Cloying Quotes & Sayings

He got a booklet out of a folder. 'This is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It's a standardized psychometric test we use to assess and analyze an individual's personality dynamic. It's got about six hundred true-or-false questions. You fill this out and then the computer will generate a report.' Well, I thought this was absolutely perfect! I was just delighted with the idea that psychodiagnostic algorithms would generate a posthumanist psychiatric profile for me for the autobiography. And both the Imaginary Intern and I felt this would really streamline the process, that it would save us a tremendous amount of work, and obviate the need for all that cloying introspection and redemptive candor that we both found so nauseating and counterrevolutionary. — Mark Leyner

I equally dislike the favor of the public with the love of a woman
they are both a cloying treacle to the wings of independence — John Keats

He did all this with great concentration in order to keep his thoughts at bay, in order to let them in only one at a time, having first asked them what they contained, because you can't be too careful with thoughts, some present themselves to us with a cloying air of false innocence and then, when it's too late, reveal their true wicked selves. — Jose Saramago

The syrup of lilies hangs thick and sweet in the air, its cloying scent the traditional mask of death and rebirth: ashes and incense, rain and dirt, and something like rosin. It's the scent Hector associates with God. The scent of heavenly things. — Kimberly Morgan

It is difficult to put words to the smell of decomposing human. It is dense and cloying, sweet but not flower-sweet. Halfway between rotting fruit and rotting meat. — Mary Roach

Bloy was the ultimate weapon against the twentieth century, its mediocrity, its moronic 'engagement,' its cloying humanitarianism; against Sartre, and Camus, and all their political playacting; and against all those sickening formalists, the nouveau roman, the pointless absurdity of it all. — Michel Houellebecq

Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go," I said.
"1. Doesn't pun on your disability," Isaac said.
"2. Gets blood on the first try," I said.
"Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dartboard? 3. No condescending voice."
"How are you doing, sweetie?" I asked, cloying. "I'm going to stick you with a needle now. There might be a little ouchie."
"Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?" he answered. "Most of them are good, actually. I just want to get the hell out of this place. — John Green

I don't think you always get to see a woman on TV who is relatively neurosis-free and, while looking for a relationship, isn't man hunting and isn't cloying and isn't a fashionista. — Jordana Spiro

Cloying tendrils of mist searched the city like skeletal fingers reaching deep into crevices, hoping to capture the elusive prey needed to satisfy gnawing hunger... — Jillian Kent

She could smell damprot, high, sweet, and cloying. She could smell madness like dead vegetables in a dark cellar. — Stephen King

There was nothing more unattractive than narcissism, she thought: nothing could transform beauty into a cloying, unattractive quality than that self-conscious appreciation of self. — Alexander McCall Smith

Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I don't know who I am, why I'm alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that there's no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life ... I am destroyed, irretrievably! — Anton Chekhov

To call them emotional comedies sounds cloying. Like Billy Wilder said, 'You want to make them laugh and you want to make them cry,' and it's very hard to do so. If you ground it in reality, you get a more honest comedy. You don't have to reach for jokes to manufacture situations as much. And I think it's a type of film I do best. — Charles Shyer

I do think there are some actors that can get away with trying to be funny, and they're still funny because they're just likeable, and you want to see them. Me, though, when you see me trying to be funny, it's like the worst thing in the world. It's needy, it's cloying, it's manipulative - it's bad. — Constance Wu

Wartime lipstick is necessarily cobbled together from whatever tailings and gristle were left over once all the good stuff was use to grease propeller shafts. A florid and cloying scent is needed to conceal its unspeakable mineral and animal origins.
It is the smell of War. — Neal Stephenson

I'll see? Really? Did she seriously say that?"
"Qualities of a Good Nurse: Go," I said.
"1. Doesn't pun on your disability," Isaac said.
"2. Gets blood on the first try," I said.
"Seriously, that is huge. I mean is this my freaking arm or a dartboard? 3. No condescending voice."
"How are you doing, sweetie?" I asked, cloying. "I'm going to stick you with a needle now. There might be a little ouchie."
"Is my wittle fuffywump sickywicky?" he answered. — John Green

Show me a man who over-elaborates and I will show you a great man! What is called their 'overelaboration' is my meat: it is the sign of struggle, it is struggle itself with all the fibers clinging to it, the very aura and ambiance of the discordant spirit. And when you show me a man who expresses himself perfectly I will not say that he is not great, but I will say that I am unattracted ... I miss the cloying qualities. When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears. — Henry Miller

As far as one journeys, as much as a man sees, from the turrets of the Taj
Mahal to the Siberian wilds, he may eventually come to an unfortunate
conclusion - usually while he's lying in bed, staring at the thatched ceiling of
some substandard accommodation in Indochina," writes Swithin in his last
book, the posthumously published Whereabouts, 1917 (1918). "It is impossible
to rid himself of the relentless, cloying fever commonly known as Home.
After seventy-three years of anguish I have found a cure, however. You must
go home again, grit your teeth and however arduous the exercise, determine,
without embellishment, your exact coordinates at Home, your longitudes
and latitudes. Only then, will you stop looking back and see the spectacular
view in front of you. — Marisha Pessl

She'd thought she'd left this behind. This crushing awful feeling of something unfulfilled, something she kept reaching for only to be dragged away and mired in others' needs and expectations and the cloying sick grasping of their love. — Cole McCade

cloying your-best-friend's-dead sympathy that will drive — Gayle Forman

We felt there was a creeping tepidness in music, a cloying softness, as if music were only a salve, not an instigator. It's — Carrie Brownstein

He smiled all the way to physics class. He almost laughed out loud when he passed through the door and saw her shadowy, hunched-over form casting around for a seat in the back.
She was in his class; this was excellent. Maybe she'd call him a name if he struck up another conversation. Even curse him out. That might fun. God, he'd probably earn himself a restraining order if he tried to sit next to her.
He was so tired of saccharine smiles and cloying tones of voice. People always plastered their eyes to his face for fear of looking anywhere else. He was fed up with everybody being so goddamned nice.
That's why he'd already fallen in love with this weird, maladjusted, beautiful girl who carried a chip the size of Ohio on her shoulder. Because nobody was ever mean to the guy in the wheelchair. — Francine Pascal

Phillip cleared his throat and got to his feet. I need some fresh air. All this postbattle rah-rah-we-lived sentimentality is a bit cloying. — Jennifer Estep

Ever eating, never cloying, All-devouring, all-destroying Never finding full repast, Till I eat the world at last. — Jonathan Swift

I believe you mother everybody, not in a cloying, hovering way, but taking care of what is around you. — Alice Walker

Evil smelled like nothing else, worse than a rotting corpse, worse than sewage and disease, more vile than the fumes that billowed from modern machinery, more cloying than the shame of drunken whores. — India Drummond

I think that overall, ultimately the impact of advertisers calling the shots is a more cloying, complacent culture. For example, it was just announced that Unilever is branding environmental content at The Guardian. How radical or pointed can that content be? — Astra Taylor

I could become servile, cloying, saccharinely sweet: the whole package of lies that passes in the world as femininity. — Erica Jong

How she loved you, her bubeleh, her boychik, her darling, but there was something cloying in that love, something theatrical and selfish, and you knew it and, as soon as you were big enough, you kept her at a safe distance. — Siri Hustvedt

Guinevere grimaced. 'Do you know how cloying love can be, Derfel? I don't want to be worshipped. I don't want every whim granted. I want to feel there's something biting back. — Bernard Cornwell

Also, tonight he reeks too much of beer and cloying cologne. This is a disappointment because I always assumed that a perfect creature such as Brendon would smell of spring rain and mountain bresses and other heavenly aromas. — Hannah Harrington

Whatever," I said. "It's getting cloying in here. Are we there yet?" He smiled. "Jerk." "Wuss." "Jackass." "Pansy." "Philistine." "Dandysprat." "Butthead." "Whiner ... — Jim Butcher

At Last It's a perfect winter day. No wind. No Arctic freeze. Cloudless azure sky. A day to fly. Snow drapes the mountain like ermine, fabulous feather- light powder coaxing me to flee the confines of my room, brave the mostly plowed road up to the closest ski resort. To run from the cloying silence connected Mom and Dad, into encompassing stillness far away from city dirt and noise Far above suburban gridlock. Far beyond the grasp of home. — Ellen Hopkins

You can close your eyes and think of England, if you like."
"I've never even been to England," she said, but she shut her eyelids. She could feel the dank heaviness of her clothes, cold and itchy against her skin, and the cloying sweet air of the cave, colder yet, and the weight of Jace's hands on her shoulders, the only things that were warm. And then he kissed her.
She felt the brush of his lips, light at first, and her own opened automatically beneath the pressure. Almost against her will she felt herself go fluid and pliant, stretching upward to twine her arms around his neck the way that a sunflower twists toward light. His arms slid around her, his hands knotting in her hair, and the kiss stopped being gentle and became fierce, all in a single moment like tinder flaring into a blaze. — Cassandra Clare

They knew each other as much as they knew themselves, and their intimacy, rather like too many suitcases, was a matter of perpetual concern; together they moved slowly, clumsily, effecting lugubrious compromises, attending to delicate shifts of mood, repairing breaches. As individuals they didn't easily take offense; but together they managed to offend each other in surprising, unexpected ways; then the offender - it had happened twice since their arrival - became irritated by the cloying susceptibilities of the other, and they would continue to explore the twisting alleyways and sudden squares in silence, and with each step the city would recede as they locked tighter into each other's presence. — Ian McEwan

Jefferson was among the greatest men who had ever lived, a Renaissance figure who was formidable without seeming overbearing, sparkling without being showy, winning without appearing cloying. — Jon Meacham

Even the great Van Helsing is not immune from these confusing and cloying vampiric attractions, 'the fascination of the wanton Un-dead' (p. 393). But destroy the vampires though he and the other men indeed do in the end, it is Mina who remains the most important enabling factor for the defeat of Dracula, with the aid, of course, of what she calls 'the wonderful power of money!' (p. 378). And the reason for this is her ambiguous sexuality. In her is to be found something — Bram Stoker