gossip Quotes

“The Witch was so stunned that she nearly lost her grip on the branch. The last thing she ever cared for was gossip. Yet she had been out of touch for so long that she was astonished at the vigorous opinions of these random nobodies.”

“The Coffee Pot was where people went to loaf, talk tall, and swap gossip. Mary Alice and I were of some interest when we dropped by because we were kin of Mrs. Dowdel’s, who never set foot in the place. She said she liked to keep herself to herself, which was uphill work in a town like that.”

“There’s no private matters in this town, Merle,” Grandma said. “Everybody’s private business is public property.” “Yes, and you’ve stuck your nose in ours!” Mrs. Stubbs said, speaking up sharp. “You got that Eubanks gal upstairs this minute.”

“Beware of women altogether. Only let to a man. . . . Men don’t gossip over tea-cups. If they get drunk, there’s an end of them—they lie down comfortably and sleep it off. If they’re vulgar, they somehow keep it to themselves. It doesn’t spread so. Give me a man—of course, provided he’s clean.”

“She could not have borne their pity, and their whispered remarks to one another upon her strange situation; though she would almost have faced a knowledge of her circumstances by every individual there, so long as her story had remained isolated in the mind of each. It was the interchange of ideas about her that made her sensitiveness wince.”

“Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate. (There was some argument about this, because he could read headlines and articles about himself, or at least headlines on articles about himself, and the gossip squibs on the New York Post’s Page Six.)”

“Prepare a crossing party,” snapped Horyse. “A single person to cross. Miss Abhorsen, here. And Sergeant, if you or Private Rahise so much as talk in your sleep about what you may have heard here, then you’ll be on gravedigging fatigues for the rest of your lives!”

“Don’t you study about other folks’s business till you take care of your own.”

“There was nothing, nothing, Gatlin loved better than a spectacle.”

“That’s the thing I hated most about Gatlin. The way everyone had something to say about everything you said or did or, in this case, wore.”

“There’s a sense of security that comes from speaking badly of someone else. But that isn’t true salvation.”

“That’s the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication.”

“It was their talk about Christophine that changed Coulibri, not the repairs or the new furniture or the strange faces. Their talk about Christophine and obeah changed it.”

“Say nothing and it may not be true.”

“Lies are never forgotten, they go on and they grow.”

“Once I’d realized how this town spread gossip, rumors, and blame like soft butter on hot toast, I’d convinced myself I had to get out of here fast after high school.”

“We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.”

“The vast majority of human communication – whether in the form of emails, phone calls or newspaper columns – is gossip. It comes so naturally to us that it seems as if our language evolved for this very purpose.”

“How the myth wipes out the fact.”

“I can’t help but feel you’re making a mistake in not allowing that woman to talk. If she gets around at all, she may have picked up some very interesting little news items.”

“I showed up on time for my eleven A.M. interview and didn’t panic until I encountered the line of leggy, Twiggy types waiting to be permitted to board the elevators. Their lips never stopped moving, and their gossip was punctuated only by the sound of their stilettos clacking on the floor. Clackers, I thought. That’s perfect.”

“Most gossip is envy in disguise.”