Selected frustration quotes

1. It's been a rough day. I got up this morning, put on a shirt and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom...

2. My worst personal problem is that my computer doesn't understand me.

3. From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.

4. Is it against the law to kill a reporter?

5. Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth.

6. Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.

7. You can't fight City Hall, but you can goddamn sure blow it up.

8. This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating.

9. Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

10. People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.

11. Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.

12. Basic anatomy. That has got to be the ongoing frustration: Why can't my fingers do what I want them to do? Not being able to play what I hear in my head - that is the ultimate source of frustration.

13. Boys frustrate me. I hate all their indirect messages, I hate game playing. Do you like me or don't you? Just tell me so I can get over you.

14. What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?

15. It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.

16. I don't like sewing machines. I don't understand how a needle with a thread going through the tip of it can interlock the thread by jamming itself into a little goddamn spool. It's contrary to nature and it irritates me.

17. Oops, I thought. Oops is an all-purpose word standing for every bit of profanity, blasphemy, and pornographic and scatological execration I could think of.

18. I hate my verses, every line, every word. Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky. Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.

19. I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times!

20. Every seemingly arbitrary destructive action is a reaction of the organism to the frustration of a gratification of a vital need, especially of a sexual need.

21. In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.

22. The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes.

23. Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

24. To Perl, or not to Perl, that is the kvetching.

25. Golf is a good walk spoiled.

26. I pledge impertinence to the flag waving, of the unindicted co-conspirators of America, and to the republicans for which I can't stand, one abomination, underhanded fraud, indefensible, with Liberty and Justice... Forget it.

27. 'If I hear Bowie Kuhn say just once more he's doing something for the betterment of baseball, I'm going to throw-up.'

28. I bought some batteries, but they weren't included - so I had to buy them again.

29. Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. If they clamor for freedom, it is but freedom to establish equality and uniformity. The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity: to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others. No one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority. They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society. The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Actually, their innermost desire is for an end to the 'free for all.' They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society.

30. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: '[They] pray not only for [their] daily bread, but also for [their] daily illusion.' The rule seems to be that those who find difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led.

31. Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity - these three - and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised? Men say that God punishes for complaining. No, but men are angry with misery. They are irritated with women for not being happy. They take it as a personal offence. To God alone may women complain without insulting Him!

32. In view of my previous weariness of office, and vague thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.

33. It just seems so useless to have to work so hard and nothin' ever really seems to come from it.

34. The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt That must, as if it had not holy blood Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud, Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theatre business, management of men. I swear before the dawn comes round again I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

35. Oh shit, I lost a ring. I sure hope it's in my pocket. This motherfuckin ring... ok, I had one and it broke in half and I got another one, and now it disappeared. Continue your interview; I'm hoping it's in my pocket. [For the record, it wasn't.]

36. That's the thing about people who think they hate computers ... What they really hate are lousy programmers.

37. A fateful process is set in motion when the individual is released 'to the freedom of his own impotence' and left to justify his existence by his own efforts. The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations. The individual on his own is stable only so long as he is possessed of self-esteem. The maintenance of self-esteem is a continuous task which taxes all of the individual's powers and inner resources. We have to prove our worth and justify our existence anew each day. When, for whatever reason, self-esteem is unattainable, the autonomous individual becomes a highly explosive entity. He turns away from an unpromising self and plunges into the pursuit of pride - the explosive substitute for self-esteem. All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in crises of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavor in which the masses most readily unite is basically a search for pride.

38. Who is booking this crap? The Rock against Billy Gunn; The Rock against Gangrel. Next week, they'll be having The Rock laying the Smackdown on the Brooklyn Brawler, for Christ's sake.

39. 'I don't believe this; this is a bunch of monkey crap; they BROKE the Rock's ROLEX!'

40. So I bought a .44 magnum it was solid steel cast And in the blessed name of Elvis well I just let it blast 'Til my TV lay in pieces there at my feet And they busted me for disturbin' the almighty peace. Judge said 'What you got in your defense son?' 'Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on' I can see by your eyes friend you're just about gone Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on.

