“
What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
We weren’t ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves – surprise! – we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
“
I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.
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”
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
“
A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.
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”
Banksy (Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall)
“
among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all
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”
Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World)
“
If I love you more than you love me, I'm as good as dead. Yet I can't make myself take it back. I can't just walk away from you, because every time you pass by me without smiling, without touching my hand, or at least making eye contact, it feels like I'm dying inside. And I'm pretty sure that hurts worse than whatever Marc would do to me. Whatever your dad would do. Hell, Faythe, I'm pretty sure that never touching you again would hurt worse than the nastiest death Calvin could think up for me.
”
”
Rachel Vincent (Shift (Shifters, #5))
“
People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realize. You see someone in school everyday, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette of a coffee with them, and you talk about the weather or last night's air raid. But you don't talk so much about what was the nastiest thing you ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were 13, or what you imagine yourself doing with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance.
”
”
Elizabeth Wein (Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1))
“
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.
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”
John Maynard Keynes
“
I knew he believed in something that none of us ever do anymore. He believed in the nastiest word in the world. He believed in KINDNESS. Please tell me you remember kindness. Please tell me you remember kindness and joy, you cool motherfuckers.
”
”
Scott McClanahan (Crapalachia: A Biography of a Place)
“
Among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all.
”
”
Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World)
“
You stopped loving me. We're a sick, fucking toxic Möbius strip, Amy. We weren't ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves - surprise! - we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way. You don't even really love me, Amy. You don't even like me. Divorce me. Divorce me, and let's try to be happy.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
“
Skin boils! Boils cause serious pain and physical suffering, and you also have to consider the ugliness factor. Even the most powerful zit cream on earth would be no match for the Lord Almighty’s epidermal masterpieces. So this one wins for my pick of the nastiest of the first nine plagues -- a dubious honor indeed.
”
”
Spencer C Demetros (The Bible: Enter Here: Bringing God's Word to Life for Today's Teens)
“
It invites a search for ultimate causes: why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel)
“
The very nastiest and coarsest, I can't tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse. It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is horrid remains.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
“
They were small, brightly coloured, happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn't be too much education wasted.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (The Truth: Stage Adaptation)
“
You could be the ugliest, nastiest most miserable piece of shit known to man, but if you had a beating heart there was always a chance you'd turn into a diamond after a million years.
”
”
Conrad Williams (One)
“
Sometimes your kids will say the nastiest things, won't they, Rose? You want to ask,'Whose child is this?'"
Rose chuckled.
"But usually, they're just in some kind of pain. They need to work it out.
”
”
Mitch Albom (For One More Day)
“
Diplomacy is to do and say, the nastiest things in the nicest way.
”
”
Isaac Goldberg
“
Republican or Democrat, this nation's affluent urban and suburban classes understand their bread is buttered on the corporate side. The primary difference between the two parties is that the Republicans pretty much admit that they grasp and even endorse some of the nastiest facts of life in America. Republicans honestly tell the world: "Listen in on my phone calls, piss-test me until I'm blind, kill and eat all of my neighbors right in front of my eyes, but show me the money! Let me escape with every cent I can kick out of the suckers, the taxpayers, and anybody else I can get a headlock on, legally or otherwise." Democrats, in contrast, seem content to catalog the GOP's outrages against the Republic, showing proper indignation while laughing at episodes of The Daily Show. But they stand behind the American brand: imperialism. They "support our troops," though you will be hard put to find any of them who have served alongside them or who would send one of their own kids off to lose an eye or an arm in Iraq. They play the imperial game, maintain their credit ratings, and plan to keep the beach house and the retirement investments if it means sacrificing every damned Lynndie England in West Virginia.
”
”
Joe Bageant (Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War)
“
because I am the nastiest, stupidest, absurdest and most envious of all the worms on earth, who are not a bit better than I am, but, the devil knows why, are never put to confusion; while I shall always be insulted by every louse, that is my doom!
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)
“
Of all the animals on this planet, we are surely the nastiest, the most deceitful, the most murderous and vile. Despite our God, or because of him. Both.
”
”
Russell Banks (Cloudsplitter)
“
It is, however, with Hillary Clinton that we see the Medusa theme at its starkest and nastiest.
”
”
Mary Beard (Women & Power: A Manifesto)
“
We are not merely the most intelligent of animals. We also have a rare and perplexing combination of moral tendencies. We can be the nastiest of species and also the nicest.
”
”
Richard W. Wrangham (The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution)
“
One of the nastiest and most virulent addictions I have seen is workaholism
”
”
Arthur C. Brooks (From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life)
“
You changed Iggy’s color?” she asked, heading over to his cage, where, sure enough, the tiny imp had yet another new look. His neatly trimmed, gold, sparkly fur was now a much poofier ice blue with tiny crimps.
“Huh, I figured he’d be pink and purple,” Sophie admitted, pointing to Ro’s colorful pigtails.
Ro tossed her head, swishing her hair in the process. “Uh, no, I’m not sharing my fabulous style with anyone—much less a creature who spent the last hour eating his own toenails. But I thought it was only right to save your imp from being sparkle-fied—and I was going to be nice and turn him your favorite color. But apparently your favorite color is teal—and yeah, yeah, we all know why. But, um, do you realize how many of the nastiest little microbes are in that color?" She shuddered. "I couldn't do that to you—or the little dude. So I went with a nice ice blue. The kind of color you can't help but love. Classic. Reliable—
”
”
Shannon Messenger (Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #8))
“
Call it fate--call it talent. I had a knack for getting in the nastiest messes.
