Underbelly Quotes & Sayings

Japan is a startling clash of the deeply traditional and the spiritual. The intensely current and the superficial. It's ancient, but futuristic. Conservative, yet hedonistic. Sleek skyscrapers graze the clouds like trees seeking sun in a man-made rainforest. Their concrete foundations often fertilized by the bodies of locals run afoul of the yakuza. It's a homogenous island nation with a quaint surface and a Twin Peaks underbelly. The polite, insular, and eerily innocuous, living symbiotically with the perverse, extroverted, and bizarre. Fashion-forward and fashion-retarded. You could make similar generalizations about most cultures of course, but Japan's beautiful contrasts were better than most."--Parker Choi — Robet Jung

He considered that a moment, rolling the sweet over his tongue. There are times when it is entirely safe to show one's vulnerability, to roll over and reveal the soft underbelly beneath. But there are other times when pain must be borne without a murmur, when the pain is so consuming that if you give in to it, even in the slightest, you have lost everything. — Deanna Raybourn

Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception. — Jodi Picoult

I kinda like the duality of California and the dark side, the underbelly of California, and I think that's what this album ['California']feels like - there's endless hope and optimism but there's also a darker side. — Mark Hoppus

Unfortunately, the cyber threat to 'the grid' is only one means of eviscerating the soft underbelly of American society. Another which has been getting increasing attention could be delivered via the kind of nuclear-armed ballistic missile that Iran and North Korea have been developing: a strategic electro-magnetic pulse attack. — Frank Gaffney

Watching people just look out for themselves, I think, is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society, how it operates, and how that reflects their so-called betters. — Peter Mullan

He felt his heart roll, exposing its underbelly. Nothing he could do about that. He was equipped to eliminate threats, protect and serve. Not to love. Never to love. — Jill Shalvis

The drivenness in any addiction is about the ruptured self, the belief that one is flawed as a person. The content of the addiction, whether it is alcoholism or work, is an attempt at an intimate relationship. The workaholic with her work or the alcoholic with his booze are having a love affair. Each alters mood to avoid the feeling of loneliness and hurt in the underbelly of shame. — John Bradshaw

The world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots. — Italo Calvino

All the above is, of course, a gross simplification. There are deeper reasons to travel - itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind. We go where we need to go, and then try to figure out what we're doing there. — Jeff Greenwald

Pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near ( ... ) the beginning — Saul Williams

I have a fascination with the nasty things people do to each other and the way relationships go wrong, and how there can be this very dark underbelly to seemingly normal, mundane domestic life. They're the stories in the newspapers I always find interesting. That's not a very nice thing to admit to, is it? — Paula Hawkins

As the week's events on reality television demonstrate, there is an ugly underbelly in society only too ready to point the finger at the foreigner, or those who might not fit in. [on celeb big brother — John Sentamu

A lot of children grow up in poverty with flawed parents, but their inner world is still as inherently filled with wonder and innocence as children who are kept away from the city's underbelly. — Heather O'Neill

The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark's underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he'd be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn't that what a smile said? Hello, world, this is the way I'll look when the wet parts are rotted. — Clive Barker

Once a man has seen society's black underbelly, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend, like you do, that it doesn't exist. — Alan Moore

Horror itself is a bit of a bullied genre, the antagonist being literary snobbery and public misconception. And I think good horror tackles our darkest fears, whatever they may be. It takes us into the minds of the victims, explores the threats, disseminates fear, studies how it changes us. It pulls back the curtain on the ugly underbelly of society, tears away the masks the monsters wear out in the world, shows us the potential truth of the human condition. Horror is truth, unflinching and honest. Not everybody wants to see that, but good horror ensures that it's there to be seen. — Kealan Patrick Burke

The Magicians brilliantly explores the hidden underbelly of fantasy and easy magic, taking what's simple on the surface and turning it over to show us the complicated writhing mess beneath. It's like seeing the worlds of Narnia and Harry Potter through a 3-D magnifying glass. — Naomi Novik

There may be people who like centipedes ... Personally, I would regard such an individual with deep suspicion. I have just petted my cat: "And how is this good little cat beast?" Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede on his underbelly? "And here is my good big centipede!" If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race. — William S. Burroughs

I believe the Visa Waiver Program, it essentially is the soft underbelly of the visa system. Now we have 35 countries in it. We have 16 million people coming in. I believe the overstays still run about 40 percent of the undocumented population. In other words, there's 40 percent that you really don't know where it came from is what I'm trying to say. And I've always suspected people come in on a visitor's visa and they just decide to stay, and that's a large part of the undocumented population. — Dianne Feinstein

My research for 'Adam' affected me profoundly, particularly the research into evil's underbelly. We tend not to think about evil until it pokes its head out of the air about us and then it tends to scare us silly. As well it should. — Ted Dekker

It was funny the way memory obliged the heart. His happy recollections were always afloat in his soupy subconscious where so many of his darker memories had sunk to the underbelly of his past and been as good as lost forever. But without conscious instruction, memory had edited and enlarged the finest moments of his life and stored them like masterpieces in the private gallery of his personal history. — Nanci Kincaid

Monstress is an exhilarating rollercoaster of a book. Deeply funny, heartbreaking, hopeful, philosophical, bawdy, and wise, Lysley Tenorio's stories, written from the underbelly of the American Dream, present one brilliant portrait after another. — Sabina Murray

Los Angeles, the sun shines a lot, and it's blue, and there's palm trees; it's a bit like Sydney, I guess, but the underbelly is a vicious, mean, cruel, awful place. — Loudon Wainwright III

That I have no right to be jealous is irrelevant. It is a human passion: the sick, white underbelly of love. — Anita Shreve

I liked to think I had a tough everything, but I did have one weakness. One. In my entire child/woman body, and we both knew it. Dante. He was the chink in my armor. My soft underbelly. — R.K. Lilley

In my experience of living, for a time, in the underbelly of society, I spent a lot of time in various holding cells. — Natasha Lyonne

Andrew Cairns has written, quite literally, a bewitching novel, one that speaks to an underbelly which lies dormant in us all. The Witch's List bridges our world of convention, with that of a fabulous Twlilight Zone, what may be true reality
a realm of magic and ultimate possibility. I recommend this book because, behind the smokescreen of simplicity, there lies a masked bedrock of extraordinary power. — Tahir Shah

Success is meaningless if you can't sleep at night because of harsh things said, petty secrets sharpened against hard and stony regret, just waiting to be plunged into the soft underbelly of a 'friendship.' — Margaret Cho

I've always been a huge fan of thrillers like David Fincher's 'Se7en.' I am fascinated by the disturbing, dark underbelly of life. I find such films deeply engrossing. They delve deep into the human psyche, and that's a place worth exploring. — Emraan Hashmi

In the past, like for the last Rilo Kiley record, 'Under the Blacklight,' I wore exclusively hot pants because the themes in that record were the underbelly of Los Angeles. — Jenny Lewis

Day, in a gazebo by a river in the middle of fucking nowhere in the Colorado Mountains, the man known throughout the dark, harsh, fetid, hostile underbelly of this great United States as Ghost got married to one of the most beautiful women Nick had ever laid eyes on. She — Kristen Ashley

The underbelly of envy and jealousy is an unconscious holding back of yourself. — Deborah Sandella

I love to get to the underbelly of why people are up in arms about anything. Really, what I see is a big shadow in the West, in America especially, and everyone's afraid of looking stupid. But the truth is, I'm a genius and I'm stupid at the same time. — Alanis Morissette

This document will play an important role in protecting the strategic interests of Russia and Uzbekistan and ensuring stability and security in the region, which some politicians call Russia's soft underbelly. It's not a secret that after the Soviet collapse and especially in recent years, Central Asia has become the focus of interest of major nations because of its geographic location and rich mineral resources. — Islom Karimov

In some of the great cities of Europe - Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Brussels - tourists bored with life above ground can descend below. All these cities have sewer museums and tours, and all expose their underbelly willingly to the curious. But not London, arguably the home of the most splendid sewer network in Europe. — Rose George

Every day, police officers see the hairy, smelly underbelly of humanity, the most depraved and evil shit human beings are capable of, shit civilians thankfully can't imagine. — Lisa Genova

In its jolly mission to expose the dark underbelly of the children's book world, Wild Things! turns up stories I've been hearing noised about for ages, but with a lot more detail and authenticity. The stories may not be quite as sordid as my own imagination had conjured up - although a few of them are - because there's no denying that this field is full of mostly nice people! - but it's all fun and a great read for anyone interested in both children's books and the collection of people who make them. — Paul O. Zelinsky

I took several trips to New Orleans and met with people who had intimate knowledge of the underbelly of the city in the 1950s. The meetings were both fascinating and terrifying. — Ruta Sepetys

The majority of them simply melted into the host country's underbelly.
The low-income areas?
If that's what you want to call them. What better place to hide than among that part of society that no one else even wants to acknowledge. How else could so many outbreaks have started in so many First World ghettos? — Max Brooks

The underbelly of the human psyche, what is often referred to as our dark side, is the origin of every act of self-sabotage. Birthed out of shame, fear, and denial, it misdirects our good intentions and drives us to unthinkable acts of self-destruction and not-so-unbelievable acts of self-sabotage. — Debbie Ford

The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized. — Russell Simmons

As with most things in life, Lady Maccon preferred the civilized exterior to the dark underbelly (with the exception of pork products, of course.) — Gail Carriger

Seemingly innocuous language like 'Oh, I'm flexible' or 'What do you want to do tonight?' has a dark computational underbelly that should make you think twice. It has the veneer of kindness about it, but it does two deeply alarming things. First, it passes the cognitive buck: 'Here's a problem, you handle it.' Second, by not stating your preferences, it invites the others to simulate or imagine them. And as we have seen, the simulation of the minds of others is one of the biggest computational challenges a mind (or machine) can ever face. — Brian Christian

Being gay is like taking a crash course in human nature," he says. "Your first real glimpse at the dirty underbelly of routine social interaction. A lesser person, " he offers with a wry grin, "Might well become one bitter fuck. — Jonathan Tropper

In a modern world, increasingly filled with pop culture fads and gimmicks, Lisa Morton reveals much of the underbelly history and unknown facts regarding the biggest pop culture event in history-Halloween. Her sheer delight and well-researched enthusiasm in tackling many of the unrecognized aspects of this monstrous topic makes one wonder what we don't know about everything else that should be as commonplace to our psyche as a bag of candy. — Del Howison

Once you've crawled into what's commonly thought of as the sordid underbelly of life, you realize it's all just different versions of normal. — Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Flint, Michigan. Detroit as seen backwards through a telescope. The callus on the palm of the state shaped like a welder's mitt. A town where 66.5 percent of the working citizenship are in some way, shape or form linked to the shit-encrusted underbelly of a French buggy racer named Chevrolet and a floppy-eared Scotchman named Buick. A town where 23.5 percent of the population pimp everything from Elvis on velvet to horse tranquilizers to Halo Burgers to NRA bumper stickers. A town where the remaining 10 percent sit back and watch it all go by - sellin' their blood, rollin' convenience stores, puffin' no-brand cigarettes while cursin' their wives and kids and neighbors and the flies sneakin' through the screens and the piss-warm quarts of Red White & Blue and the Skylark parked out back with the busted tranny. — Ben Hamper

In 1965, worked with Nite Owl bringing street gangs under control. Tackled the Big Figure together. Brought down Underboss together. Good team.
Until he got soft, like rest. Until he quit.
No staying power. None of them. Except Comedian. Met him in 1966. Forceful personality. Didn't care if people liked him. Uncompromising. Admired that.
Of us all, he understood most. About world. About people. About society and what's happening to it.
Things everyone knows in gut. Things everyone too scared to face, too polite to talk about. He understood.
Understood man's capacity for horrors and never quit. Saw the world's black underbelly and never surrendered. Once man has seen, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend it doesn't exist.
No matter who orders him to look the other way.
We do not do this thing because it is permitted. We do it because we have to.
We do it because we are compelled. — Alan Moore

'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

'Good as Gone' goes from zero to 60 in under six seconds and never lets off the gas! If you like your thrillers filled with nonstop action in a race against time through Europe's underbelly, hop in and take a ride. — Andrew Gross

Someone should have warned me about love's dark underbelly, about the rejection and despair. — Victoria Scott

If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a Third World, dirty-underbelly, developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations. It's just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Golden Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not. — Amitabh Bachchan

The funny thing about a lie is that once it has been said and believed, it lives and becomes. It can't be taken back. It sucks all the air from you until you give up and it takes over and you forget how to breathe on your own. It is like those parasitic relationships, but not like the shark and the little remora that politely cleans the shark's skin and sometimes attaches itself to its underbelly. No, it is more like a tapeworm eating someone from the inside out. — Carrie Arcos

In idyllic small towns I sometimes see teenagers looking out of place in their garb of desperation, the leftover tatters and stains and slashes of the fashion of my youth. For this phase of their life, the underworld is their true home, and in the grit and underbelly of a city they could find something that approximates it. Even the internal clock of adolescents changes, making them nocturnal creatures for at least a few years. All through childhood you grow toward life and then in adolescence, at the height of life, you begin to grow toward death. This fatality is felt as an enlargement to be welcomed and embraced, for the young in this culture enter adulthood as a prison, and death reassures them that there are exits. "I have been half in love with easeful death," said Keats who died at twenty-six and so were we, though the death we were in love with was only an idea then. — Rebecca Solnit

SHAME AS THE CORE AND FUEL OF ALL ADDICTION Neurotic shame is the root and fuel of all compulsive/addictive behaviors. My general working definition of compulsive/addictive behavior is "a pathological relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life-damaging consequences." The drivenness in any addiction is about the ruptured self, the belief that one is flawed as a person. The content of the addiction, whether it be an ingestive addiction or an activity addiction (such as work, shopping or gambling), is an attempt at an intimate relationship. The workaholic with his work and the alcoholic with his booze are having a love affair. Each one alters the mood to avoid the feeling of loneliness and hurt in the underbelly of shame. Each addictive acting out creates life-damaging consequences that create more shame. — John Bradshaw

For nearly a decade Democrats have sought a religious wedge issue that could separate big chunks of white evangelical voters from their Republican home. Now they've found it, and are thrusting at the Social Darwinist/Ayn Rand underbelly of American conservatism. — Marvin Olasky

My work is about the underbelly of the beauty of nature - and the dark side of nature is its indifference. Nature isn't friendly, nor is it unfriendly - it's the perfect embodiment of the Other. — April Gornik

It is strange the way the Western world reacts so positively and strongly to films make by foreigners or by Indian NRIs to celluloid representations of the underbelly of any Indian city. — Shoma A Chatterji

The bookcase tipped and the book covers opened like wings over an underbelly of white feathers, dirty with ink. — Anthony Marra

What disturbs and compels about pornography is not the sex, which is always a snooze, but that the medium addresses every social issue in the absolute wrong way. Not long after any social event or trend, a pornographic response emerges. It will be incredibly creepy and wrong headed, an underbelly view of public life via the worst excesses of capitalism in which the answer to every social problem is the commodification of desire. — Jarett Kobek

Because the truth was, there was a dark underbelly of terror to motherhood. You loved your children with such an overwhelming fierceness that you were absolutely vulnerable at every moment of every day: They could be taken from you. Somehow, you could lose them. You could stop at the corner to buy a newspaper when a drunk driver veered onto the sidewalk. You could feed your child an E. coli-tainted hamburger. You could turn your head for a second while one darted out into the street. The threats to your child were infinite. And the thing was, if any of your children's lives were ruined, even a little bit, yours wold be, too. — Katherine Center