Nitty Quotes & Sayings

It has been my experience that women tell more intimate details to their friends than men do. Men may brag more, but women will talk the nitty-gritty and share the experience more. — Laurell K. Hamilton

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

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

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

If you actually get down to the nitty-gritty of the average Pakistani, the average Indian, the average whoever, what you really do know emotionally is that they're exactly the same. — Bryan Callen

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

I find infidelity interesting because it's so revelatory about people. It's this really silent thing. Everyone acknowledges it as a general practice, but nobody likes to go beyond that, to get down to the nitty-gritty. — Junot Diaz

Men like Crawford mistrusted Keynes because his views were unconfused. Throughout his life Keynes produced unimpeachable facts and figures, clear analyses, direct solutions and trenchant practical advice all based on the nitty-gritty of his subject, which were discounted by officials, politicians and bankers who dismissed him as academic, theoretical, quixotic, impractical. To them his clarity seemed too good to be true. — Richard Davenport-Hines

Especially with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, I can't tell necessarily the nitty gritty of what you're really up to. I'm just seeing the performance of all the work you're doing and the look you're giving; it's very hard to get to the center. It's very hard to see what's what. — Casey Wilson

Apprenticeships are the real nitty-gritty way of creating an efficient, skillful and vibrant workforce. — Sean Bean

John (Grisham) was really helpful keeping me on track, not wandering off into subplots, making sure I didn't spill the beans too early, all kinds of nitty-gritty things that you've gotta have under control if you're going to write a good thriller. — Tony Vanderwarker

The directors were often really nice and I was well behaved, so I would just sit there in rehearsal. That allowed me to see the process - not just the result, the red carpet, all of the wonderful, fun things that happen afterwards - the nuts and bolts, the nitty-gritty, "Let's try to build this character from the page," tech rehearsals. — Condola Rashad

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, most people are motivated by unconscious motives most of the time. — Richard J. Mayer

When you get down to the nitty gritty, isn't it a pity that in this big city not one little bitty man will admit that he could have been a little wrong. — Elvis Presley

The idea is to intentionally design a relaxing environment that is off-limits to many of the stresses and distractions that
define your waking hours. Begin with aesthetics, making an effort to keep your bedroom neat and attractive. In other words, aim for Southern Living in your private quarters even if the rest of your house looks like Mechanics Weekly. Then begin to work on behaviors, keeping your bedroom off-limits to activities other than sleeping, relaxing, or making love. Nix the stacks of unpaid bills, piles of dirty laundry, collections of unread newspapers, and file folders from the office. By fostering this kind of space, seemingly untouched by the nitty gritty of daily life, you will have created a quiet haven where-by simply stepping inside and closing the door behind you-you can take a mini-vacation from stress. This time can then be used to pray, to relax, or to lavish your undivided romantic attentions on your husband. — William R. Cutrer

Early on in your career, find someone better than yourself to run the business on a day-to-day basis. Remove yourself, maybe even from the building, and from the nitty-gritty. That way, you're going to be able to see the bigger picture and think of new areas to go into. — Richard Branson

I've got a wonky nose. Is it classical, is it not? That's what's hard work, getting down into the nitty-gritty of who are the human beings behind the front of what they present? — Ciaran Hinds

Lorenz was the charismatic, flamboyant thinker - he didn't conduct a single statistical analysis in his life - while Tinbergen did the nitty-gritty of actual data collection. — Frans De Waal

It's not like we're all animalistic people trying to become more spiritual. We're really living spirit, trying to find out how to live embodied in this nitty gritty world, these corporeal forms, in these fleeting bodies in the material world where everything's changing and we're not in control. — Surya Das

We don't want to put a band-aid on our problems that we keep talking about in society; we want to get down to the nitty gritty and do some surgery. — Allan Houston

Motherhood is nitty and gritty and brutal and wonderful, but everything I read is about the wonderful parts. Sometimes, you're really in the trenches! — Constance Marie

Any skills that I have, I couldn't really make money with them. I would like to think that maybe I would be doing something in psychology or something of that nature because I love that vein of medicine - the getting down and getting nitty-gritty. — Ian Harding

I'm aware now over the last 5 or 10 years that when you do an accent, you really have to kind of get down to the nitty gritty and go into the phonetics of it, if necessary. Find out not just the sounds but the rhythms and the music - or lack thereof - in a particular accent. — Brendan Gleeson

People who are kind of at the cutting edge of life and survival, and being near the nitty-gritty, like my films, and I like that. — Wes Craven

These days, everybody is supposed to be so intelligent: 'Isn't it terrible about Nixon getting elected?' 'Did you hear about the earthquake in Peru?' And you're supposed to have all the answers. But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, like, 'What is bugging you, mister? Why can't you make it with your wife? Why do you lie awake all night staring at the ceiling? Why, why, why do you refuse to recognize you have problems and deal with them?'
The answer is that people have forgotten how to relate or respond. In this day of mass communications and instant communications, there is no communication between people. Instead it's long-winded stories or hostile bits, or laughter. But nobody's really laughing. It's more an hysterical, joyless kind of sound.
Translation: 'I am here and I don't know why. — John Cassavetes

Stay a dreamer, and you'll never have your dream; get down in the nitty-gritty, and when you get your dream you see what horseshit it was in the first place. — Norman Spinrad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. — Fred Brooks

We get to get into the nitty-gritty and the minutiae of the way they relate now, and that's really valuable. We just have to make sure we don't repeat ourselves and we plot this thing so it doesn't dead end too much, and so that's the challenge really. It's like, how do you keep those balls in the air and make it exciting still? — Mark Duplass

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

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

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

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

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

It was always that detail that drove me. Ever since I was a little kid, I used to get into the nitty gritty ... when I was drawing army tanks or monsters, I'd do every nut and rivet, and I'd do every scale on the dragon's back. It was just the way I was built. — Graeme Base

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

We can skip through a lot of the stuff people might ask about the writing of the book, and so their comments always start well, well down into the nitty-gritty. — Chang-rae Lee