Exasperation Quotes

“But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.

He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.

So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“I'm getting really tired of bleeding. Someone stop the world, I want to get off.”
― Lilith Saintcrow, Night Shift

“People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Celine

“I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. “None of this is worth it!” That’s what I’d like people to hear.”
― Raymond Carver, Elephant and Other Stories

“Now that your speech impediment has been rectified, perhaps you might say something. It would be best if it were humorous. I enjoy a good jest.'

'You are dreadfully rude,' I said to him.

He sighed. 'That wasn't the slightest bit funny.”
― Danielle L. Jensen, Stolen Songbird

“Anger gets you into trouble, ego keeps you in trouble.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“The number of things he thought of saying all at once nearly suffocated him.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“Now for the hitch in Jane's character,' he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak. 'The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is. Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“But," expostulated Josiah Worthington. "But. A human child. A living child. I mean. I mean, I mean. This is a graveyard, not a nursery, blast it.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“...the only thing that could justify your continuing existence on the planet would be if you started breathing carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen.”
― Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

“There is an inanimate object which has a capacity to exasperate which no human being will ever attain: a piano.”
― Marcel Proust

“Granny," said Esk, in the exasperated and remarkably adult voice children use to berate their wayward elders. "I don't think you quite understand. I don't want to hit the ground. It's never done anything to me.”
― Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

“Would somebody please tell him whose idea it had been to kill the entire state of Colorado?”
― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“A thousand curses on girls with smart mouths and access to firepower.”
― Katherine McIntyre, The Airship Also Rises

“Oh, Hammond-intolerable, but he will see the job through.”
― Naomi Novik, Crucible of Gold

“My God, this is longer than sorrow!”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“I've survived revolution, war, and over a decade on this continent," the Burgrave reflected. "But by all the ghosts of the hundred emperors, I think fatherhood will finally do me in.”
― Anthony Ryan, The Waking Fire

“[A]ll over the empire, Romans are frustratingly unwilling to play their role as bloodthirsty martyr-makers. Many even refuse to execute Christians when they arrive in front of them. Arrius Antoninus was a Roman governor of Asia who in the late second century had executed a number of Christians in his province. He was perhaps unprepared for what came next. Instead of fleeing, local Christians suddenly turned up and, in one large mob, presented themselves before him. Antoninus did indeed dutifully kill a few (presumably there is only so much temptation a Roman can stand) but rather than dispatching the rest with pleasure, he turned to them with what, even with the passage of almost two millennia, sounds unmistakably like exasperation. ‘Oh you ghastly people,’ he said. ‘If you want to die you have cliffs you can jump off and nooses to hang yourself with.”
― Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

“I didn't create the system- I was born into it," I say at last. It feels like a fair thing to say.

His face seems to be at war. A flash of anger, a sharp narrowing of his gaze, then a slight pull of his eyebrows- exasperation maybe, but smoothed away to make room for a clenched jaw. "Please stop talking before I do something I regret. Por favor."

"What did I say that was so terrible?" My hands fly to my hips. "If you don't explain it to me, how am i supposed to know-"

"I'm a little tired of explaining myself," Rumi says flatly. "Have been for years. And you all never listen. Do your own reading on the subject, why don't you? And then come back and we'll discuss whatever you like.”
― Isabel Ibañez, Woven in Moonlight

“What in the three worlds are you doing?” I took stock of the mess of torn pages scattered around me like the fanned-out train of a dress.

“Making paper animals. I’m taking requests for the next ten minutes only.”

“A spider.”

“How about a horse?”

“A caterpillar.”

“Can I tempt you with a horse?”

He stared at me, unimpressed. “A stag.”

“I’m sorry, did you say horse?” He pressed a finger between his brows, pushing upward as he sighed. “A fucking horse, then.”

I flung the mangled paper I had been holding at him. “Enjoy”
― Jane Washington, A Dream of Embers

“Carter?” This time it was Sato. He swore darkly. “Again? Seriously, this fucking girl.”
― Jane Washington, Plier