A lot of my characters in all of my books have a self-destructive urge. They'll do precisely the thing that they know is wrong, take a perverse delight in doing the wrong thing.
Richard Russo

Admitting weakness seems to be such a severe psychic threat for Bush that when he makes a mistake it's safer just to reinforce it. The strategy creates a perverse system of rewards and punishments.
Tina Brown

And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.
David Kay

Anything that was perverse and silly would be Kids in the Hall.
Kevin McDonald

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.
Diane Arbus

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.
Gustave Flaubert

I think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic.
Studs Terkel

I would tell anyone who wants something from someone else to feign not wanting it. People are perverse. If you show great affection to them, they'll run the other way.
Hedy Lamarr

In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Stephen Jay Gould

Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take.
Barney Frank

Isn't that the most perverse thing you've ever heard?
John Waters

It is better to be thought perverse than insincere.
Samuel Richardson

It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it.
Robert Musil

Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe, from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man.
George G. Simpson

Our career path has tended to be the most perverse and contrary approach to the entertainment industry imaginable, while at the same time doing the kinds of things that you have to do, the videos, the photos and all that sort of stuff.
Peter Garrett

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous- to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.
Thomas Mann

That strategy of buy and hold, which is the sound and sensible one for the individual, can have very dangerous and perverse effects for the market as a whole.
Ron Chernow

The more decadent a culture gets, the more they have a need for what they don't have at all, which is innocence, so you end up with kiddie porn and a perverse obsession with youth.
Joni Mitchell

The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.
Charles E. Trevelyan

The supply-side effect of a restrictive monetary policy is likely to be perverse, in that high interest rates enter into costs and thus exert inflationary pressure.
William Vickrey