Cliche Quotes & Sayings

When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said. — Jincy Willett

Thinking about your training should put a smile on your face. As cliche as it sounds, you are worth all the time and energy you've put in. Unleash your emotions with a cheer, or even a signature roar, after a tough workout. — Summer Sanders

I think the diva is kind of a cliche. My definition of a diva is somebody whose talent does not match what they're trying to play, so all this temperament comes out. — Glenn Close

How could someone so cool, so different be such a cliche when it came to love? — Terence Blacker

I know it's a cliche, but trust me on this. I once dated a Canadian. Canada = boring. — Alex Berenson

Because I am well read, I know what a terrible cliche it is to shout, "I *hate* you. I never *asked* to be born," so I refrain. — Caitlin Moran

I retraced my steps, walked up to her, and in another moment would have certainly said, "Madam!" if I had not known that that exclamation had been made a thousand times before in all Russian novels of high life. It was that alone that stopped me. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I'm very much aware of the dangers of becoming a cliche. Mr. Anger, someone who gets meaner, angrier on record. — Trent Reznor

When I look back I can't believe how my parents managed, but the cliche is true. We didn't have money, but we were rich in so many other ways. — Joaquin Phoenix

The challenge, really, on any new film is to try to avoid that and achieve a few moments that aren't cliche. — Adrian Lyne

People talk about love and it seems like a cliche but it's a real thing - the more love we spread around the world the more it's going to change lives. — Ben Vereen

A popular cliche in philosophy says that science is pure analysis or reductionism, like taking the rainbow to pieces; and art is pure synthesis, putting the rainbow together. This is not so. All imagination begins by analyzing nature. — Jacob Bronowski

On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true. — James Surowiecki

My experience is that journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren't many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche ... It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

For someone who is starting out on developing their critical skills, just being aware of its existence is great: it can make the difference between trying to write a story around a cliche or an original idea, and better still, studying it can eventually clue you in on how to breathe new life into tired tropes. — Charles Stross

Sometimes you can hear them talk, other times you can't. All the same old cliches, is that a woman or a man? — Bob Seger

I don't mean this to sound cliche, but it's really about the work for me. I like to keep working on things. — Jeremy Luke

I know it's a cliche, but I see myself as a citizen of the world. I was brought up in Switzerland by German and Turkish parents but I've very much grown up in San Francisco. I have a European sense of aesthetic, but I'm also deeply steeped in the notion of change and entrepreneurship that is associated with Silicon Valley. — Yves Behar

The music business is one of a few places where everything you've heard about it seems entirely cliche, but it's true. — Patrick Stump

I really realize the more movies I do just how important - it's so cliche when people say it, because everybody says it nowadays - but it's so important to keep it grounded. I totally understand what that means. — Ken Jeong

May we all beware lest our innovative ideas appear very cliche before we even blink. — David Livermore

O'Kelly's disregard for cliche is so sweeping that it almost has its own panache. I find this entertaining or irritating or mildly comforting, depending on my mood, but at least it makes it very easy to prepare your script in advance. — Tana French

I don't know, I find that honestly, the stand-up thing in some ways is a little bit of a cliche to carry around, because people don't consider stand-ups really actors. — Jim Gaffigan

If you think of exercise as a 60-minute commitment 3 times a week at the gym, you're missing the point completely. If you think that going on a diet has something to do with nutrition, you don't see the forest through the trees. It is a lifestyle. I know it sounds cliche, but you have to find things you love to do. — Brett Hoebel

In high school, theater was all I ever wanted to do. I didn't see that I was going to set it aside for so many years and take a right turn into television. Of course, wanting to do theater is something you hear a lot from actors. I think I've been embarrassed to be in that big cliche. — Mare Winningham

You describe your reality in the highest resolution even when it's a nightmare and in doing so, you live your own life, not a cliche others have formulated for you. — David Grossman

Music was a large part of my life. and it is a bit cliche, but it's a way people come together. — Clyde Edgerton

I admire actors who are bold and try to go forward over the cliche and propose something original to the audience. — Berenice Marlohe

Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression. — Sarah Churchwell

Writing is both bomb and bomb disposal-a necessary shattering of cliche and assumption, and a powerful defusing of the soul-destroying messages of modern life (that nothing matters, nothing changes, money is everything, etc). Writing is a state of being as well as an act of doing. — Jeanette Winterson

I was extremely irritated being photographed for a long time, then I gave up caring. Photography is a nauseating cliche, but there is a lot to it. You can tell so much about a person from it. You are exaggerating the consciousness. It's life-thickening, photography. — Peter Beard

It is Barack Obama who is at war with this country. Recent events prove it. This is not a cliche. It's not a figure of speech. Obama is at war with the U.S. economy. — Rush Limbaugh

It's wrong for women to be constantly shy and embarrassed about their bodies. There are so many images of unattainable beauty that are so destructive. It's important to show how your body really is. As the cliche has it, beauty comes from within. — Alex Kingston

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression. — Robert McKee

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. Mindless may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion ... — Richard Dawkins

Although it sounds cliche, the main thing I want to do is touch people with what I do. I want everything I do to be meaningful, and I want it to be about more than just myself, or the money. — Sophie Lowe

What Einstein was able to do was - to use a cliche - think out of the box. — Walter Isaacson

Why weren't we born in the same era?" he lamented. She eased past him neither here nor there, looked over her shoulder and whispered, "How mundane and cliche would that be? — Donna Lynn Hope

You try to make the most of each day. I'm not big into setting real specific goals. I think, really, if you just focus on every day - and I know that's the oldest cliche in the book, but it really is true. Day 1 of camp means just as much as Day 17 of camp. If you really try to focus on each and every one of those days, long-term. — Scott Tolzien

It's a cliche, but John Lennon is my hero. He was so rebellious, so outspoken and so publicly opinionated, and I'm someone who's so private. I suppose you admire people who have the qualities you wish you had. — Emun Elliott

It's so cliche to say florals for spring. I really like a vintage-like dress that's floral. You can belt it; I like belts. I like wearing pretty dresses that are really comfortable, that you can spend the day in but also feel girly. — Brittany Snow

What is good today may be a cliche tomorrow. — Alexey Brodovitch

I have never been beautiful in cliche terms. — Sally Field

I think my whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche. — Beck

The reason the art world doesn't respond to Kinkade is because none - not one - of his ideas about subject-matter, surface, color, composition, touch, scale, form, or skill is remotely original. They're all cliche and already told. — Jerry Saltz

A look says more than words alone. That's a cliche, of course. But a cliche, also says more than words alone. — Herman Koch

To avoid sounding like a cliche, I won't say I want to get proposed to in Paris, but Paris. I want it to happen somewhere public where people can be excited that I just got proposed to, and everyone applauds, like in a restaurant - that, or somewhere totally secluded ... in Paris. — Betty Who

Everyone knows history is written by the winners, but that cliche misses a crucial detail: Over time, the winners are always the progressives. Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving (and social evolution inevitably dovetails with the agenda of those who see change as an abstract positive). It might take seventy years, but it always happens eventually. Serious historians are, almost without exception, self-styled progressives. Radical views
even the awful ones
improve with age. — Chuck Klosterman

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

I feel like a cliche. — Jonathan Carroll

I'm constantly trying to strip away layers of perceived thought or cliche. — Deborah Eisenberg

I really want to be known for my work. That sounds like such a ... cliche, and I've thought about how else I can say it to make it sound less hackneyed. But that's what it comes down to ... I know people are interested in these things. — Delroy Lindo

Honestly, you got to take care of the people that take care of you. I know that sounds like cliche, or borderline phony, but that's the case. The reason I've had the fans that I have is because I've been consistent over the years and kept coming back and doing the same runs. I'm never going to stop doing the cities I've gone through. I'm only going to add. — Gabriel Iglesias

It's certainly a cliche to remark that a nonfiction book 'reads just like a novel,' but in the case of Jonathan Eig's 'The Birth of the Pill,' I have no other recourse, since his narrative is full of larger-than-life characters sharply limned and embarked on fascinating doings, their story told in sprightly visual fashion. — Paul Di Filippo

I got a lot of flak originally for writing with photographs, because the great cliche in photography is that one photograph is worth a thousand words, and photographers are usually dodo birds anyway. — Duane Michals

Important things are inevitably cliche, but nobody wants to admit that. — Chuck Klosterman

One of the biggest obstacles to making a start on climate change is that it has become a cliche before it has even been understood — Tim Flannery

I have the cliche 'struggling actor' story. I was waiting tables in New York, went out to L.A. soon after graduation to get some jobs, but it didn't work out. I wanted to cut my teeth in professional theater, so I came back to New York. It made my journey a longer one, but I really wanted to excel in the theater. — Pedro Pascal

There was a fine line between love and hate you heard that cliche all the time. But no one told you that the moment you crossed it would be the one you least expected. You'd fall in love and crack open a secret door to let your soul mate in. You just never expected such closeness one day to feel like an intrusion. — Jodi Picoult

Nowadays filmmakers tend to recycle the same cliches over and over again. — Tom Hooper

(A Foreign Secretary) is forever poised between the cliche and the indiscretion. — Harold Macmillan

The cliche of what a rock star is - there's something elitist about it. I never related to that. I'm an entertainer. I think of it as, you're performing for people. It's not a self-glorification thing. — Beck

I know it's a cliche, but I've been happy to go to work every day. — Jennifer Finnigan

Everything that I've done has made me who I am today. You know, it's cliche, but it's true. — Kristin Cavallari

She remained silent. There was nothing left to say. He'd said it all the night before. He had to end it. He could never leave his wife. And, in fact, she had known this. Although she loved him - and truly she did - he wasn't hers. He belonged to his wife. She'd earned him. It didn't matter that he was her first love or that she was his passion. It didn't matter that they had loved one another for more than half their lives. It didn't matter that he had married his wife on the rebound. It didn't matter that he didn't love the woman. It didn't even matter that they had turned into some soap-opera cliche. He was married to someone else and that meant that she was leftovers and destined to remain on the periphery in the shadow of another woman's marriage. But no more. She was well and truly sick of it. — Anna McPartlin

I grew up in southern California in the '80s. Yes, I am a walking cliche. — John Scalzi

Out of all the neighborhoods in Manhattan, Soho in particular had the charged atmosphere of a movie set, populated with passersby who looked like extras from Central Casting, so perfectly did they fit into this environment. There was the feeling of everything being not quite real, or too perfectly cliched to actually be true, and it began to rain in a fine, misty drizzle from a black patent leather sky. — Candace Bushnell

I tell people, 'It's just like a cliche, but it's true: In Hollywood, dreams can come true.' — Michael Clarke Duncan

Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly, but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons, who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad. — Aravind Adiga

There is an old cliche, 'You can see the glass half empty, or you can see it half full.' You can focus on what's wrong in your life, or you can focus on what's right. But whatever you focus on, you're going to get more of. Creation is an extension of thought. Think lack, and you get lack. Think abundance, and you get more. — Marianne Williamson

It's a cliche, but Americans are puritanical. In their movies, they are scared of sex, but they overindulge in violence. I could have cut a G-rated version of 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' that would have pleased the American ratings board, but it would have been five minutes long. — Alfonso Cuaron

'Brave' is one of those words that has been bleached of most of its meaning these days, thanks to far too many appearances in the glaring light of ad slogans and corporate public relations. I never thought about anything as brave anymore; it just seemed like a flabby, glib cliche. — Susan Orlean

I think British men build up the idea of us French girls having some magic extra sex appeal so much, they lose their heads. I can't really understand the whole thing - but it makes me laugh. It's such a cliche to think all French girls are well dressed, elegant, sophisticated and sexy. Some are utter slobs, I promise you that. — Eva Green

I love my kids, and the moments I have with them, and it's kind of weird, it's such an age old cliche, but the way that my sons, the way they make me feel when I look at them, the way they say things, no one else would probably react to them, but it's a special thing for me. — Michael Rapaport

My size has helped make me an amazing performer too. The cliche of the Funny Fat Friend: I absolutely was that character - I am that character ... It's a complicated bag of tools I acquired, and I've put them all to work onstage. — Beth Ditto

Banality is a symptom of non-communication. Men hide behind their cliches. — Eugene Ionesco

I don't want to be the cliche American Idol dude. I want to be different, you know - that's the whole goal, me and music. It's about being yourself and being unique. — Paul McDonald

Phones and soundtracks and Muzak and fountains replace genuine and unpredictable human contact with a seamless soundtrack from a bad movie and a cliche that makes us believe we must all be happy. — Margaret Heffernan

Every day I've got to be thankful that I am alive, and you never know - the cliche is, I guess, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow, so you'd better be at peace with whatever you got going at the moment. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

All love as all life is cliche until you look beyond the obvious, until you look for what's hidden within what's displayed. — Chloe Thurlow

You can't do anything if a person says no. In such a case, there's nothing you can do - unlike the popular cliche that pressure is exerted, or that maybe an unwilling source is done away with. — Markus Wolf

This is a cliche, but in fiction, I feel it is easier for me to get to some sort of truth, some kind of more honest writing. — Miriam Toews

Everyone can write a cliche. What's rare is to write them often and unashamedly enough that people quote it as if it's some deep shit. — Jimmy Lo

It's so cliche, but I love the feeling you get from improv that anything can happen. The audience is already accepting that there are no props or costumes or furniture, so the performers can be anywhere doing anything; cut from underground to space, and it doesn't matter. — Andy Daly

At the beginning there was the Word; at the end just the Cliche. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Often times, music is used to evoke an emotion and it's become a cliche, so I don't want to do that, and actually what I do, is that emotional intensity that has developed throughout the film, I allow it to get released by having that music at the end with the credits. — Asghar Farhadi

But in this case," he continues, tracing the line of the plasterwork with one finger, "I feel that there is one cliche that sums up my position so admirably that it would be pure egotism to attempt a more interesting periphrasis. Plain speaking, therefore, there is to be.
"There is undoubtedly a strong possibility, notwithstanding the vagaries of contingency and misfortune, that my son might
have fallen - or might, we could say, have voluntarily jumped, in accordance with the ethical codes with which he has been brought up - for a play you have made with some success, although, as I am persuaded you would concede, very little originality."
Plain speaking if you're Henry James, perhaps. — Deborah Meyler

So here I am. Twenty-eight years old, with thirty looming on the horizon. Drunk. Fat. Alone. Unloved. And, worst of all, a cliche, Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones put together, which was probably about how much I weighed ... — Jennifer Weiner

I don't believe that old cliche that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad they can't sit still. — Ashton Kutcher

All plots are cliche. — Jincy Willett

What passes for education, culture or maturity in most minds is merely how individuals want to think of themselves, a contrived egocentric self-concept, not actual and effective principles and values. This is what is known in the cliche as the "veneer" of civilization. — Kenny Smith

I realize it's a cliche, almost, that coming out of the closet is a very healthy and empowering thing to do, but for me, it really has been a truly wonderful thing. — BD Wong

Men are born privileged in the scale of things - I'm generalizing, but it's true. Women have to define themselves in the eyes of men. They have to fight for their rights, especially in a society that will pretend that there is no fight or no battle, that it's a cliche, that feminists are reactionary, all these things. — Xavier Dolan

He is forever poised between a cliche and an indiscretion. — Harold Macmillan

The cliche is that misery loves company. Another is that there is fellowship among thieves. But thieves do not seek the consoling presence of the fellowship of police officers. Sinful misery does not love the company of purity. — R.C. Sproul

I didn't want to admit that I was falling into a cliche. — Jeff Tweedy

The world doesn't revolve around me anymore. Now it's all about this little baby. I come home after a rough day, I see her and she smiles and nothing but that matters. I know that sounds really cliche but it's the truth. — Michael Easton

Redeeming subjects from cliche is its own pleasure and privilege. — Leslie Jamison

Because I've been so bad at looking after myself, how would I ever look after a kid? But the old cliche applied: they handed her to me, and my world turned upside down - and I realised I was now going to be vulnerable in more ways than I expected. — Ken Bruen

The cliche is dead poetry. — Gerald Brenan