Casual Quotes - Page 6

The more you know, the more unflinchingly you deny casual beliefs and Accepted Wisdom when it flies in the face of reality, the more carefully you observe the world and its people around you, the better chance you have of writing something meaningful and well-crafted.

Harlan Ellison

Meaningful, Writing, Reality

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If you're dressed for my funeral, it's too casual. If it's just street clothes, then you must be scaring the tourists.

Laurell K. Hamilton

Clothes, Funeral, Tourists

Laurell K. Hamilton (2002). “Obsidian Butterfly: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.318, Penguin

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I marvel again at the nakedness of men's lives: the showers right out in the open, the body exposed for inspection and comparison, the public display of privates. What is it for? What purposes of reassurance does it serve? The flashing of a badge, look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here. Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women? Some form of unbuttoning, some split-crotch routine, just as casual. A doglike sniffing.

Margaret Atwood

Men, Order, Doe

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What are you doing?" "Ya!" said Jane, whirling around, her hands held up menacingly. It was Mr. Nobley with coat, hat, and cane, watching her with wide eyes. Jane took several quick (but oh so casual) steps away from Martin's window. "Um, did I just say, 'Ya'?" "You just said 'Ya,'" he confirmed. "If I am not mistaken, it was a battle cry, warning that you were about to attack me. I, uh..." She stopped to laugh. "I wasn't aware until this precise and awkward moment that when startled in a startled in a strange place, my instincts would have me pretend to be a ninja.

Shannon Hale

Eye, Hands, Strange Places

Shannon Hale (2013). “Austenland: A Novel”, p.81, A&C Black

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i understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. i understood that, finally and absolutely, i alone exist. all the rest, i saw, is merely what pushes me, or what i push against, blindly - as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. i create the whole universe, blink by blink.

John Gardner

Enmity, World, Saws

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My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Camille Paglia

Pushing, Argument, Fit

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...The girl raised her eyes to see who was passing by the window, and that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that still had not ended half a century later.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Romantic, Girl, Eye

"Love in the Time of Cholera". Book by Gabriel García Márquez, www.elle.com. 1985.

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Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Life, Cities, Yellow

F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.29, Atlântico Press

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... Andres Segovia literally created the genre of classical guitar, which hadn't existed before around 1910. There was flamenco, which he borrowed from, but he actually arranged the works of Mozart and other classical composers for guitar, something that had never been done before ... Segovias' style is not slick or contrived, but it's still very clean and his timing is impeccable ... it's got a feeling of casual elegance, as if he's sitting around the house in Spain with a jug of wine, just playing from the heart.

Roger McGuinn

Music, Heart, Wine

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Sometimes I'll spend an hour writing a tiny email. I work on it until I've created the illusion that I've dashed it off in three minutes. If I make a typo, I let it stand. Sometimes in fact I correct the typo without thinking, and then I back up and retype the typo so that it'll look more casual. I don't know why.

Nicholson Baker

Writing, Thinking, Email

Nicholson Baker (2009). “The Anthologist: A Novel”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

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In all, his outfit required nearly two thousand man-years of research and development, eight barrels of oil, and sixteen patent and trademark infringement lawsuits. All so he could possess casual style. A style that, in logistical requirements, was comparable to fielding a nineteenth-century military brigade. But he looked good. Casual.

Daniel Suarez

Military, Men, Eight

Daniel Suarez (2009). “Daemon”, p.410, Penguin

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But worse things were about to be found in the bedroom: on the jeweller’s wife’s ottoman, in a casual pose, sprawled a third party- namely, a black cat of uncanny size, with a glass of vodka in one paw and a fork, on which he had managed to spear a pickled mushroom, in the other. , The Master and Magarita

Mikhail Bulgakov

Party, Cat, Glasses

Mikhail Bulgakov (2016). “THE MASTER AND MARGARITA: 50th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.74, Penguin

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Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun.

Sylvia Plath

Baby, Home, Rivers

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How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?

James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke (2009). “Swan Peak: A Dave Robicheaux Novel”, p.248, Simon and Schuster

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What matters is that someone—that you—know me that well. When a person can see into your soul, it's hard. It forces you to be open. Vulnerable. It's much easier being with someone who's just more of a casual friend.

Richelle Mead

What Matters, Soul, Vulnerable

Richelle Mead (2013). “Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection”, p.351, Penguin

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When you have a sense of calling, whether it's to be a musician, soloist, artist, in one of the technical fields, or a plumber, there is something deep and enriching when you realize it isn't just a casual choice, it's a divine calling. It's not limited to vocational Christian service by any means.

Charles R. Swindoll

Life, Positive, Christian

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The casual listener won't be around forever.

Mike Shinoda

Forever, Listeners

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Performance art is going to be the future. Plays on Broadway are so restricted. But performance art is like haikus, just one line thing. And it's more casual but more interesting.

Yoko Ono

Art, Play, Interesting

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By our pontifical assertions, our superior impatience, and our casual brushing aside of their curiosity, we do not encourage their inquiry, for we are rather apprehensive of what may be asked of us; we do not foster their discontent, for we ourselves have ceased to question.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love, Life, Truth

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Diversity...is not casual liberal tolerance of anything not yourself. It is not polite accommodation. Instead, diversity is, in action, the sometimes painful awareness that other people, other races, other voices, other habits of mind have as much integrity of being, as much claim on the world as you do... And I urge you, amid all the differences present to the eye and mind, to reach out to create the bond that...will protect us all. We are all meant to be here together.

William Merritt Chase

Integrity, Eye, Race

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One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality.

Joseph Murray

Science, Errors, Giants

"A Conversation With: Joseph E. Murray; On Surgical Innovation And The Questions It Can Raise". Interview With Cornelia Dean, www.nytimes.com. September 25, 2001.

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The profoundest order is revealed in what is most casual.

Fairfield Porter

Art, Order, Drawing

Joan Ludman, Fairfield Porter (2001). “Fairfield Porter: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels”

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I'm a strict, strict agnostic. It's very different from a casual, 'I don't know.' It's that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can't present it as fact.

Margaret Atwood

Facts, Different, Belief

"Narrative Magazine’s Friday Feature: Margaret Atwood Interview, In Which She Talks About “A Handmaid’s Tale”,“The Year Of The Flood” And Having Fun". Interview with Jo Scott-Coe, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 26, 2011.

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In my life, there have been people that I was convinced would be around forever, and yet, somehow they managed to drift away after a couple of years. Likewise there have been people who have begun as casual acquaintances but become more important with each passing year.

Alana Stewart

Couple, Years, People

"My Journey With Farrah" by Alana Stewart, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 11, 2009.

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Jeremy Clarkson is rather charming, but I can't stomach his public persona. I don't like his casual racism and casual misogyny.

Jo Brand

Racism, Charming, Stomach

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