”
”
Carrie Clevenger (Crooked Fang (Crooked Fang #2))
“
Because I swear to you, sometimes the nastiest shit happens behind the prettiest doors, while everyone laughs and smiles and pretends everything’s okay.
”
”
Joanna Wylde (Reaper's Legacy (Reapers MC, #2))
“
...and though it was three in the morning, and he had to traverse some of the nastiest quarters in Paris, trouble passed him by. Everyone knows that God watches over drunkards and lovers.
”
”
Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers)
“
Angelo and I had the nastiest “deaf fights” where instead of speaking, we mouthed the words—“Fuck you” or “I want a divorce”—because we didn’t want the baby to be any more upset than she already was.
”
”
Leah Remini (Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology)
“
Adults seemed to view mannerly children as somehow superior, and hence deserving of better treatment. It was silly at best and dangerous at worst—some of the nastiest bullies in school were capable of pulling out exquisite manners at the drop of a hat—but it could work for her, when she wanted it to.
”
”
Seanan McGuire (In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children, #4))
“
sometimes the nastiest shit happens behind the prettiest doors, while everyone laughs and smiles and pretends everything’s okay. Here’s the thing about my world. We’re fucked up. We own it. We take care of business and move on.
”
”
Joanna Wylde (Reaper's Legacy (Reapers MC, #2))
“
People had always amazed him, he began. But they amazed him more since the sickness. For as long as the two of them had been together, he said, Gary’s mother had accepted him as her son’s lover, had given them her blessing. Then, at the funeral, she’d barely acknowledged him. Later, when she drove to the house to retrieve some personal things, she’d hunted through her son’s drawers with plastic bags twist-tied around her wrists.
“…And yet,” he whispered, “The janitor at school--remember him? Mr. Feeney? --he’d openly disapproved of me for nineteen years. One of the nastiest people I knew. Then when the news about me got out, after I resigned, he started showing up at the front door every Sunday with a coffee milkshake. In his church clothes, with his wife waiting out in the car. People have sent me hate mail, condoms, Xeroxed prayers…”
What made him most anxious, he told me, was not the big questions--the mercilessness of fate, the possibility of heaven. He was too exhausted, he said, to wrestle with those. But he’d become impatient with the way people wasted their lives, squandered their chances like paychecks.
I sat on the bed, massaging his temples, pretending that just the right rubbing might draw out the disease. In the mirror I watched us both--Mr. Pucci, frail and wasted, a talking dead man. And myself with the surgical mask over my mouth, to protect him from me.
“The irony,” he said, “… is that now that I’m this blind man, it’s clearer to me than it’s ever been before. What’s the line? ‘Was blind but now I see…’” He stopped and put his lips to the plastic straw. Juice went halfway up the shaft, then back down again. He motioned the drink away. “You accused me of being a saint a while back, pal, but you were wrong. Gary and I were no different. We fought…said terrible things to each other. Spent one whole weekend not speaking to each other because of a messed up phone message… That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I’m fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness--That’s what makes me sad. Everyone’s so scared to be happy.”
“I know what you mean,” I said.
His eyes opened wider. For a second he seemed to see me. “No you don’t,” he said. “You mustn’t. He keeps wanting to give you his love, a gift out and out, and you dismiss it. Shrug it off because you’re afraid.”
“I’m not afraid. It’s more like…” I watched myself in the mirror above the sink. The mask was suddenly a gag. I listened.
“I’ll give you what I learned from all this,” he said. “Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.
”
”
Wally Lamb (She’s Come Undone)
“
I happen to think Israel is in many ways a noble enterprise, worth defending and supporting, and that Israel's fashionable enemies in the West have allied themselves with some of the nastiest and most bigoted forces now loose in the world.
”
”
Peter Hitchens (Short Breaks in Mordor: Dawns and Departures of a Scribbler's Life)
“
I swear to you, sometimes the nastiest shit happens behind the prettiest doors, while everyone laughs and smiles and pretends everything’s okay. Here’s the thing about my world. We’re fucked up. We own it. We take care of business and move on.
”
”
Joanna Wylde (Reaper's Legacy (Reapers MC, #2))
“
Never for one minute have I taken you for reality . . . You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom . . . You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself . . . of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiest and stupidest of them.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
“
I'd always assumed Beth and I would be friends forever. But then in middle of the eighth grade, the Goldbergs went through the World's Nastiest Divorce.
Beth went a little nuts.
I don't blame her. When her dad got involved with this twenty-one year old dental hygienist, Beth got involved with the junk food aisle at the grocery store. She carried processed snack cakes the way toddlers carry teddy bears. She gained, like, twenty pounds, but I didn't think it was a big deal. I figured she'd get back to her usual weight once the shock wore off.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the only person who noticed.
May 14 was 'Fun and Fit Day" at Surry Middle School, so the gym was full of booths set up by local health clubs and doctors and dentists and sports leagues, all trying to entice us to not end up as couch potatoes. That part was fine. What wasn't fine was when the whole school sat down to watch the eighth-grade cheerleaders' program on physical fitness.
”
”
Katie Alender (Bad Girls Don't Die (Bad Girls Don't Die, #1))
“
nobody told me the second I gave my life to him, he would start tilling up the very deep places of my heart, revealing the darkest, nastiest things. Nor was I told about the stuff that would come to the surface so that I could deal with it and find my way to joy, through the cross. No one really preached that message.
”
”
Matt Chandler (The Mingling of Souls: God's Design for Love, Marriage, Sex, and Redemption)
“
Oh, you have the nastiest way of making virtues sound so stupid.”
“But virtues are stupid. Do you care if people talk?
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
“
It's ironic that it's sometimes the loudest and nastiest music which seems to calm me down the most.
”
”
Lou Brutus
“
Some may have been as hierarchical, tense and violent as the nastiest chimpanzee group, while others were as laid-back, peaceful and lascivious as a bunch of bonobos.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
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the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies.
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
“
Nobody sees themselves as 'the bad guy.' Even the nastiest, most evil people are heroes in their own minds.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (The Shadow Club Rising (Shadow Club, #2))
“
truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies.
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel)
“
We weren't ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves - surprise! - we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
“
Maybe it's the shadows that beckon, but I've created some of my nastiest work in the middle of the night.
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”
Megan Denby
“
I knew nothing at all of the art of diplomacy, which I have since diagnosed as the ability to make the nastiest possible comment in the nicest possible way.
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”
Carlos P. Romulo (I Walked With Heroes)
“
Verla says that nobody thinks of himself as a villain. Even the nastiest person thinks that he is in the right.
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”
Pat Murphy (The Wild Girls)
“
Of all the mean and wicked things a landlord can do, shutting up his footpath is the nastiest.
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”
John Ruskin
“
We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
“
He turns around, and when he sees me standing there, he looks scared. That’s something useful. Because I’m not going to let him go. He may think he was lying when he said all those nice things to lure me home. But I know different. I know Nick can’t lie like that. I know that as he recited those words, he realized the truth. Ping! Because you can’t be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. Our kind of love can go into remission, but it’s always waiting to return. Like the world’s sweetest cancer...
"We’re a sick, fucking toxic Möbius strip, Amy. We weren’t ourselves when we fell in love, and when we became ourselves – surprise! – we were poison. We complete each other in the nastiest, ugliest possible way. You don’t really love me, Amy. You don’t even like me. Divorce me. Divorce me, and let’s try to be happy.’
‘I won’t divorce you, Nick. I won’t. And I swear to you, if you try to leave, I will devote my life to making your life as awful as I can. And you know I can make it awful.
”
”
Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
“
[Soho] is all things to all men, catering comprehensively for those needs which money can buy. You see it as you wish. An agreeable place to dine; a cosmopolitan village tucked away behind Piccadilly with its own mysterious village life, one of the best shopping centres for food in London, the nastiest and most sordid nursery of crime in Europe. Even the travel journalists, obsessed by its ambiguities, can't make up their minds.
”
”
P.D. James (Unnatural Causes (Adam Dalgliesh, #3))
“
What are you on?' said AJ. 'Leon's mum has died and you are determined to add to the total sum of misery by going out with the girlfriend of the nastiest piece of manhood that was ever assembled in the factory of life...
”
”
Sally Gardner (The Door That Led to Where)
“
Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me. ‘Sluggard’—why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best club by right, and should find my occupation in continually respecting myself. I knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte. He considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself. He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite right, too. Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a gluteton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I have long had visions of it. That ‘sublime and beautiful’ weighs heavily on my mind at forty But that is at forty; then—oh, then it would have been different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything ‘sublime and beautiful.’ I should have snatched at every opportunity to drop a tear into my glass and then to drain it to all that is ‘sublime and beautiful.’ I should then have turned everything into the sublime and the beautiful; in the nastiest, unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the sublime and the beautiful.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead)
“
I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. 'We spent one night together.'
'You had sex then?'
'No we crocheted a quilt.' I cocked my head to side and gave him my nastiest glare." Lorelei Preston to Agent Brody-The Wild Hunt
”
”
Ashley Jeffery (The Wild Hunt)
“
The man radiated power, strength and raw sex. He was the biggest, nastiest bastard in the room – not to mention easy on the eyes – and deep down inside I just knew we’d make beautiful babies together. Too bad I already sort of had a boyfriend…Shade was so potent we’d probably have quintuplets or something crazy on the first try.
You don’t even want a baby, I reminded my quivering ovaries.
Jump him! Jump him and ride him like a cowgirl! they snapped back.
”
”
Joanna Wylde (Shade's Lady (Reapers MC #6.5))
“
Such was Frémont’s fame that, in 1856, he was nominated as the Republican Party’s first presidential candidate. The ensuing campaign was “one of the nastiest in the nation’s history.” Indulging in the kind of unbridled calumny that makes modern-day mudslinging seem like the height of civility, Frémont’s adversaries branded him “a secret papist” (a harsh accusation in an era of virulent anti-Catholic bigotry), a bastard, an adulterer, a native-born Frenchman, and the son of a prostitute.
”
”
Harold Schechter (Man-Eater: The Life and Legend of an American Cannibal)
“
but the stories on the edge of civilization are horrible things. They’re as cruel and violent as the nastiest fairy tales, but they don’t have any hope or happily-ever-afters. They have victims, not heroes. The best you get is to escape and go home.
