Mot Juste Quotes & Sayings

I've never bonded with anyone before. I didn't know that day on the field that standing up to him the way I did could earn his respect. He might have been an asshole homophobe but he was my asshole homophobe and probably the first real friend I ever had. I love him. Don't tell him. He wouldn't want to hear it. — Mercy Celeste

I've been working hard on [Ulysses] all day," said Joyce.
Does that mean that you have written a great deal?" I said.
Two sentences," said Joyce.
I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of [French novelist Gustave] Flaubert. "You've been seeking the mot juste?" I said.
No," said Joyce. "I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. — James Joyce

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position. — Nancy Kress

I do take enormous interest in what's going on. I try to see whatever I can, whenever I can. — PJ Harvey

I want every day to be the most boring news day ever. I want every day to be about spelling bee champions and baby basketball. It's better to have no comedy material than a horrific news day. — Tina Fey

The French call mot juste the word that exactly fits. Why is this word so hard to find? The reasons are many. First, we don't always know what we mean and are too lazy too find out. — Jacques Barzun

thinking that this conversation was going — Jackie Collins

I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective. — Evelyn Waugh

She has had a couple of lovers before, but honest to God, no one has ever felt as good, as perfect a fit, as him. — Sarah Rayner

The drive to propagate our race has also propagated a lot of other things — Georg C. Lichtenberg

It is a great thing, indeed, to make a proper use of the poetical forms, as also of compounds and strange words. But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars. — Aristotle.

I don't think they're more temperamental people now. With social media we hear a lot more about it. The nastiness you get online, there were always mean girls - always - they didn't have such a big forum as they do now. Mean girls ought to get a life, I think. — Jacki Weaver

I was a news reporter for 16 years, seven of them a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Perhaps the most useful equipment I acquired in that time is a lack of preciousness about the act of writing. A reporter must write. There must be a story. The mot juste unarriving? Tell that to your desk. — Geraldine Brooks

Prosperity is something the businessmen created for politicians to take credit for — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Like everyone else, I grew up loving the Anne books, but L.M. Montgomery is so much more. Like Jane Austen, she has an eye for the absurd and a gift for the 'mot juste.' — Lauren Willig

It's frightening to admit but if I lay off the lin it'a amazing how my love handles deplete. But is life without gin worth living? — Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

My high school career was undistinguished except for math and science. However, having barely been admitted to Rice University, I found that I enjoyed the courses and the elation of success and graduated with honors in physics. I did a senior thesis with C.F. Squire, building a regulator for a magnet for use in low-temperature physics. — Robert Woodrow Wilson

Engineering, like poetry, is an attempt to approach perfection. And engineers, like poets, are seldom completely satisfied with their creations. They notice, even if no one else does, the world that is not quite le mot juste, or the hairline crack that blemishes the structure. — Henry Petroski

The daily quota I've set for myself is 500 words or approximately a page and a half double-spaced. Which isn't much, except that I'm extremely slow, extremely meticulous. 'Le mot juste' haunts me. On a good day, I will finally secrete the 500th word at about 5 o'clock, and I'll reward myself by going to Housing Works Bookstore to read. — Said Sayrafiezadeh

I claim that all those who think they can cherry-pick science simply don't understand how science works. That's what I claim. And if they did, they'd be less prone to just assert that somehow scientists are clueless. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson