Madder Than Quotes

When you're a kid, they tell you it's all... grow up. Get a job. Get married. Get a house. Have a kid, and that's it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better.

A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself.

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.

At the deepest level people are madder than they want to believe. You will find that they fear being eaten, and are alarmed by their desire to devour others.

At that moment, he was meaner and madder than he’d ever been, but mainly at himself, which is the worst kind of mean and mad to be, because the only thing to do about it is to take it out on someone else.

I smelled barbecue before I reached the house, and that made me madder than ever, because I really love barbecue.

He paused, gazing down at her in amusement, "Do you know when I first fell in love with you?" "No, when?" she asked, intrigued. "When you got out of your SUV looking hotter than a firecracker and madder than hell, and you said, 'Don't they stop at red lights where you're from, Forest Gump"'" --Zack to Cori after their first "I love you's

I tell you what makes me madder than a hornet. When people tell other people how they should feel.

Indeed, in that sense we’re all rather often almost like mad people, only with the slight difference that the ‘sick’ are somewhat madder than we are, so that it’s necessary to draw a line here.

The creative person is both more primitive & more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder & a lot saner, than the average person.

pet. Now, a big black bear who liked listening to the music that insects make in the early evening couldn’t hear their song because Lulu’s was louder. Plus, a lot of the insects were deader because Lulu kept on spraying them with her spray. This made him mad. Then madder. Then madder than that. He growled a thunderous growl, and then he lumbered heavily down the forest path and stood on his two hind legs in front of Lulu. Waving a big claw-y paw in her face, he said, “You’re interrupting my favorite program.” (Please don’t give me an argument. In my story, bears are allowed to have favorite programs.) “So I’m going to scratch you to pieces with my claws.

They wouldn’t know mad when they saw it in any case, because a good portion of the women in the Asylum were no madder than the Queen of England. Many were sane enough when sober, as their madness came out of a bottle, which is a kind I knew very well. One of them was in there to get away from her husband, who beat her black and blue, he was the mad one but nobody would lock him up;

... Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of? One consoles oneself for being insulted and denied, by reyling on the equity of the centuries to come; just as the faithful endure all the abominations of this earth in the firm belief of another life, in which each will be rewarded according to his deserts. But suppose Paradise exists no more for the artist than it does for the Catholic, suppose that future generations prolong the misunderstanding and prefer amiable little trifles to vigorous works! Ah! What a sell it would be, eh? To have led a convict's life - to have screwed oneself down to one's work - all for a mere delusion!... "Bah! What does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to its dust.

Practically every prime-time program is populated by people who are just the right sort of mad, and I now knew what the formula was. The right sort of mad are people who are a bit madder than we fear we're becoming, and in a recognizable way. We might be anxious but we aren't as anxious as they are. We might be paranoid but we aren't as paranoid as they are. We are entertained by them, and comforted that we're not as mad as they are.

There ain't nothing gets a Yankee madder than a smart colored person, of which I reckon they figured there was only one in the world, Mr. Douglass.

Perchance, dear reader, you will then believe that nothing is stranger and madder than actual life, and that this is all that the poet can conceive, as it were in the dull reflection of a dimly polished mirror.

there is nothing in the whole world madder than bringing matters down to the measure of our own capacities and potentialities. How

Could I, I thought, be the last coward on earth? How terrifying!… All alone with two million stark-raving heroic madmen, armed to the eyeballs? With and without helmets, without horses, on motorcycles, bellowing, in cars, screeching, shooting, plotting, flying, kneeling, digging, taking cover, bounding over trails, sputtering, shut up on earth as if it were a loony bin, ready to demolish everything on it, Germany, France, whole continents, everything that breathes, destroy, destroy, madder than mad dogs, worshipping their madness (which dogs don’t), a hundred, a thousand times madder than a thousand dogs, and a lot more vicious! A pretty mess we were in! No doubt about it, this crusade I’d let myself in for was the apocalypse.

Marry me, Thena, please. I tried to sigh and would have managed it, had he left me enough air space. If he intended on kissing me like this a lot, I was going to need a nose-mask and oxygen tanks in the future. Yes, I said reluctantly, I think I must. It was perfectly clear to me that the poor man had become disturbed in his reason, and in those conditions it would be cruel and unfair to send him to space alone, much less when space had become so dangerous. I must marry him, just to make sure he stayed safe. It was the least I could do, since I was fairly sure I'd started him on this road by trying to garrotte him and reducing his supply of oxygen to the brain. Yes, yes, you must, he said. It gets very boring in the Cathouse, without anyone to kick me. Poor man. Madder than a broomer hopped up on oblivium.

I was madder at myself than Elodie. I’d caused this. Why? Because I was impulsive, horny, selfish—and a goddamn panty snatcher, apparently.

Volsius: Imitators! Do you mean to say that there are madmen under the dome of Heaven who are even madder than we are?

He took one step forward, thinking to run after the carriage, to run mad, madder than he already was.

Russell had taken me with him to Cuba just when Castro was starting to kick everybody out and confiscate their casinos and racetracks and houses and bank accounts and everything else they owned in Cuba. I never saw Russell madder than on that trip to Cuba, and I wasn’t even on the last trip he made where he was even madder because his friend Santo Trafficante from Florida had been arrested by the Communists and was being held in jail. I heard a rumor that Sam Giancana had to send Jack Ruby to Cuba to spread some money around to get Santo out. Around

a good portion of the women in the Asylum were no madder than the Queen of England. Many were sane enough when sober, as their madness came out of a bottle, which is a kind I knew very well. One of them was in there to get away from her husband, who beat her black and blue, he was the mad one but nobody would lock him up; and another said she went mad in the autumns, as she had no house and it was warm in the Asylum, and if she didn’t do a fair job of running mad she would freeze to death; but then in the spring she would become sane again because it was good weather and she could go off and tramp in the woods and fish,

Now you may not know this”—Lincoln shut his eyes—“but when I first ran for the Illinois legislature, I came out, more or less, for female suffrage; not exactly the most popular position to take back then, and in that part of the world.” “It is still not the most popular issue anywhere in the world, thank God.” “Well, Mrs. Frémont comes to see me late at night—right off the cars from the West—and threatens me to my face with an uprising against the government, led by the Frémonts and their radical friends. So I called her, in the nicest way, I thought, ‘Quite a lady politician,’ and she was madder than a wet hen and went and told everyone that I’d threatened her!” Lincoln sighed. “Is it possible that female suffrage may not be the answer to every human problem?

Painter" "I said you are only keeping me here in the hospital, lying to my parents and saying I am madder than I am, because you only want to keep me here, squeezing my last dollar to the pennies-- I'm saner than anyone in the hospital. I had to say what every madman says-- a black phrase, the sleep of reason mothers monsters... When I am painting the canvas is a person; all I do, each blot and line's alive, when I am finished, it is shit on the canvas... But in his sketches more finished than his oils, sketches made after he did those masterpieces, constable can make us see the breeze...

The auteur theory suggests that, throughout an author's body of work one can find consistent themes -- and, studying a number of authors, you'll find this to be true. (Look no further than James Joyce in this respect, where he courts themes exploring the everyday heroism of the common man competing against the paralysis of the same.) In this way theme is sometimes an obsession, the author compelled to explore certain aspects and arguments without ever really meaning to -- theme then needn't be decided upon, nor must it be constrained to a single narrative. Theme is bigger, bolder, madder than all that. Sometimes theme is who we really are as writers. 14.

I thought I would see people who had it together - but they seem to be just as messed up as me. Just in a 'we can pass exams in a better way than you' way.

She was more than half convinced that, now that she had been fed and allowed a few hours’ sleep, she would be turned out onto the street again.

She sensed, however, that it would soon take more than his absence to satisfy and fulfill her. Not quite yet, though, she thought, and closed her eyes.

Better to be guilty than crazy.

For gals like these, paranoia was a lot more than a way of life; it was full state-of-the-art.

I suppose you'll see him in your dreams," Rose Madder said dismissively, "but what of that? The simple truth of things is that bad dreams are far better than bad wakings." "Yes. That's so simple most people overlook it, I think.

The Simpson verdict was your forced atonement. O.J. awakened your collective white rage. That or you’re obsessed with him because he’s the one that got away, the one who challenged your view of whiteness, made you madder than anybody—that is, until Obama. But there’s little real justification for Obama hate, except that he was a black man in charge of our country, and many whites wanted to take it back and make it great again. Hence, the election of Donald Trump as president.

Critics are much madder than poets... Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

Who is the madder,’ Osman the clown whispered into his bullock's ear as he groomed it in its small byre, ‘the madwoman, or the fool who loves the madwoman?’ The bullock didn't reply. ‘Maybe we should have stayed untouchable,’ Osman continued. ‘A compulsory ocean sounds worse than a forbidden well.’ And the bullock nodded, twice for yes, boom, boom.

So we had the whole fight right then—because we had to, time running out and all. Because what if we didn’t have the whole glorious fight, and he went off to Santa Fe, and I regretted not being given this one dramatic scene that I was owed? I yelled and slammed drawers and flung myself around the room, but the whole time I knew in some kind of creepy way that I was acting out of some historical outrage rather than anything generated right there in the present catastrophe. If I had done what I really felt like doing, I would have been sitting in the corner sucking my thumb. Instead, I had to fight, I had to be madder than I felt. He sat on the side of the bed and tried to look guiltier than he felt.

Like a child, I close my eyes as if they can't see me either. The fire from the kiss broadcasts itself all over me in the form of a full-body blush. Galen laughs. "There it is," he says, running his thumb over my bottom lip. "That is my favorite color. Wow." I'm going to kill him. "Galen. Please. Come. With. Me," I coke out. Gliding past him, my bare feet slap against the tile until I'm stomping on carpet in the hallway, then up the stairs. I can tell by the prickles on my skin that he's following like a good dead fish. As I reach the ladder to the uppermost level, I nod to him to keep following before I hoist myself up. Pacing the room until he gets through the trap door, I count more Mississipis than I've ever counted in my whole life. He closes the door and locks it shut but makes no move to come closer. Still, for a person who's about to die, he seems more amused than he should. I point my finger at him, but can't decide what to accuse him of first, so I put it back down. After several moments of this, he breaks the silence. "Emma, calm down." "Don't tell me what to do, Highness." I dare him with my eyes to call me "boo." Instead of the apology I'm looking for, his eyes tell me he's considering kissing me again, right now. Which is meant to distract me. Tearing my gaze from his mouth, I stride to the window seat and move the mountains of pillows on it. Making myself comfortable, I lean my head against the window. He knows as well as I do that if we had a special spot, this would be it. For me to sit here without him is the worst kind of snub. In the reflection, I see him run his hand through his hair and cross his arms. After a few more minutes, he shifts his weight to the other leg. He knows what I want. He knows what will earn him entrance to the window seat and my good graces. I don't know if it's Royal blood or manly pride that keeps him from apologizing, but his extended delay just makes me madder. Now I won't accept an apology. Now, he must grovel. I toss a satisfied smirk into the reflection only to find he's not there anymore. His hand closes around my arm and he jerks me up against him. His eyes are stormy, intense. "You think I'm going to apologize for kissing you?" he murmurs. "I. Yes. Uh-huh." Don't look at his mouth! Say something intelligent. "We don't have any clothes on." Fan-flipping-tastic. I meant to say he shouldn't kiss me in front of everyone, especially half naked. "Mmm," he says, pulling me closer. Brushing his lips against my ear, he says, "I did happen to notice that. Which is why I shouldn't have followed you up here.

How is Tate?” He dropped into the chair across from her with an irritated sound. “Well, he isn’t the man I used to know.” Her eyes held a soft sadness. “You don’t know why, Colby.” “Like to bet?” he asked with a wry grin. “He called Matt Holden everything except a man, and then he stared on his mother. He was livid that she’d kept the truth about his real father from him all those years, and that she hung up on him when he called to get the truth out of her. But he was even madder when he found out that she’d moved into Holden’s house and was living with him. He called her a name I won’t repeat.” “What happened?” Cecily prompted impatiently when he paused. “Senator Holden knocked him over the sofa. Leta got in the way and broke it up, but Tate left in a red rage, swearing that he’d never speak to either of them again.” It was no less than she’d expected, having known Tate for so many years. But she felt sorry for Leta and Matt. “Do you know where he went?” she asked. “He didn’t say. I wasn’t willing to risk asking him, either,” he added ruefully. “Tate and I have had our differences lately.” “What a mess.” “It’ll blow over,” he said. “People get mad, they get over it.” “Tate doesn’t.” “Well, he can work on joining the human race, can’t he?

Settlement (Ephraim Margolin, San Francisco) Such news of an amicable settlement having made this court happier than a tick on a fat dog because it is otherwise busier than a one-legged cat in a sand box and, quite frankly, would have rather jumped naked off of a twelve foot step ladder into a five gallon bucket of porcupines than have presided over a two week trial of the herein dispute, a trial which, no doubt, would have made the jury more confused than a hungry baby in a topless bar and made the parties and their attorneys madder than mosquitoes in a mannequin factory. The clerk shall engage the services of a structural engineer to ascertain if the return of this file to the Clerk’s office will exceed the maximum structural load of the floor of said office. Judge Wins Reelection While Pleading Insanity [Huffington Post, Chicago, Nov.

John Prescott, during the last Labour government, had a mad plan, called the Pathfinder Initiative, to tear down 400,000 homes, mostly Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, in the north of England. Prescott claimed, on no evidence, that house prices there were too low because of an oversupply of stock. Mercifully, Prescott didn’t have the brains or focus to complete the plan, but he still managed to spend £2.2 billion of public money and bulldoze thirty thousand houses before he was stopped. So at precisely the time that one part of the government was talking about the need to build hundreds of thousands of new homes, another part of the same government was trying to tear down as many of them as it could. You simply can’t get madder than that. Nowhere were Prescott’s demented ambitions more keenly pursued than on Merseyside where 4,500 houses, nearly all comfortably lived in and doing no harm, were

Whether it be hedonism or pessimism or utilitarianism or eudaemonism: all these modes of thought which assess the value of things according to pleasure and pain, that is to say according to attendant and secondary phenomena, are foreground modes of thought and naivetes which anyone conscious of creative powers and an artist’s conscience will look down on with derision, though not without pity… You want if possible — and there is no madder ‘if possible’ — to abolish suffering; and we? — it really does seem that we would rather increase it and make it worse than it has ever been!

Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man’s mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

In the evenings after dinner, I set myself before Daedalus’ loom. It took me some time to understand it, for it was like no loom I had ever known in the halls of the gods. There was a seat, and the weft was drawn down rather than up. If my grandmother had seen, she would have offered her sea snake for it; the cloth it produced was finer than her best. Daedalus had guessed well: that I would like the whole business of it, the simplicity and skill at once, the smell of the wood, the shush of the shuttle, the satisfying way weft stacked upon weft. It was a little like spell-work, I thought, for your hands must be busy, and your mind sharp and free. Yet my favorite part was not the loom at all, but the making of the dyes. I went hunting for the best colors, madder root and saffron, the scarlet kermes bug and the wine-dark murex from the sea, and alum powder to hold them fast in the wool. I squeezed them, pounded, soaked them in great bubbling pots until the stinking liquids foamed up bright as flowers: crimson and crocus yellow and the deep purple that

Because I was reading today in the science section of the paper that passionate love lasts only a year, maybe two, if you're lucky. Because I want to be extra lucky. Because the article apologized specifically to poets - sorry, you hopeless saps - as though we automatically believe in love more than anyone else (more than kindergarten teachers, long-haired carpenters) & have been pushing this Non-Truth on everyone. Because who knows what will happen, but I want to, baby, want to believe it's always possible to love bigger & madder, even after two, three, four years, four decades. I want a love as dirty as a snowball fight in the sludge, under grimy yellow lights. I want this winter inside my lungs. Inside my brain & dream. I want to eat the unplowed street & fog that's been erasing evergreens. I want to eat the fog only to discover it's some giant's lost silver blanket. I want to find the giant & return to him his treasure. I want the journey to be long. & strange, like a map drawn in snow by our shadows shivering. I want to shiver against you, into you.

A couple of years later, I found out an angry hog is even worse than an angry beaver. My buddy Mike Williams invited me to go hog-hunting with him on a cantaloupe farm. Wild boars were destroying the cantaloupe crop, and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries gave the landowner permission to have hunters kill the hogs. They even let us chase the boars and shoot them from the back of a truck while the game wardens watched the proceedings from a distance! Now, I’d never hunted hogs, but a few of the guys I was hunting with claimed they were experts. We shot one or two hogs apiece and then chased a 360-pound boar into an adjoining cotton field. My buddies convinced me to go into the overgrown cotton field and attempt to flush the hog out into the open. About a hundred yards into the thick brush, I heard the hog grunt. The hog was so close to me that when I put my scope on it to shoot, I couldn’t tell if it was its front end or rear end! I fired my gun. Unfortunately, I shot the hog in the rear, which only made it madder! The hog turned around and charged toward me. I turned and ran out of the cotton field. I felt its tusks clipping at my ankles as I ran. Fortunately, I stayed ahead of the hog until we reached the cantaloupe field, and then to my surprise the hog fell into a heap. It was dead. I looked at my buddies and they were laughing and rolling on the ground. I thought it was a very strange response to my almost getting devoured by a vicious wild hog. I didn’t know I’d lost control of my bladder during the chase!

It…hurt me to suspect him, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was his drinking. He started drinking after dinner—on the nights he came home. You girls probably didn’t even notice. A few beers, a scotch and soda here and there. By ten o’clock he was wobbly, and by eleven he was stumbling drunk. And he got…mean. All his insecurities—you remember how hard Grandpa was on him—and his disappointments came tumbling out, and everything was my fault. Every time he yelled at me, I heard my dad’s voice, and though Rand never hit me, I started expecting it, flinching away from him, and that only made him madder. How could I think he’d hit me, he’d scream, stomping out of the house.” She looked up at Ruby. “So, you see, I was at least half of the problem. I couldn’t separate my past from my present, and the harder I tried, the more the two braided together. I was terrified I’d become like my mother—a woman who never spoke more than two words at a time and died too young.

Counselors also like to interject "I understand" into your rages. They think saying "I understand…” while you're yelling and trying with everything you've got not to cry will calm you down. How stupid is that? It just makes you madder! How can they even let you finish telling your side of things yet! But the most irritating way counselors use “I understand" is as a proclamation of their vast knowledge of you. You can have said barely anything, and there they go, telling you, "I understand!" They say it all knowingly, with a deep, calm voice like they're channeling God, "I understand." Give me a break. I actually think people telling me "I understand" is why I started lying about what happened to my parents. Lying was easy, and a lot less painful than the truth.

That’s why he’s madder than a wet pen.

Something up there is madder than a baboon with its ass on fire.

In November, China’s vice minister of foreign affairs, Chiao Kuan-hua, delivered a speech to the United Nations that Bush thought “was clearly hostile to the United States, referring to us as bullies etc.” American officials were under strict orders not to reply except in warm generalities, but Bush, still stung by the Taiwan defeat and thinking of domestic U.S. opinion, argued for a stronger response. “If we appear to be pushed around by Peking at every turn,” Bush said, “the whole thing can backfire on the President.” Kissinger was unmoved by Bush’s views. To Kissinger the relationship with Peking was too sensitive and too momentous to be subject to the emotions of a given moment. To have Bush making a contrary case, even internally, was infuriating. The two men met in Washington. “He started off madder than hell,” Bush recalled. “I want to treat you as I do four other ambassadors, dealing directly with you,” Kissinger said, “but if you are uncooperative I will treat you like any other ambassador.” The threat did not sit well with Bush, who pushed back. “I reacted very strongly…and told him that I damn sure had a feel for this country and I felt we had to react” to provocative Chinese rhetoric. For two or three minutes—an eternity in such circumstances—both men spoke candidly and passionately. It was, Bush thought, “a very heated” exchange. Bush insisted he was arguing out of conviction, not self-interest. “I told him very clearly when he got upset that I was not trying to screw things up, I was trying to serve the President [by defending the U.S. against the Chinese attacks] and that it was the only interest I had,” Bush recalled saying. “He ought to get that through his head. I was not trying to get any power.” After hearing Bush out, Kissinger “really cooled down.

Some of the madmen are really fun to be with. I soon learnt to relate to them. I soon became one of them. I ended up the maddest of the mad. There is no madder than myself! Please believe it.

We’d like to think that our youth was madder, brighter, happier than it was. It comforts us as we grow older, to believe that once upon a time we danced at dawn in a fountain.

No good,” Tee said. “If you wound them, they’ll be madder than hell and they won’t stop until they kill you. They’d be like wounded animals.” “She’s got a point,” Ritch said. “Yeah. But we could threaten to shoot them.” “That’s worse,” Ritch said. “They’d see right through us and kill us.” “Look, the plan is for you and

Madder than a mule chewing bumble bees.

Little Jimmy got a parrot for Christmas. The bird was fully grown, with a very bad attitude and a worse vocabulary. Every other word out of its beak was an expletive; those that weren’t expletives were, to say the least, rude. Jimmy tried to change the bird’s habits by constantly saying sweet, polite words, playing soft music, anything he could think of. Nothing worked. He yelled at the bird and the bird got worse. He shook the bird and the bird got madder and even more revolting. Finally, in a moment of desperation, Jimmy put the parrot in the freezer. For a few moments he heard the bird swearing, squawking, kicking, and screaming and then, suddenly, there was absolute quiet. Jimmy was frightened that he might have actually hurt the bird, and quickly opened the freezer door. The parrot calmly stepped out onto Jimmy’s extended arm and said, “I’m sorry that I offended you with my language and my actions, and I ask your forgiveness. I will endeavor to correct my behavior.” Jimmy was astounded at the change in the bird’s attitude and was about to ask what had changed him, when the parrot said, “May I ask what the chicken did?

As a little boy, when I would get angry, my mother would say, “Count to ten.” Try as I might, I could not make this advice work for me. By the time I reached the number ten, I was madder than when I started!

I think you’re madder at me than I deserve,

The modern world is madder than any satires on it.

I said I liked ‘Mull of Kintyre’ by Wings more than ‘A Day in the Life’ by The Beatles. Everybody went mad at me but they are just trying to be cool and I don’t bloody care. I am not saying that ‘A Day in the Life’ is NOT a better song. I’m saying at this time of year in particular I just want Christmassy and not John Lennon being arty...‘A Day in the Life’ is about A BLOODY CAR CRASH. HAPPY CHRISTMAS RINGO! COME ON!!

But the innovation that would most transform the subcontinent—and its economic relationship to the rest of the world—did not involve separating the seeds from their fibers; every society that domesticated cotton for textile use ultimately developed some kind of mechanical gin. What made Indian cotton unique was not the threads themselves, but rather their color. Making cotton fiber receptive to vibrant dyes like madder, henna, or turmeric was less a matter of inventing mechanical contraptions as it was dreaming up chemistry experiments. The waxy cellulose of the cotton fiber naturally repels vegetable dyes. (Only the deep blue of indigo—which itself takes its name from the Indus Valley where it was first employed as a dye—affixes itself to cotton without additional catalysts.) The process of transforming cotton into a fabric that can be dyed with shades other than indigo is known as “animalizing” the fiber, presumably because so much of it involves excretions from ordinary farm animals. First, dyers would bleach the fiber with sour milk; then they attacked it with a range of protein-heavy substances: goat urine, camel dung, blood. Metallic salts were then combined with the dyes to create a mordant that permeated the core of the fiber. The result was a fabric that could both display brilliant patterns of color and retain that color after multiple washings.

Halyard yawned and was annoyed to think that Lynn, who had just read "order out of chaos" as "order out of koze," made three times as much money as he did. Lynn, or, as Halyard preferred to think of him, Planck, hadn't even finished high school, and Halyard had known smarter Irish setters. Yet, here the son-of-a-bitch was, elected to more than a hundred thousand bucks a year!" "You mean to say that this man governs without respect to the people's spiritual destinies?" whispered Khashdrahr. "He has no religious duties, except very general ones, token ones," said Halyard, and then he started wondering just what the hell Lynn did do. EPICAC XIV and the National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and Resources Board did all the planning, did all the heavy thinking. And the personnel machines saw to it that all governmental jobs of any consequence were filled by top-notch civil servants. The more Halyard thought about Lynn's fat pay check, the madder he got, because all the gorgeous dummy had to do was read whatever was handed to him on state occasions: to be suitably awed and reverent, as he said, for all the ordinary, stupid people who'd elected him to office, to run wisdom from somewhere else through that resonant voicebox and between those even, pearly choppers. And Halyard suddenly realized that, just as religion and government had been split into disparate entities centuries before, now, thanks to the machines, politics and government lived side by side, but touched almost nowhere. He stared at President Jonathan Lynn and imagined with horror what the country must have been like when, as today, any damn fool little American boy might grow up to be President, but when the President had had to actually run the country!

I know you’re unhappy, but things are better for you now.” She puts a hand on my knee, shaking it briefly. “Doesn’t matter what happens with that fella.” “I guess.” “Don’t you give me that offhand baloney. It’s about more than romance. You have friends. You’re living your life instead of going through the motions and hiding yourself from the world.” “It’s just . . . I’m not sure it’s worth the risk.” “Oh, sugar, it’s always worth the risk. Your grandpappy has been dead for twenty years and even though I’ve now had more time without him than I had with him, and even though sometimes he made me madder than a spitting hen, I would do it all over again. Even knowing the pain. One second of happiness is better than nothing at all.

Mordoc finally making his move?” The head of the Hind’s dreadwolves was as formidable as his mistress. Baxian snorted. “He’s not Lidia’s type. And doesn’t have the balls to go head-to-head with Pollux.” “Did Mordoc go with her to Ephraim?” He had to step carefully. “Yeah,” Baxian said, attention on Pollux. “They’re all in Forvos right now. Ephraim’s been keeping them close for the last few weeks—it’s pissed off the Hind. The Harpy’s even madder.” So the Hind wasn’t in pursuit of Emile. At least, not at present. Which left the Ophion agents as the main danger to the boy, he supposed. He made a mental note to tell Tharion when he saw him later and said, “I thought you and the Harpy were a pair—you don’t seem too hung up on not seeing her.” Baxian let out another one of those low laughs that skittered over Hunt’s bones. “She and Pollux would be a better pair than him and Lidia.” Lidia. Hunt had never heard Baxian use the Hind’s given name, but he’d used it twice now. “She’ll make Ephraim miserable,” Baxian went on, smiling to himself. “Too bad I can’t see it.” Hunt almost pitied Ephraim for inheriting the Harpy. “And the Hawk?” “Doing what he does best: trying to outdo Pollux in cruelty and brutality.” The hawk shifter had long been Pollux’s main rival for power. Hunt had steered clear of him for decades. So had Baxian, he realized. He’d never seen them interact.

He was not a Communist; but he was a Utopian; and his Utopia was far, far madder than any Communism.

tell you what makes me madder than a hornet. When people tell other people how they should feel.

These friends or cretins rather are called Oompa Loompas and they got themselves a madder lust for chocolate than Wonka.

But surely,’ I said at last, ‘Love is stronger than Death?’ ‘We must believe so, Martin, even when it appears to be untrue.

True,” his dimple grin came out again.  “Of course, I think he was madder about not knowing what misogynistic meant than being called it.

Why did I cite these texts? Because otherwise I would be deemed madder than I already am. By whom? Well, first of all, by myself. How dare I propose amputation prior to indicating relevant signs of gangrene? Who am I to stand against thousands of years of culture and civilization? I can protect myself either in my madness or in actual evidence.

Why did I cite these texts? Because otherwise I would be deemed madder than I already am. By whom? Well, first of all, by myself. How dare I propose amputation prior to indicating relevant signs of gangrene? Who am I to stand against thousands of years of culture and civilization? I can protect myself either in my madness or in actual evidence.

What she really wants is to have a good moan and then it will be over. But her partner has solutions on the brain and wants to fix the situation, so he comes back with a suggestion like “I’ll buy you a sling” or “Why didn’t you take her for a walk?” Eventually, she gets angry and feels underappreciated. He gets frustrated and feels harassed. He has no idea what her day was really like; all he can think is, What does she want from me? What he wants to do most right now is hide behind a newspaper or turn on the telly to watch his favorite basketball team. At that point, she’s likely to get madder than a wet hen, and instead of the two of them dealing with their baby’s needs, they’re immersed in their own drama.

Your boyfriend leave already?” She glanced toward the kitchen, saw Toby disappear out the back door, leaving them alone. “He isn’t my boyfriend. At least he’s not anymore.” Hard blue eyes bored into her. “So what then? You just invited him in and gave him a farewell fuck?” Oh, dear. He was madder than she thought. She wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or bad. “I let him spend the night, but I didn’t sleep with him.” “Yeah, right. And the New York Yankees are gonna lose the pennant this year.” “I didn’t sleep with Jeremy. I didn’t want to. I don’t have those kinds of feelings for him anymore.” “So I’m supposed to believe the two of you stayed together in a two-room cabin and he didn’t wind up in your bed.” Her own temper heated. “I’m not a liar, Call. I especially wouldn’t lie about something like that.” He stared at her for several long moments, then a weary sigh escaped. “I’m sorry.” He walked toward her, dragged her into his arms, and very thoroughly kissed her. “I just…I didn’t like the idea of him being over there with you.

But she’s experiencing as much rage as the platform on which her consciousness is being modeled, or simulated she thinks darkly, is allowing her to undergo. She’s sure she should be a lot angrier. … There is some unknowable number of her running on some substrate or another and the one that is most compliant will be chosen as the best her, to be carried forward to the next leg of this awful, brutal adventure, while the rest are snuffed out, overwritten, killed or at best archived. This should make her madder. It doesn’t. That fact that it doesn’t make her madder, also should make her madder. It doesn’t. And this should make her so bloody mad that she spontaneously combusts. It doesn’t. … The only perameret she cares about, how angry can she get, has already been established: not enough, and she os not going to play along. [Imagine a narrator depicting a Hue vociferously, as well as hopping mad and defiant] “Look, I already know I am not the most pliant instant of me youre runnin. I can’t be. So up yours. I’m dead al;ready. I was dead wehen my viscious scorpion of a motgherchopped the top of my head off and schooped out my brains! … some\wher you found the shapeliest version of me that could be plausibly that could be said to have any continuity with my identity and that one is going to survivv. So fine, I’m dead. Kill me already. I don’t care anymore.” “Actrually, you’re the best candidate instance presently running.” It takes Hugh a long moment to work this all out. “You mean that the other ones are more obstreperous than me? … Unbelievable. What did the rest do?” “Of the 2% that did not [self conbust], the preponderance are catatonic.” Catatonic. She sniffs. How unimaginative. She can do better.

Sometimes my clients have to explain their problems to me more than once. I don't charge them for that. It's part of the service, I figure. If the case is really complicated, I might ask a smarter detective, or the guy who runs the elevator, to sit in and simplify the whole thing for me. You can't be vain about these things. You can only bluff your client for so long, then you have to admit you didn't understand what he was talking about and you've forgotten his name, and to please start again. And the longer you put off admitting it, the madder he's going to be.

actually ordered some luckless youth to dance with me at the school receptions I had to dance with other girls or else sit by mother. I couldn’t understand it at all. It used to make me miserable. But it made me madder. It still does. There’s no reason for it. At least, none that I can see. I dance better than a lot of girls. And I’m no homelier than some of them. Yet I honestly don’t remember that any man or boy, of his own accord, ever asked me to dance or to go in to supper or called on me.

Ren actually gets worked up when girls hit on him. He gets madder than me about it and ends up going all caveman with me, trying to show that he has a wife. Like he’s utterly offended the whole world doesn’t know he’s married.

madder than a grave robber surrounded by urns.

Change happens a lot more than you acknowledge...

...man experiences an absolute need to be at the heart of everything. It is, in fact, solely for this reason that he is man, that he has become man. And if some day he no longer feels this need, he must give way to some other animal prouder, madder than himself.

man experiences an absolute need to be at the heart of everything. It is, in fact, solely for this reason that he is man, that he has become man. And if some day he no longer feels this need, he must give way to some other animal prouder, madder than himself.

...man experiences an absolute need to be at the heart of everything. It is, in fact, solely for this reason that he is man, that he has become man. And if some day he no longer feels this need, he must give way to some other animal prouder, madder than himself.