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perverse
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  • In this perverse world, that would be a relief.†   (source)
  • "Pasiphae," I said, "do not be perverse.†   (source)
  • This has a perverse effect on those prisoners who work for the SS, particularly the Sonderkommando.†   (source)
  • A lich was an undead creature, usually an incredibly powerful wizard or king who had employed dark magic to bind his intellect to his own reanimated corpse, thus achieving a perverted form of immortality.†   (source)
  • I tried to keep a small part of me dry and warm, around my chest, where I had placed the survival manual, but the wetness spread with perverse determination.†   (source)
  • Unfortunately, the United States military has also perverted the pentacle; it's now our foremost symbol of war.†   (source)
  • It was the thought of these intimacies in particular, which she imagined as painful acts of perversity, that filled her with dread and made her break out in a sweat.†   (source)
  • It's just that some perverse bit of me had begun to question my own attractiveness.†   (source)
  • I am sure this man was one of the ones who roamed the camp shooting people, either following Goeth's orders or just for his own perverse entertainment.†   (source)
  • —he liked basketball; perversely, perhaps, because it was a tall boy's game.†   (source)
  • I wish I'd known America before it got perverted.†   (source)
  • Perversely, she would not allow herself to turn and acknowledge him; he must learn that she was independent now of other people's opinion, even his.†   (source)
  • Every twelve hours or so they passed the Horcrux between them as though they were playing some perverse, slow-motion game of pass-the-parcel, where they dreaded the music stopping because the reward was twelve hours of increased fear and anxiety.†   (source)
  • They believed they had discovered a method by which the function of time loops could be perverted to confer upon the user a kind of immortality; not merely the suspension of aging, but the reversal of it.†   (source)
  • Still, listening to his classmates complain, he feels perversely responsible, as if his own work were being attacked.†   (source)
  • Suddenly, the scurrying in the rafters and the creaking in the building became irrelevant—I felt a perverted euphoria.†   (source)
  • "You are a perverse little imp, aren't you?"†   (source)
  • Maybe I'm some sort of perverted cartoon-sexual.†   (source)
  • Just struggling with my own perversity.†   (source)
  • The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom.†   (source)
  • I've always thought the Giant's Drink was the most perverted part at the whole mind game, but going for the eye like that. this is the one we want to put in command of our fleets?†   (source)
  • And yet, perversely, this only made me long even more to have the painting close to hand, to look at whenever I wanted.†   (source)
  • How ridiculous, how perverse I would feel presenting that painted Capitol mask to these people.†   (source)
  • He had almost reached the safety of the farmhouse door when a perverse little notion took hold of him.†   (source)
  • It had always seemed slightly perverted to him to clip and torture a plain old hedge into something that it wasn't.†   (source)
  • But back of that perversity, I knew I wasn't mad and that they wouldn't keep me there, locked up in a loony bin.†   (source)
  • And at the time, it was funny, in a perverse kind of way.†   (source)
  • In my mind I invented snmyhymns, as I call them, my own perverse hymns that can be sung equally well forward or backward: Evil, all its sin is still alive!†   (source)
  • I fear he is a poor and perverse influence on her.†   (source)
  • The world had hinged upon each day their child lived and no thought had been given to the chance of accident, the perverse antilogic of a sharp-edged universe.†   (source)
  • But at the very end of the highlight reel, Walsh, perversely, had inserted a single negative play: the Doleman sack.†   (source)
  • Ulrich is not I hope intentionally dishonest but he is perverse to the point of deceiving & misleading us & cannot be depended on.†   (source)
  • "It's almost perverse," he said, "having so much athletic equipment here when there's no athletic aptitude at all.†   (source)
  • Part of me took perverse satisfaction in the way he stomped the guitar until it was reduced to kindling and wires.†   (source)
  • Even someone who is not an engineer can see that it has gone all perverse and twisted.†   (source)
  • Market pressures now exert a perverse influence on the management of beef plants: the same factors that make these slaughterhouses relatively inefficient (the lack of mechanization, the reliance on human labor) encourage companies to make them even more dangerous (by speeding up the pace).†   (source)
  • Pity links us in a perverted way, transcending our veneers, joining us in our vulnerability, and at the same time distancing us from one another.†   (source)
  • This was a death made in the laboratory, defined and measurable, but we thought of it at the time in a simple and primitive way, as some seasonal perversity of the earth like a flood or tornado, something not subject to control.†   (source)
  • Perverted quality; Moral perversion; The innate corruption of human nature due to original sin; Both the elect and the non-elect come into the world in a state of total d. and alienation from God, and can, of themselves do nothing but sin. y H. Blunt.†   (source)
  • The image of his daughter fighting off some perverted monster was like a fist to the stomach.†   (source)
  • It probably shows a perverse element of my personality that even though I was finally inside the Archives, surrounded by endless secrets, that I was drawn to the one locked door I had found.†   (source)
  • Which was strange, since Amy had decided she didn't want kids, and she'd reiterated this fact several times, but the tears gave me a perverse wedge of hope that maybe she was changing her mind.†   (source)
  • The truth was they both played a game, mythical and perverse, but for all that comforting: it was one of the many dangerous pleasures of domestic love.†   (source)
  • What perversity caused the book to open at my Wanna's favorite passage?†   (source)
  • Jacob asked with perverse enjoyment.†   (source)
  • My classmates snickered, and I beamed with perverse pride.†   (source)
  • He noticed Gibbon's acidity, but not his tolerance, Othello's love for the fair Desdemona, but not Iago's perverted love of Othello.†   (source)
  • I felt as though I were drinking them all in—my sister, Satsu, who had run away and left me so young; my father and mother; Mr. Tanaka, with his perverse view of kindness; Nobu, who could never forgive me; even the Chairman.†   (source)
  • She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy.†   (source)
  • At first, this seemed perverse to me.†   (source)
  • But there's also some sort of undertone…I think Gottfried fantasised that his children would share his, to put it mildly, perverted world view.†   (source)
  • Like they fight over the money, or the guy wants some perverted stuff or something.†   (source)
  • As for Jeod's accounts of her misdeeds, Eragon chose to believe that Morzan had perverted her essentially good nature.†   (source)
  • Then, too, the severity of Dick's "wake-up" speech, the belligerence with which he proclaimed his theretofore concealed opinion of Perry's dreams and hopes-all this, perversity being what it is, appealed to Perry, hurt and shocked him but charmed him, almost revived his former faith in the tough, the "totally masculine," the pragmatic, the decisive Dick he'd once allowed to boss him.†   (source)
  • I allowed myself an instant of perverse pleasure, noticing the marks of my fingernails all over his face.†   (source)
  • And she had good reason for it, she was not being fantastical or perverse.†   (source)
  • But the brass bells, the drums, hammered his chest, revved his heart so he felt his pulse reverse, his blood turn back in perverse thrusts through all his flesh, so he was nearly shaken free to fall, so all he did was clutch, hang pale, and drink the sight of the backward-turning machine and Mr Dark, alert at the controls, on the sidelines.†   (source)
  • Here's how it came about: two psychiatrists were visiting a slaughterhouse, for God knows what perverse reason, and were watching cattle being killed by a blow between the eyes with a sledgehammer.†   (source)
  • After writing, I dressed and ran all the way up to Brimmleir's Bridge, looked out at the frozen wasteland below, but decided for some perverse reason that I wanted to see my father before doing anything rash.†   (source)
  • My interactions with him had grown unpleasant, as I resented the fact that I worked for the nastiest man in construction services, and he seemed to take perverse pleasure in treating me in as degrading a manner as he could devise.†   (source)
  • He was certain the president would take perverse pleasure in manipulating the grotesque American legal system to his own advantage, all the time pointing out that, as president, he was constitutionally unable to interfere with the working of the courts.†   (source)
  • It angered her that Gus had been so perverse as to extract such a promise.†   (source)
  • In her stolen moments when she hadn't been working, Gabby's guilty pleasure was watching Judge Judy on television, and Travis had always teased her about the way she took an almost perverse delight in the antics of those unfortunate enough to find themselves in Judge Judy's courtroom.†   (source)
  • Perverse, even.†   (source)
  • Is she perverse?†   (source)
  • I don't know if this perverse conversation is real, but it must be because I don't think I could imagine this.†   (source)
  • It also worried Blanca that her daughter did not play with dolls, but Clara took her granddaughter's side, arguing that those tiny porcelain corpses with eyes that opened and shut and perverse, pouting mouths were repulsive.†   (source)
  • The collection's full of perverse, sexual violence.†   (source)
  • This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.†   (source)
  • Fear was driven out by anger, and anger had its own perverted reasoning: What cheek this invader had to put Mary's life in jeopardy!†   (source)
  • A group bands together because they believe the same things, and then somehow that gets perverted so that anyone who doesn't believe those things is wrong.†   (source)
  • It seems like a return to the days of the priests of Baal, so vulgar and disgusting do these perversities appear.'†   (source)
  • It was a closing argument and much leeway was given for the art of persuasion, but Lanier slanted things so perversely that Jake was compelled to stand and say, "Your Honor, I object.†   (source)
  • For a moment I was perversely glad I was hidden from myself.†   (source)
  • It's no jumping-jack, but what, I thought, seeing the doll throwing itself about with the fierce defiance of someone performing a degrading act in public, dancing as though it received a perverse pleasure from its motions.†   (source)
  • Roarke wondered if he'd become perverse that he could so enjoy the way she slashed at him.†   (source)
  • I know how silly and paranoid that sounds, especially coming from a man who gets a perverse thrill from taking chances.†   (source)
  • He seemed to take a perverse amusement in belittling his wife.†   (source)
  • And while she spoke, across the corral, Pilgrim seemed to be acting out some perverse parody of the events she described.†   (source)
  • Perversely, if he perished in the same way that his wife and daughters had been taken, he would be calm and without fear on the long ride down into the earth, because such a fate would seem like a welcome return to balance in the universe, an open circle closed, a wrongness made right at last.†   (source)
  • First a kind of perverted pride that my meek mother had bested the old woman, if only for an afternoon.†   (source)
  • She pulled the bedclothes up as far as they would go and suppressed a perverse wish to have her old nurse come to chase away the darkness, perverse because she didn't know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not.†   (source)
  • They seemed to take a perverse delight in the fact that Max not only survived assassination, but also showed no trace of the attack.†   (source)
  • That sounds perverted.†   (source)
  • The huge blanket of fur made her look like a child bundled for a snowstorm; the luxurious texture transformed the innocence of the awkward bundle into the elegance of a perversely intentional contrast: into a look of stressed sensuality.†   (source)
  • Perversely perhaps, the current younger generation tends toward a "subversive prestige" or "covert prestige," as linguists put it, in adopting the speech of less privileged minorities; for instance, wiggers are privileged white teenagers who wish to sound and dress like blacks.†   (source)
  • Mayhap Miss Love doth use Juliet's words to tease: "If thou think'st I am too quickly won, I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay, so thou wilt woo…."†   (source)
  • Often there were five or ten upperclassmen concentrating all their perverted energies on Bobby Bentley while the others took care of the rest of us.†   (source)
  • A perverse and solitary desire.†   (source)
  • I say that justice has been perverted here from the outset, validating without question certain prejudices against the color of a man's skin.†   (source)
  • Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us.†   (source)
  • From the back of the car I desperately searched the windows of the three-story building, my thoughts clouded, somehow joyous, perverse, thinking of a moment long past when my mother and father both rode with me on a carnival ride of cups and saucers, and in my vision I thought I spotted him up there, everything twirling but him, his fleshy face, the old-style glasses, the greasy cut mop of hair, and then his roundish hand, bluntly pressed against the glass, more like a paw than an…†   (source)
  • By some perversity the sailors directed the launches straight for the silhouetted spires of Venice.†   (source)
  • It seemed perverse that someone so mobile did not own a mobile phone.†   (source)
  • But caution can deteriorate into obstinacy, perverseness, or disingenuity.†   (source)
  • Reflexively, he grabbed the dagger at the back of his belt and flung it at Kessell, though he knew that Kessell was joined in some perverted symbiosis with Crenshinibon and that the small weapon had no chance of hitting its mark.†   (source)
  • It was gross and perverted and disgusting, but it was nice having someone mature like Collin to discuss it with.†   (source)
  • Perverted contracts, grotesque and extraordinarily dangerous.†   (source)
  • The age differences in the family always seemed to add unnecessarily and perversely to our problems.†   (source)
  • A perverse tropism.†   (source)
  • Stop being perverse.†   (source)
  • We worry just as much as white people about our children losing their virginity or being perverted.†   (source)
  • Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried.†   (source)
  • Old Stingo, I mused as she climbed upward, there must be some perversity in this dorsal fixation.†   (source)
  • I see your assessment of the deaths, that guard's, Dave's, Leila's, and I see your conclusions on many other things as well: what a stupid, perverse, short-sighted, selfish race we are.†   (source)
  • Ground-vines coiled and snaked and clutched at their feet; the decaying trunks of fallen trees perversely blocked their path; but the girl kept on, sorting out a line of least resistance, holding back the lower branches to protect Peter from their swing back.†   (source)
  • He abandoned politeness; he became aggressive and perverse, over a secret nervousness.†   (source)
  • Will had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering.†   (source)
  • There were moments that afternoon when Leamas was so brazenly perverse that Ashe would have been justified in terminating their conversation—especially since he was paying; but he did not.†   (source)
  • Jinny, who in childhood had seemed more knowing than her years, was in her thirties strangely childlike; was it old perversity or further tactics?†   (source)
  • COMMON MAN (Rises) It is perverse!†   (source)
  • Then, one afternoon, there was a slight shower that fell, perversely, on only one of the two pieces of land which held the tobacco.†   (source)
  • a perverse mood
  • They began using this perverted version to summon dark forces.†   (source)
  • Even if he did think she was a perverted psychopath who wrote herself badly punctuated threats.†   (source)
  • Eyes firmly closed, Daddy is not famished for affection, perverted or otherwise.†   (source)
  • I'd come to grips with my husband's perverted shortcomings years ago.†   (source)
  • At the end he was some kind of eloquent if perverted saint.†   (source)
  • The idea of God is affirmed and at the same time disfigured and perverted.†   (source)
  • How perverted is that?†   (source)
  • We were like rival soldiers, rooted in shooting distance for months, eyeing each other across no-man's-land, achieving some sort of perverted fraternity.†   (source)
  • Robert, you and I both know that the ancients would be horrified if they saw how their teachings have been perverted …. how religion has established itself as a tollbooth to heaven …. how warriors march into battle believing God favors their cause.†   (source)
  • The prosecution was too clever to charge him directly, but there were attempts to make him look sick, perverted, criminally insane.†   (source)
  • The lack of this bond is why Galbatorix's partnership with Shruikan, his second dragon, is such a perverted union.†   (source)
  • A couple of the other boys were teaching the mainland kids the island's perverted version of basketball.†   (source)
  • You are the pleasures which we draw him on to-(he escapes a fractional giggle but recovers immediately) and by that I don't mean your usual filth; you can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires.†   (source)
  • Vittoria looked at Kohler and then at Langdon, wondering if this was some kind of perverse joke.†   (source)
  • It's far from disagreeable, but, perversely, it makes him think of his mother.†   (source)
  • By now, Y.T. finds it perversely comforting.†   (source)
  • He did not like that answer, yet that was the perversity of him: in a way he liked it best of all.†   (source)
  • Mariam smirked inwardly with perverse pleasure.†   (source)
  • In a perverse kind of way, he conceded that it didn't feel half bad.†   (source)
  • He felt a strange, perverse, immense presence that could never be understood by human intellect.†   (source)
  • Madness, of course; a perverse fantasy, to marry a suspected murderess.†   (source)
  • Somehow staging some perverse wedding between Peeta and me.†   (source)
  • Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you?†   (source)
  • And I was perverse enough to be bothered by the ease.†   (source)
  • I found him perversely exotic, a good ole Missouri boy.†   (source)
  • When he entered upon his medical studies, it was out of a young man's perversity.†   (source)
  • What is it in me that is so perverse it thrives on ruffling you?†   (source)
  • I almost killed you," said the man, sounding perversely satisfied.†   (source)
  • But, perversely, that added the final spice of excitement to this mad happening.†   (source)
  • Are you utterly ignorant or simply perverse?†   (source)
  • Out of sheer perversity she chose the next most expensive, a huge apartment just off Mosebacke Torg.†   (source)
  • But, perversely, I bit my tongue against the flood of questions.†   (source)
  • I felt for a perverse moment like reminding Deo of all this.†   (source)
  • Each movement of his broom brought forth a new creature with its own perverse shape.†   (source)
  • The crew of her Black Wind took a perverse pride in the deeds of their woman captain.†   (source)
  • Something perverse made him not want to hand the whole score to his friend on a platter.†   (source)
  • Even if I had forgiven him, a perverse streak in me refused to let him know that.†   (source)
  • It is perverse how you people love to make a racket while the rest of us are trying to sleep.†   (source)
  • In a perverse way, the size of the reward pleased him, giving him a sense of importance.†   (source)
  • The world assumed Ida's sins to be natural, whereas those of Cass were perverse.†   (source)
  • In fact, there's something downright perverse about what we're doing."†   (source)
  • Was part of this due to some perverse effect of the booze?†   (source)
  • He thought later that the world, in its unfailing perversity, would probably construe those things which he did next as acts of heroism.†   (source)
  • He shouldn't dangle impossibilities in front of himself, as if he were some caged, wired-up lab animal, trapped into performing futile and perverse experiments on his own brain.†   (source)
  • The ferocity with which he applied himself was almost frightening, and though she supposed it could have been a perverse form of motherly pride, she could not believe such obsession was typical.†   (source)
  • At the time, of course, it struck Owen and me that the Brinker-Smiths were dangerously oversexed; that they should make such reckless use of the dormitory beds, including—as we later learned—systematic process through all the rooms of Waterhouse Hall …. well, it was perverse behavior for parents, in Owen's and my view.†   (source)
  • That's a perverse thought, young lady.†   (source)
  • There was something between them, and even she had to acknowledge that a tame remark about the weather sounded perverse.†   (source)
  • Perverse reasoning.†   (source)
  • Other barriers remained, however, the most elemental of which was the bedeviling character of Chicago's soil, which prompted one engineer to describe the challenge of laying foundations in Chicago as "probably not equaled for perverseness anywhere in the world."†   (source)
  • The next day, after he'd suited up, Wallace received another explanation for Walsh's perverse behavior.†   (source)
  • The situation was perverse but not without irony: a few months before, Audrey had said that Shawn should be supervised around children.†   (source)
  • "Mae, so many of the things I invented I honestly did for fun, out of some perverse game of whether or not they'd work, whether people would use them.†   (source)
  • Lacey offered me a ride, but I decided to clean out my locker, because I didn't really want to come back here and again have to feel like my lungs were drowning in this perverse nostalgia.†   (source)
  • In her final years she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory.†   (source)
  • When they boarded the shuttle that would take them to the surface of Eros they repeated perverse misquotations of lines from the videos that the captain had endlessly watched, and laughed like madmen.†   (source)
  • I had dismissed her coupling with the bull as some perverse whim, but she was not ruled by appetites; she ruled with them instead.†   (source)
  • She'd roused herself, finally, out of a perversely selfish concern for Gar, because a retreat to that black center would provide her no peace if he were dragged down too.†   (source)
  • I shouldn't put my heart to such tests, now that I've been informed of its imperfections; yet I take a perverse delight in doing this, as if I am a bully and it is a small whining child whose weaknesses I despise.†   (source)
  • However, the true atrocities, the most frightening, incorporate a perverse psychological twist designed to terrify the victim.†   (source)
  • Ever since she had taught him to read, his mother had bought him illustrated books by Nordic authors which were sold as stories for children but in reality were the crudest and most perverse that one could read at any age.†   (source)
  • It seems hypocritical, perverse.†   (source)
  • What made all this so comical and perverse was that Anne de Larmessin was so disturbed by me she could hardly stand to look at me.†   (source)
  • Then quickly she changed the subject because it made her feel perverse and guilty to feel that about Zalmai, who was a child, a little boy who loved his father, whose instinctive aversion to this stranger was understandable and legitimate.†   (source)
  • It was Colonel Parkman who upped stakes, crossed the border, and named our town, thus perversely commemorating a battle in which he'd lost.†   (source)
  • In my desert fantasias of New York I'd sometimes entertained perverse images of Boris and me living on the street, around St. Mark's Place or Tompkins Square, quite possibly standing around rattling our change cups with the very skate rats who'd once jeered at Andy and me in our school uniforms.†   (source)
  • A perverse part of me enjoys spending money, because every time I pull off a wad of twenties, that's less money to hide, to worry about being stolen or lost.†   (source)
  • Respectable women are by nature sexually cold, without the perverse lusts and the neurasthenic longings that drive their degenerate sisters into prostitution; or so goes the scientific theory.†   (source)
  • While more recent events blurred in just a few days, the memories of her legendary journey through Cousin Hildebranda's province were as sharp as if they had happened yesterday, and they had the perverse clarity of nostalgia.†   (source)
  • He had not aged well; in the old days he'd been the blondest and best-looking of the brothers, but he'd grown thick in the jaw and around the middle and his face had coarsened away from its perverse old Jungvolk beauty.†   (source)
  • In reality the egg had the consistency of the excised tumour a fellow medical student once slipped into his pocket for a joke both hard and spongy at the same time It takes a perverse talent to maltreat an egg so completely.†   (source)
  • Florentino Ariza was never to understand how a few articles of penitential clothing could have hidden the drives of that wild mare who, choking on her own feverish desire, undressed him as she had never been able to undress her husband, who would have thought her perverse, and tried, with the confusion and innocence of five years of conjugal fidelity, to satisfy in a single assault the iron abstinence of her mourning.†   (source)
  • Leaving a quarter of the prices low also meant that, by some perverse alchemy, the marked-up prices seemed legitimate in comparison: for whatever reason, some people were more apt to put out fifteen hundred bucks for a Meissen teapot if it was placed next to a plainer but comparable piece selling (correctly, but cheaply) for a few hundred.†   (source)
  • The people on the sidewalks appear prosperous enough for the most part, without the hordes of destitute beggars, the swarms of rickety, dirty children, and the platoons of draggled or showy prostitutes that disfigure so many European cities; yet such is his perversity that he would rather be in London or Paris.†   (source)
  • Gaston's system seemed so perverse to him, but at the same time so effective, that he ventured to warn Amaranta Ursula.†   (source)
  • Every now and then a perverse downdraft would make the smoke whirl and eddy toward him, and sporadic whiffs of the smoke touched him.†   (source)
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