Excruciating Quotes
More Excruciating Quotes
Critics have found in the narrative a veneer of erudition that cloaks nothing more than a James Bond-style romp, albeit a highly addictive one. His publisher has described it as 'a thriller for people who don't like thrillers'. One newspaper put it thus: 'It is terribly written, its characters are cardboard cutouts, the dialogue is excruciating in places and, a bit like a computer manual, everything is overstated and repeated — but it is impossible to put the bloody thing down.
dan brown— David Smith in "Veni vidi da Vinci" in The Observer (12 December 2004)
How thrilling to discover one had depths, how consoling to find them less polluted than the shallows, how encouraging to identify the enemy not as a fissure in the will but as a dead fetus in the specimen jar of the unconscious. My attention was being paternally led away from the excruciating present to the happy, healthy future that would be enabled by an analysis of the sick past, as though the priest had nothing to do but study old books and make bright forecasts, the present not worthy of notice.
Edmund White— A Boy's Own Story, Chapter Six (p. 170)
Mandingo is racist trash, obscene in its manipulation of human beings and feelings, and excruciating to sit through in an audience made up largely of children, as I did last Saturday afternoon. The film has an "R" rating, which didn't keep many kids out, since most came with their parents... if [Chicago] believes Mandingo should be shown to children, then there are no possible standards left and the only thing to do is transfer the censors to the parks department, where they can supervise paper?plate? throwing contests.
roger ebert— Review of Mandingo (25 July 1975)
We realize this is an excruciating time for the families of those on board. No words can describe the pain they must be going through. We understand the desperate need for information on behalf of the families and those watching around the world.
— Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Hamzah Zainuddin, quoted on Yahoo! News, "Malaysia, Flight 370 relatives talk financial help", April 20, 2014.
Love hurts. First love is excruciating. Like being burned in orange flames and then cast into icy water. Your emotions change from one second to the next. You can't sleep. You never sleep. First love is a form of dying and being reborn.
Chloë Thurlow— Snow Falls Softly (2014)
Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate , merciless , excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. .
— Dr. Hendricks, in Atlas Shrugged, in The Little Red Book of Leadership Lessons, p.70