”
”
Richard Roberts (Quite Contrary)
“
The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies realized ... and it all happens, fittingly enough, in the dark.
”
”
Stephen King (Danse Macabre)
“
I start to drift back to sleep when my traitorous nose sends SOS signals to my stomach about the bacon-filled air floating under my door. Being the little bitch my stomach is, she betrays me in the nastiest way and grumbles loudly, churning in on herself, begging for a slice of bacon.
”
”
Meghan Quinn (My Best Friend's Ex (Binghamton, #2))
“
He had been looking for her all his life, and even when he thought he had found her, in other ports and other places, he shied away. He stood in her bedroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. Clean as a whistle, having just said the nastiest thing he could think of to her. Staring at a heart-red tree desperately in love with a woman he could not risk loving because he could not afford to lose her. For if he loved and lost this woman whose sleeping face was the limit his eyes could safely behold and whose wakened face threw him into confusion, he would surely lose the world. So he made himself disgusting to her. Insulted and offended her. Gave her sufficient cause to help him keep his love in chains and hoped to God the lock would hold. It snapped like a string.
”
”
Toni Morrison (Tar Baby)
“
SUPER KITTY GAS BOMB!” Jack yelled, throwing Bruce at the Great Gourd. The evoker ducked, and Bruce flew right over his head. “HAHAHeheheh! YOU MISSED, FOOL!” the evoker yelled. “Your one big play and you MISSED!” Jack smirked. “I wasn’t aiming for you.” The evoker spun around to witness a horrible sight. The rotten flesh had finally had its effect on Bruce, and the cat’s eyes crossed as he let out the hugest, nastiest, greenest fart he had ever had.
”
”
Pixel Ate (The Accidental Minecraft Family: Book 12)
“
Because diseases have been the biggest killers of people, they have also been decisive shapers of history. Until World War II, more victims of war died of war-borne microbes than of battle wounds. All those military histories glorifying great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies.
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
“
Feminist' gets misrepresented as a dirty word, echoing throughout the timeline of experiences of activists in the women's movement since the 70's and longer; we've been seen as the radical feminists who want women to leave their husbands, become lesbians, dye their hair green. If wanting a woman to be able to own her own sexuality, to be able to live life with freedom and dignity and find and make her own choices are these things, then yes, we are nasty women - the nastiest around.
”
”
Laura Jones (Nasty Women)
“
The woods grew increasingly dense as Wolf walked farther from the castle. A hoot from an owl just overhead made Aralorn-the-mouse cringe tighter against his neck. “Lots of nasties in these woods,” she said in a mouselike voice devoid of all but a hint of humor.
“And I,” announced Wolf in a grim voice that was designed to let Aralorn know that it was time to be serious, “am the nastiest of all.”
“Are you really?” asked Aralorn in an interested sort of tone. “Oh, I just adore nasties.”
Wolf stopped and looked at the mouse sitting innocently on his shoulder. Most people cowered under that look. Aralorn began, industriously, to clean her whiskers. When Wolf started to walk again, though, she said in a stage whisper, “I really do, you know.
”
”
Patricia Briggs (Masques (Sianim, #1 / Aralorn, #1))
“
With just about every script, in almost every corner of the set, I was faced with the truth: This was my parents' life. My mother had sat in handcuffs; my father had once worn an orange jumpsuit like the dozens that sat folded in our wardrobe department. For the other actors and me on our show, this was all fantasy, the re-creation of a world we knew little about; for Mami and Papi, it could not have been any more real or painful...I've had so many scenes in which Flaca & I are doing the dirty work, like cleaning the kitchen or mopping the floors, which is when I think of my parents most. Long before they ended up in prison, they'd spent years handling the nastiest jobs, the ones often avoided by others. Manual labor. Low pay. No respect. They must've felt so trapped. It must've been so hard for them to maintain their dignity when others looked down on them or, worse, didn't see them at all.
”
”
Diane Guerrero (In the Country We Love: My Family Divided)
“
You Are What You Eat
Take food for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself - as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gerard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer.How does a plate of sheep brain's sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That's revolting.
Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig's shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin', but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what's their rationale? And what about all the expectations? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff 'em in an intestine, and you've got yourself respectable sausage or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years aqo by an advertising hired to sell more bacon, and the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, not ketchup.
Think it's rational to be grossed out by eating bugs? Think again. A hundred grams of dehydrated cricket contains 1,550 milligrams of iron, 340 milligrams of calcium, and 25 milligrams of zinc - three minerals often missing in the diets of the chronic poor. Insects are richer in minerals and healthy fats than beef or pork. Freaked out by the exoskeleton, antennae, and the way too many legs? Then stick to the Turf and forget the Surf because shrimps, crabs, and lobsters are all anthropods, just like grasshoppers. And they eat the nastiest of what sinks to the bottom of the ocean, so don't talk about bugs' disgusting diets. Anyway, you may have bug parts stuck between your teeth right now. The Food and Drug Administration tells its inspectors to ignore insect parts in black pepper unless they find more than 475 of them per 50 grams, on average. A fact sheet from Ohio State University estimates that Americans unknowingly eat an average of between one and two pounds of insects per year.
An Italian professor recently published Ecological Implications of Mini-livestock: Potential of Insects, Rodents, Frogs and Snails. (Minicowpokes sold separately.) Writing in Slate.com, William Saletan tells us about a company by the name of Sunrise Land Shrimp. The company's logo: "Mmm. That's good Land Shrimp!" Three guesses what Land Shrimp is. (20-21)
”
”
Christopher Ryan
“
The down side is that more and more of them keep coming. The noise is like a dinner bell. Hungries are crowding into the green space from the streets on every side, at what you’d have to call a dead run. There’s no limit to their numbers, and there is a limit to his ammo. Which he hits, suddenly. The gun stops vibrating in his hands and the noise of his shots dies away through layers of echoes. He ejects the empty magazine, gropes for another in his pocket. He’s done this so often he could go through the moves in his sleep. Slap the new mag in and give it a quick, sharp tug, pivoting it on the forward lip so it locks into place. Pull the bolt all the way back. The bolt sticks halfway. The weapon’s just dead weight until he can clear whatever’s jamming it–the first round, most likely, elbowed in the chamber. And two hungries are on top of him now, triangulating from left and right. One of them used to be a man, the other a woman. They’re about a second away from the world’s nastiest three-way. It’s
”
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M.R. Carey (The Girl With All the Gifts)
“
Once I got into college I didn’t think about joining up again. But on September 11, 2001, everything changed. Now my country was under attack. We might go to war and I needed to be a part of that. My country needed me.
I just kept running until finally I stopped and realized I had run quite far from the house. And I was thirsty. I saw a gas station and headed that way. There were cars lined up all the way down the street to get gas. It looked like something out of a disaster movie. Everyone was freaking out. All of the people in the cars had the same terrified look on their faces.
I walked into the gas station convenience store, grabbed a Gatorade, and got in line. And then when I got to the counter I said the stupidest thing I could have said. The cashier was a Middle Eastern man and I said to him, “Business is good today, isn’t it?”
He glared at me like I was the rudest, nastiest person on the planet. He didn’t have to reply. His face said it all. Inside my head I was screaming, Why did you say that? I was so distraught over what I’d seen on the TV, about what was happening to my country, I think I had pulled up my imaginary shield and gone into emotional protection mode. It’s what I do when I am upset or uncomfortable.
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Noah Galloway (Living with No Excuses: The Remarkable Rebirth of an American Soldier)
“
You know what Dex has everyone calling me now?” she asked. “I’m sure you’d be proud of him.” “The Mysterious Lady F?” Ro guessed. “Ugh, I wish. Nope, it’s… Lady Fos-Boss.” The confession was almost worth it when Keefe couldn’t help giving her a quick smirk. “I knew I liked that boy,” Ro announced. “In fact, I even tried out one of his little tricks—see?” She pointed to Sophie’s desk, and it took Sophie a second to figure out what she meant. “You changed Iggy’s color?” she asked, heading over to his cage, where, sure enough, the tiny imp had yet another new look. His neatly trimmed, gold, sparkly fur was now a much poofier ice blue with tiny crimps. “Huh, I figured he’d be pink and purple,” Sophie admitted, pointing to Ro’s colorful pigtails. Ro tossed her head, swishing her hair in the process. “Uh, no, I’m not sharing my fabulous style with anyone—much less a creature who spent the last hour eating his own toenails. But I thought it was only right to save your imp from being sparkle-fied—and I was going to be nice and turn him your favorite color. But apparently your favorite color is teal—and yeah, yeah, we all know why. But, um, do you realize how many of the nastiest little microbes are that color?” She shuddered. “I couldn’t do that to you—or the little dude. So I went with a nice ice blue. The kind of color you can’t help but love. Classic. Reliable—
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Shannon Messenger (Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #8))
“
April. It teaches us everything. The coldest and nastiest days of the year can happen in April. It won’t matter. It’s April. The English word for the month comes from the Roman Aprilis, the Latin aperire: to open, to uncover, to make accessible, or to remove whatever stops something from being accessible. It maybe also partly comes from the name of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, whose happy fickleness with various gods mirrors the month’s own showery-sunny fickleness. Month of sacrifice and month of playfulness. Month of restoration, of fertility-festivity. Month when the earth and the buds are already open, the creatures asleep for the winter have woken and are already breeding, the birds have already built their nests, birds that this time last year didn’t exist, busy bringing to life the birds that’ll replace them this time next year. Spring-cuckoo month, grass-month. In Gaelic its name means the month that fools mistake for May. April Fool’s Day also probably marks what was the old end of the new year celebrations. Winter has Epiphany. Spring’s gifts are different. Month of dead deities coming back to life. In the French revolutionary calendar, along with the last days of March, it becomes Germinal, the month of return to the source, to the seed, to the germ of things, which is maybe why Zola gave the novel he wrote about hopeless hope this revolutionary title. April the anarchic, the final month, of spring the great connective.
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Ali Smith (Spring (Seasonal, #3))
“
At the end of this Sabbath encounter with the religious leaders Mark records a remarkable sentence that sums up one of the main themes of the New Testament, “Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.” The Herodians were the supporters of Herod, the nastiest of the corrupt kings who ruled Israel, representing the Roman occupying power and its political system. In any country that the Romans conquered, they set up rulers. And wherever the Romans went, they brought along the culture of Greece—Greek philosophy, the Greek approach to sex and the body, the Greek approach to truth. Conquered societies like Israel felt assaulted by these immoral, cosmopolitan, pagan values. In these countries there were cultural resistance movements; and in Israel that was the Pharisees. They put all their emphasis on living by the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures and putting up big hedges around themselves to prevent contamination by the pagans. See what was going on? The Herodians were moving with the times, while the Pharisees upheld traditional virtues. The Pharisees believed their society was being overwhelmed with pluralism and paganism, and they were calling for a return to traditional moral values. These two groups had been longtime enemies of each other—but now they agree: They have to get rid of Jesus. These two groups were not used to cooperating, but now they do. In fact, the Pharisees, the religious people, take the lead in doing so. That’s why I say this sentence hints at one of the main themes of the New Testament. The gospel of Jesus Christ is an offense to both religion and irreligion. It can’t be co-opted by either moralism or relativism. The “traditional values” approach to life is moral conformity—the approach taken by the Pharisees. It is that you must lead a very, very good life. The progressive approach, embodied in the Herodians, is self-discovery—you have to decide what is right or wrong for you. And according to the Bible, both of these are ways of being your own savior and lord. Both are hostile to the message of Jesus. And not only that, both lead to self-righteousness. The moralist says, “The good people are in and the bad people are out—and of course we’re the good ones.” The self-discovery person says, “Oh, no, the progressive, open-minded people are in and the judgmental bigots are out—and of course we’re the open-minded ones.” In Western cosmopolitan culture there’s an enormous amount of self-righteousness about self-righteousness. We progressive urbanites are so much better than people who think they’re better than other people. We disdain those religious, moralistic types who look down on others. Do you see the irony, how the way of self-discovery leads to as much superiority and self-righteousness as religion does? The gospel does not say, “the good are in and the bad are out,” nor “the open-minded are in and the judgmental are out.” The gospel says the humble are in and the proud are out. The gospel says the people who know they’re not better, not more open-minded, not more moral than anyone else, are in, and the people who think they’re on the right side of the divide are most in danger.
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Timothy J. Keller (Jesus the King: Understanding the Life and Death of the Son of God)
“
That “sublime and beautiful” weighs heavily on my mind at forty. But that is at forty; then—oh, then it would have been different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything “sublime and beautiful.” I should have snatched at every opportunity to drop a tear into my glass and then to drain it to all that is “sublime and beautiful.” I should then have turned everything into the sublime and the beautiful; in the nastiest, unquestionable trash, I should have sought out the sublime and the beautiful. I should have exuded tears like a wet sponge. An artist, for instance, paints a picture worthy of Gay. At once I drink to the health of the artist who painted the picture worthy of Gay, because I love all that is “sublime and beautiful.” An author has written as you will: at once I drink to the health of “anyone you will” because I love all that is “sublime and beautiful.” I should claim respect for doing so. I should persecute anyone who would not show me respect. I should live at ease, I should die with dignity, why, it is charming, perfectly charming! And what a good round belly I should have grown, what a treble chin I should have established, what a ruby nose I should have colored for myself, so that everyone would have said, looking at me: “Here is an asset! Here is something real and solid!” And, say what you like, it is very agreeable to hear such remarks about oneself in this negative age.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from the Underground)
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Nastiest thing that you can ever say about anyone including yourself is the truth.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
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They’re trying to kill me. Death by indignity, the nastiest kind of all.
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Paula McLain (The Paris Wife)
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Spitting on someone is the nastiest thing you could ever do to a person, but this bitch was disgusting to me. Yes a nigga was in his feelings. My daughter is
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Mz. Lady P. (Remy and Rose' 3:: Me and You Against the World)
“
Man's sole Magic Wand in Science is observation using the five senses; any other function/tool used to produce illusions to the same data and information is that of the Occult using Esotery. After all, processing the data (i.e., mental activity that produces information) is an upper layer to that of its radiation (i.e., emission/active or reception/passive); and since esotery erroneously claim to transcend the lower layers (of data transfer and information assembly/disassembly) and enables access directly onto the spiritual realms (termed as, Consciousness) without resorting to that authentic Magic Wand for acquiring 'objects of study', the data needed will ultimately be rendered into self-generated artifacts using such a shenanigan. In other words, the Occult comprises practices and techniques using artifacts delivered by the use of Esotery for the aim of constructing some delusion of Science; this is when innocent Magic turns into Sorcery. It is the process of enforcing subjectivity rather than objectivity onto its participants and accomplices for maintaining a discipline that facilitates for spirituality to lurk into the public domain (including that of secret societies) under the pretense of being part of some universal reality rather than an individual experience confined to each person's private sphere separately. Politically speaking, it is the nastiest flavor of Socialism in action; the assault on the ownership of souls to socially modify man instead of scientifically modify the environment. It is hence just another ideology of Social Engineering which is specifically shared by the children of Gaia/Isis/whatever, and only by holding onto the principle of 'Family' as an abstract model of an atomic element in society, is one able to escape this unscientific spiritual redistribution of souls. Remember that Science is the tool which man her-/himself has developed to harvest nature for her/his own service and not vice versa!
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Ibrahim Ibrahim (Quotable: My Worldview)
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Are you trying to make me jealous, my pretty bird?” Theseus asked, teasing. He took one of the filled wine goblets from the cupbearer attending him and tried to give it to me. I turned my shoulder to him deliberately. “You can’t seem to take your eyes off Telys. What will it take to make you spare just one of those sweet glances for me? Shall I step onto the training ground myself?”
“Only if you’ll let me be the one to fight you, sword against sword,” I replied. “I’m willing to stake my freedom on the match.”
His lips twisted into a mocking smile. “And risk damaging that face? In four days’ time, we’ll be married. I intend to have a queen whose beauty makes me the envy of all.” He tried to stroke my cheek. I jerked my head back.
“Don’t worry, Theseus,” I said. “If we fight, I won’t be the one who’ll take away a scar. But if you’re afraid, name one of your men to match swords with me.” I swept the training ground with my eyes and in a loud, carrying voice added: “Or are all the men of Athens scared to fight a Spartan girl?”
A grumbling ran through the ranks of the assembled guardsmen. My barb hit the target and sunk in deep. Theseus didn’t like the way things were going. He tried to pull the fangs from my challenge by turning it into a joke.
“Ha! I know what you’re after, Helen. You’re hoping I’ll say yes to this mad proposal of yours, then you’ll find some sly, womanly way to fix it so that you fight Telys. There’s an easy win for anyone!”
I looked into his leering face and decided I’d seen enough of the cold malice everyone in the palace inflicted on Telys. The soldiers, the servants, and even the slaves were all a yapping pack of hounds following the lead of Theseus, the nastiest cur of them all. I leaped to my feet and shouted, “You worm! If you’re too scared to fight me yourself, then say so!
”
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Esther M. Friesner (Nobody's Prize (Nobody's Princess, #2))
“
Napalm is one of the nastiest and probably most frightening weapons that man has ever devised.
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Dirk Patton (Crucifixion (V Plague, #2))
“
We might already have figured this out from the careful placing of Philippians 2.8b, thanatou de staurou, “even the death of the cross,” at the dead center of the poem that some think antedates Paul himself. As we shall see later, the first half of that poem is a downward journey, down to the lowest place to which a human being could sink with regard to pain or shame, personal fate or public perception. This was precisely the point. Those who crucified people did so because it was the sharpest and nastiest way of asserting their own absolute power and guaranteeing their victim’s absolute degradation.
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N.T. Wright (The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion)
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Unfortunately, just hours earlier, the nastiest witch who ever walked the earth had cast a curse on me that would turn my world upside down and destroy everything I held dear.
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M.D. Massey (Junkyard Druid (Colin McCool, #1))
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The nastiest roadkill there is, is a skunk. Really.
Never breathe within forty yards of roadkill.
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Foster Kinn (Freedom's Rush: Tales from The Biker and The Beast)
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The scale of the technological transformation required dwarfs any achievement that has emerged from Silicon Valley—in fact dwarfs every technological revolution ever engineered in human
history, including electricity and telecommunications and even the invention of agriculture ten thousand years ago. It dwarfs them by definition, because it contains all of them—every single one needs to be replaced at the root, since every single one breathes on carbon, like a ventilator.
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David Wallace-Wells (1937: A Tale of Hollywood's Nastiest Scandals)
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Nasty white folks is about the nastiest things they is.
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Toni Morrison
“
Have I seriously found the sweetest woman on the planet who also wants to do the nastiest shit with me in bed?
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Sarah Blue (Swallow Your Pride (The Carlson Brothers, #1))
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The truth of grace is that our sins—even our nastiest ones—are not the things that prevent us from being loved. Those very flaws are what make us human, create our need for others, and make our reception of grace possible. And in confessing them we become closer to one another and God than ever before. Honesty about our sins becomes the path, not the barrier, to relationship.
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Justin Whitmel Earley (Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship)
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Family politics comes in three sizes. Nasty, nastier, nastiest.
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Daksh Tyagi (A Nuclear Family)
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[CR] I was reading another of your books in your library last night—Herbert Morrison’s autobiography. He’s got one paragraph on you. It’s the nastiest piece of business, calling you a TV personality. He doesn’t know if you have any influence on anyone and he refers to your election defeat in Plymouth. He loads it on. Do you remember that? [MF] Ernest Bevin is supposed to have said of Morrison when someone else said, “He’s his own worst enemy,” “not while I’m alive.” Michael had no other comment on Morrison. He rarely spent time on those he disliked.
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Carl Rollyson (A Private Life of Michael Foot)
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Marcus woke again to find Sanga lying asleep on his bed, and he quietly climbed off his own mattress, standing still for a moment to allow the slight feeling of dizziness to pass. Walking quietly on bare feet, he made his way up the corridor to the latrine, then went in search of his wife. Felicia was delighted to see him on his feet, despite her immediate concern for his well-being, which were quickly dispelled when he waved her away and turned a full circle with his arms out.
‘Well, you seem to be spry enough that I think we can assume the effects of the mandrake have completely worn off. You won’t be able to speak or eat solid food for some time yet though.’
‘And that’s why I brought this for him.’ They turned to find the tribune standing in the doorway with a smile on his face, a small iron pot dangling from one hand. ‘There’s a food shop at the end of the street whose proprietress was only too happy to lend me the pot in the likelihood of getting your business for the next few weeks. Pass me a cup and I’ll pour you some.’
Marcus found his glass drinking tube and took a sip at the soup, nodding his thanks to the tribune. Scaurus sat in silence until the cup was empty, watching as the hungry centurion consumed the soup as quickly as its temperature would allow.
‘That’s better, eh? There’s more in the pot for when I’m gone. I’d imagine you’ll be spending another night in here just to be sure you’re over the worst of it, but that ought to keep you going until morning. And now, Centurion, to business? First Spear Frontinius tells me that you passed a message requesting a conversation with me, although from the look of things most of the speaking will be done by me.’
Marcus nodded, reaching for his tablet and writing several lines of text. He handed the wooden case to Scaurus, who read the words and stared back at his centurion with his eyebrows raised in astonishment. ‘Really? You’re sure of this?’
After thinking for a moment, Marcus held out his hand and took the tablet back. He smoothed the wax and wrote another statement. Scaurus looked grimly at the text, shaking his head.
‘You got that close to him?’
Marcus wrote in the tablet again. Scaurus read the text aloud, a wry smile on his face. ‘“Take a tent party with you.” A tent party? I’ll need a damned century if he’s as dangerous as you say. And the nastiest, most bad-tempered officer in the First Cohort. Do any names spring to mind, Centurion?
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Anthony Riches (The Leopard Sword (Empire, #4))
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It was the strangest thing to me that Charlie Gaines was publishing all these Bible stories about love and kindness,” said Klapper, “and he was the nastiest son of a bitch on the face of the earth.
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David Hajdu (The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America)
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The nastiest things they saw were the cobwebs: dark dense cobwebs with threads extraordinarily thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lower branches on either side of them.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit)
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No one outside of our family unit would ever guess that away from prying eyes, we were systematically tearing ourselves apart. Away from the outside world, everyone in our family started to fall to pieces, and never really recovered. Even though our times together are always fun and laughter-filled, the closeness we once shared is gone. In its place is guilt, regret, the ability to say the nastiest things and, for the longest minute on earth, mean every word of them
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Dorothy Komsoon
“
No one outside of our family unit would ever guess that away from prying eyes, we were systematically tearing ourselves apart. Away from the outside world, everyone in our family started to fall to pieces, and never really recovered. Even though our times together are always fun and laughter-filled, the closeness we once shared is gone. In its place is guilt, regret, the ability to say the nastiest things and, for the longest minute on earth, mean every word of them
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Dorothy Koomson (The Ice Cream Girls (Poppy & Serena, #1))
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Capitalism, argued J.M. Keynes, is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for everyone’s benefit. When the freedom to grow trumps responsibility to the polis, however, “productivity” becomes a euphemism for “increased unemployment.
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Georgia Kelly (Uncivil Liberties: Deconstructing Libertarianism)
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When the record of “Walk This Way” came out, David Johansen told me, “That’s the nastiest song I’ve ever heard on the radio.
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Joe Perry (Rocks: My Life in and out of Aerosmith)
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If the person retelling the story liked the people involved, the tale would be warm, gentle, almost Disney fairy tale like. If not, all bets were off and the gossip would resemble the nastiest of Grimm's fairy tales.
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Nadia Lee (Reunited in Love (Hearts on the Line, #2))
“
according to this colonel the nastiest form of weaponized pneumonic plague was developed in Russia, employing canisters that released it in a powdered form from cruise missiles. Hard to detect.” Karin’s voice faltered as she spoke. “It’s . . . horrendous what the human race can concoct. In aerosol form pneumonic plague reaches its zenith, the most terrible, easy-to-deploy world killer out there, all down to the contagiousness of the disease, its resistance to dozens of antibiotics and, at least up to early 2000, no vaccine was available to combat the aerosolized form.
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David Leadbeater (The Plagues of Pandora (Matt Drake, #9))
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Jace winked at Lannon. "Fear not, my young friend. That Wolf won't escape us indefinitely. I know how to trap Goblins--even the nastiest ones. I wrote the book on Goblins, remember?" Lannon managed a smile, remembering his favorite book The Truth about Goblins.
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Robert E. Keller (Knights: Four Novels)
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We walked almost a mile before we came out of the woods atop a ridge overlooking a broad green meadow that looked almost artificial in its pastoral sweetness, like someone had transplanted it from a movie set in New Zealand. Fluffy clouds of sheep dotted the green, and we were far enough away that they looked a little dingy but not filthy—a beautiful trick of distance. (Sheep are some of the nastiest creatures in the world. They’re smelly, stupid things that have been bred to have way too much hair, meaning that all their bodily fluids and drippings get felted right into the wool. If not for bleach, we’d all walk around covered in sheep shit all the time. Agriculture is not a pretty thing.)
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Seanan McGuire (Pocket Apocalypse (InCryptid, #4))
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We found a hotel. Of course with our current financial situation it was one room in the cheapest, nastiest hotel ever. When we flipped on the light, the cockroaches didn’t scatter. They just turned to face us, and seemed to say, “Fuck you…this is my house! I’ll cut you!” I half expected a few of them to be carrying switchblades.
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J.L.M. Visada (Midnight Squad: The Grim)
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The nastiest kind of writer is a ghostwriter, who bears people’s children in their body for money.
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M.F. Moonzajer (LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS)