The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is, he's writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious way.
Stephen Rea

The photographs were never about me. They were always about the people who were laying their lives on the line for basic civil rights. I look back and I can't believe there was ever a time in this country when ANY citizen could not vote. The times were appalling.
Charles Moore

The poor peasant here hives under conditions quite different from those of Russia. Though often terrible, they are not as appalling as they were there.
Herman Gorter

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
Quentin Crisp

The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling.
Orison Swett Marden

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
James A. Baldwin

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
Victor Hugo

These irresponsible acts, which cannot have any justification whatsoever, are to be fully condemned. In these appalling circumstances, I want to offer you the most sincere condolences, both in my name and in that of the French people.
Jacques Chirac

This is appalling. The idea that a person could be punished because of their religious belief and the idea they might be executed is just beyond belief.
John Howard

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

We've got 50 percent voter turnout for presidential elections. That's appalling. We can do so much better.
Joan Blades

When I want to render these fine nuances, I do not find them in the subject, but in the nature of women in real life who seek unhealthy emotions and are too stupid even to understand the horror in the most appalling situations.
Gustave Moreau

You never know with politicians what they are really saying. And I don't say that in a negative way-they have an appalling job.
James Lovelock