"It is a truth universally acknowledged among book critics that the most memorable lines in many novels contain the word fuck...I have saved these lines up, and present some of them here."

Garner's Quotations: a Modern Miscellany, compiled by Dwight Garner (Picador, 2020, 978-1-250-80022-0)

How're you doing, apart from the end of liberal capitalist democracy?
-- Ali Smith, Spring

Everyone nodded, nobody agreed.
-- Ian McEwan, Amsterdam

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
-- Dorothy Parker, attributed

No problem is insoluble given a big enough plastic bag.
-- Tom Stoppard, Jumpers

And off he fucked.
-- Kingsley Amis, attributed, after having told someone to fuck off

Fox News did to our parents what they thought video games would do to us.
-- Ryan Scott, on Twitter

I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.
-- Philip Larkin

I'm looking for my dignity. Don't laugh.
-- Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh

A guy's not really your boyfriend until he's thrown up on you.
-- Patti Smith

The pitter-patter of a police helicopter overhead
Looking for you.
-- Frederick Seidel, "The Ezra Pound Look-Alike"

My favorite ethnic group is smart.
-- Dagoberto Gilb, interview

Do you try to listen to classical music but feel you don't ever really advance past knowing it's better than it sounds?
-- Padgett Powell, The Interrogative Mood

My knowledge of the world consisted of fucking hell, fucking hell, fucking hell.
-- Anna Burns, Milkman

There are fuckers and fuckees.
-- John Lennon

Did you know you can trick people into being more interesting by being more interesting yourself?
-- Elisa Gabbert, "New Theories on Boredom"

It's very difficult to feel contempt for others when you see yourself in the mirror.
-- Harold Pinter, interview

Somebody's boring me. I think it's me.
-- Dylan Thomas

We talked filth for a pleasant half hour.
-- William Boyd, Any Human Heart

The early bird who gets the worm works for somebody who comes in late and owns the worm farm.
-- John D. MacDonald, The Dreadful Lemon Sky

Everybody thinks they're good at sucking dick but they're not, usually.
-- Garth Greenwell, Cleanness

When we championed trash culture, we had no idea it would become the only culture.
-- Pauline Kael