Gritty Quotes & Sayings

Brain Juice was a recipe invented by Eve years before, when she had had to stay awake all day to look after Caddy and Indigo and Saffron, and all night to take care of the fragile and impermanent baby Rose. It was Coca-Cola with a great deal of instant coffee stirred into it. It was black and frothy and gritty, and it tasted like a primitive, medieval poison, but it banished sleep like magic. — Hilary McKay

Besides all of this, Patrick and I living together for the first time meant it was the beginning of a life together, that nitty-gritty one where we fight over the way he leaves the spatula on a still-hot burner, or how she always "organizes" his things in illogical piles when they were already in order according to his systems. No matter where in the world, no matter how exotic the locale, they'll still fight over that spatula and those piles. And they'll still notice how other couples, no matter their language, will glare at one another on the sunniest of days, skulking by the ocean that they'd just enjoyed hand-in-hand. — Megan Rich

I painted with my husband a portrait of a naked Serge Gainsbourg draped with a French flag, and it hangs in our bedroom. I love gritty and dark art like what the German couple Herakut does. — Stephanie Szostak

'Dark Blue' is ultimately a gritty crime drama, at its core. I don't think that is ever going to change. — Dylan McDermott

We all seek approval, and our mother's seal is usually the most important. The nitty gritty is that we have to accept ourselves, even if it is just to be ready for the next cut-down. Mom's blessing or not. — Beth Ditto

Another thing about pain - it renders you incapable of bullshit. — Gwen Mitchell

He [Daniel Craig] is mysterious, and I think that that's the thing Bond has to exude, that kind of mysterious edge. He draws you in, but he is also incredibly cool, you know, James Bond is cool and sharp and Daniel has that to a tee, and he's also got the rawness and an edginess to him that is slightly unhinged, and you're not sure what is going on there, and I think that is really intriguing and interesting. It is a lot weightier and gritty, and he has that. — Gemma Arterton

Like any oppressed people, they defined themselves by what offended them, which would give New England its gritty flavor and, it has been argued, America its independence. — Stacy Schiff

I love challenging films, really. I'd prefer to do some gritty, challenging roles. That would be awesome and really fun. — Charlie Rowe

The city was different back then
poor and crumbling
kept alive only by the gritty determination and steely cynicism of its occupants. But underneath the dirt was the apple-cheeked optimism of possibility, and while she worked, the whole city seemed to throb along with her. — Candace Bushnell

The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life. — Isobelle Carmody

Merrie Destefano storms the world of urban fantasy with AFTERLIFE, breathing new life into the vast genre of the undead. Gritty, poignant, in the tradition of Bladerunner, with the nostalgia of New Orleans. With crisp and beautiful prose, AFTERLIFE blurs the line between the living and the dead to ask life's ultimate questions-even if they take nine lives to solve. — Tosca Lee

I remember opening up my first vinyl and seeing the incredible artwork it had. There's nothing like it. You also get that true gritty sound on vinyl that really makes a rock record sound great, which CDs can never achieve. — Nikki Sixx

I would destroy the entire village if doing so meant keeping you safe. — Auden Johnson

I like my cinema gritty, I like my eggs gritty. — David Letterman

Real relationship is gritty and earthy, the stuff that life is made of. — Amy Grant

Dirt is chaos, gritty, full of bugs and decay, but from that dirt comes such immense beauty. Roses, tulips, tomatoes, peonies, raspberries, oranges, magnolias...and even me. — R.S. Grey

We have become this very fear-based culture, especially post-9/11. Fear is the opposite of love, in my opinion. I think there would be more love in the world. I'm not talking about rainbows and unicorns and '70s Coca-Cola commercials. I'm talking about gritty, dangerous, wild-eyed love. Radical acceptance of people. Belonging. A good, goofy kind of love. — Brene Brown

Cheryl Strayed is a courageous, gritty, and deceptively elegant writer. — Pam Houston

The magical proposition of the gospel, once free from the clasps of fairy tale, was very adult to me, very gritty like something from Hemingway or Steinbeck, — Donald Miller

By five A.M., her eyes were gritty and her head ached. The single hour's sleep she had managed to tuck in between sex and murder was beginning to wear on her. — J.D. Robb

What we don't listen to, is what I am continually telling people in which nobody really, to get down to the nitty gritty believes, is that there is a piece of Divinity in us. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds to analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions. — David Miliband

To be perfectly frank: I don't write women's fiction. I write intimate, gritty, realistic, character-driven fiction that happens to be thrown into the women's fiction category. — Jillian Medoff

Leh has few of what Europeans regard as travelling necessaries. The brick tea which I purchased from a Lhassa trader was disgusting. I afterwards understood that blood is used in making up the blocks. The flour was gritty, and a leg of mutton turned out to be a limb of a goat of much experience. — Isabella Bird

THREE DAYS TO DEAD is one of the best books I've read. Ever. Evy Stone is a heroine's heroine, and I rooted for her from the moment I met her. Kelly Meding has written a phenomenal story, one that's fast-paced, gritty, and utterly addictive. Brava! More! More! More! — Jackie Morse Kessler

I'm loving doing Outlander. We've got a great cast and we're up in the Scottish Highlands. [ ... ] It's big budget, they're spending a lot of money on it. They're going for a very gritty and realistic portrayal of the Highlands and I play Dougal MacKenzie, the War Chieftain of Clan MacKenzie. As that implies, he's quite the serious character. There's lots of political intrigue, there's romance, there's adventure and action and there's time-travel. — Graham McTavish

If you take someone's thoughts and feelings away, bit by bit, consistantly, they then have nothing left except some gritty, gnawing, shitty little instinct, down there, somewhere, worming around in the gut, but so far down, so hidden, it's impossible to find. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I didn't think that and I didn't verbalize that to myself or within meetings that we ever had, but we wanted to make a hard-nosed, gritty, realistic spy thriller. Roger talked about using lenses. He shot hi-def, but using anamorphic lenses that he'd found from this warehouse. He was so thrilled with that. Him and Romain [Lacourbas] were just like kids in a toy store with their lenses. — Pierce Brosnan

This is just how I pictured it in my head. Raw and gritty, and dirty as hell. — Belle Aurora

It's so easy for shows to be gritty and handheld and shaky and really tight in people's faces. — Cary Fukunaga

Sundance [festival] is all your Hollywood buds and buddies and rolling out and high-fiving and "Hell, yeah. Here comes the movie," and in Venice, it's very elegant, and respectful ... It's decadence. It's such a fun way to formalize a movie that is for us a down-and-dirty, gritty movie. And to see it with the red carpet, and rolling up in a Maserati. — David Gordon Green

He pulled me toward him, and all I could do was stand there with arms at my sides and head against his chest. Broken, I feared even the slightest movement would cause pieces of me to snap off and fall to the gritty pavement. — Jodi LaPalm

I always like to incorporate one or two chic accessories that contrast with the more gritty look of my daily uniform: a leather jacket and jeans. — Johan Lindeberg

Being an entrepreneur is sexy ... for those who haven't done it. In reality it's gritty, tough work where you will be filled with self doubt. Entrepreneurs are survivors. — Mark Suster

Alchemy is glorious, gritty, and gruesome, forcing one to mature spiritually."

-from my weblog posted today on diavirginia — Dia Virginia Rigden

We also have a piece about the Mayflower, but it's just a very different, very gritty, very character-driven version of why those people were on that boat and what the experience was like for them, emotionally, physically and spiritually, and also the Native Americans and what the state of Native American society was at that time. — John Landgraf

Egypt tasted as Eleanor remembered: gritty, dry, and full of a hundred thousand secrets. She licked her lips and peered down the long corridor before her. A shadow moved across the ancient tomb walls. — E. Catherine Tobler

I like Sergio Martinez. I think he's strong, he's gritty, he's got plenty of heart, he's not the fanciest guy you might have seen in boxing but he has the goods to be around a long time in the Middleweight division. — Bernard Hopkins

I love playing serious! That's a relief for me. It means something. It sounds dead corny and cheesy, but on a day-to-day basis, you can't just let loose and cry. So as an actress playing those gritty roles, I can play it quite decently. — Lauren Socha

Dogwalker is a book of fiction, with characters based on the types of people who truly exist in the world. I've seen them and know them - some of them I know really well. Although the stories are sometimes gritty and unsettling, my hope is that in the end they hit a positive note. — Arthur Bradford

But our country's equivalent of gritty reality is more like "Look out Sarge, he's got a shooter!" — Bill Bailey

One thing we can know for sure is that when we are confessing our sin to God but not to the people around us in ordinary, nitty-gritty life, there is not much real spiritual transformation going on — Ruth Haley Barton

The writers I most enjoy reading, even in gritty, down-to-earth genres, have a touch of the poet in them; they can create original, evocative images and make words do things they hadn't known they could. Writing my first novel left me feeling that the most important quality for a writer is empathy, the ability to see the world through the eyes of someone from a vastly different background. Especially, to create engaging villains, you have to see how the world makes sense from their point of view, even if it's the polar opposite of yours. For me, a good villain is one who makes the reader ask, "If I had the same experience as this person, can I be absolutely sure I wouldn't have done the same things? — Charles Kowalski

Before High School Musical, I wanted to be a nitty-gritty actress. And High School Musical came along, and, I was like, "Oh my God, fun!" But the more we did it, the more prude I became ... When I am around kids and they come up to me, of course I am going to act a certain way, but at the end of the day, I'm doing this for myself. I'm going to be doing movies kids can't watch. — Vanessa Hudgens

With this? Do you live as if this is true? Let's keep going. The Bible isn't just about heaven and only for the by-and-by. It is gritty and real. It is about messed-up people and the way God pursues them. The Bible describes real life - with its ups and downs and our stubborn quests for independence - better than anything — Edward T. Welch

Gritty and witty, The Chicago Way is done the classic Raymond Chandler Way. Harvey's taut plot, snappy prose, and memorable characters make this debut novel a real winner. — Kathy Reichs

Ultimately, I try to think of my application's main codebase as just stringing together various components and code from many sources. It just controls logic and flow. The real nitty-gritty is handled behind the scenes. This is why frameworks like Backbone are so important - they hide a lot of the details in the background and allow you to just focus on the flow and control of your application. — Robert Duchnik

They don't really focus on that history here in America. I remember growing up as a kid, history class was very washed-over. They didn't really get into the gritty bits of slavery. It's a very, very small section in the history books. It's not something they really touch on directly with American curriculums. — Aldis Hodge

Reviewers said Ghost Country was rich, astonishing and affecting in the way it blended comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago's mean streets. — Sara Paretsky

Tried to teach him The Lord's Prayer once." His eyes traveled out beyond the hut for a moment, toward the gritty, featureless hardpan. "Guess this ain't Lord's Prayer country. — Stephen King

The collective sign of relief heaved on V-J Day ought to have inspired Hollywood to release a flood of "happily ever after" films. But some victors didn't feel too good about their spoils. They'd seen too much by then. Too much warfare, too much poverty, too much greed, all in the service of rapacious progress. A bundle of unfinished business lingered from the Depression - nagging questions about ingrained venality, mean human nature, and the way unchecked urban growth threw society dangerously out of whack. Writers and directors responded by delivering gritty, bitter dramas that slapped our romantic illusions in the face and put the boot to the throat of the smug bourgeoisie. Still, plenty of us took it - and liked it. — Eddie Muller

As PM, you have got to do everything from chairing the Cabinet to ceremonial things. You have also got to do the nitty gritty. I do get stuck into the detail. — David Cameron

History at its best is a gritty, dirty business. — Sara Sheridan

And what, you think you can fix me?" she asks, turning in her stool to face me, shifting her body closer, so close I can smell the liquor on her warm breath as she whispers, "Think you can make me whole again? Save me from the world? Save me from myself? Fill me up, maybe fuck the feeling back into me, like the big, strong, man you are? Make me a real woman, instead of a broken little girl?"
There's a sickening sweetness to her voice that sends a chill down my spine. If I never heard a thinly veiled 'fuck you' before, that was certainly one for the books. I move closer to her, uncomfortably so, cocking my head slightly as I lean in, watching as her body tenses. She thinks I'm about to kiss her, my mouth just inches from hers, before I stop, my voice gritty as I say, "On the contrary, Scarlet, I don't think you need to be fixed at all."
"No?"
"No," I say. "I think you're perfect the way you are. — J.M. Darhower

I love gritty drama. I'm passionate about films and drama that make you think - hard-hitting, gravelly characters. — Emma Rigby

I am undependable. You might get gritty contemporary with one book, science fiction, magical realism, or high fantasy with another. — Mary E. Pearson

He pushes in then, slowly, deeply, stroking a chord inside of me. My breath hitches. Oh God.
"I love that sound," he whispers, his voice gritty. "It's the best music in the world."
I wrap my arms around him. "Maybe that should be your ringtone, then."
He laughs, his face nuzzled into my neck. "That wouldn't work."
"Why?"
"Because others would hear it. That sound belongs only to my ears. — J.M. Darhower

I'm fading, Bethany, I know it. I think that's what happened to my dad, that's why I can't see him. One day I'll be so see-through that you'll forget I was ever here, just like everyone else has. — Sharon Sant

Like an explorer returned from a distant planet or another dimension, Suki Kim has many extraordinary tales to tell, among them how different
and how awful
life is for those who live in North Korea. The devil is in the details here, for her gritty narrative focuses on everyday events to reveal how repression shapes daily life, even for the most privileged. Yet Kim also bears witness to that part of the human soul that no oppressor can ever claim. — Carlos Eire

I would love to do a good gritty drama, a romantic role. I tend to play bad guys for some reason. — Will Rothhaar

He's a gritty hockey player, he's got good vision, he's an intelligent player. — John Muckler

This segregation is confirmed by the common stereotypes of these two disciplines and their representatives. While scientists are perceived as absentminded, casually dressed individuals who live in a refined world of abstract theory with little practical reality, lawyers are usually perceived as formally dressed people who are practically oriented, concentrating mainly on trivialities (such as negotiating their retaining fee) and engaging professionally in all sorts of nitty-gritty social intercourse - the kind of things that normal people, although worried by them, would rather not have to deal with themselves. — Fritjof Capra

If I cry on telly, I'm genuinely crying. If it's a gritty scene it can come naturally. — Kelvin Fletcher

I don't want to talk too much about the nitty-gritty of writing. It's rather like a pressure cooker with a certain amount of pressure in it - the more you let out, the less you cook. — Vikram Seth

I'm hungry for a cold and mean character. I'd love it if someone thought I could play gritty. I want to play a baddie - someone really scary. — Jessica Brown Findlay

ROBOT DRIVE TO PINE OMPHALOS QUINTAIN BULL'S EYE NITTY-GRITTY NUANCE MOOT HEGEMONY. — Various

Kill Bill is one of my favorite movies. It has this gritty feeling to it, and it's got a little bit of everything - a little bit of western, a little bit of samurai, and a lot of this very cinematic violence that I personally think is very entertaining. — Tove Styrke

Basically what I'm trying to say is that when you get down to the nitty gritty of song writing, it is very logical to a certain degree. It requires a bit of intuition as to how things can fit together elegantly. — Vienna Teng

She grasped the crook and flail with cool hands and sank gracefully to her knees. The High Priest of Amun placed a piece of flatbread imprinted with an ankh, the symbol of everlasting life, upon her tongue. It was gritty, the dough having been sprinkled with sand blessed by all the High Priests before it was baked that morning. — Stephanie Thornton

I've heard New York actors say Chicago actors intimidate them because apparently we're the real nitty-gritty actors who're in a town where being onstage doesn't necessarily get you anything except your craft. — Scott Adsit

I've just written a very gritty, non-magical take on the King Arthur legend, 'Here Lies Arthur,' and I'm currently toying with some other historical ideas, as well as working with the illustrator David Wyatt on some sequels to my Victorian space opera 'Larklight.' — Philip Reeve

New York City gritty committee pity the fool that act shitty in the midst of the calm, the witty. — Pharoahe Monch

The physicists are getting down to the nitty-gritty, they've really just about pared things down to the ultimate details, and the last thing they ever expected to happen is happening. God is showing through. — John Updike

It doesn't seem right to throw dirt at you when you're dead ... — Sharon Sant

I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world? — E.A. Bucchianeri

My heart is in independent film-making. For me, it's where the fun, gritty storytelling is being told. — Aaron Paul

Pulp Fiction is a, uh, gritty, urban satire. Pump Friction is a uh-uh, a bunch of uh, dudes and ladies having dirty sex. — Norm MacDonald

Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night,' he had said. 'You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses. — Sherwood Anderson

I milked my typical persona as a gritty, intellectual sex-positive feminist that men loved to conquer, toss aside, and shove into their conquest collection in the dusty backs of their closets. — Maggie Young

A self-help story about a man who overcomes circumstance by reminiscing over his own life's lessons. Inspired, he sets out at night on the gritty streets of New York City to capture the beauty of life thru his passion for photography. — Amazon

Solidarity is learned through 'contact' rather than 'concepts.' Students in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively. They should learn to perceive, think, judge, choose and act for the rights of others, especially the disadvantaged and the oppressed. — Peter Hans Kolvenbach

Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian. — Philippa Gregory

In her book The Writing Life (1989), Annie Dillard tells the story of a fellow writer who was asked by a student, "Do you think I could be a writer?" "'Well,' the writer said, 'do you like sentences?'" The student is surprised by the question, but Dillard knows exactly what was meant. He was being told, she explains, that "if he likes sentences he could begin," and she remembers a similar conversation with a painter friend. "I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, 'I like the smell of paint.'" The point, made implicitly (Dillard does not belabour it), is that you don't begin with a grand conception, either of the great American novel or masterpiece that will hang in the Louvre. You begin with a feel for the nitty-gritty material of the medium, paint in one case, sentences in the other. — Stanley Fish

To stay close and intimate with experience is to stay close to the mind; the nitty gritty mind of the way things really are. — Natalie Goldberg

Sylvia Day spins a gorgeous adventure in A Touch of Crimson that combines gritty, exciting storytelling with soaring lyricism. Adrian is my favorite kind of hero
an alpha male angel determined to win the heart of his heroine, Lindsay, while protecting her from his lethal enemy. Lindsay is a gutsy, likable woman with paranormal abilities of her own, as well as a dedication to protecting humanity against a race of demonic monsters. This is definitely a book for your keeper shelf. — Angela Knight

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallow subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books. — Neal Stephenson

Emotionally, it was the hardest 33 days of my life, but it was worth it because the result is that this album is 100 percent me. It's heartfelt, real, bold, honest, vulnerable, hopeful, strong, poetic, bluesy, gritty, pretty, and simple. — Christina Perri

There was a lot of things about love that you could only learn after you'd faced the real kind. The best kind wasn't this soft, sweet thing of hearts and picnics. It wasn't flowery and divine. Real love was gritty. The real kind of love never quit. Someone who loved you would do what's best for you; they'd stand up for you and sacrifice. Someone who loved you would face any inconvenience willingly. You didn't know what love was until someone was willing to give up what they loved the most for you. But it was also never letting them make that choice, either. — Mariana Zapata

I have my dark side like anybody, you know, depression, anxiety ... and I write about gritty, real-life stuff. — Art Alexakis

It's time for a new National Anthem. America is divided into two definite divisions. The easy thing to cop out with is sayin' black and white. You can see a black person. But now to get down to the nitty-gritty, it's getting' to be old and young - not the age, but the way of thinking. Old and new, actually ... because there's so many even older people that took half their lives to reach a certain point that little kids understand now. — Jimi Hendrix

Visitation Street is urban opera writ large. Gritty and magical, filled with mystery, poetry and pain, Ivy Pochoda's voice recalls Richard Price, Junot Diaz, and even Alice Sebold, yet it's indelibly her own. — Dennis Lehane

I believe that Manila can be a reflection of your state of mind. Being a city of extreme contrasts it's easy to see how it can become an intense personal experience. Manila can be chaotic and spiritual, dirty and divine, gritty and gorgeous all at once. If you don't find beauty and poetry here, you will never find it anywhere. — Carlos Celdran

The audience burst into applause and hallelujahs. I kept trying to make sense of it, and kept coming up short. Here were people who routinely used their computers to stay in touch with their friends and get the news of the day, people who took weather satellites and lung transplants for granted, people who expected to live lives thirty and forty years longer than those of their great-grandparents. Here they were, falling for a story that made Santa and the Tooth Fairy look like gritty realism. — Stephen King

I like the gritty parts of fashion, the design, the studio, the pictures. — Vera Wang

I'd love to venture into TV or do some gritty dramas - Guy Ritchie, that kind of thing. — Shayne Ward

History gives us the facts, sort of, but from literary works we can learn what the past smelled like, sounded like, and felt like, the forgotten gritty details of a lost era. Literature brings us as close as we can come to reinhabiting the past. By reclaiming this use of literature in the classroom, perhaps we can move away from the political agitation that has been our bread and butter - or porridge and hardtack - for the last 30 years. — Scott Herring

Hild fetched a lump of grey salt for Mildburh and mortar and pestle to crush it in. She loved the gritty crunch and thump under her hand. It sounded like a cat eating a bird. — Nicola Griffith

I wanted to work with somebody who seemed like he came from the same place that I did, which is that total immersion and learning about the world around, from this very gritty, dark side, and had access to that. — Joe Manganiello

When it comes to the nitty-gritty, what ties these threads of biblical narrative together into a revelation of God's love is that God has commanded us to refrain from grumbling about the dailiness of life. Instead we are meant to accept it as a reality that humbles us even as it gives cause for praise. The rhythm of sunrise and sunset marks a passage of time that marks each day rich with the possibility of salvation. — Kathleen Norris