I Am Clumsy Quotes & Sayings

In a more evolved world, one a little more alive to the Greek ideal of love, we would perhaps know to be a bit less clumsy, scared, and aggressive when wanting to point something out, and rather less combative and sensitive when receiving feedback. The concept of education within a relationship would thus lose some of its unnecessarily eerie and negative connotations. We would accept that in responsible hands, both projects - teaching and being taught, calling attention to another's faults, and letting ourselves be critiqued - might — Alain De Botton

I am terribly clumsy, so there is a plethora of walking into lamp-posts, falling over, dropping things, and ruining sofas. — Matt Smith

I now make my living by being impolite. I am clumsy at it. — Kurt Vonnegut

He stood in front of her and told her he'd come, not to climb her tower but to shelter it. In his clumsy way, he was like a prince who arrived with sweaty armpits and bad hair. At least I'm here, he might have said. That's better than nothing. And it was. — Cammie McGovern

In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity - and it was an atrocity. — Oliver Stone

My mother complained about the Parisians' habit of bumping into tourists on the narrow sidewalks. 'Am I bumping into them?' she asked, perplexed. 'I feel like such a clumsy American.' 'No, no,' I corrected. 'That's their way of saying hello. — Kate Betts

Teafortwo was a wyrman. Barrel-chested creatures like squat birds, with thick arms like a human dwarf's below those ugly, functional wings, the wyrmen ploughed the skies of New Crobuzon. Their hands were their feet, those arms jutting from the bottom of their squat bodies like crows' legs. They could pace a few clumsy steps here and there balancing on their palms, if they were indoors, but they preferred to careen over the city, yelling and swooping and screaming abuse at passers-by. The wyrmen were more intelligent than dogs or apes, but decidedly less than humans. They thrived on an intellectual diet of scatology and slapstick and mimicry, picking names for each other gleaned without understanding from popular songs and furniture catalogues and discarded textbooks they could just about read. Teafortwo's sister, Isaac knew, was called Bottletop; one of his sons Scabies. — China Mieville

I writhe when I see myself on the screen. I'm such a dreadfully clumsy hulking image. I say to myself, 'Why doesn't he get off? Why doesn't he get off?' I mean, I look like such an idiot. Some fat awkward thing dredged up from some third-rate drama company. I must stop thinking about it, otherwise I shan't be able to go on working. — Peter Sellers

But it's no use. I m already on my feet. She drags me onto the dance floor, jiving and snapping her fingers. When we're surrounded by other couples she turns to me. I take a deep breath and then take her in my arms. We wait a couple beats and then we're off, floating around the dance floor in a swirling sea of people. She's light as air
doesn't miss a step, and that's a feat considering how clumsy I am. And it's not as though I don't know how to dance, because I do. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. I'm sure as hell not drunk. — Sara Gruen

I can do everything with ease on the stage, whereas in real life I feel too big and clumsy. So I didn't choose acting. It chose me. — Ingrid Bergman

Many patients may confess that they feel "strange" or "confused" during a migraine aura, that they are clumsy in their movements, or that they would not drive at such a time. In short, they may be aware of something the matter in addition to the scintillating scotoma, paraesthesiae, etc., something so unprecedented in their experience, so difficult to describe, that it is often avoided or omitted when speaking of their complaints. Great — Oliver Sacks

Once in power, Stalin's campaign to succeed Lenin required a legitimate heroic career which he did not possess because of his experience in what he called 'the dirty business' of politics: this could not be told, either because it was too gangsterish for a great, paternalistic statesman or because it was too Georgian for a Russian leader. His solution was a clumsy but all-embracing cult of personality that invented, distorted and concealed the truth. Ironically this self-promotion was so grotesque that it fanned sparks, sometimes innocent ones, which flared up into colossal anti-Stalin conspiracy-theories. It was easy for his political opponents, and later for us historians, to believe that it was all invented and that he had done nothing much at all - particularly since few historians had researched in the Caucasus where so much of his early career took place. An anti-cult, as erroneous as the cult itself, grew up around these conspiracy-theories. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

They weren't bad guys, just products of a society run by men and infused with rules to leave everyone sexually frustrated. Even in marriage sex in India is often just a brief, clumsy fumble in the dark, trying not to wake up grandma who's sleeping in the same bed. — Tom Thumb

How many times have you said, 'This is it. I've finally found my one true love'? And how many times has the reality turned out differently? Paperback romances and fairy tales promote an ideal of a first and only love, but few of us can claim to have had such uncomplicated good fortune. For most people, the process of finding the perfect partner is one trial and error: breakups, makeups, missed opportunities and misunderstandings. Human love is a fragile creation, and sometimes the smallest thing - the wrong choice of words or a single clumsy gesture - can make love shatter, stall or fade away. — Haruki Murakami

The direction of research . . .should be:
- toward non-violence rather than violence,
- towards a harmonious cooperation with nature rather than with warfare against nature;
- towards the noiseless, low-energy, elegant, and economical solutions normally applied in nature rather than [our often] noisy, high-energy, brutal, wasteful, and clumsy solutions. — E.F. Schumacher

There is always something rough and tumble about planting - because with our clumsy implements we must reach from our atmospheric element down into another, down into the darkness of the soil. — Stanley Crawford

I was a dork. I'm still kind of goofy and clumsy and not always the most graceful person. — Katrina Bowden

You should not translate for more than two hours at a time. After that, you lose your edge, the language becomes clumsy, rigid. — Tom Stoppard

I'm not clumsy, I'm just accident prone. — Daniel Radcliffe

When Liesel left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Ilsa Hermann's feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud and clumsy. Two giant words ... I'm sorry. — Markus Zusak

The most able seems clumsy. — Laozi

And it's still unclear to me why a person has abilities that they do not want to have, why a person feels things that person doesn't want to feel and why that person doesn't feel things that person does want to feel, and why a person falls out of love when being in love was such a good thing to be in, and why a person makes loud and clumsy attempts at midnight to kill the life one could reasonably expect that person to want to preserve. — Catherine Lacey

You see, I am not very good in company. I am clumsy. I am shy. [ ... ] I always say the wrong thing. I upset water jugs. I am unlucky."
"We all do these things when we are young. The poise, the savoir faire, comes later. — Agatha Christie

But like every kiss, this one is an answer, a clumsy but tender answer to a question that eludes the power of language. — Sandor Marai

I went on steadily trying to 'find out how to'; but I wrote two or three novels without feeling that I had made much progress. It was not until I wrote "Ethan Frome" that I suddenly felt the artisan's full control of his implements. When "Ethan Frome" first appeared I was severely criticized by the reviewers for what was considered the clumsy structure of the tale. I had pondered long on this structure, had felt its peculiar difficulties, and possible awkwardness, but could think of no alternative which would serve as well in the given case: and though I am far from thinking "Ethan Frome" my best novel, and am bored and even exasperated when I am told that it is, I am still sure that its structure is not its weak point. — Edith Wharton

Only I am clumsy, like drifting on the waves of the sea, without direction. — Laozi

Patience was not just a manner, it was the very form of seminar teaching. Columbia's core curriculum had been designed not to enshrine the authority of the lecturing professor (that was something done at Harvard) but to reach understanding through discussion, however clumsy and uncertain. Till this moment, I never knew myself. . . . Vanity, not love has been my folly! — David Denby

It was not enough that food aplenty was within Man's grasp: he wanted more.
It was not enough that prey surrendered themselves to Man according to the natural order: Man wanted to cook his prey.
Man had discovered fire when lightning stuck and set a tree or two alight, but he was clumsy and greedy and stupid and could not keep the flame alive — David Bowles

There have been times when I reread - or at least leafed through - something because I'd sent a copy to a friend, and what usually happened was that I noticed dozens and dozens of clumsy phrases I wished I could rewrite. — Peter Straub

I am that clumsy human, always loving, loving, loving. And loving. And never leaving. — Frida Kahlo

But some, a very come to the gods all on their own They find their way - long and far it is, sometimes - and they wander up to the altars, shy and clumsy and embarrassed and alone, and when they can get the words out, they say, 'Well. Here I am — Peter S. Beagle

The way grew more and more stony and this made me suspicious. If we were approaching a town we ought by now to have found a path. Instead there were these jumbled white stones that looked as if they had been combed out by an ignorant hand from the elements that make least sense. There must be stupid portions of heaven, too, and these had rolled straight down from it. I am no geologist but the word calcareous seemed to fit them. They were composed of lime and my guess was that they must have originated in a body of water. Now they were ultra-dry but filled with little caves from which cooler air was exhaled - ideal places for a siesta in the heat of noon, provided no snakes came. But the sun was in decline, trumpeting downward. The cave mouths were open and there was this coarse and clumsy gnarled white stone. — Saul Bellow

She had not died there. A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which society would measure the quick motions of man. — E. M. Forster

In other circumstances, if Jamie hadn't been so miserable, Ryan would have laughed. Jamie rarely got so pissed that he lost the thread of the conversation. "Yes, you are." Cradling Jamie's face, he brushed his lips against Jamie's forehead. "Everything will be fine, you'll see." He kissed Jamie's temple.

Jamie shuddered. "Don't. Not now. I can't - not now."

Frowning, Ryan pulled back to look at his friend.

Jamie was staring at him oddly, his lips parted and curled in half a grimace, his eyes gleaming with desperation. "I - " he said before suddenly lunging forward and closing the distance between their mouths.

For a moment, Ryan's alcohol-fogged brain couldn't understand what was going on.

Jamie was kissing him.

Jamie was kissing him. Or at least trying to, his lips clumsy and awkward but desperate and needy - so needy it was weirding Ryan out. — Alessandra Hazard

But I don't know what my side is, he thought, as he went back to his chair by the window. The Liberation, of course, yes, but what is the Liberation? Not an ideal, the freedom of the enslaved. Not now. Never again. Since the Uprising, the Liberation is an army, a political body, a great number of people and leaders and would-be leaders, ambitions and greed clogging hopes and strength, a clumsy amateur semi-government lurching from violence to compromise, ever more complicated, never again to know the beautiful simplicity of the ideal, the pure idea of liberty. And — Ursula K. Le Guin

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next
summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do no know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor! — Kenneth Koch

I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore
written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen,
and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined. — W.B.Yeats

He saw her as the passionate spirit of innocent youth, now beleaguered by the trick which is played on youth - the trick of treachery in the body, which turns flesh into green bones. Her stupid finery was not vulgar to him, but touching. The girl was still there, still appealing from behind the breaking barricade of rouge. She had made the brave protest: I will not be vanquished. Under the clumsy coquetry, the undignified clothes, there was the human cry for help. The young eyes were puzzled, saying: It is I, inside here - what have they done to me? I will not submit. Some part of her spirit knew that the powder was making a guy of her, and hated it, and tried to hold her lover with the eyes alone. They said: Don't look at all this. Look at me. I am still here, in the eyes. Look at me, here in the prison, and help me out. Another part said: I am not old, it is illusion. I am beautifully made-up. See, I will perform the movements of youth. I will defy the enormous army of age. — T.H. White

SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman - what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women - that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman? — Friedrich Nietzsche

I am still clumsy; I should aim to be clumsy only when I wish to be. I must learn to keep silent ... I must learn to take myself seriously; and not to hold any smug opinion of myself. To have more mobile eyes and a less mobile face. To keep a straight face when I make a joke. Not to applaud every joke made by others. Not to show the same colorless geniality toward everyone. To disconcert at the right moment by keeping a poker face. Especially never to praise two people in the same way, but rather to keep toward each individual a distinct manner from which I would never deviate without intending to. — Andre Gide

Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work. — William Klein

I suppose I am one of life's naturally clumsy people; I don't drop stuff all the time, or break things, but I'm just generally a bit flustered. — Karen Gillan

But I hope I will never have a life that is not surrounded by books, by books that are bound in paper and cloth and glue, such perishable things for ideas have lasted thousands of years ... I hope I am always walled in by the very weight and breadth and clumsy, inefficient, antiquated bulk of them, hope that I spend my last days on this Earth arranging and rearranging them on thrones of good, honest pine, oak, and mahogany, because I just like to look at their covers, and dream of the promise of the great stories inside. — Rick Bragg

When you're photographing anything to do with war and conflict you're photographing something impossible. Everything you do is just clumsy and stupid and half witted. Because it is impossible to portray the full width and breadth of everything that you are up against. — Simon Norfolk

I'm going away anyway. I am. Do you hear me? I may be ugly and clumsy, but one thing I am not, I'm not retarded. I may be ugly and clumsy, but one thing I am not, I'm not retarded. There's nothing wrong with my brain. Do you know what the Teacher Ghosts say about me? They tell me I'm smart, and I can win scholarships. I can get into colleges. I've already applied. I'm smart. I can do all sorts of things. I know how to get A's, and they say I could be a scientist or a mathematician if I want. I can make a living and take care of myself. So you don't have to find me a keeper who's too dumb to know a bad bargain. I'm so smart, if they say write ten pages, I can write fifteen. I can do ghost things even better than ghosts can. Not everyone thinks I'm nothing. I am not going to be a slave or a wife. Even if I am stupid and talk funny amd get sick, I won't let you turn me into a slave or a wife. I'm getting out of here. I can't stand living here anyore. It's your fault I talk weird. — Maxine Hong Kingston

People expect it to be easy because there you are, out there, doing the thing that you want and making lots of money out of it. But, you know, I'm not that smooth. I can get clumsy around certain people. Like if I were to sit down and think, 'OK, I'm really famous, how am I going to conduct myself in public?' I wouldn't know who that person would be! It would be a lot easier if I could, but I can't. — Kristen Stewart

I will fly away to them, to the royal birds, and they will beat me, because I, that am so ugly, dare to come near them. But it is all the same. Better to be killed by them than to be pursued by ducks, and beaten by fowls, and pushed about by the girl who takes care of the poultry yard, and to suffer hunger in winter!" And it flew out into the water, and swam towards the beautiful swans; these looked at it, and came sailing down upon it with outspread wings. "Kill me!" said the poor creature, and bent its head down upon the water, expecting nothing but death. But what was this that it saw in the clear water? It beheld its own image; and, lo! it was no longer a clumsy dark-gray bird, ugly and hateful to look at, but a - swan! — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Am I to bless the lost you,
sitting here with my clumsy soul? — Anne Sexton

I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga. — Emma Donoghue

The irreducible, ultimate element in religious faith is the insistence that we are created things; male and female He created them; without God we are nothing. And yet, when men and women have children and become parents, they unmistakably become creators, incompetent, accidental and partial creators, no doubt, but creators none the less. It is their inescapable duty, and, with luck, their occasional delight to care and watch over their creations; even if this creative power is partly illusory because chromosomes and chance decide the whole business, parents cannot act as if it is illusory; they cannot sincerely believe in their ultimate helplessness. They must behave like shepherds, however clumsy, and not like sheep, however well trained.
The Sermon on the Mount is a wonderful, intoxicating sermon. But it is a sermon for bachelors. — Ferdinand Mount

Bosch knew the dawn had nothing on the dusk. Dawn always came up ugly, as if the sun was clumsy and in a hurry. The dusk was smoother, the moon more graceful. Maybe it was because the moon was more patient. In life and nature, Bosch thought, darkness always waits. — Michael Connelly

Each season, my balance gets worse, and sometimes I fall. I no longer cook for myself but microwave widower food, mostly Stouffer's. My fingers are clumsy and slow with buttons. — Donald Hall

I'm not a sympathetic main character. My quirks are not lovable. I am not clumsy. I am not overwhelmed by life. I am not unlucky in love. — Rahul Kanakia

Our imagination is so limited, our arsenal of potential responses so narrow, that the only thing anyone can think to do with an inappropriate shamer like Adria is to punish her with a shaming. All of the shamers had themselves come from a place of shame, and it really felt parochial and self-defeating to instinctively slap shame onto shame like a clumsy builder covering cracks. — Jon Ronson

The day comes in slowly to those who are ill. The night has separated them from the sleepers, who return to them like strangers from a distant land, full of clumsy preparations for the living, the earth itself creaking towards the light. — Elizabeth Taylor

The Ecuadorian, Mexican, Dominican and Salvadorian cooks I've worked with over the years make most CIA-educated white boys look like clumsy, sniveling little punks. In — Anthony Bourdain

Then, how do you know?" "I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?" "My dear Holmes," said I, "this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago. — Arthur Conan Doyle

So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge. — Sharon Shinn

And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. "There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. — Joseph Heller

Fiction, like sculpture or painting, begins with a rough
sketch. One gets down the characters and their behavior any
way one can, knowing the sentences will have to be revised,knowing the characters' actions may change. It makes no difference
how clumsy the sketch is - sketches are not supposed
to be polished and elegant. All that matters is that, going over
and over the sketch as if one had all eternity for finishing one's
story, one improves now this sentence, now that, noticing
what changes the new sentences urge, and in the process one
gets the characters and their behavior clearer in one's head,
gradually discovering deeper and deeper implications of the
characters' problems and hopes. — John Gardner

I shared with Fleur the mysterious self-contempt of the survivor. There were times we hated who we were, and who we had to become, in order not to follow those we loved into the next world. We grew hard. We became impenetrable, sparing of our pity. Sorrows that leveled other people were small to us. We made no move to avoid pain. Sometimes we even welcomed it--we were clumsy with knives, fire, boiling water, steel traps. Pain took our minds off the greater pain that was the mistake that we still existed. — Louise Erdrich

That's the clarinet I used to use ... but it's just a piece of wood, you know, with holes in it and they put these clumsy keys on it and you're supposed to try to take that and manipulate it with throat muscles and chops ... and try to make something happen that never happened before. And when you do, you never forget it. It beats sex, it beats anything ... — Artie Shaw

That's what I want, a mental evidence I can feel. I don't want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in. I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there's no way to do that. In order to believe in a thing you've got to carry it with you. You can't carry the Earth, or a man, in your pocket. I want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so I can believe in them. How clumsy to have to go to all the trouble of going out and bringing in something terribly physical to prove something. I hate physical things because they can be left behind and become impossible to believe in them. — Ray Bradbury

She looks clumsy, beautiful. It's a beauty that could pierce the most delicate regions of the heart of the viewer. — Haruki Murakami

I need poise. I'm just so clumsy that it would kind of save me a lot. — Brea Grant

A book is a delicate friend, a white bird, an exquisite being, afraid of water.
Darling things! Afraid of water, of fire, They shiver in the wind. Clumsy, crude human fingers leave bruises on them that'll never fade! Never!
Some people touch books without washing their hands!
Some underline things in ink!
Some even tear pages out! — Tatyana Tolstaya

A cell phone rings. I can feel the vibration through Brittany's pants.
"It's hers," I say.
"Answer it," Isa Instructs.
I already feel like I've kidnapped the girl. Now I'm gonna answer her cell? Shit. Rolling her a bit, I feel for the bulge in her back pocket.
"Contesta," Isa whispers loudly, this time in Spanish.
"I am," I hiss, my fingers clumsy as I fumble for the phone.
"I'll do it," Paco says, leaning over the seats and reaching toward Brittany's ass.
I whack his hand away. "Get your hands off her."
"Geez, man, I was just tryin' to help."
My response is a glare. — Simone Elkeles

The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics. — Edsger Dijkstra

Mr Pett, receiving her cold glance squarely between the eyes, felt as if he were being disembowelled by a clumsy amateur. — P.G. Wodehouse

Writing isn't generally a lucrative source of income; only a few, exceptional writers reach the income levels associated with the best-sellers. Rather, most of us write because we can make a modest living, or even supplement our day jobs, doing something about which we feel passionately. Even at the worst of times, when nothing goes right, when the prose is clumsy and the ideas feel stale, at least we're doing something that we genuinely love. There's no other reason to work this hard, except that love. — Melissa Scott

Zack stepped toward Mollie, and without asking permission, tugged her into his arms. "Let's dance," he said impulsively. Her eyes widened in alarm. "Don't be ridiculous." Mollie was not the sort to be drawn out of her comfort zone without a little prodding. She tried to skitter out of his arms, but he hauled her back. "Let me do all the work, Mollie. I know what I'm doing." Like any good Pole in Chicago, Zack had been dancing since childhood and confidently led Mollie in a rousing jig. She was clumsy at first, but all she had to do was follow his lead. The tension in her back relaxed, and she learned the steps. Her smile started out hesitant, then bloomed wider. With her face illuminated by firelight and laughter, she was perfect in his arms. — Elizabeth Camden

I have an incredible talent for tripping everywhere. And I find that rather boring. Tripping and walking out of my shoes; I do it all the time when I am out at work. I'm a bit clumsy. — Mette-Marit, Crown Princess Of Norway

This is why you need everyone you know after a disaster, because there is not one right response. It's what paralyzes people around the grief-stricken, of course, the idea that there are right things to say and wrong things and it's better to say nothing than something clumsy. — Elizabeth McCracken

Girls of all kinds can be beautiful - from the thin, plus-sized, short, very tall, ebony to porcelain-skinned; the quirky, clumsy, shy, outgoing and all in between. It's not easy though because many people still put beauty into a confining, narrow box ... Think outside of the box ... Pledge that you will look in the mirror and find the unique beauty in you. — Tyra Banks

I am sorry the only outlet for her troubled mind was in clumsy foreplay with an inadequate partner. He threw the rest of her sandwich at the swinging door as she passed through it. — Jennifer Armintrout

Careful with that," said the Doctor. "No need to get carried away."

Aldridge spun the scalpel like a baton. "Yessir. Careful is my middle name. Actually Clumsy is my middle name, but that doesn't encourage clients and it makes me sound like one of those dwarfs that are going to be so popular when moving pictures a get going. — Eoin Colfer

I understand now that desperate, clumsy desire to make people feel better - even when you know perfectly well that nothing will. — Liane Moriarty

Raw, real human conversation can be the most direct path to greater awareness and stronger relationships, even when it's unrehearsed and clumsy-perhaps especially when it's unrehearsed and clumsy! — Beverly L. Kaye

Now look: Droplets of oil were dotted across the front of her best dress, over the mound of her stomach. She was clumsy and fat-stomached and she didn't even have the sense to wear an apron while she was cooking. Also she had paid way too much for this dress, sixty-four dollars at Hecht's, which would scandalize Ira if he knew. How could she have been so greedy? She dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand. Took a deep breath. Well. Anyhow. — Anne Tyler

Marvin Gaye said there's a song inside of me and I can't get it out. And I know it's in there, and I can feel that it's in there, and I can't get it out. There's so much that I want to say, and I haven't been able to figure out how to say it in my art. I can only say it in ham-fisted, clumsy, nonpoetic ways, and I'm trying to figure out how to talk about life and talk about love and talk about pain and trials and tribulation in an artistic form. — Will Smith

Something entirely unexpected happened to Bert. Yesterday he had seen her as a child grown up, today it was different. There was a pain in his chest and a hammering, the skin on his temples felt oddly tight, his hand trembled so that he almost dropped the bar he was holding. He leaned back against the wheel, staring at her but unable to speak. A long time seemed to pass before he could say anything, and the words sounded clumsy in his own ears. What — John Wyndham

You'd think that would have been forgotten long ago. But no, no sooner has a little grass grown over it than some clumsy camel comes along and rakes it all up again."
Caroline giggled. She was probably imagining Aunt Glenda as a camel.
"This is not a TV series, Maddy," said Lady Arista sharply.
"Thank goodness, no, it isn't," said Great-aunt Maddy. "If it were, I'd have lost track of the plot ages ago. — Kerstin Gier