Social Commentary Quotes

“What a luxury to turn your back on luxury.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“The moral of that story, I think, is that being poor will kill you.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

“That, right fucking there, that was what he hated about them. All of them. Their arrogance. That fucking self-satisfied superiority. Their smug assumptions that they understood what was best for everybody, that they couldn't possibly be wrong. For the Bible told them so.”
― 19, Hero's Torch

“Well, of course there is such a thing as good taste! Some things actually are better than other things, and some people are capable of making the distinction.
But...
Bad taste will always ultimately triumph over good taste, because bad taste has more financial backing. There is far more profit to be made from selling cheap and nasty products, at a big mark-up, than selling quality items at a small mark-up. And you can always produce far more cheap and nasty items far more quickly than you can produce quality items. Far more.”
― Robert Rankin, The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse

“Hollywood, where the rich don't have to pay for anything.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“And if she spent rather more time with her nose in a book than was considered ideal at that time (or any other), well, at least that meant she always had a story to tell.”
― Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This

“If they do these things when the tree is green, what will they do when it is dry?”
― Jesus of Nazareth -- Book of Luke

“Until we came to Baker &Inglis my friends and I had always felt completely American. But now the Bracelets’ upturned noses suggested that there was another America to which we could never gain admittance. All of a sudden America wasn’t about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was about something that had happened for two minutes four hundred years ago, instead of everything that had happened since. Instead of everything that was happening now!”
― Eugenides, Jeffrey

“It's the little things that make you want to kill someone, the way Milo drinks Diet Dr Pepper and ties his Jewfro in a bun and lifts his shirt to show off his stomach and wipes his glasses down even though they're not dirty. Yes, Milo got glasses, and seafoam green Topsiders, and a navy blue Polo-style shirt with a popped collar, and didn't I already kill this guy when he was schilling Home Soda and fucking Guinevere Beck?”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“I bet he got picked on but what they don't tell you about bullying is that sometimes, the kid deserves it.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“Captain Dave is a salt-and-pepper guy who looks older than forty-six. He doesn't have kids of his own. Some people are born to be uncles and Captain Dave is that kind of people. He's also a recovering alcoholic who's obsessed with what everyone else is drinking at all times. Life is hard for some people.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“The song "Born in the U.S.A." comes on and he groans. "I hate Bruce Springsteen," he says. "Can we do something about this? Goddamn whiny Democrat, we get it. You're from New Jersey and you think it's cool to be poor. Just fuck off already.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“Detective Carr sits in his chair. In a way I think it would be terrible to live in LA devoid of aspirations. How would you do it? How would you put up with the traffic and the monotony of the sun, the way people use the word hella and lie so freely? How could you stand it here if you weren't striving for something better? Oh that's right; he liked The Wolf of Wall Street. He aspires to take someone down like me, a serial killer. But he chose the wrong guy. I am done with all that. And I will not let my past dictate my future.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“There is more friendship ahead after we tell each other the truth.”
― Zain Abdul Nassir

“What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”
― Apostle Paul -- Letter to the Romans

“..."You're getting a sort of vaccination this year. If you don't know it now, you'll find it out some day. But it's going to keep you from dying of a terrible disease."
Lucinda was filled with amazement… "What is the disease, Uncle Earle?" she asked solemnly.
"Snobbishness-priggishness-the Social Register. I don't care a damn what you call it, Snoodie, as long as you get your antitoxin before the disease gets you.”
― Ruth Sawyer

“When I pull Amy's extra-long body into an infinity pool and make it look like an accident—dare to dream!—I will be okay because I will have become a Facebook guy, a normal dude. We live in an era where people who don't have 4,355 friends are considered nefarious, as if socially entrenched citizens aren't also capable of murder. I need friends so that when Amy disappears, my friends can roll their eyes at the idea of handsome, gregarious Joe killing someone. I can't be that guy who 'keeps to himself." That's too in-line with the dated but pervasive stereotype of a 'killer' reinforced by biased TV 'news' shows no matter how many happy-go-lucky husbands go and murder their wives. We all want to fear single people. It's endemic. It's American.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“Dope guac," says some asshole, and I pick up a Dorito and shove it into the guac. There is nothing remarkable about this guac, about any guac, and California needs to calm the fuck down. They're just avocados. Guac is guac and while sometimes it's slimy and disgusting, it's never delicious.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“Everyone in this building is sleeping; Angelenos need beauty sleep. They need energy to make storyboards for web series and hike and talk about movies they'll never make and walk their dogs that hate them.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“This is why people like writing. You visit old friends without having to go on Facebook and see what they're up to and deal with what idiots call FOMO. You make them into what you want them to be, the people they could be if only they were braver, smarter.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“At the counter, a different waitress flirts with an aspiring writer who's probably been trying to fuck her and finish his screenplay for months. He asks for a side of guac and she tells him that it's two dollars extra. That's how it works here. The guy who deserves free guac doesn't get free guac.”
― Caroline Kepnes, Hidden Bodies

“Those old hags downstairs were quite nauseating,' she said after another silence. 'I can't think why we stayed there listening to them. (You because you hunger for social contacts, however squalid. Me to lick the pebble of my unhappiness.)”
― Albert Cohen, Belle du Seigneur

“He was stupid, yes; he had never had any schooling; he didn't know how to explain himself. Was he in jail because he doesn't know how to explain things right? What was wrong with his being stupid? He worked like a slave, day in and day out. [...] Was it his fault he was stupid? Who was to blame?”
― Graciliano Ramos, Vidas secas

“Someone in the women's cell was crying and cursing the fleas. Some whore probably, the kind that would take on anybody. She was no good either. Fabiano wanted to yell to the whole town, to the judge, the chief of police, the priest, and the tax collector, that nobody in there was worth a damn. He, the men squatting around the fire, the drunk, the woman with the fleas —they were all completely worthless, fit only to be hanged.”
― Graciliano Ramos, Vidas secas

“How, then, in an hour of anxiety about the future of the country, ... can those with deep concerns about the nation’s future enlist on the side of [our better] angels?

1. ENTER THE ARENA
[get involved in politics in some way]

2. RESIST TRIBALISM
[engage sympathetically and respectfully with people who do not share your views]

3. RESPECT FACTS AND DEPLOY REASON
There is such a thing as discernible reality.
... Reform is slow work, and it is for neither the fainthearted nor the impatient.

4 . FIND A CRITICAL BALANCE
If we are sympathetic rather than blindly condemnatory or celebratory, we will, I believe, help create a more rational political climate.

5. KEEP HISTORY IN MIND
A grasp of the past can be orienting.”
― Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

“A gentleman by definition is a man who makes everyone around him feel comfortable. Arrogance who only thinks of himself without considering the needs of others is the opposite of a gentleman. They can both be wealthy, they don't have to be, but they cannot both be gentlemen.”
― Oliver Oyanadel, The Fruit of the Knowledge of Good & Evil

“At that time I had to keep meeting people and meeting people in case one of them was someone I could marry.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“The only way a man could always be right is to accept it when he is wrong. For when he is right, he is right. And when he is wrong and accepts he is wrong, he is right.”
― Zain Abdul Nassir

“Maybe it's true what they say, that as long as you're nursing your own pain, whatever it is, you'll turn your back on others in the same boat. You'll want to believe the fix they're in is their own damn fault.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams