Quotes about hell
page 9

Megan Whalen Turner photo
Dan Brown photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo

“Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Very Good, Jeeves!

Jodi Picoult photo

“This was hell and I was its fury.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

George Bernard Shaw photo
Jodi Picoult photo
John Calvin photo
Isabel Allende photo

“Vengeance was one hell of a roommate.”

Source: Dark Lover

Kim Harrison photo

“I've been asleep and I don't know if it's the same day or week or year, but who the hell cares anyway?”

Beatrice Sparks (1917–2012) American writer

Source: Go Ask Alice

Cassandra Clare photo
Scott Westerfeld photo
Kelley Armstrong photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Richelle Mead photo

“God might work on mysterious ways, but hell worked on efficient ones.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Shadows

Ben Jonson photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
Charles Bukowski photo

“I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems

E.M. Forster photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“It was hell to be so tired, and still care.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: Shards of Honour

A.E. Housman photo

“Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

No. 19, st. 2.
Source: More Poems http://www.kalliope.org/vaerktoc.pl?vid=housman/1936 (1936)

Jodi Picoult photo
Carrie Vaughn photo
Jürgen Moltmann photo
Steven Wright photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Harry Truman photo

“I never gave anybody hell. I just told the truth and they think it's hell.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Source: As quoted in My Fellow Americans : The Most Important Speeches of America's Presidents (2003) by Michael Waldman, p. 137

William Blake photo

“Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven’s despite.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Clod and the Pebble, st. 3
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)
Source: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

Cassandra Clare photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo

“So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!”

Garcin, Act 1, sc. 5
Variant: So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.
Source: No Exit (1944)

Laurell K. Hamilton photo
Cheryl Strayed photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Sylvia Day photo
Dean Karnazes photo

“Sometimes you've got to go through hell to get to heaven.”

Dean Karnazes (1962) American distance runner

Source: Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner

Jeff Lindsay photo

“Life is hell, but at least there are prizes. Or so one thought.”

Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand author

Source: The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches

George Bernard Shaw photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Chris Rea photo

“Look out world take a good look
What comes down here
You must learn this lesson fast
And learn it well
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the road to Hell”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

"The Road to Hell (Part 2)"
Song lyrics, The Road to Hell (1989)

Elbert Hubbard photo

“Life without absorbing occupation is hell — joy consists in forgetting life.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927)

Philip Kapleau photo
William Carlos Williams photo
Linus Torvalds photo

“Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of Minix.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Post to comp.os.minix newsgroup, 1992-01-29, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1992Jan29.231426.20469%40klaava.Helsinki.FI, To Andrew Tanenbaum (author of Minix) during the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate.
1990s, 1991-94

Michael Badnarik photo
Wallace Stevens photo

“They married well because the marriage-place
Was what they loved. It was neither heaven nor hell.
They were love’s characters come face to face.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

Richard Baxter photo

“All are making haste towards hell, until by conviction, Christ brings them to a halt, and then, by conversion, turns their hearts and lives sincerely to himself.”

Richard Baxter (1615–1691) English Puritan church leader, poet, and hymn-writer

The Saints' Everlasting Rest (1650), "The Nature of the Saints' Rest"

Dalton Trumbo photo
Robert Olmstead photo
Josh Homme photo

“You're solid gold, I'll see you in hell.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

"You Can't Quit Me Baby", Queens of the Stone Age (1998)
Lyrics, Queens of the Stone Age

Salma Hayek photo

“I'd hear, "Because they paid the man, there's no money for the woman." How many times do you think I heard this? Over and over. Then I became a sex symbol. Now, how the hell did that happen? I don't exactly know the moment when it happened, but all of a sudden I'm a bombshell. The way I discovered this was I did Desperado. I had a very hard time with the love scene. I cried throughout the love scene. That's why you never see long pieces of the love scene — it's little pieces cut together. I'm crying most of the time so they have to take little pieces. It took eight hours instead of an hour. I nearly got fired. … Because I didn't want to be naked in front of a camera. The whole time, I'm thinking of my father and my brother… And then when the movie comes out, I read the first review. What do they say about me. "Salma Hayek is a bombshell." I had heard that when a movie does badly here, they say it bombs. So I'm crying. Thinking they're saying, "That terrible actress! It's a bomb! Salma Hayek is the worst part of the movie!" I called my friend and said, "The critics are destroying me!" She says, "No, they're saying you're very sexy." And then I look at all the reviews, and everybody said I was very sexy. So I'm very confused. I said, "I wonder if that's good or bad." I hear, "Yes, that's good." Then I do Fools Rush In, and I'm a pregnant woman. And they say I'm sexy again! I go, "But I'm pregnant!"”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

I'm not even naked in this movie, and they still say I'm sexy. And then it became very depressing — I thought, I guess I'm reduced to that now. That's all I am in the perception of these people.
O interview (2003)

Blake Schwarzenbach photo

“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water.
No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water.
Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity.
Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 6 (pp. 137-138)

“[Unnamed actress on the set of Grand Prix] never had eyes for me. Hell, she wouldn't even talk to me, after she'd found out that I was just an unimportant actor. Good grief! Then, this is what happened: We were sitting in the foyer of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. She, myself and Antonio. Then an assistant director crossed our path. That actress was trying to get him to take us to the theatre where they were showing the rushes of the day before. After some discussion, she persuaded him. He said: `Be quiet, I'm gonna lose my job…' So we hid in the balcony, looking down, where that wonderful director Frankenheimer was sitting. After some minutes of racing cars, finally her scene came, and she was doing a phone call - she was playing a sophisticated magazine editor -, and suddenly you could hear the director, who had this loud, resonant voice, howling in rage, because he didn't like her at all. `Oh my God, she's awful! She can't walk, she can't talk, look at her hair!' So he turned to that faggot hairdresser, who was like Katherine the Great, and this guy said: `Well, usually she plays this peasant types. I don't know why you cast her for this role in the first place!”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

And remember, this actress was sitting there with us, and she nearly went crazy! She was squirming with embarrassment. This is an actor's nightmare, you know. The next day she was fired.
Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

George William Russell photo
Arundhati Roy photo

“These horrific murders are only a symptom of a deeper malaise. Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations — millions of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Quoted in Was Arundhati Roy really misquoted by Pakistans... https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/was-arundhati-roy-really-misquoted-by-paks-un-rep-or-is-this-leftist-spin

Alan Keyes photo
David Carter photo

“I don't have the soreness I used to have before. I'm not sluggish. I recover a lot faster. If I get a little bump or bruise, it hurts for a second and then it goes away. I'm a lot stronger. I was shocked. When I first started, I was, 'What the hell? I have more energy. I'm a lot stronger than I was before.”

David Carter (1987) Player of American Football

About his switch to a vegan diet. "Bears' David Carter: 300 lbs of veganism" https://chicago.suntimes.com/sports/bears-david-carter-300-lbs-of-veganism/, interview with the Chicago Sun Times (4 August 2015).

Muhammad photo
Bret Easton Ellis photo
John Ogilby photo
Ingmar Bergman photo
Will Carleton photo

“To appreciate heaven well
'T is good for a man to have some fifteen minutes of hell.”

Will Carleton (1845–1912) poet.

Gone with a handsomer Man, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Anne Brontë photo
Tom Robbins photo
Maggie Stiefvater photo

“"Where the hell is Ronan?" Gansey asked, echoing the words that thousands of humans had uttered since mankind developed speech.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

pg 15
The Raven Cycle Series, The Raven King (2016)

Roger Ebert photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Philip Pullman photo
S. I. Hayakawa photo
Starhawk photo
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo

“I've always thought of being in love as being willing to do anything for the other person — starve to buy them bread and not mind living in Siberia with them — and I've always thought that every minute away from them would be hell — so looking at it that [way] I guess I'm not in love with you.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Letter breaking up with a boyfriend in 1947, as quoted in Jacqueline Kennedy's Old Love Letters Will School You in the Art of Breaking Up" by Laura Beck, in Cosmopolitan (2 September 2015)]

Brad Paisley photo
Linus Torvalds photo
Don Marquis photo

“well boss
mehitabel the cat
has reappeared in her old
haunts with a
flock of kittens

archy she said to me
yesterday
the life of a female
artist is continually
hampered what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens
i look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another
i am a dancer archy
and my only prayer
is to be allowed
to give my best to my art
but just as i feel
that i am succeeding
in my life work
along comes another batch
of these damned kittens
it is not archy
that i am shy on mother love
god knows i care for
the sweet little things
curse them
but am i never to be allowed
to live my own life
i have purposely avoided
matrimony in the interests
of the higher life
but i might just
as well have been a domestic
slave for all the freedom
i have gained
i hope none of them
gets run over by
an automobile
my heart would bleed
if anything happened
to them and i found it out
but it isn t fair archy
it isn t fair
these damned tom cats have all
the fun and freedom
if i was like some of these
green eyed feline vamps i know
i would simply walk out on the
bunch of them and
let them shift for themselves
but i am not that kind
archy i am full of mother love
my kindness has always
been my curse
a tender heart is the cross i bear
self sacrifice always and forever
is my motto damn them
i will make a home
for the sweet innocent
little things
unless of course providence
in his wisdom should remove
them they are living
just now in an abandoned
garbage can just behind
a made over stable in greenwich
village and if it rained
into the can before i could
get back and rescue them
i am afraid the little
dears might drown
it makes me shudder just
to think of it
of course if i were a family cat
they would probably
be drowned anyhow
sometimes i think
the kinder thing would be
for me to carry the
sweet little things
over to the river
and drop them in myself
but a mother s love archy
is so unreasonable
something always prevents me
these terrible
conflicts are always
presenting themselves
to the artist
the eternal struggle
between art and life archy
is something fierce
yes something fierce
my what a dramatic
life i have lived
one moment up the next
moment down again
but always gay archy always gay
and always the lady too
in spite of hell
well boss it will
be interesting to note
just how mehitabel
works out her present problem
a dark mystery still broods
over the manner
in which the former
family of three kittens
disappeared
one day she was talking to me
of the kittens
and the next day when i asked
her about them
she said innocently
what kittens
interrogation point
and that was all
i could ever get out
of her on the subject
we had a heavy rain
right after she spoke to me
but probably that garbage can
leaks so the kittens
have not yet
been drowned”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

mehitabel and her kittens http://donmarquis.com/reading-room/kittens/
archy and mehitabel (1927)