7

INSULTS

 

• ‘He is racist, he’s homophobic, he’s xenophobic and he’s a sexist. He’s the perfect Republican candidate.’
Liberal political commentator Bill Press, speaking about Pat Buchanan

• ‘Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend – if you have one.’
George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

• ‘Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend second – if there is one.’
Winston Churchill, in reply to George Bernard Shaw

• ‘You can’t see as well as these f***ing flowers – and they’re f***ing plastic.’
Tennis player John McEnroe, speaking to a line judge

• ‘You’re like a pay toilet, aren’t you? You don’t give a shit for nothing.’
Producer Howard Hughes to actor Robert Mitchum

• ‘Who picks your clothes – Stevie Wonder?’
US comic Don Rickles to talk-show host David Letterman

• ‘He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.’
William Faulkner, speaking about Ernest Hemingway

• ‘Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?’
Ernest Hemingway’s response to William Faulkner

• ‘If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee.’
Lady Astor to Winston Churchill

• ‘If you were my wife, I’d drink it.’
Winston Churchill, in reply to Lady Astor

• ‘Sir, you’re drunk!’
Lady Astor to Winston Churchill

• ‘Yes, madam, I am drunk. But in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.’
Winston Churchill, replying to Lady Astor

• ‘Joe Frazier is so ugly, he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wildlife.’
Muhammad Ali’s response to Joe Frazier

• ‘He got a reputation as a great actor by just thinking hard about the next line.’
Director King Vidor, speaking about Gary Cooper

• ‘He’s phoney, using his blackness to get his way.’
Joe Frazier, speaking about Muhammad Ali

• ‘The only reason he had a child is so that he can meet babysitters.’
US talk-show host David Letterman, speaking about Warren Beatty

• ‘Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad.’
Donald Trump to interviewer Larry King

• ‘He’s the type of man who will end up dying in his own arms.’
Actress Mamie Van Doren, speaking about Warren Beatty

• ‘He couldn’t adlib a fart after a baked-bean dinner.’
US talk-show host Johnny Carson, speaking about Chevy Chase

• ‘He acts like he’s got a Mixmaster up his ass and doesn’t want anyone to know it.’
Marlon Brando, speaking about Montgomery Clift

• ‘His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open.’
Producer Howard Hughes, speaking about Clark Gable

• ‘Steve Martin has basically one joke and he’s it.’
Musician Dave Felton

• ‘Now there sits a man with an open mind. You can feel the draught from here.’
Groucho Marx, speaking about his brother Chico

• ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
Oscar Wilde to actress Sarah Bernhardt

• ‘I don’t care if you burn.’
Sarah Bernhardt, in reply to Oscar Wilde

• ‘Most of the time he sounds like he has a mouth full of wet toilet paper.’
Actor Rex Reed, speaking about Marlon Brando

• ‘I’ve got three words for him: Am. A. Teur.’
Former hell-raising actor Charlie Sheen, speaking about current hell-raising actor Colin Farrell

• ‘He sings like he’s throwing up.’
Musician Andrew O’Connor, speaking about Bryan Ferry

• ‘Well at least he has finally found his true love. What a pity he can’t marry himself.’
Frank Sinatra, speaking about Robert Redford

• ‘Bambi with testosterone.’
Film critic Owen Gleiberman, speaking about Prince

• ‘There were three things that Chico was always on – a phone, a horse or a broad.’
Groucho Marx

• ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a condom full of walnuts.’
TV critic and journalist Clive James

• ‘McEnroe was as charming as always, which means that he was as charming as a dead mouse in a loaf of bread.’
Clive James

• ‘Michael Jackson’s album was only called Bad because there wasn’t enough room on the sleeve for ‘Pathetic’.
US songwriter Prince

• ‘I love his work but I couldn’t warm to him even if I was cremated next to him.’
Keith Richards, speaking about Chuck Berry

• ‘Boy George is all England needs – another queen who can’t dress.’
US comedienne Joan Rivers

• ‘Michael Jackson was a poor black boy who grew up to be a rich white woman.’
Author Molly Ivins 

• ‘He has turned almost alarmingly blond – he’s gone past platinum, he must be plutonium; his hair is co-ordinated with his teeth.’
Film critic Pauline Kael, speaking about Robert Redford

• ‘He has so many fish hooks in his nose, he looks like a piece of bait.’
Sports commentator Bob Costas, speaking about basketball star Dennis Rodman

• ‘He has the vocal modulation of a railway-station announcer, the expressive power of a fencepost and the charisma of a week-old head of lettuce.’
Film critic Fintan O’Toole, speaking about Quentin Tarantino

• ‘I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized to how many people he is not a sex symbol but a mother image.’
David Bowie

• ‘Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.’
Rock music critic Greil Marcus, speaking about Elvis Presley

• ‘Pamela Lee said her name is tattooed on her husband’s penis. Which explains why she changed her name from Anderson to Lee.’
US talk-show host Conan O’Brien, speaking about ex-Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee 

• ‘He sounds like he’s got a brick dangling from his willy, and a food-mixer making purée of his tonsils.’
Musician Paul Lester, speaking about Jon Bon Jovi

• ‘Presley sounded like Jayne Mansfield looked – blowsy and loud and low.’
Columnist Julie Burchill, speaking about Elvis Presley

• ‘He looks like a dwarf who’s been dipped in a bucket of pubic hair.’
British musician Boy George, speaking about Prince

• ‘Sleeping with George Michael would be like having sex with a groundhog.’
Boy George

• ‘If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drilling rights on George Bush’s head.’
Columnist and author Jim Hightower

• ‘A pin-stripin’ polo-playin’ umbrella-totin’ Ivy-Leaguer, born with a silver spoon so far in his mouth that you couldn’t get it out with a crowbar.’
Former Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, speaking about George Bush

• ‘He’s a Boy Scout with a hormone imbalance.’
Political analyst Kevin Phillips, speaking about George Bush 

• ‘He can’t help it – he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.’
Former Texas Governor Ann Richards, speaking about George Bush

• ‘He would kill his own mother just so that he could use her skin to make a drum to beat his own praises.’
Society figure and wit Margot Asquith, speaking about Winston Churchill

• ‘Bill Clinton’s foreign policy experience is pretty much confined to having had breakfast once at the International House of Pancakes.’
Republican Pat Buchanan

• ‘He is a shifty-eyed goddamn liar… He’s one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and lying out of both sides.’
Harry Truman, speaking about Richard Nixon

• ‘Clinton is a man who thinks international affairs means dating a girl from out of town.’
Best-selling author Tom Clancy

• ‘Avoid all needle drugs – the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.’
Abbie Hoffman, 1960s counter-culture icon 

• ‘He doesn’t die his hair – he’s just prematurely orange.’
Gerald Ford, speaking about Ronald Reagan

• ‘He is so dumb, he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.’
Lyndon Baines Johnson, speaking about Gerald Ford

• ‘Nixon’s motto was: If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.’
Editor and writer Norman Cousins, speaking about Richard Nixon

• ‘When he does smile, he looks as if he’s just evicted a widow.’
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Mike Royko on former presidential candidate Bob Dole

• ‘Dan Quayle is more stupid than Ronald Reagan put together.’
The Simpsons creator Matt Groening

• ‘That’s not writing, that’s typing.’
US author Truman Capote, commenting on Jack Kerouac’s style

• ‘He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.’
Author James Reston, speaking about Richard Nixon

• ‘I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad.’
Lyndon Baines Johnson, commenting on a speech by Richard Nixon

• ‘President Clinton apparently gets so much action that every couple of weeks they have to spray WD-40 on his zipper.’
US talk-show host David Letterman

• ‘If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking, “Do you want fries with that?”’
British actor and comedian John Cleese

• ‘He doesn’t dye his hair, he bleaches his face.’
US talk-show host Johnny Carson, speaking about Ronald Reagan

• ‘The stupid person’s idea of the clever person.’
Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen, speaking about Aldous Huxley

• ‘The only time he opens his mouth is to change feet.’
Golf commentator David Feherty, speaking about Nick Faldo

• ‘I think Nancy does most of his talking; you’ll notice that she never drinks water when Ronnie speaks.’
US actor and comedian Robin Williams, speaking about Ronald Reagan

• ‘Washington could not tell a lie; Nixon could not tell the truth; Reagan cannot tell the difference.’
US comic Mort Sahl

• ‘Once he makes up his mind, he’s full of indecision.’
US pianist and actor Oscar Levant, speaking about Dwight D Eisenhower

• ‘The world is rid of him, but the deadly slime of his touch remains.’
English painter John Constable, commenting on the death of Lord Byron

• ‘He was a great friend of mine. Well, as much as you could be a friend of his, unless you were a 14-year-old nymphet.’
US author Truman Capote, speaking about William Faulkner

• ‘The last time I was in Spain I got through six Jeffrey Archer novels. I must remember to take enough toilet paper next time.’
Comic Bob Monkhouse

• ‘Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.’
D H Lawrence, speaking about James Joyce 

• ‘Once you’ve put one of his books down, you simply can’t pick it up again.’
Mark Twain, speaking about Henry James

• ‘What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?’
Author and columnist Gore Vidal

• ‘Dr Donne’s verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding.’
James I

• ‘There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.’
Oscar Wilde, speaking about Alexander Pope

• ‘That insolent little ruffian, that crapulous lout. When he quitted a sofa, he left behind him a smear.’
Poet Norman Cameron, speaking about Dylan Thomas

• ‘Reading him is like wading through glue.’
Lord Alfred Tennyson, speaking about Ben Jonson

• ‘They told me that Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.’
Winston Churchill

• ‘Elizabeth Taylor has more chins than the Chinese telephone directory.’
Joan Rivers

• ‘I have more talent in my smallest fart than you have in your entire body.’
Walter Matthau to Barbra Streisand

• ‘He has a face like a warthog that has been stung by a wasp.’
Golf commentator David Feherty, speaking about Colin Montgomerie

• ‘The only person who ever left the Iron Curtain wearing it.’
US actor and pianist Oscar Levant, speaking about Zsa Zsa Gabor

• ‘She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B.’
Dorothy Parker, speaking about Katharine Hepburn

• ‘You can calculate Zsa Zsa Gabor’s age by the rings on her fingers.’
Bob Hope

• ‘The plain truth is, that he was a most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the history of England.’
Charles Dickens, speaking about Henry VIII 

• ‘He writes his plays for the ages – the ages between five and twelve.’
US author George Nathan, speaking about George Bernard Shaw

• ‘Sarah Brightman couldn’t act scared on the New York subway at 4 o’clock in the morning.’
Film-maker Joel Segal, speaking about theatre actress Sarah Brightman

• ‘Zsa Zsa Gabor has been married so many times, she has rice marks on her face.’
US comic and actor Henry Youngman

• ‘She has breasts of granite and a mind like a Gruyère cheese.’
Film-maker Billy Wilder, speaking about Marilyn Monroe

• ‘Martina was so far in the closet, she was in danger of being a garment bag.’
Lesbian author Rita Mae Brown, speaking about tennis star Martina Navratilova

• ‘Joan always cries a lot. Her tear ducts must be close to her bladder.’
Bette Davis, speaking about Joan Crawford

• ‘She speaks five languages and can’t act in any of them.’
John Gielgud, speaking about Ingrid Bergman 

• ‘She looks like she combs her hair with an eggbeater.’
Columnist Louella Parsons, speaking about Joan Collins

• ‘A woman whose face looked as if it had been made of sugar and someone had licked it.’
George Bernard Shaw, speaking about dancer Isadora Duncan

• ‘Hah! I always knew Frank would end up in bed with a boy!’
Actress Ava Gardner, speaking about Mia Farrow’s marriage to her ex-husband Frank Sinatra

• ‘Elizabeth Taylor’s so fat, she puts mayonnaise on aspirin.’
US comic Joan Rivers

• ‘The only genius with an IQ of 60.’
Author and columnist Gore Vidal, speaking about Andy Warhol

• ‘She’s a vacuum with nipples.’
Film-maker Otto Preminger, speaking about Marilyn Monroe

• ‘Nowadays a parlour maid as ignorant as Queen Victoria was when she came to the throne would be classed as mentally defective.’
George Bernard Shaw, speaking about Queen Victoria

• ‘Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater.’
Bette Davis, speaking about Jayne Mansfield 

• ‘It’s a new low for actresses when you have to wonder what’s between her ears instead of her legs.’
Katharine Hepburn, speaking about Sharon Stone

• ‘The closest thing to Roseanne Barr’s singing the national anthem was my cat being neutered.’
US talk-show host Johnny Carson

• ‘When it comes to acting, Joan Rivers has the range of a wart.’
Author Stewart Klein

• ‘She is closer to organized prostitution than anything else.’
Singer Morrissey, speaking about Madonna

• ‘Comparing Madonna with Marilyn Monroe is like comparing Raquel Welch to the back of a bus.’
Boy George

• ‘A cross between an aardvark and an albino rat.’
Film critic John Simon, speaking about Barbra Streisand

• ‘I didn’t know her well, but after watching her in action I didn’t want to know her well.’
Joan Crawford, speaking about Judy Garland

• ‘Her voice sounded like an eagle being goosed.’
Author Ralph Novak, speaking about Yoko Ono

• ‘If I found her floating in my pool, I’d punish my dog.’
US comic Joan Rivers, speaking about Yoko Ono

• ‘A senescent bimbo with a lust for home furnishings.’
Author and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich, speaking about Nancy Reagan

• ‘In her last days, she resembled a spoiled pear.’
Author and columnist Gore Vidal, speaking about US experimental writer Gertrude Stein

• ‘She looks like something that would eat its young.’
Dorothy Parker, speaking about actress Dame Edith Evans

• ‘Virginia Woolf’s writing is no more than glamorous knitting. I believe she must have a pattern somewhere.’
Poet Dame Edith Sitwell, speaking about Virginia Woolf

• ‘She looked like a huge ball of fur on two well-developed legs.’
Novelist Nancy Mitford, speaking about Princess Margaret

• ‘A fungus of pendulous shape.’
Writer Alice James, speaking about George Eliot

• ‘Every word she writes is a lie, including “and” and “the”.’
US writer and critic Mary McCarthy, speaking about US playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman 

• ‘I am fairly unrepentant about her poetry. I really think that three quarters of it is gibberish. However, I must crush down these thoughts, otherwise the dove of peace will shit on me.’
Noel Coward, speaking about poet Dame Edith Sitwell