“He was so damn perverse, he preferred to dream it than to make it come true.”
Janet Fitch (1955) American writer
Source: Paint it Black
“He was so damn perverse, he preferred to dream it than to make it come true.”
Janet Fitch (1955) American writer
Source: Paint it Black
“For this I would be damned forever. For this I would have given up everything.”
Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess
Source: Clockwork Princess
“Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?”
Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Kresley Cole American writer
Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night
Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Wahida Clark American writer
Source: Justify My Thug
“Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?”
James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet
“Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.”
Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer
Source: This is Where I Leave You
Laurell K. Hamilton book The Laughing Corpse
Anita
Source: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, The Laughing Corpse (1994)
“Cliff said "damn" for me (I'm going to die). I didn't know he liked me enough to swear.”
L.J. Smith (1965) American author
Source: Night World, No. 1
Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye
Ham On Rye (1982)
Source: Ham on Rye
Context: The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.
“so whatever you want to do, just do it… Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.”
Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist
Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer
Source: Jealousy
“Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results.”
Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) Anglo-Irish polar explorer
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
"The Little Hours" in Here Lies (1939)
Source: Here Lies: The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker
“Remember to get the weather in your damn book--weather is very important.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist
“You don't have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.”
Toni Morrison book God Help the Child
Source: God Help the Child
Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer
Source: The Vampire and the Virgin
“And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.”
Graham Greene book The Power and the Glory
Source: The Power and the Glory
“… one damn thing after another … one damn thing over and over.”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet
From an October 1930 letter to Arthur Davison Ficke, as variously described by her biographers, e.g.:
[L]ife was not so much "one damn thing after another" as "one damn thing over and over"
As paraphrased ("she had sent [...] a half-comic note, complaining that...") with quoted phrases in Jean Gould, The Poet and Her Book: A Biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1969), p. 198
[L]ife isn't one thing after another, it's the same thing over and over
As paraphrased ("she writes that...") and apparently Bowlderized in Miriam Gurko, Restless spirit: the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1962), p. 197
[I]t was not true that life is one damn thing after another — it was one damn thing over and over
As paraphrased ("Edna had written [...] that...") in Joan Dash, A Life of One's Own: Three Gifted Women and the Men they Married (1973), p. 189
The paraphrase by Dash appears to be the origin of later popularly attributed variants, e.g.:
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over.
As attributed without citation in Psychoanalysis Today: A Case Book (1991) by Elizabeth Thorne and Shirley Herscovitch Schaye, p. 93
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It's the same dang thing over and over again.
As attributed without citation in The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes (1992) by Carolyn Warner
Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo
Source: Magic Strikes
“Sometimes talking to you is like talking to myself: pretty damned annoying.”
Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice
Source: Last Sacrifice
“To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.”
Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor
“People with ambition don't give a damn what other people think of them.”
Diane Setterfield (1964) English novelist
Julie Garwood (1946) American writer
Source: The Gift
“Damn boudas. I tell him he's under siege and he goes to take a nap.”
Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo
Source: Magic Slays
“This was one princess who could rescue her own damn self.”
Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist
Source: Beauty
Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer
Source: This is Where I Leave You
“A man can go along obeying all the rules and then it don’t matter a damn anymore.”
Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)
Edward Rutherfurd (1948) British writer
Source: The Rebels of Ireland
Kresley Cole American writer
Source: Kiss of a Demon King
Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo
Source: Magic Slays
Kresley Cole American writer
Source: Kiss of a Demon King
Lora Leigh (1965) American writer
Source: Mercury's War
“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer
“Damn chicken. Come eat your dinner. I'm cold.”
Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind
Source: The Name of the Wind
Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Source: Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
“Sometimes an imitation of love can be pretty damn convincing.”
Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer
Source: Blue-Eyed Devil
Charles Frazier (1950) American writer
Glen Cook book Shadows Linger
Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 38, “Juniper: The Storm” (p. 390)
Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter
in Art of this Century, February 12 – March 2, 1946, Peggy Guggenheim Papers on the work of Clyfford Still; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 203
1940's
Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) Danish artist
But the moment they are out the door I start working on it. I rework it.
In a talk with Kosinski, before 'Per Kirkeby at the Phillips', in The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. January, 2013
Kirkeby spoke to exhibition co-curator Dorothy Kosinski about the necessity of time in the development of a painting.
1995 and later