

You're not supposed to talk ill of the dead, because how are they supposed to defend themselves? But what if they've done something so bad, so awful that you had to think ill of them? That you needed to. — Kara Terzis

And when something awful happens, the goodness stands out even more ... — Banana Yoshimoto

You guys dated, didn't you?"
"Are you insane? Not even if the continuation of our kind depended on it would I be tempted to do something so awful. — Rachel Morgan

But I knew it was pure masturbation, because down in my gut I wanted nothing more than a clean bed and a bright room and something solid to call my own at least until I got tired of it. There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detatched. — Hunter S. Thompson

Delayed gratification hints that something terrible is going to happen, and then delays the resolution.

It's that interval between the promise of something awful and it actually happening, where suspense resides. — Sandy Vaile

If it had been a heart attack, the newspaper
might have used the word massive,
as if a mountain range had opened
inside her, but instead
it used the word suddenly, a light coming on
in an empty room. The telephone
fell from my shoulder, a black parrot repeating
something happened, something awful
a sunday, dusky. If it had been
terminal, we could have cradled her
as she grew smaller, wiped her mouth,
said good-bye. But it was sudden,
how overnight we could be orphaned
& the world became a bell we'd crawl inside
& the ringing all we'd eat. — Nick Flynn

I sound awful saying it but I think it can be like that. I see a lot of people in unstimulating relationships. And not just boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. They find themselves in stagnant friendships. If people were a little less scared [of ending things] they'd get more out of life ... You meet the right person at the right time and they fulfil a certain something in your life. You fulfil something in theirs. But there's a time limit to that. Unless you choose to be bloody good company for the rest of your life, do you know what I mean? — Laura Marling

When you're a little fat boy in any kind of school, you're just persecuted something awful. — Raymond Burr

I sat on the bench by the willows and at my honey bun and read Triton. There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books. When I grow up I would like to write something that someone could read sitting on a bench on a day that isn't all that warm and they could sit reading it and totally forget where they were or what time it was so that they were more inside the book than inside their own head. I'd like to write like Delany or Heinlein or Le Guin. — Jo Walton

Awful first drafts are fine - Agree with this.
If you don't finish something, you'll never get in the game. Just quell the voice in your head that says "Are you kidding? No one is going to want to read this drivel" and keep on going. You're going to revise and revise and then revise again anyway. — Jamie Freveletti

I can say, I am terribly frightened and fear is terrible and awful and it makes me uncomfortable, so I won't do that because it makes me uncomfortable. Or I could say get used to being uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable doing something that's risky. But so what? Do you want to stagnate and just be comfortable? — Barbra Streisand

Raising a child is the very definition of ambivalence. I am overwhelmed at times by how something can simultaneously be so awful and so rewarding. — Elizabeth Gilbert

I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike. — Martin Amis

Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's. As a kid growing up with books and films and stories instead of friends, that was always the narrative injustice that upset me more than anything else. I felt it sometimes like a sharp pain under the ribcage, the kind of chest pain that lasts for minutes and hours and might be nothing at all or might mean you're slowly dying of something mundane and awful. It's a feeling that hit when I understood how few girls got to go on adventures. I started reading science fiction and fantasy long before Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, before mainstream female leads very occasionally got more at the end of the story than together with the protagonist. Sure, there were tomboys and bad girls, but they were freaks and were usually killed off or married off quickly. Lady hobbits didn't bring the ring to Mordor. They stayed at home in the shire. — Laurie Penny

All right, Chris, you've given me a breather. I'm prepared for
anything.
And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you
haven't gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself." I kissed him quickly on
the lips, and told him to go on, to hit me with his knockout blow.
"Really, Chris, I know you must have something perfectly awful to tell
me-so out with it. Keep holding me as you tell me, and I can stand
anything you have to say. — V.C. Andrews

We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world didn't seem to notice how bad things really were. I thought of how I'd gotten used to awful, how after my dad died the planets kept on spinning and I got up and ate breakfast every morning and kept going to school. Something happens and it's terrible and you think you can't live another day, but then your mother gets used to it and you get used to it and you both keep on living, and you're not sure if that getting-used-to-things is good or the way life should be. — Margaret McMullan

I expected Dad to do his usual brisk thing and say something like, "Excellent. I will anxiously await your pronouncement on this significant matter." Instead, he just looked relieved and said, "Good."
Thinking we were done, I moved toward the door, but Dad stepped in front of it. "We're not quite finised yet."
I blinked at him, surprised. "I could try to break some more mirrors if you really want me to, Dad, but I'm kind of wiped out. Between last night and today, there's been an awful lot of magin flyin' around for me,and-"
He shook his head. "No,not that. We have one more matter to discuss."
I didn't need my new psychic senses to tell me something bad was coming. "What?"
Dad took a deep breath and folded his arms. "I want you to tell me about Archer Cross. — Rachel Hawkins

It was every detective's nightmare. The worst-case scenario. A lead ignored or bungled, allowing something awful to be loose in the world. Something dark and evil, destroying life after life as it moved through the shadows. It was true that all detectives made mistakes and had to live with the regrets. But Bosch instinctively knew that this one was malignant. It would grow and grow inside until it darkened everything and he became the last victim, the last life destroyed. — Michael Connelly

When school friends would think about appearing on stage as the most frightening, the most awful, intimidating experience ever, I knew that it was something I could do. — Hugh Laurie

She saw her mother appearing at her bedroom door. "Daddy and I want to talk to you about something." It would not happen to Liam the way it had happened to her. Over her dead body. It was the one thing she'd always known she could and would spare him from. Her beautiful, grave-faced little boy would not feel the loss and confusion she'd felt that awful summer all those years ago. He would not pack a little overnight bag every second Friday. He would not have to check a calendar on the refrigerator to see where he was sleeping each weekend. He would not learn to think before he spoke whenever one parent asked a seemingly innocuous question about the other. — Liane Moriarty

Love is terrifying and hard and awful but it's also amazing and beautiful, and there's something about us, as humans, that wants that perfect relationship even though we know it's probably unattainable, and even if we do manage to get it, holding on to t, helping it grow into something that will last a lifetime, well ... it's daunting in its impossibility. — Ted Michael

I think there is pressure on people to turn every negative into a positive, but we should be allowed to say, 'I went through something really strange and awful and it has altered me forever.' — Marian Keyes

When people say it's a funny thing about them, you will probably be able to control your hysterics. They are only getting ready to announce the shattering fact that they don't like something. And it's not going to be something that's really quite awful, like suttee or apartheid; it's going to be something small. — Peg Bracken

How lucky I am to have known somebody and something that saying goodbye to is so damned awful. — Evans G. Valens

Just because something awful happens to someone else, it doesn't mean the issues in your life should take any less importance. — Kiki Archer

The Nigger was a handsome, austere woman with snow-white hair and a dark and awful dignity. Her brown eyes, brooding deep in her skull, looked out on an ugly world with philosophic sorrow. She conducted her house like a cathedral dedicated to a sad but erect Priapus. If you wanted a good laugh
and a poke in the ribs, you went to Jenny's and got your money's worth; but if the sweet worldsadness close to tears crept out of your immutable loneliness, the Long Green was your place. When you came out of there you felt that something pretty stern and important had happened. It was no jump in the hay. The dark beautiful eyes of the Nigger stayed with you for days. — John Steinbeck

I was really awful at auditions. There's something about sitting down and saying into the camera: 'I'm Nina and this is the name of my agent.' That makes me just die inside. — Nina Conti

Not long ago I was much amused by imagining - what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a dozen people at once, or to do some thing awful, something considered the most awful crime in the world - what a predicament my judges would be in, with my having only a fortnight to live, now that corporal punishment and torture is abolished. I should die comfortably in hospital, warm aad snug, with an attentive doctor, and very likely much more snug and comfortable than at home. I wonder that the idea doesn't strike people in my position, if only as a joke. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky