Scorn (24 page)

I think he is one of these people who is a voyeur. He likes to watch other people. There are some guys who, when they are at home, have a big telescope to see what happens in other families. He speaks, speaks, speaks about Chelsea.
Chelsea manager José Mourinho on Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger

If Everton were playing at the bottom of the garden, I'd pull the curtains.
Bill Shankly

Football is a simple game, complicated by idiots.
Bill Shankly

Football is war minus the shooting.
George Orwell

Football is popular because stupidity is popular.
Jorge Luis Borges

The politics of Fifa, they make me nostalgic for the Middle East.
Henry Kissinger

Runners run because they love running. Joggers jog because they love cake.
Stuart Heritage

Cycling releases a chemical that makes you feel utterly smug and superior for the rest of the day.
Mark Steel

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.
Alice Munro

 

Celebrity

The main advantage of being famous is that when you bore people at dinner parties they think it is their fault.
Henry Kissinger

Being famous is like having dementia. Everyone knows who you are, but you don't know who they are.
Michael Douglas

Anyone enquiring: ‘Do you know who I am?' is effectively asking: ‘Do you know who I was?'
Marina Hyde

Celebrity is just obscurity biding its time.
Carrie Fisher

Beware the celebrity who refers to himself in the third person.
Jemima Khan on Julian Assange

When I read the lives of celebrities in our newspapers I sometimes wish we had a Freedom From Information Act.
Theodore Dalrymple

I'd rather have a rectal examination on live TV by a fellow with cold hands than have a Facebook page.
George Clooney

Malibu is the only place in the world where you can lie on the sand and look at the stars – or vice versa.
Joan Rivers

To people making mean comments about my G[olden] G[lobe] pics, I mos def cried about it on that private jet on my way to my dream job last night.
#JK
Gabourey Sidibe
, actress, on Twitter

I don't care what you think about me. I don't think about you at all.
Coco Chanel

A whole family of women who take the faces they were born with as a light suggestion.
Amy Schumer on the Kardashians

When someone asks me, ‘What do you do?' under my breath I want to say, ‘Ask my fucking bank account what I do.'
Kim Kardashian

You know why she's the most Googled person? Because she was Googling herself.
Khloe Kardashian on her sister Kim

If Kim wants us to see a part of her we've never seen, she's gonna have to swallow the camera.
Bette Midler on Kim Kardashian, after the latter had tweeted a nude selfie

A walking X-ray.
Oscar Levant on Audrey Hepburn

A vacuum with nipples.
Otto Preminger on Marilyn Monroe

It's like kissing Hitler.
Tony Curtis on kissing Marilyn Monroe

Her body has gone to her head.
Barbara Stanwyck on Marilyn Monroe

Like a condom full of walnuts.
Clive James on Arnold Schwarzenegger

He has turned alarmingly blond – he's gone past platinum, he must be into plutonium; his hair is coordinated with his teeth.
Pauline Kael on Robert Redford

His skin looks like a child's sandpit after heavy rain.
Lynn Barber on Robert Redford

His ears make him look like a taxi-cab with both doors open.
Howard Hughes on Clark Gable

If you say ‘Hiya, Clark, how are you?' he's stuck for an answer.
Ava Gardner on Clark Gable

A face unclouded by thought.
Lillian Hellman on Norma Shearer

Jeremy Clarkson is like Marmite. Disgusting.
Peter Serafinowicz

What is she peddling, anyway? Sex repeal?
Mae West on Twiggy

She looks like she combs her hair with an egg-beater.
Louella Parsons on Joan Collins

In real life, Keaton believes in God. But she also believes that the radio works because there are tiny people inside it.
Woody Allen on Diane Keaton

I'd rather have a cup of tea than go to bed with someone – any day.
Boy George

That big blob … too bad there's not a closet big enough for him to hide in.
Rupert Everett on Boy George

Boy George is all England needs: another queen who can't dress.
Joan Rivers

@PIERSMORGAN
: I currently air in 200 countries/territories – how you getting on?
#SmallPondMinnow
@GARYLINEKER
: I think the 2 world cups I played in probably edged that
Exchange between Piers Morgan and Gary Lineker on Twitter

What a monumental twat this man is.
Jeremy Clarkson on Piers Morgan

Being called a ‘monumental twat' by a pot-bellied pig
@ JeremyClarkson
who wants nurses executed is the purest definition of irony.
Piers Morgan responding to Jeremy Clarkson

Ghastly simpering thespian toad.
Piers Morgan on Rupert Everett

The definition of countryside is the murder of Piers Morgan.
Stephen Fry

Basically a slug.
Tony Blair on Piers Morgan

If name-dropping were an Olympic sport, Yentob would be suspected of doping.
Henry Mance on Alan Yentob

The shit hits the fan.
Headline suggested by Kenneth Tynan after Rex Harrison punched an autograph hunter

 

Food and Drink

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead, not sick and wounded.
Woody Allen

Cheese – milk's leap towards immortality.
Clifton Fadiman

Only the dull are brilliant at breakfast.
Oscar Wilde

Custard is a detestable substance produced by a malevolent conspiracy of the hen, the cow and the cook.
Ambrose Bierce

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark Twain

The national dish of America is menus.
Robert Robertson

American society is pyramid-shaped: the further down you go, the wider people grow.
Craig Brown, the
Daily Telegraph

My mother was a good recreational cook, but what she basically believed about cooking was that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.
Nora Ephron

Life is too short for platonic love affairs or savoury desserts.
Food writer Josh Ozersky

Avoid any restaurant where a waiter arrives with a handful of knives and forks just as you reach the punchline of your best story and says: ‘which of you is having the fish?'
John Mortimer

We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.
Alfred E. Newman

Fish is the only food considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.
P.J. O'Rourke

It was the food! Don't touch the food!
Last words of Richard Harris, actor, spoken to fellow hotel guests, as he was wheeled through the foyer by paramedics

Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. You know you're going to get it, but it's going to be rough.
Adam Hills

I have always preferred the old-fashioned term ‘drunkard'. Alcoholic makes it sound like an achievement, and alcoholism a branch of knowledge.
Timothy Mo

Someone I don't like who drinks almost as much as I do.
Dylan Thomas on alcoholics

I'm on a whisky diet. Last week I lost three days.
Tommy Cooper

Nothing good ever happens in a blackout. I've never woken up and been like, ‘What is this Pilates mat doing out?'
Amy Schumer on heavy drinking

I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learnt how to swim.
Frida Kahlo

There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.
Frida Kahlo who had suffered horrific injuries when her bus hit a trolley. Later she married Diego Rivera.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake thoughts for words.
Samuel Johnson

Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.
Andrea Dworkin

The trouble with the world is that everybody in it is three drinks behind.
Humphrey Bogart

Las Vegas is the only place I know where money really talks – it says ‘Goodbye'.
Frank Sinatra

Cocaine is terrific if you want to hang out with people you don't know very well and play ping pong all night. It's bad for almost everything else.
Amy Poehler

Cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making too much money.
Robin Williams

Drugs have taught a generation of American kids the metric system.
P.J. O'Rourke

 

Women and Men

Woman was God's second mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche

When God made man, she was only testing.
Graffiti in ladies' lavatory, London W11

‘O Grandson of Conn, O Cormac,' said Carbre, ‘how do you distinguish women?'

‘Not hard to tell,' said Cormac. ‘I distinguish them, but I make no difference among them.'

They are crabbed as constant companions

haughty when visited,

lewd when neglected …

stubborn in a quarrel,

not to be trusted with a secret …

boisterous in their jealousy …

lustful in bed …

Better to whip than to humour them …

better to scourge than to gladden them …

They are waves that drown you,

they are fires that burn you …

they are moths for sticking to one,

they are serpents for cunning …
The Instructions of King Cormac MacAirt

To what purpose is it for women to make vows, when men have so many millions of ways to make them break them? And when sweet words, fair promises, tempting, flattering, swearing, lying will not serve to beguile the poor soul, then with rough handling, violence and plain strength of arms they are, or have been heretofore, rather made prisoners to lust's thieves than wives and companions to faithful honest lovers.
The Law's Resolutions of Woman's Rights,
published 1632 but probably written in the 1580s

God created Adam, lord of all living creatures, but Eve spoiled it all.
Martin Luther

All men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws and their cocks.
Marilyn French

The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior: the one rules and the other is ruled.
Aristotle,
Politics,
I.5

A good part – and definitely the most fun part – of being a
feminist is about frightening men … Of course, there's a lot more to feminism … but scaring the shit out of the scumbags is an amusing and necessary part because, sadly, a good many men still respect nothing but strength.
Julie Burchill, in
Time Out

Nature intended women to be our slaves … they are our property; we are not theirs. They belong to us, just as a tree that bears fruit belongs to a gardener. What a mad idea to demand equality for women! … Women are nothing but machines for producing children.
Napoléon Bonaparte

The male function is to produce sperm. We now have sperm banks.
Valerie Solanas, in
S.C.U.M. Manifesto

Marie Stopes was living with him, an arrangement which I would have thought would satisfy any woman's craving for birth control.
Muriel Spark on Lord Douglas and the campaigner for contraception, Marie Stopes

It's a pity it was not her parents, rather than her, who thought of birth control.
Muriel Spark on Marie Stopes

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.
Marie Shear

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
Rebecca West

When a woman inclines to learning there is usually something wrong with her sex apparatus.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Interviewer: People think you are very hostile to men.
Andrea Dworkin: I am.
Interviewer: Doesn't that worry you?
Andrea Dworkin: From what you said, it worries them.
Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity.
Andrea Dworkin

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
Virginia Woolf,
A Room of One's Own

A very little wit is valued in a woman; as we are pleased with a few words spoken plain by a parrot.
Jonathan Swift,
Thoughts on Various Subjects

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking upon his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
Samuel Johnson

I have always been amazed that women are allowed to enter churches. What sort of conversations can they have with God?
Charles Baudelaire

We have no desire to say anything that might tend to encourage women to embark on accountancy, for although women might make excellent book-keepers, there is much in accountancy proper that is, we think, unsuitable for them.
English Institute of Chartered Accountants, in the
Accountant
(1912)

Do you know why God withheld the sense of humour from women? That we may love you instead of laugh at you.
Mrs Patrick Campbell, an actress, to a man

An ego like a raging tooth.
W.B. Yeats on Mrs Patrick Campbell

All women are little balls of fluff in the eyes of the Creator.
Donald Pomerleau, Baltimore Police Commissioner, testifying in a sex discrimination case

What a mighty man he turns out to be! He raped ten women –
I would never have expected this from him. He surprised us all. We all envy him.
Vladimir Putin, Russian President, to visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, on Israeli President Moshe Katsav

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
Samuel Johnson

These are rare attainments for a damsel, but pray tell me, can she spin?
James I, when introduced to a young girl proficient in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Attrib.

That woman can speak eighteen languages and she can't say ‘no' in one of them.
Dorothy Parker of a guest surrounded by men at one of her parties

The only place men want depth in a woman is in her cleavage.
Zsa Zsa Gabor

Beneath this stone, a lump of clay
Lies Arabella Young
Who on the 21st of May
Began to hold her tongue.
Epitaph, Hatfield, Massachusetts

A friend of mine, who is an excellent anatomist, had promised me the first opportunity to dissect a woman's tongue, and to
examine whether there may not be in it certain juices which render it so wonderfully voluble or flippant …
Joseph Addison, in the
Spectator,
1711

[Men's] slanderous tongues are so short, and the time wherein they have lavished out their words freely hath been so long, that they know we cannot catch hold of them to pull them out, and they think we will not write to reprove their lying lips.
Jane Anger,
Her Protection for Women,
1589

A Preface.
To all women in general,
and gentle Reader whatsoever
Fie on the falsehood of men, whose minds go oft a-madding and whose tongues cannot so soon be wagging, but straight they fall a-tattling! Was there ever any so abused, so slandered, so railed upon, or so wickedly handled undeservedly, as are we women?
Jane Anger,
Her Protection for Women,
1589

The only difference between men is the colour of their neckties.
Helen Broderick in
Top Hat

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.
John Ruskin

He has the heart of a cucumber fried in snow.
Ninon de l'Enclos, French courtesan, on the Marquis de Sévigné

The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs.
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal,
Marquise de Sévigné

You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.
Max Beerbohm,
Zuleika Dobson

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
Edward Abbey

I have … observed, that in all ages [women] have been more careful than the men to adorn that part of the head which we generally call the outside.
Joseph Addison, in the
Spectator,
1712

She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when'.
P.G. Wodehouse

[She] appeared to have put on her lipstick during an earth tremor.
Bill Bryson on an elderly guest in his hotel

The only time I see a photograph of anybody who looks like me in a women's magazine is under the word ‘Before'.
Sarah Millican

Take a close-up of a woman past sixty? You might as well use a picture of a relief map of Ireland!
Nancy Astor, asked for a close-up photograph. Attrib.

When I don't look like a tragic muse, I look like the smoky relic of the great Boston Fire.
Louisa May Alcott on herself

I hate those short skirts, for women's knees are like badly risen rock-cakes.
Sir Norman Hartnell

Sure, deck your lower limbs in pants;
Yours are the limbs, my sweeting.
You look divine as you advance –
Have you seen yourself retreating?
Ogden Nash

I wonder why men can get serious at all. They have this delicate long thing hanging outside their bodies, which goes up and down by its own will. First of all, having it outside your body is terribly dangerous. If I were a man I would have a fantastic castration complex to the point that I wouldn't be able to do a thing. Second, the inconsistency of it, like carrying a chance time alarm or something. If I were a man I would always be laughing at myself.
Yoko Ono on
Film No.4

Viewed from the side, a woman presents an exaggerated S
bisected by an imperfectly straight line, and so she inevitably suggests a drunken dollar-mark.
H.L. Mencken

Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.
Mae West

God created man with a penis and a brain, but only gave him enough blood to run one at a time.
Stephen Ambrose

For 50 years it was like being chained to an idiot.
Kingsley Amis on finally losing his sex drive

I feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master.
Sophocles on being asked in old age about love

If, sir, I, possessed the power of conveying unlimited sexual attraction through the potency of my voice, I would not be reduced to accepting a miserable pittance from the BBC for interviewing a faded female in a damp basement.
Gilbert Harding, urged to be more ‘sexy' interviewing Mae West

I used to be Snow White … but I drifted.
Mae West

She's the original good time that was had by all.
Bette Davis on a starlet of her day

If I ever get hold of that hag, I'll tear every hair out of her moustache.
Tallulah Bankhead on Bette Davis

Mme de Genlis, in order to avoid the scandal of coquetry, always yielded easily.
Talleyrand

He's the kind of man who will end up dying in his own arms.
Mamie Van Doren on Warren Beatty

Madame, you must really be more careful. Suppose it had been someone else who found you like this.
Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, when he discovered his wife with her lover

She's like the old line about justice – not only must be done but must be seen to be done.
John Osborne,
Time Present

You were born with your legs apart. They'll send you to the grave in a Y-shaped coffin.
Joe Orton,
What the Butler Saw

If the girls at a Yale weekend were laid end to end I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
Dorothy Parker

Women might be able to fake orgasms, but men can fake whole relationships.
Sharon Stone

She is chaste whom nobody has asked.
Ovid,
Amores,
I.8

Ladies, just a little more virginity, if you don't mind.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree, directing a group of actresses

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite virginity.
Daniel Webster on hearing of an exchange of views about his friend Peggy Eaton's scandalous reputation

… Your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French wither'd pears: it looks ill, it eats drily …
William Shakespeare,
All's Well That Ends Well

Sara could commit adultery at one end and weep for her sins at the other, and enjoy both operations at once.
Joyce Cary,
The Horse's Mouth

You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think.
Dorothy Parker, in a speech to the American Horticultural Society

Masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable.
H.L. Mencken,
In Defence of Women

A woman is only a woman,
But a good cigar is a smoke.
Rudyard Kipling; later used by Groucho Marx

There she goes, not with a wimp but a banker.
Paul Desmond on seeing a former girlfriend with a suited man in the street

A woman's place is in the wrong.
James Thurber

Men are nicotine-stained, beer-besmirched, whisky-greased, red-eyed devils.
Carry Nation

Men's men: be they gentle or simple, they're very much of a muchness.
George Eliot,
Daniel Deronda

Macho isn't mucho.
Zsa Zsa Gabor