41. 'I was sitting in my hotel room, with a copy of your rock magazine (Kerrang!) and I didn't know whether to read it...or wipe my ass with it!'

42. Please excuse me if it seems I'm throwing a little tantrum, but I can't get a microphone that fucking works.

43. This Humidity is doing murder to my hair! (Introducing 'Miss Murder')

44. What do we have now? I don't know, Oh yay! We have a commercial.

45. Damn, and just when I was starting to get it!

46. The attitude of the intellectual community toward America is shaped not by the creative few but by the many who for one reason or another cannot transmute their dissatisfaction into a creative impulse, and cannot acquire a sense of uniqueness and of growth by developing and expressing their capacities and talents. There is nothing in contemporary America that can cure or alleviate their chronic frustration. They want power, lordship, and opportunities for imposing action. Even if we should banish poverty from the land, lift up the Negro to true equality, withdraw from Vietnam, and give half of the national income as foreign aid, they will still see America as an air-conditioned nightmare unfit for them to live in.

47. Balance the stupid fucking budget!

48. Of course there are boob and bad reporters who bring in boob and bad items which are printed, and which make so many papers what they are. But there are more intelligent men who try to bring in intelligent items, only to see them changed into imbecile items, with the result that they may easily give up trying, and accustom themselves instead to the spirit of the office....

49. Nothing but a damn bunch of bullshit!

50. I've had the most extraordinary longing to say 'Bloody Hell'!

51. F**k off! It's enough that I have to see you shit-kickers every day, I'm not going to talk to you too. Just do your G-ddamn job and keep your mouth shut.

52. I want to get this shit over with and get these damn people out of here.

53. Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature, despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason than to sate your repulsive gluttony!

54. Many of us affect a tone of irony about gadgets, as if we lived always in realms above and dealt with trifles only during rare descents from sublime thoughts. The truth is that more and more of the important things in life turn on pinpoints. Our frustrations begin in trivialities - a telephone out of order, a car that will not start, a claim check whose number has been misread. The thing in cellophane that cannot be got at - plain to the sight but sealed like an egg - is the modern version of the torture of Tantalus. Catastrophes we will deal with like heroes, but the bottle top that defies us saps our morale, like the tiny arrows of the Lilliputians that maddened Gulliver and set his strength at naught.

55. 'Hackey-bag-foot-sack always confused me. I could never figure out what the score was or who was winning, so I'd always get mad and end up kicking it into the lake.'

56. It's 'most enough to make a deacon swear.

57. 'Where are my keys?' (The Mask)

58. 'These props are kicking my butt...'

59. The network called up and said 'We piggybacked you on the deal for another show,' I'm like 'Okay, so what you're saying to my writers is that they weren't picked up when they thought they were and now that they are it was because of something that has nothing to do with them. Okay. Great. Stop calling'.

60. Let's change things. Let's danger it up. We're crazy enough. I just can't take it.

61. Alla you! Quit bugging me, goddammit!

62. It's getting harder and harder to think out loud. One of these days someone's gonna go off and kill Thomas a'Becket for me...

63. Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): 'I knew it, I'm surrounded by Assholes.' (This follows everyone on the bridge announcing that their last name is 'Asshole.')

64. Lonestar (Bill Pullman): 'That's all we needed, a Druish Princess!' Mel Brooks in the director's Commentary : 'I'm both proud and ashamed of that line'

65. I was gonna get a candy bar; the button I was supposed to push was 'HH', so I went to the side, I found the 'H' button, I pushed it twice. Fuckin'...potato chips came out man, 'cause they had a 'HH' button, for Christ's sakes! You need to let me know. I'm not familiar with the concept of 'HH'. I did not learn my AA-BB-CC's. God god dammit dammit.'

66. Sometimes it was very nice to have monsters and lawyers. Why ordinary people didn't strangle arrogant bureaucrats more often, [he] didn't know.

67. I spend... twenty times more for you people than any other commercial I've ever made. You are such pests! Now what is it you want? In your... depths of your ignorance, what is it you want? Whatever it is you want, I can't deliver, 'cause I just don't see it.

68. What's with the K-Mart thing, huh? Is it cuz I'm black? IS IT CUZ I'M BLACK?!?

69. You know my Doctor, Doctor Vinny BoomBots... I called and told him I had a bad case of diarrhea. - He put me on hold!

70. I came here to get freedom from the inane interruptions of the mentally deficient, but it seems I asked too much of fate.

71. Come on, people, it's fucking Christmas!

72. I sense that novel of my dreams is in the Remington SL3 - although it writes much faster than I can spell.

73. I'll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I'd rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dogshit.

74. All you niggas living bummy/While you fucking with me?/I'm a self made Millionaire/Thug livin', out of prison/Pistols in the Air {Air} (Ha Ha)

75. There's a lot of bastards out there!

76. I had in my soul the greatest truths to tell, but when I came to the work of telling them I couldn't do it.

77. The Etch a Sketch is the toy for drawing that makes drawing almost impossible. It simulates what drawing would be like if you had crippling arthritis.

78. 'Dammit, woman, you're not listening to me.'

79. Let's say, for instance, I'm out of cheese. And then I'll think, oh, but what if I go to the store and they're out of cheese? I'd be like, 'How can you be out of cheese?' 'What do you mean 'How can we be out of cheese?' You're out of cheese. People run out of cheese.' Then I'd be like, 'Yeah, but you're a store. You should have cheese stocked up in the back for people like me coming in looking for cheese.' And that's when they send the manager over, who thinks he's so cool for being the manager 'cause his picture's framed in the front of the store 'cause he's the manager, you know. And he'd be like, 'What seems to be the problem, ma'am?' Which to me is so condescending, like 'little lady.' I'd be like, 'The little lady's problem.:' He'd be like, 'Who's the little lady?' I'd be like, 'Shut up and listen to me. You're out of cheese and I want some.' And, he's like, 'Well, how about some cottage cheese?' Like he's going to negotiate the situation, he's a diplomat because he's the manager. And I'd be like, 'I don't want cottage cheese; I want cheddar cheese. Sharp cheddar cheese is what I came in for. Sharp cheddar cheese and cottage cheese are not the same things. Just 'cause they have the name cheese in the title doesn't make it a cheese at all. That'd be like going into a musical instrument store and saying 'I'd like to buy a trumpet,' and them saying 'I'm sorry, we're all out of trumpets, but would you like a shoehorn?' See, that's not the same thing, is it, Mr. Manager?' ('Thank you for the shoe horn,' you know.) And he starts getting all nervous and everything, because a crowd has formed and he starts feeling humiliated because they're all sitting around mumbling 'What seems to be the problem?,' I don't know, she wants some cheese.' And, so, um, he just slaps me right across the face. And, umm, so that's when Skip, the part time guy who works there, who hates the manager 'cause he thinks so cool for being the manager and treats Skip like shit because he's just the part time guy. And Skip's going to quit in the fall and go back to school anyway. He doesn't even need the money; he's from a wealthy family. He's just doing it for the experience because his family wants him to work one summer. And, so anyway, so, he takes the hose, and he goes to spray the manager right in the eye, right, and so, but that's when he's leaning down to pick the cottage cheese, so he misses him and he gets this old woman who's standing right behind him, and she's there picking out an avocado, because the older you are the less you eat and she all she wants is the avocado. So she screams out, 'my eye, I've been sprayed in the eye with a produce hose.' And so then that's when her nephew who's visiting from Austin Texas is two aisles over buying tortilla chips because he thinks they're going to have guacamole. Little does he know it's one avocado. And so, he starts running 'I'll help you, aunt so and so,' running, and then when he's running down the aisle when he slips on some water from the produce hose, breaks his leg, breaks his arm, bruises two ribs right there: gets a stitch put in his cheekbone, just one, but still, it's a stitch. Chaos breaks out and it's all over Hard Copy and Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood: 'Lesbian Demands Cheese, Causes Riot.' And I'm like, 'I didn't even want the cheese.' You know?

80. ...he felt frustrated, his sense of fate and direction subverted by banalities - the frustration of the man who, having thought himself following his destiny, finds he is actually on the A318 to New Malden.

81. You know, I'm sorry. Normally we have all the writers. We've got a big group of people kicking that soundbite around, but right now it's just me. So... let me see if I can, just quickly, whip something up here; erm... erm... ooh! I've got something. FUCK YOU!

82. [He] always seemed to take it so personally that the universe didn't always work the way he wanted it to

83. Don't ask me questions when I don't even know the answer myself

84. [In a Scottish Accent] Here's my idea for a fucking sport...I knock a ball into a gopher hole. 'Oh you mean like pool?' Fuck off pool! Not with a straight stick. With a little fucked up stick. I whack the ball, it goes in a gopher hole. 'Oh like croquet?' Fuck croquet! I put the hole hundreds of yards away. Oh yeah, whack the ball and it goes in the little fucking hole! 'Oh, so it's like a bowling thing?' Fuck no! Not straight, I put shit in the way! Like trees and bushes and high grass! So you can lose your fucking ball and go whackin' away with a tire iron. Whackin' away, and each time you miss you feel like you're gonna have a stroke. Fuck! That's what we'll call it! A stroke, cause every time you miss you feel like you're gonna fucking die! Oh great and here's the best part-oh fuck this is brilliant! Right near the end I'll put a little flat piece with a little tiny flag to give you fucking hope! But then I'll put a pool and a sandbox to fuck with your ball again! You'll be trashin' yer arse, jerkin' away in the sand, ah-hah! 'And you do this one time?'... FUCK NO! EIGHTEEN FUCKIN' TIMES!

85. What they want from us motherf**kin thug niggaz?/Used to love niggaz now I plug niggaz, and slug niggaz

86. Why was I born with such contemporaries?

87. Goddamn the Warner Brothers to hell for giving Marvin the Martain the raygun.

88. Its gonna be 85 degrees, they're not gonna allow any cold beer...why don't you just go ahead and turn on a garbage disposal and shove a child's hand into it, 'cause that's the same thing.

89. I don't like being used that way! The only one that use me is jesus! I'd be Jesus' jail bitch if you wanted me to!

90. I don't get no respect!!!

91. Fuck rational thinking.

92. 'Is this Groundhog Day?'

93. She's got a cheap cell phone and the host left and now I'm all alone. sigh

94. (When asked if he got something for Sabu on their 10 year anniversary fight on XPW) 'Well I got together and counted the nickels and pennies and went to radio shack I know Sabu is a fan of electronics, Bloomingdale sure had some nice things but well, I couldn't find anything good enough so I guess I will just have to give him an ass kicking'

95. Cat, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

96. I can't watch TV longer than 5 minutes without praying for nuclear holocaust.

97. We can call anyone? Well, how about my fucking agent, and let's fire him together. Pittsburgh, you bastard. Good crowds? They stared at me like a dog that's just been shown a card-trick.

98. When it rains it pours, they say. My guess is that its those damned English terrorists with their weather machine, trying to ruin our fun.

99. It didn't seem to work, cause no matter how much make up I wore people just kept saying, 'Yes, Sir!, Would you like tea with that Sir?!' 'Yes, I would like tea, why don't you put it on my breasts?' 'Certainly, tea for this man's breasts! Anything else, sir?' 'No, just fuck off'

100. This is no time to be getting all steamed up about La Rochefoucauld. It's only a question of minutes before I'm going to be pretty darned good and sick of La Rochefoucauld, once and for all. La Rochefoucauld this and La Rochefoucauld that. Yes, well, let me tell you that if nobody had ever learned to quote, very few people would be in love with La Rochefoucauld. I bet you I don't know ten souls who read him without a middleman.