It's time for some booing and hissing.
Literature has offered up an overstuffed rogue's gallery of villains and with the power of the written word, they've embedded their wickedness in our minds. To celebrate their genuine awfulness, we've assembled the 30 most evil lines from books.
As always, let us know if we've missed off one of your favourites at the bottom.
Paradise Lost (John Milton)
"Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n."
Satan
The Shining (Stephen King)
“Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in.”
Jack Torrance
The Killer Inside Me (Jim Thompson)
"I kissed her, a long hard kiss. Because baby didn't know it, but baby was dead, and in a way I couldn't have loved her more."
Lou Ford
East Of Eden (John Steinbeck)
"When I was half-grown I made a man kill himself."
Cathy Ames
Richard III (William Shakespeare)
"I am in so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin."
Richard III
Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)
"I have none o' yer bawling, praying singeing niggers on my place; so remember. Now, mind yourself. I'm your church now! You understand - you've got to be as I say."
Simon Legree
American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis)
"My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape."
Patrick Bateman
Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
"There's never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a'terward."
Long John Silver
No Country For Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)
"When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end."
Anton Chigurh
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)
"You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill... And so, that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property."
The White Witch
Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier)
"It's you that ought to be lying there in the church crypt, not her. It's you who ought to be dead, not Mrs. de Winter."
Mrs Danvers
101 Dalmatians (Dodie Smith)
"Poison them, drown them, bash them on the head. Got any chloroform? I don't care how you kill the little beasts. Just do it, and do it NOW!"
Cruella De Vil
Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
"Lie down, you stupid brute! Don't you know the devil when he's got a great-coat on?"
Bill Sikes
The Trial (Franz Kafka)
"No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."
The Gatekeeper
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (JK Rowling)
"I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."
Voldemort
Dracula (Bram Stoker)
"My revenge has just begun! I spread it over centuries and time is on my side."
Count Dracula
The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman)
"I wanted him to find no good in me and he didn't. There is none."
Marisa Coulter
Lord Of The Flies (William Golding)
"Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!"
Jack
Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
"War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."
Judge Holden
The Return Of The King (JRR Tolkien)
"Do not expect me to wish you health and long life. You will have neither. But that is not my doing. I merely foretell."
Saruman
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
"I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry."
Milo Minderbinder
Ripley Under Ground (Patricia Highsmith)
"Honestly, I don't understand why people get so worked up about a little murder!"
Tom Ripley
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
"Remember my Lady I was your master once! I will be your master again."
Alec d'Urberville
The Silence Of The Lambs (Thomas Harris)
"A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone."
Hannibal Lecter
The Jew Of Malta (Christopher Marlowe)
"Fornication: but that was in another country; And besides, the wench is dead."
Barabas
The Revenger's Tragedy (Thomas Middleton)
"As fast as they peep up, let's cut 'em down."
Vindice
Alice In Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
"Off with his head!"
The Queen Of Hearts
1984 (George Orwell)
"Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
O'Brien
Titus Andronicus (William Shakespeare)
"If one good Deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very Soule"
Aaron the Moor
Heart Of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
"Exterminate the brutes!"
Colonel Kurtz
