Phrases Quotes - Page 30

• They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.

  Joseph Conrad

  Dream, Darkness, Mind

  Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I distrust pious phrases, especially when they issue from my mouth. I try militantly never to be affected by the pious language of the faithful but it is always coming out when you least expect it. In contrast to the pious language of the faithful, the liturgy is beautifully flat.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Issues, Faithful, Trying

  9 Copy quote

• I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Writing, Expression, Lines

  5 Copy quote

• So you are a vampire." "I most certainly am not." He looked annoyed. "That's such a common phrase, such a cliche, and so unflattering. I suppose you believe in werewolves and aliens too. I blame television.

  Margaret Stohl

  Believe, Annoyed, Vampire

  44 Copy quote

• Some people--Samad for example--will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase "at the end of the day"--football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds--but Archie's never felt that way about it. Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamentals.

  Zadie Smith

  Football, People, The End Of The Day

  4 Copy quote

• A man fell in love with Jeanne, and she tried to love him. But she complained that he uttered such ordinary words, that he could never say the magic phrase which would open her being.

  Anais Nin

  Men, Magic, Ordinary

  4 Copy quote

• She had told him that she loved him. He had known that, but hearing it in the traditional phrase had affected him in new and blinding ways. Ways that made him believe that he could do anything. Anything she needed or wanted him to do. Because her loving him meant so much more than him loving her.

  Jacquelyn Frank

  Believe, Way, Hearing

  4 Copy quote

• The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?

  Brion Gysin

  Thinking, Poet, Chains

  19 Copy quote

• Every human occupation has it repertoire of stock phrases, within which every man twists and turn until his death. His vocabulary, which seems so lavish, reduces itself to a hundred routine formulas at most, which he repeats over and over.

  Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

  Men, Vocabulary, Twists

  11 Copy quote

• Who ya gonna call?" "Ghostbusters!" "That phrase is ruined forever.

  James Patterson

  Forever, Ruined

  7 Copy quote

• The word "metaphor" means carrying something from one place to another . . . and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word "metaphor" is a metaphor. I think it should be called a lie because a pig is not like a day and people people do not have skeletons in their cupboards. And when I try and make a picture of the phrase in my head it just confuses me because imagining and apple in someone's eye doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about.

  Mark Haddon

  Lying, Mean, Eye

  4 Copy quote

• Holden Caulfield is the embodiment of what we mean by the phrase “young adult” – too young to be a grown-up, but too wise to the world to be completely innocent. He’s caught in the in-between, and that in-between is what all young adult authors write about.

  David Levithan

  Wise, Writing, Mean

  4 Copy quote

• The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.

  Hilary Mantel

  Flower, Fate, Men

  10 Copy quote

• I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.

  John Guare

  Real, Believe, Imagination

  John Guare (2010). “Six Degrees of Separation”, p.22, A&C Black

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality- and in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.

  Mitch Albom

  Love, Children, Fall

  12 Copy quote

• I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers - where you repeat what you've already said with phrases like 'In summation', and 'To conclude'.

  John Green

  Writing, Paper, Said

  4 Copy quote

• Dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase.

  Truman Capote

  Dizzy, Excitement, Mere

  Truman Capote (2012). “Breakfast at Tiffany's”, p.52, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Iggy: "Now what? Who you gonna call?" A quiet voice in the hallway outside: "Ghostbusters!" (Captain Perry and John groan) John: "That phrase is ruined forever.

  James Patterson

  Quiet Voice, Forever, Captains

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home.

  James A. Baldwin

  Home, Mean, Thinking

  14 Copy quote

• This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Nor is it merely a question of building on precedent, of standing on the shoulders of giants, in Newton's famous phrase. Great breakthroughs are closer to what happens in a flood plain: a dozen separate tributaries converge, and the rising waters lift the genius high enough that he or she can see around the conceptual obstructions of the age.

  Steven Johnson

  Practice, Water, Intellectual

  Steven Johnson (2006). “The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World”, p.146, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some words have multiple meanings. Scholastic, aware that I'm allergic to preservatives, kindly got someone to translate the phrase "I can only eat food without preservatives" into Italian. They warned me, however, as they taught me how to say it, that the Italian word for "preservatives" is the same as the word for "condom." So that I should be careful how I look when I say it.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Italian, Looks, Multiple Meanings

  4 Copy quote

• I still care for you, you know.. That phrase again. Everyone cares for me. They just don't know how to love me.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Care, How To Love, Stills

  Ellen Hopkins (2012). “Ellen Hopkins: Crank Trilogy”, p.884, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There was a warmth of fury in his last phrases. He meant she loved him more than he her. Perhaps he could not love her. Perhaps she had not in herself that which he wanted. It was the deepest motive of her soul, this self-mistrust. It was so deep she dared neither realise nor acknowledge. Perhaps she was deficient. Like an infinitely subtle shame, it kept her always back. If it were so, she would do without him. She would never let herself want him. She would merely see.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Self, Soul, Want

  D. H. Lawrence (2013). “The Essential D.H. Lawrence”, p.271, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have discovered in my long life that there are many words and phrases which have more power than any spell of magick. The most well-known of these is, of course, I love you. But by far the most deadly is, if only. For these two words can strip a man's strength, his courage and his confidence. They become the father of regret and anguish and pain.

  David Gemmell

  Pain, Regret, Father

  31 Copy quote

• If I'm a guy who doesn't seem so merry, It's just because I'm so misunderstood. When I was young I ate a dictionary, And that did not do me a bit of good. For I've absorbed so many words and phrases— They drive me dizzy when I want to speak. I start explaining but each person gazes As if I spoke in Latin or in Greek.

  Ira Gershwin

  Latin, Guy, Greek

  5 Copy quote