Cliched Quotes & Sayings

My best investment, as cliched as this sounds, is the money I've spent developing myself, via books, workshops and coaching. Leadership begins within, and to have a better career, start by building a better you. — Robin S. Sharma

I'm very particular who I work with. I'm not interested in portraying women with a cliched, generic look. I'm interested in a model who I can take a portrait of. — Tim Walker

What offends me more than something sexist is something poorly written or unfunny or cliched. — Jenji Kohan

So, I guess motherhood and the threat of not being able to pay my rent inspired me to be a novelist. But as far as what inspired me to be a writer, it's the stories. It sounds very cliched, but the stories rise up and demand to be told. They always have done, long before I became a writer. — Gayle Forman

I know it sounds cliched, but if we just treated each other as we'd like to be treated ourselves, we'd all be doing a lot better. — Marsha Thomason

We've had science fiction novels where China is dominant; we've had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it's all about getting away from that cliched old tired idea that the future belongs to the West. — Alastair Reynolds

When you die I bet you want real life, pure real life, eulogies that are unpoetic and messy, smeared with tears and truisms, cliched as hell, the kind of stuff a person means. — Kate Hattemer

And here I was at the end of my trip, with everything just as fuzzy and unreal as the beginning. It was easier for me to see myself in Rick's lens, riding down to the beach in that cliched sunset, just as it was easier for me to stand with my friends and wave goodbye to the loopy woman with the camels, the itching smell of the dust around us, and in our eyes the feat that we had left so much unsaid. There was an unpronounceable joy and an aching sadness to it. It had all happened too suddenly. I didn't believe this was the end at all. There must be some mistake. Someone had just robbed me of a couple of month in there somewhere. There was not so much an anticlimactic quality about the arrival at the ocean, as the overwhelming feeling that I had somehow misplaced the penultimate scene. — Robyn Davidson

I have read books that are so cliched and lazy, my eyes have bled. But I also have read books marketed under the chick-lit umbrella that are so honest, clever and gritty that I've wanted to give up writing and paint walls instead. — Jojo Moyes

It would have been convenient to be gay. Just because of the grooming, the narcissism, stuff like that. But I have this kind of roaring heterosexuality. Traditional, uncomplicated heterosexuality, an almost cliched Robin Askwith thing. — Russell Brand

I don't like to be in delineated moments. I don't like it when your reality feels prescriptive. I don't like Christmas holidays and their pseudo-joy. I don't like New Year's Eve. I don't like anything that feels like an established electromagnetic paradigm is pulling you into it's cliched forebear's footsteps. — Russell Brand

My philosophy has always been that I hope I have a good enough day to give me another one, I hope that I have a good enough year to give me another year. I know that's cliched, but it's the truth in how I approach my career. — David Nail

I love you," he writes again and again. "I can't bear to live without you. I'm counting the minutes until I see you." The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe. — Christina Baker Kline

It's difficult to write about poverty in a way that doesn't feel cliched. — Jake Halpern

That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business. — John Banville

Once I started working as a professional actor, it was like, 'Bye-bye waiting tables, bye-bye bartending, bye-bye all the cliched jobs actors do.' But after a year of not getting work, there's this really difficult conflict, like, 'Do I have to go back to being a waiter when people recognize me from a show?' — David Walton

It's very cliched to go, 'You're not punk.' We don't care if we are, and we don't care if we aren't. — Joel Madden

I just want to do everything. I don't want to sound soppy or too cliched, but that's the way it is. — Kylie Minogue

Though it's impossible for us to legislate one's thoughts and feelings, we still need things like affirmative action in place because without measures like it, people in charge would not have, sadly, enough impetus to do, as cliched as it sounds, the right thing. — Jonathan Coleman

I really feel like the first day I went to drama school and I went up on stage, that I found my vocation. It's kind of a cliched thing to say but I really feel like it was what I was meant to do. — Diane Kruger

I'm interested in what would normally be considered the worst aspects of commercial art. I think it's the tension between what seems to be so rigid and cliched and the fact that art really can't be this way. — Roy Lichtenstein

Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at history was not to accuse it of failure. — Orhan Pamuk

He looked down at her. "Have you found that peace?"
Yes, she had. But it was so corny and cliched that she couldn't bring herself to admit it.
"A wise man once told me that peace has to come from within. We have to learn to like ourselves before we can find our place in the world. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Sorry has got to be the most over-used cliched get-out clause in the history of mankind. Tossed out flippantly without any real meaning or substance. — Siobhan Davis

As cliched as it sounds, if you have an original voice and an original idea, then no matter what anybody says, you have to find a way to tell that story. — Damon Lindelof

I like the feeling that I'm giving young women self-confidence. It sounds so cliched, but it can be very moving. — Shirley Manson

I love art, but not in a cliched, luvvie way. — Imogen Poots

They are filled with earnest nonsense, the sort of things that a boy writes to his sweetheart, but which somehow, when they are meant for you, never feel tired or cliched or anything other than absolutely tender and true. — Natasha Solomons

I was, like, a total cliched '80s child. I had Barbies, obviously, as well as My Little Ponies and Cabbage Patch Kids, but I used to destroy them. I used to draw all over their faces and cut off their hair. — Natalie Portman

It might sound cliched, but choosing the right script is crucial. I think 'Badmaash Company' was a very big break for me because it gave me a lot of appreciation from the masses. It made me more confident as an actor. — Vir Das

In terms of romantic films, all-time romantic films, I really like 'Gone With the Wind.' And I realize I sound so cliched saying that, but there's something so absolutely romantic about it. — Freida Pinto

So often in TV, when you have an antagonist who's supposed to be the 'big baddie,' it's so easy for them to become cliched. — Michelle Forbes

I don't want to be cliched, but Buckingham Palace is beautiful, and the old red telephone booths are really interesting to me. I've always wanted to see those. — Alessia Cara

Danny Fletcher has a cliched evening in store for you. Italian restaurant, checkered tablecloth. Probably a candle. he'll push the last meatball to you with his nose, — Sally Thorne

In my time since moving to the United States, I've found that there is a dearth of great writing for black people. There are stories that depict us in a way that isn't cliched or niche, and that a white person, a Chinese person, an Indian person can watch and relate to. Those are the stories I want to be a part of telling. — David Oyelowo

Cliched characters are cliches because they're people being described by people who are on the outside. If you take two sentences from anybody and reduce them to just that, that's what you're going to get. — Michael Cudlitz

The cliched rock life never seemed that cool to me. — Win Butler

I don't feel the need to direct. I tried to get other people to direct Dances, but they wouldn't do it. They all thought it was too long. One director wanted to cut the Civil War sequence. Another thought the white woman was very cliched. — Kevin Costner

Chemistry is really about two people who like to act together, I think. It's like tennis in the most cliched way. It's like if you hit the ball, they hit the ball back, and they don't hit it into the stands, and they don't put the ball in their pocket and walk off - and they don't argue with the umpire, you know? — David Duchovny

I automatically leaned back, my head fitting into that spot between his neck and his shoulder. Again, the cliched romantic in me wondered how we seemed to fit so perfectly, two pieces of a jigsaw, and have such different, clashing personalities... I didn't care how bad we were for each other or that he'd be off to college soon; I just remembered that I was in love with him. — Beth Reekles

Even though it's become a really cliched thing to see musicians working for charity, it's still effective and it still has to be done. — George Michael

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 get bored with the constant probing for the cliched tears of the clown, the dark side of the comic. — Chris Lilley

I'm a believer in getting punched in the face. I know it sounds cliched, but to me, fighting is a metaphor for life. — Frank Grillo

It may sound cliched, but 'Strictly' is a real journey. I try to encourage my partner to stay in as long as they can, but above all to enjoy it. — Anton Du Beke

When you're acting, you're escaping and hiding behind something. It's cliched to say, but there's a safety there. — Tamsin Egerton

If you have ever been in a real tragic or sad situation, the words that come out are hopelessly inadequate and kind of cliched. — Erika Slezak

I think film had a terrible effect on horror fiction particularly in the 80s, with certain writers turning out stuff as slick and cliched as Hollywood movies. — Poppy Z. Brite

I've always felt, with 'The Iliad,' a real frustration that it's read wrong. That it's turned into this public school poem, which I don't think it is. That glamorising of war, and white-limbed, flowing-haired Greek heroes - it's become a cliched, British empire part of our culture. — Alice Oswald

I've never had any delusions about being a leading man, and it's not sour grapes to say that in the best films that I've always enjoyed, the cliched leading man type isn't a part of the picture. — John Hawkes

It sounds cliched, but superheroes can be lonely, vain, arrogant and proud. Often they overcome these human frailties for the greater good. — Tom Hiddleston

My story wasn't one of those cliched stories of being an ugly duckling, I had a pretty good time at school. But then I think being six foot by the age of 15 meant that I couldn't help but be noticed, and that was when my physical being felt quite painful - I could not any longer walk into a room without being noticed. — Erin O'Connor

I think love is blind. I hate to use that cliched statement, but people, when they love somebody, they seem to be able to somehow to put aside red flags. — Eric Close

It sounds so cliched, but I've always been kind of different. I always liked being around weird kids. — Cecily Strong

I can be really silly, but I never get to do that. I'm always playing on-the-nose characters, professionals - lawyers, a serious news anchor, people with a really focused energy, which can become a cliched type. — Nicole Ari Parker

One thing I would say is that I think in any environment that you work in, there's always going to be one or two people who you don't like. But there just wasn't that on 'Games Of Thrones'. I know it sounds cheesy and cliched, but it was like a big family. — Alfie Allen

Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa. — Ella Leya

I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically.
A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength.
[From a 1986 Fangoria interview] — James Cameron

From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me. — Cat Power

At the time, when you're being dissected and judged it's pretty brutal, but in hindsight it's great and - it sounds cliched - you do come out the other side better and stronger. — Kate Bosworth

My beauty ethos? Well, I'd love to tell you it's something like 'less is more,' but honestly, it all starts with happiness. If only someone could bottle that up - when I'm happy, I'm at my most radiant and glowing. It does me better than any product ever could. And I stand by how cheesy and cliched that sounds. — Solange Knowles

Twin, sagging is seriously lame. It's so cliched gang-wannabe circa 1990s. Hotties should just say no to it. — P.C. Cast

Hale." Kat sighed. "The headmaster's car? Really? That's not to cliched for you?"
What can I say?" He shrugged. "I'm an old-fashioned guy. Besides, it's a classic for a reason." He leaned against the window. "It's good to see you, Kat."
Kat didn't know what to say. It's good to see you, too? Thanks for getting me kicked out? Is it possible you've gotten even hotter? I think I might have missed you? — Ally Carter

There's a tired notion that the photojournalist has to be disengaged to be able to shoot what he shoots, and that's such a cliched idea of what the experience is. Of course they're engaged, and they're not distanced. — Michael Mann