Quotes & Sayings About Cliches

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought. — H.L. Mencken

There was nothing that I ever did, no conscious effort to do one kind of behavior or another, I can't explain what it was, but I can explain that the thinking of the time was that we didn't want to emulate our heroes. That wasn't kosher. 'Don't try to play the old cliches, play like yourself' - that's what people were saying — Larry Coryell

I'm not a guy who likes cliches. I don't think that stereotypes and cliches are the end of the line, when it comes to a performance. — Chris Bauer

Touching on universality is an important part of effective storytelling, but the problem with cliches is that they are tired and dull. And that's where writers must try to be artful. — Miguel Syjuco

Having survived something like that, it shows a person they can take more than they thought. It tempers the soul, and if it doesn't destroy you, it can make you stronger.

Sometimes the old cliches weren't just bullshit. — Tymber Dalton

I would rather read a poorly structured story that has fresh ideas than a tightly structured one with cliches. — Douglas Wood

Too many new writers dress up old cliches. — Christopher Fowler

You can't go back. What's done is done. Unrequited love is never easy. Time heals all wounds. I kept repeating such cliches to myself, hoping that they, like medicine, would take away the sting.

They didn't. — Alice J. Wisler

I've learned that unfeeling, bloodsucking men like you need to reduce women to manageable cliches, even to destroy them, for the sake of control. — Hanif Kureishi

In the second half of life, our old compasses no longer work. The magnetic fields alter. The new compass that we need cannot be held in our hand, only in our heart. We read it not with our mind alone, but with our soul.

Now we yearn for wholeness. We yearn to remember the parts of ourselves that we have forgotten, to nourish those that we have starved, to express those we have silenced, and to bring into the light those we have cast into the shadows. On this quest for wholeness, we must let go of cliches of adult life, both positive and negative . . . Using the best information available , each of us must find his own way.

To varying degrees, all of us are trying to break out of . . . the "life structure" that we have built during the first part of our lives. — Mark Gerzon

In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins. — Newt Gingrich

No serious sociologist any longer believes that the voice of the people expresses any divine or specially wise and lofty idea. The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders. — Edward L. Bernays

Cliches work by appealing to the collective unconscious. They are the Pachbel's Canon in D of writing, something familiar the talented can riff off to create a distinct work. — Thomm Quackenbush

[Seeing clearly] is not so difficult to achieve, and yet it is rather unusual. To my mind, it is less a question of an exalted or shrewd intelligence than of good sense, goodwill and a certain sort of courage to enable one to rise above both the pressures of one's environment and the natural inclination to close one's eyes to facts, a temptation that arises from our immediate interests and from the fear which problems inspire in us. A French essayist has said: 'What is terrible when you seek the truth, is that you find it.' You find it, and then you are no longer free to follow the biases of your personal circle, or to accept fashionable cliches. — Victor Serge

We do not serve a distant and detached God who spouts encouraging cliches safely from the sideline. Instead, he enters into our suffering. Jesus did it in the Incarnation and his Spirit does it in us now. God will never leave us alone in our suffering. — Rick Warren

What really matters is that 'Black Swan' deploys and exaggerates all the cliches of earlier ballet movies, especially 'The Red Shoes,' another tale of a ballerina driven mad and suicidal. — Robert Gottlieb

The ground swell is what's going to sink you as well as being what buoys you up. These are cliches also, of course, and I'm sometimes interested in how much one can get away with. — Paul Muldoon

Modern Arabic literature achieved international recognition when Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel prize in 1988 ( ... ) Mahfouz also rendered Arabic literature a great service by developing, over the years, a form of language in which many of the archaisms and cliches that had become fashionable were discarded, a language that could serve as an adequate instrument for the writing of fiction in these times. — Denys Johnson-Davies

Educators shouldn't be afraid of cliches. You know why? Because kids don't know most of them! They're a new audience. And they're inspired by cliches. — Randy Pausch

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

Raw, naked truth exchanged between the black man and the white man is what a whole lot more of is needed in this country - to clear the air of the racial mirages, cliches, and lies that this country's very atmosphere has been filled with for four hundred years. — Alex Haley

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

My interests were aroused, and my faith in the cliches of the subject destroyed, as so often with other subjects, by the discussions with my friend, Aaron Director. — George Stigler

If contemporary artists sincerely seek to be original, unique, and new, they should begin by disregarding the notions of originality, individuality, and innovation: they are the cliches of our time. — Octavio Paz

Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and cliches. — Harold Evans

People love cliches. If you can give people cliches, that's very good TV, then. — Michael Hirst

I wish i could tell you that through the tragedy i mined some undiscovered, life-altering absolute that i could pass on to you.I didn't.The cliches apply-people are what count,life is precious,materialism is over rated, and the little things matter,live in the moment-and i can repeat them to you ad nauseam.you might listen, but you won't internalize.Tragedy hammers it hm.Tragedy etches into your soul.You might not be happier.But you will be better. — Harlan Coben

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can't write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the 'i's' small. — Charles Bukowski

Football is a game of cliches, and I believe in every one of them. — Vince Lombardi

You're a kid. I didn't know we taught kids manners anymore. — Christine Amsden

One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas. — Matt Taibbi

Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest ... — James Branch Cabell

There are still some terrible cliches in the presentation of Indian fiction. The lotus flower. The hennaed hands. In mainland Europe, people still slap these images on my books and I go bananas. — Hari Kunzru

Spade didn't respond with any useless, comforting cliches, for which she was grateful. She's head enough of those well-meaning phrases after Randy died. Why couldn't people acknowledge that occasionally, life just sucked? Didn't they realize that sometime silence was more comforting than the more sincere expression of sympathy or attempt at showing the deeper meaning behind it all? — Jeaniene Frost

Time-honoured insights are often trivialised as cliches. — Densey Clyne

One of the problems of this genre is that there are cliches everywhere, and you've got to be careful and watch out. Our rule with cliches is to either gently acknowledge them and make fun of them, or do something else. Milady is, in one sense, a villain because she does bad things. — Adrian Hodges

Cliches and stereotypes such as "beatnik" or "hippie" have been invented for the antitechnologists, the antisystem people, and will continue to be. But one does not convert individuals into mass people with the simple coining of a mass term. — Robert M. Pirsig

I'm aware of cliches and I'm aware of experiments that have been done and I'm aware of a kind of deadness to a lot of realism both in the language and in the structure of a book. — Jeffrey Eugenides

In baseball and sex, cliches are usually true: pitching beats hitting, and people always want to be loved by anyone who doesn't seem to care. — Chuck Klosterman

This life is quite a rave- few heartaches, some long waits, altering faiths & breaking cliches! — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Fashion fosters cliches of beauty, but I want to tear them apart. — Miuccia Prada

It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics. — Steven Pinker

Don't avoid the cliches - they are cliches because they work! — George Lucas

Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once; a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow. — Cyril Connolly

The champions of militant Islam are, of course, misogynists, woman-haters; they are also misologists
haters of reason. Their armed doctrine is little more than a chaotic penal code underscored by impotent dreams of genocide. And, like all religions, it is a massive agglutination of stock response, of cliches, of inherited and unexamined formulations. — Martin Amis

I'm trying to go beyond the traditional cliches of an African safari. — Jochen Zeitz

They think in terms of a sentimental ballad. And that's what terrifies you about them. It isn't their cruelty, it isn't even their shrewdness - it's their extraordinary naivete. Everything in their whole bloody world is a cliche. Everything is born out of a cliche, rests on a cliche, survives by a cliche. And they believe in the cliches - there's no hope — Jean Rhys

People regurgitate the same old cliches and it becomes like a photocopy of a photocopy of something that's vaguely interesting. — Steve Coogan

Metal is made up of many silly cliches, and Dio's songs rarely shied away from a good cheeseball lyric about medieval knights and crystal balls. But the amazing thing is, Dio the man never succumbed to the typical ravages of drugs, booze or hideous all-body tattoos. He never gained 75 pounds later in life or lost most of his voice through merciless shredding and ended it all playing county fairs for 19 drunk dudes in a barn before collapsing in a heap in a motel room in Jersey. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Or everywhere. — Mark Morford

In this twilight they were more imagined than seen, but I felt surrounded by the practitioners of a sacred mediocrity, an elegant mediocrity cloistering inaccessible tortures. I don't know quite how to put it. People, men, proud of their cliches yet full of helpless poetry. — Denis Johnson

I think my mistakes were kind of common - leaning on cliches and adjectives in the place of clear, vivid writing. But at least I knew how to spell, which seems to be a rarity these days. — Dick Schaap

Political art expresses the cliches you agree with, unlike propaganda, which expresses the cliches you don't. — Brad Holland

Beauty is a living abiding presence completely untouchable by all the devices of man, such as moral codes, creeds, intellectual analysis, games and cliches, the acquisitive instinct, or lust for anything whatsoever. — Lawren Harris

Buzzwords and cliches - those are stock in trade. There's nothing wrong with them. — Michael Nesmith

New York cops are very specific in terms of the way they talk and the way they handle themselves. All these cliches that, as an Englishman, I thought were from a bygone era or were a bit of poetic license with cop shows - the more you hang out with them, the more you realize how real that jargon is. — Theo James

It is possible for music to be labeled "Christian" and be terrible music. It could lack creativity and inspiration. The lyrics could be recycled cliches. That "Christian" band could actually be giving Jesus a bad name because they aren't a great band. It is possible for a movie to be a "Christian" movie and to be a terrible movie. It may actually desecrate the art form in its quality and storytelling and craft. — Rob Bell

Suddenly, everything I'd ever read made sense. All of the cliches about electricity and drowning and falling and other sinister metaphors for a kiss all swept over me. It was nuclear fusion. It was the door to Narnia. — Lily Anderson

Let's have some new cliches. — Samuel Goldwyn

All those cliches, those things you hear about having a baby and motherhood - all of them are true. And all of them are the most beautiful things you will ever experience. — Penelope Cruz

It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue. — Stephen Fry

When it comes to love, the English language bears no shortage of cliches. — Sarah MacLean

You need cliches. Cliches are what people respond to. — Matthew Vaughn

Thomas Merton to write: The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television. His head is filled with inane slogans, songs, noises, explosions, statistics, brand names, menaces, ribaldries, and cliches. Then, when the child gets to school, he learns to verbalize, rationalize, to pace, to make faces like an advertisement, to need a car and in short, to go through life with an empty head conforming to others, like himself, in togetherness.3 — Brennan Manning

Listen to the speeches, one after another telling the audience what it already knows, evoking applause with necessary cliches, no longer shocking anybody with the shocking facts of the war because you can become so jaded with horror that you develop an emotional callous. — Paul Krassner

Ford considers that development journalism means getting behind the cliches of starving children and getting people to tell their own stories: "We are looking at big policies affecting developing countries and looking at how this relates on the ground to those who expect to be benefiting. — Anonymous

There are trappings of science fiction which I kind of embrace, but there are also cliches which I run from. — David Twohy

She looked so disappointed, so grieved and desperate that Clem longed to comfort her, only he couldn't think of thing to say that she hadn't heard a hundred times from Dad and Dr. Snow and Mrs. Mack: how things would get better in time, though no one knew how much time, and that life might be a little better for her and Jess once school began again. — Judith Clarke

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague. — William Safire

All the child-star cliches, I've tried very hard to avoid them all. — Macaulay Culkin

When people express what is most important to them, it often comes out in cliches. That doesn't make them laughable; it's something tender about them. As though in struggling to reach what's most personal about them they could only come up with what's most public. — Terrence Malick

As inexplicable as the accidents that set it off, our imagination is a crucial privilege. I've tried my whole life simply to accept the images that present themselves to me without trying to analyze them. I remember when we were shooting That Obscure Object of Desire in Seville and I suddenly found myself telling Fernando Rey, at the end of a scene, to pick up a big sack filled with tools lying on a bench, sling it over his shoulder, and walk away. The action was completely irrational, yet it seemed absolutely right to me. Still, I was worried about it, so I shot two versions of the scene: one with the sack, one without. But during the rushes the following day, the whole crew agreed that the scene was much better with the sack. Why? I can't explain it, and I don't enjoy rummaging around in the cliches of psychoanalysis. — Luis Bunuel

I hate to repeat lines, to say the same damned thing. I try to rewrite cliches and make what I say sound fresh. — Gary McCord

I originated my own cliches, but I'm finding that's not working for me anymore. — Tom Bodett

I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time. — Patrick Rothfuss

I believe with all my heart that the cliches are true, that we are our own best friends and best company, and that if you're not right for yourself, it's impossible to be right for anyone. — Rachel Machacek

Superiority and success doesn't favor good effort or self-esteem ... The mentally precise and physically fit win, while the mediocre and obtuse take solace in hopeful cliches. — Bobby Knight

The goal with 'Alpha' was to run towards the cliches and then to break through them, and that doesn't change depending on the medium. — Greg Rucka

Christmas really is about all the cliches: health, happiness and love. A future with my family is the important thing ... to stay alive for them. — Sylvie Meis

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

What I think is interesting is that the more you do, you have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can't do. And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches. — Adrian Lyne

At the logic of fashion, such once-popular perversions as pedophilia and sodomy will become derided cliches, as amusing as pottery ducks on suburban walls. — J.G. Ballard

Are we then creatures of action? Do we say that we desire those accepted cliches of comfort when, in fact, it is the challenge and the adventure that truly give us life? — R.A. Salvatore

The challenge in daytime in particular, I think, is to go against all the traditional cliches of daytime and try to make it real. — Eric Braeden

To paraphrase president Kennedy's inaugural, the torch has been passed to a new generation of cartoonists and they are doing really interesting stuff, taking the old cliches and breathing new life into them and inventing new ones. This doesn't mean the previous generation of which I'm a charter member isn't doing good stuff but this new material is invigorating everyone. — Robert Mankoff

I understand why sometimes people speak in cliches because sometimes there is no other way to describe something. — Augusten Burroughs

Our writers are full of cliches just as old barns are full of bats. There is obviously no rule about this, except that anything that you suspect of being a cliche undoubtedly is one and had better be removed. — Wolcott Gibbs

Please, don't torture me with cliches. If you're going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors. — Dean Koontz

He remembered his uncle saying once how little vocabulary man really needed to get comfortably and even efficiently through his life, how not only in the individual but within his whole type and race and kind a few simple cliches served his few simple passions and needs and lusts. — William Faulkner

I want to write something that means something to someone ... the reminds them of what a second, a moment, really is ... or that assures them that we are just as lost as they are. I want to write an emotion they are too fragile to let loose, so that my words can do the expression for them, the feeling for them. I want to write beyond the basics and the cliches ... I want to write you, I want to write a long walk on a starry night, I want to write an exhale or an inhale ... or suffocation.
I want to write as clear as my voice could be heard ... that is, if I had anything to say. — Augusten Burroughs

If you do something that's really original, you discover why everybody else does it the other way, usually. There's a reason cliches exist, 'cause they work. — Doug Liman

Isn't it what all librarians strive toward, at least in the movies and cliches? Silence, invisibility, nothing but a rambling cloud of old book dust. — Rebecca Makkai

The best way to achieve surprise quality is by avoiding cliches. — Alexey Brodovitch

Some people might laugh or roll their eyes and accuse me of tired cliches. But there it was-hot food in an empty stomach, water on a parched throat, that first glimpse of home just around the bend, or that first bite of something you thought you'd never have the courage to try, only to realize it was the best thing you'd ever tasted. That was what Finn's kiss was like. And in that moment, I realized I was starving and had been for a long time. I was starving. Hungry for companionship, affection, connection. And strangest of all, hungry for Finn Clyde. — Amy Harmon

I must try and break through the cliches about Latin America. Superpowers and other outsiders have fought over us for centuries in ways that have nothing to do with our problems. In reality we are all alone. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The cliches of a culture sometimes tell the deepest truths. — Faith Popcorn

Sadly, for those who are busy sawing off their feet to escape the trap of cliches, every story is chock full of them and sometimes depends on an especially hoary one. — Rafael Yglesias

I encourage students to pursue an idea far enough so they can see what the cliches and stereotypes are. Only then do they begin to hit pay dirt. — Robert Morgan

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

I think that often times Hollywood panders to the cliches of small town life, specifically Southern small town life, and I think that this movie does the opposite. — Josh Lucas

Cliches remind and reassure us that we're not alone, that other have trod this ground long ago. — Miguel Syjuco