Wry Humor Quotes

“Maybe she should cut the guy a little slack, [...] Maybe Thorne had been a no-show because something bad happened to him on the job.

What if he'd been injured in the line of duty and didn't come by as promised because he was incapacitated in some way? Maybe he hadn't called to apologize or to explain his absence because he physically couldn't.

Right. And maybe she had checked her brain into her panties from the second she first laid eyes on the man.”
― Lara Adrian, Kiss of Midnight

“I'm so glad I didn't die on the various occasions I have earnestly wished I might, for I would have missed a lot of lovely weather.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Solitary Summer

“It is perhaps beside the point to remark that bowling alleys and supermarkets have nursery facilities, while schools and colleges and scientific laboratories and government offices do not.”
― Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

“You let the cops in. Thy've brought in a ram to take down the front door. A white chick in an evening gown will settle the cops faster than a brother with guns.”
― Faith Hunter, Mercy Blade

“Well, how did you die, then?” the old man finally asked.
“Die?” Matthew threw back. “Are you crazy? I’m not dead. I’m just very late.”
― J. Tonzelli, The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween

“My other chore is to buy a tree- a thankless task. The only truly well-proportioned Christmas trees are the ones they use in advertisements. If you try and find one in real life you face inevitable disapointment. Your tree will lean to the left or the right. It will be too bushy at the base, or straggly at the top. Even if you do, by some miracle, find a perfect tree, if won't fit in the car and by the time you strap it to the rooftop and drive it home the branches are broken and twisted out of shape. You
wrestle it through the door, gagling on pine needles and sweating profusely, only to hear the maddening question from countless Christmases past: 'Is that really the best one you could find?”
― Michael Robotham, Suspect

“I don't know why--there are no brick gables,' said Mrs. Prest, 'but this corner has seemed to me before more Dutch than Italian, more like Amsterdam than Venice. It's perversely clean, for reasons of its own; and though you can pass on foot scarcely anyone ever thinks of doing so. It has the air of a Protestant Sunday. Perhaps the people are afraid of the Misses Bordereau. I daresay they have the reputation of witches.”
― Henry James, The Aspern Papers

“Quite suddenly she understood the impulse that caused men to engage in casual blasphemy.”
― Diana Gabaldon, An Echo in the Bone

“You get tired of always wondering anew why life has to take the place of youth.”
― Gary Lutz, Divorcer

“As the proverb said, “Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep in the night.” Too late for thinking now. Too early for eating.”
― Orson Scott Card, Seventh Son

“You know why I’ve survived in this job, year after year, lousy assignment after lousy assignment, with no counseling whatsoever? Because I have a keen appreciation of the ludicrous. Also because I have no choice.”
― Kage Baker

“I'm afraid it isn't good news. The Council seems to have gone quite mad.”
― Jim Butcher, Changes

“She feels a little sad. Is she sad? Helen considers an alternative: She is dehydrated.”
― Meg Howrey, The Wanderers

“The cure for writer's block is writer's cramp.”
― Inigo DeLeon

“I was sorry he had not a cat, or a young dog, or better still, an old dog. But all he had to offer in the way of dumb companions was a pink and grey parrot. He used to try and teach it to say, Nihil in intellectu, etc. These first three words the bird managed well enough, but the celebrated restriction was too much for it, all you heard was a series of squawks.”
― Samuel Beckett

“...they had only to suffer religious dogmatism, which was not so dogmatic as scientific dogmatism.”
― John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos

“This, I thought, was perhaps the ultimate symbol of the decadently rich, huge amounts of space devoted to nothing in particular.”
― Ashley Weaver, A Peculiar Combination

“Esther is too busy being insubordinate at the moment, I’m afraid.”
― Giselle Beaumont, On the Edge of Daylight

“This was the second time I’d been forced to open a safe in an evening gown in the presence of Major Ramsey”
― Ashley Weaver, Locked in Pursuit

“We stood there in contemplative silence. Then two attendants wheeled by a wooden cart, one wheel squeaking wildly. The cart carried a large glass tank, like an aquarium—but as it passed before us, we saw it did not contain any conventional fish. Rather, a massive, rippling, purplish starfish was gripping the bottom of the tank—and growing from its back was a human hand.

The hand’s fingers flexed and twitched very slowly as it passed before us, as if exulting in the flow of the water. It had a feminine look to it. Something delicate in the nails and knuckles.

We watched in silence as the tank went by, the one wheel squeaking in protest.

“Looks like Topirak’s getting a replacement,” said Miljin.

I cleared my throat. “Looks that way, sir,” I said hoarsely.

Miljin waited to speak again until its squeak had long faded. Then he grunted.

“Let’s go check Loveh’s quarters for that fucking coin,” he said, “before someone wheels one of them starfish by with a prick growing from its back, and I faint and crack my head open and wind up in one of these goddamn baths.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup