Not Cliche Quotes & Sayings

When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said. — Jincy Willett

I do feel like the world is a better and happier place now that my son is here. That's so cliche, but it's true. I just have a new perspective; I'm more driven. Also, the thing that stands out to me is that I'm not as selfish. Before you have a child, you're doing everything for yourself. But now it's about what's best for him, and I'm enjoying that shift. — Tia Mowry

Parents must lead by example. Don't use the cliche; do as I say and not as I do. We are our children's first and most important role models. — Lee Haney

I think the diva is kind of a cliche. My definition of a diva is somebody whose talent does not match what they're trying to play, so all this temperament comes out. — Glenn Close

My fear now is of cliche, of complacency, of not being able to feel authenticity in myself and those around me. — John Hawkes

People think that buying something for their home which is up-to-date is chic, but often it's a cliche. I call people who simply give clients the current 'thing' stylists not decorators. — Nicholas Haslam

It's not the early bird that gets the worm, it's the one who knows to go outside after a rainstorm. — James Schannep

I retraced my steps, walked up to her, and in another moment would have certainly said, "Madam!" if I had not known that that exclamation had been made a thousand times before in all Russian novels of high life. It was that alone that stopped me. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But what I mean is she talks like a cliche. Do you know that word?" "It means what is always said or believed by people who think only a little or not at all. — Stephen King

I'm not a wide-eyed imperialist who wants to see Americans manning outposts all over the world. Not outposts to freedom in the cold war cliche, but islands of stability and seas of ethnic strife. That is not what anyone should feel comfortable seeing Americans doing. — Richard Holbrooke

It's extremely difficult to describe interestingly what happens on the pitch. Thousands of journalists write millions of words every week trying to do it, so your chances of avoiding cliche are very slim. And you're trying to write fiction, not a match report. — Mal Peet

A popular cliche in philosophy says that science is pure analysis or reductionism, like taking the rainbow to pieces; and art is pure synthesis, putting the rainbow together. This is not so. All imagination begins by analyzing nature. — Jacob Bronowski

We live in a drug culture! Drugs are everywhere and touted as the panacea for every ailment in our society. We have drugs for hyper children, drugs for depression - some of the most insidious drugs ever - , drugs for allergies, drugs for acne, drugs for emphysema and drugs for erectile disfunction - maybe the most useful of them all. And let's not forget the side effects of these wonder drugs! It's cliche to even talk about drug advertisements and the laundry list of side effects tacked onto the end of them, usually rattled off at warp speed by someone on loan from the local auction house. I've seen ads for acne medicines that include side effects that are potentially fatal! Seriously? "Hey! Buy our Acne-Magic Drug! You'll have crystal clear skin! In your coffin!" What the hell is wrong with us? — Steve Bivans

So I think I sometimes will put a cliche in and then just pad it out so you're not noticing. — Matthew Vaughn

My experience is that journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren't many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche ... It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Teen angst is so boring, isn't it? I try so hard not to be a cliche, but it's like written in my DNA to hate my parents and be totally unsatisfied with everything. I wonder if there's anyone our age who actually likes their life. — Amy Reed

So, what's the big emergency, princess? You and ice-boy look fine to me, and the Nevernever isn't crumbling around us. What's going on?"
"I'm pregnant, Puck," I said quietly, and watched his eyebrows shoot into his hair. Briefly,I explained what had happened at Elysium, the oracle's mysterious appearance and invitation, and Grimalkin's instruction to meet him at the Wishing Tree. By the time I was done, Puck was still staring at me openmouthed, struck mute for maybe the second time in his life, and I would've laughed if the situation wasn't so serious.
"Oh," he finally managed. "That's, uh ... Wow. That's not something you hear every day. Not exactly what I was expecting, though the entire prophecy thing does get old after a while." He shook himself, seeming to regain his composure, and glanced at Ash. "So, it's the ever so popular Firstborn Child of Doom prophecy, huh, ice-boy? How very cliche. Why can't it be the third nephew twice removed who's fated to destroy the world? — Julie Kagawa

Saying that "life is short" is such a cliche. And it's true.
In fact, we only have five minutes to be here. In the really big scheme of things, not even that long. We humans don't even have the lifespan of fruit flies if you look at the bigger picture.
In other words, we don't have a second - not even a second - to waste on petty drama, on living fake, shallow lives, on swallowing our truth, or on hiding our light.
We only dance around the flame of this gorgeous human existence for moments and the one thing important at all is loving beautifully. — Jacob Nordby

I'm just not somebody who can sit around doing nothing, and all of us in the Foo Fighters have our own things outside of the band. I'm not going to use the cliche that those outlets bring us back fresh and with new ideas, but what I will say is that it keeps us all feeling free - and that creative freedom is a very positive thing. — Taylor Hawkins

It sounds like a cliche but I also learnt that you're not going to fall for the right person until you really love yourself and feel good about how you are. — Emma Watson

It's been reinforced to me, and it's a little cliche, but I've learned that you can't make a movie that even works, much less that's good, without really good writing and really good acting. That lesson has led me to not be distracted, so much, by the other stuff going on in filmmaking and to focus on the essence of a story, and the words and the events and the way that those are interpreted by the actors. That philosophy has taken me to a place that I really like. — Ben Affleck

I would love to play an unexpected character. Really raw and simple and not a cliche - something rugged. People like to put actors in boxes. — Eva Green

I did the rock 'n roll-pop cliche of getting burnt out. I'm not the first person that happened to, and I'm sure I won't be the last. — Robbie Williams

You describe your reality in the highest resolution even when it's a nightmare and in doing so, you live your own life, not a cliche others have formulated for you. — David Grossman

Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression. — Sarah Churchwell

Especially on television, it's not so much a patriarchy; it always seems that there's a smart, strong woman calling the shots, and her doofus husband. In the sitcom world, it's almost a cliche that the women have the common sense, going back to 'The Honeymooners.' — Jake Weber

I would feel ill without theater. It's kind of a cliche, but every time you make a mistake, you really do have to learn from it to move on. When you're doing something live, there's no time to dwell. Hopefully you'll laugh it off, but if not, you can always take a day to hate yourself. — Nina Arianda

It's an old - and true - cliche that VCs rarely actually say 'no' - more often they say 'maybe', or 'not right now', or 'my partners aren't sure', or 'that's interesting, let me think about it' — Marc Andreessen

I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now. It's an old cliche, I know, but it's mine. I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural. So far, at least. Not that I wouldn't like to. I mean, I want to believe. I do pray. I pray to something ... up there. I have a God sense. It's not religious so much as superstitious. It's part of being human, I guess ... Do unto others: How much deeper into religion do we really need to go? — Jack Nicholson

Sex is not about reproduc-tion, gender is not about males and females, courtship is not aboutpersuasion, fashion is not about beauty, and love is not about affec-tion. Below the surface of every banality and cliche there lies irony,cynicism, and profundity. — Matt Ridley

The idea that all the people locked up in mental hospitals are sane while all the people walking about are mad is merely a literary cliche, put about by people who should be locked up. I assure you there is not much in it. Taken as a whole, the sane are out there the sick are in here. For example you are in here because you have delusions that sane people are put in mental hospitals. — Tom Stoppard

Cliche refers to words, commonplace to ideas. Cliche describes the form or the letter, commonplace the substance or spirit. To confuse them is to confuse the thought with the expression of the thought. The cliche is immediately perceivable; the commonplace very often escapes notice if decked out in original dress. There are few examples, in any literature, of new ideas expressed in original form. The most critical mind must often be content with one or the other of these pleasures, only too happy when it is not deprived of both at once, which is not too rarely the case. — Remy De Gourmont

I am who I am.And you're you.Even if I'm pretty good at basketball or computers, or popular with the girls, that doesn't make me a better person. You can make people laugh and you're kind. When you're serious, you're much more sincere than I am. Like with the girls. I'm not resorting to the cheap cliche about everyone having something to offer, but i'm saying there are a lot of things I admire about you. — Koushun Takami

There is this cliche of, "Oh, your professional life is fine, but your romantic life isn't." But, that's also really true of me and all my friends. You don't want to not do something that's relatable simply because you're worried that it might be cliche. — Mindy Kaling

What's disappointing is that it's just another mold, you leave one cliche and end up right back in another. Not really that subversive or out of control. — Virginie Despentes

I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed. — Umberto Eco

Images of strangled women, women in cages do not push any limits; they are a mainstream cliche of a mainstream social order. Rock music fails to live up to its subversive tradition when it eroticizes the same old establishment sadomasochism rather than playing with gender roles to make us look at them afresh — Naomi Wolf

My sound is very smooth. Not to be to cliche, but really sensual and sultry. — Paul Taylor

Maybe this is kind of cliche, but animals, well, dogs, are what I do for a living. One reason I like spending time with them so much is they seem to think people are really good. They live with us, and obey our rules, most of which make no sense to them. And the main reason they do it is because they like us. When I watch them, sometimes I'm so blow away by how enthusiastic they are about everything we do that I have to go out and buy them something squeaky or chewy. Just because I love proving to them that it's not a mistake to see the world as a great benevolent place. I hope one day to react to something with as much pure ecstasy as I see in Chuck's face every time I throw the ball. Sometimes he looks so happy, it reminds me of the way blind people smile way too big because they can't see themselves. And if none of this links to anything in you, well ... I think you don't know who I am. — Merrill Markoe

Would that cricketers had better lines, or at least that their most famous were not also their tritest or most banal. 'This thing can be done,' said Fred Spofforth in 1882. 'We'll get 'em in singles,' George Hirst did not say twenty years later. 'You guys are history,' growled Devon Malcolm in 1994. 'You've just dropped the World Cup,' Steve Waugh may have crowed in 1999. At least two of these could have been put into the mouth of Arnold Schwarzenegger. — Rodney Ulyate

The cliche of the nerdy kid who doesn't go outside and just plays games is completely untrue. And it's also true for the nerdy kid who studies comic books and turns into this genius, and it is also true for the nerdy kid who listens to every nerdy thing that Led Zeppelin put out. That kind of obsession in a 16-year-old is not ugly. It's beautiful. — Penn Jillette

When I was younger, I felt it essential to see every movie ever made. Now I feel as though I've got to read every book, see every art show, watch every play and opera and concert and so on. It does not end, and of course there is truth in the old cliche that the more one knows, the more one realizes one knows nothing at all. — James Gray

The villain is usually the most interesting part. But it has to be a smart thing. Just dumb cliche villains with a Russian accent and big muscles and a mean face, I don't know. My Russian accent isn't that great, and the muscles aren't that big and the mean face is not enough. You know what I mean? It gets very boring. Tedious stuff. — Christoph Waltz

When not eating, I like shopping; although I'm afraid I've become a bit of a cliche. — Arabella Weir

Write as precisely and as lucidly and as richly as you can about what you find truly mysterious and irreducible about human experience, and not obscurely about what will prove to be received opinion or cliche once the reader figures out your stylistic conceit. There's all the difference in the world between mystery and mystification. — Paul Harding

I have a work-out regime; I am not a maniac. It sounds cliche, but stand-up comedy, doing a one-man show, helps keep me young, and yes, it is exhausting, but I don't collapse. — Robert Klein

The cliche had it that kids were the future, but that wasn't it: they were the unreflective, active present. They were not themselves nostalgic, because they couldn't be, and they retarded nostalgia in their parents. Even as they were getting sick and being bullied and becoming addicted to heroin and getting pregnant, they were in the moment, and she wanted to be in it with them. She wanted to worry herself sick about schools and bullying and drugs. — Nick Hornby

You have incredible lives ahead of you. You have incredible things that you can accomplish. If you feel that, you will have an amazing life. Do not let anything build a wall too high for you to get over. And I know that might seem very cliche, but I've had alot of friends who had hurt themselves. And when you're younger, a lot of that stuff is so temporary. You can get through it. You're stronger than you think. You'll ALWAYS be stronger than you think. Feel with your heart and do what you want. — Corey Taylor

As for memes, the word 'meme' is a cliche, which is to say it's already a meme. We all hear it all the time, and maybe we even have started to use it in ordinary speech. The man who invented it was Richard Dawkins, who was, not coincidentally, an evolutionary biologist. And he invented it as an analog for the gene. — James Gleick

It's not that anything has changed about me, and, it's a cliche, but I think that as you get older, you learn to accept who you are, and you feel more comfortable in your own skin. — Joanne Froggatt

Out of all the neighborhoods in Manhattan, Soho in particular had the charged atmosphere of a movie set, populated with passersby who looked like extras from Central Casting, so perfectly did they fit into this environment. There was the feeling of everything being not quite real, or too perfectly cliched to actually be true, and it began to rain in a fine, misty drizzle from a black patent leather sky. — Candace Bushnell

The cliche of what a rock star is - there's something elitist about it. I never related to that. I'm an entertainer. I think of it as, you're performing for people. It's not a self-glorification thing. — Beck

The cliche is that misery loves company. Another is that there is fellowship among thieves. But thieves do not seek the consoling presence of the fellowship of police officers. Sinful misery does not love the company of purity. — R.C. Sproul

What passes for education, culture or maturity in most minds is merely how individuals want to think of themselves, a contrived egocentric self-concept, not actual and effective principles and values. This is what is known in the cliche as the "veneer" of civilization. — Kenny Smith

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. Mindless may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from. It came from religion ... — Richard Dawkins

Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression. — Robert McKee

It is Barack Obama who is at war with this country. Recent events prove it. This is not a cliche. It's not a figure of speech. Obama is at war with the U.S. economy. — Rush Limbaugh

So you are a vampire."
"I most certainly am not." He looked annoyed. "That's such a common phrase, such a cliche, and so unflattering. I suppose you believe in werewolves and aliens too. I blame television. — Margaret Stohl

The reason the art world doesn't respond to Kinkade is because none - not one - of his ideas about subject-matter, surface, color, composition, touch, scale, form, or skill is remotely original. They're all cliche and already told. — Jerry Saltz

You try to make the most of each day. I'm not big into setting real specific goals. I think, really, if you just focus on every day - and I know that's the oldest cliche in the book, but it really is true. Day 1 of camp means just as much as Day 17 of camp. If you really try to focus on each and every one of those days, long-term. — Scott Tolzien

There's a big difference between the role of an academic and the role of someone in government. That's a cliche, but in academic life if you say things that are common sense and people nod their heads, it's not very useful. You're not adding anything. — Cass Sunstein

The reason 'closure' is a cliche is that it is used too often, too imprecisely, and doesn't in any case reflect reality. In reality, such closure in broken friendships and much else in life is rarely achieved; only death brings closure and then not always for those still living. — Joseph Epstein

I take a cliche and try to organize its forms to make it monumental. The difference is often not great, but it is crucial. — Roy Lichtenstein

It may be a cliche, but cliche or not, I fear the day when the only marsh harriers or peregrines I can look at are in paintings by Joseph Wolf or Bruno Liljefors - and no matter how beautiful those works may be, life is the great thing: life, life, life. — John Burnside

I don't think she is underappreciated, certainly not among writers, but Alice Munro is the classic underappreciated writer among readers. It is almost a cliche now to wonder why this living legend is not more widely read. — Khaled Hosseini

If you want to use a cliche you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society. — Lewis Thomas

Pace begins in the screenplay. Cliche or not, we must control rhythm and tempo. It needn't be a symmetrical swelling of activity and shaving of scene lengths, but progressions must be shaped. For if we don't, the film editor will. And if to trim our sloppy work he cuts some of our favorite moments, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We're screenwriters, not refugees from the novel. Cinema is a unique art form. The screenwriter must master the aesthetics of motion pictures and create a screenplay that prepares the way for the artists who follow. — Robert McKee

Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliche or a smoothing down that will soften their real look. — Flannery O'Connor

The following evening John left with Lady Shorne for the south of France, without so much as a word to me."
Alexa felt as if she were hearing that fateful cliche for the first time. "Without so much as a word." No matter how much she tried to see it from every point of view, its meaning was always clear. John was a coward. Anne was his victim. The roles were the opposite of what she had supposed. It was Anne who had been heroic, not John. John was a coward, a mere puppet into whom both Anne and Alexa had managed to breathe a semblance of life. He was as much the creation of one as of the other. — Violet Trefusis

I think that anything that you do, any accomplishment that you make, you have to work for. And I've worked very hard in the last ten years of my life, definitely, and I can tell you that hard work pays off. It's not just a cliche. — Cameron Diaz

A man who cooks is very sexy. A woman who cooks is not that sexy. Because it's associated in our mind to the domestic cliche of the woman. — Isabel Allende

It seems like a cliche, but you do grow up a lot faster when you travel a lot, go through things like this interview, spend time away from home and hang around with other actors. It's inevitable that you're not going to have a so-called normal childhood. — Matt Dillon

If you're not interested in history, if you're living for the day, you need some sort of cliche hook. I certainly don't think of myself as a cult anything. It's a strange thing to even consider pursuing. — Leon Redbone

Producers are men who will keep their heads in the noisy presence of writers and directors and not be carried away by art in any of its subversive guises. Their task is to guard against the unusual. They are the trusted loyalists of cliche. — Ben Hecht

As for the Jews, their explanation of anti-Semitism is more characteristic yet. In addition to the usual cliche, "with hatred and savagery" - naturally with no motive, they do not care to discuss motives - according to them, anti-Semitism is a madness, an intellectual degeneration, an affliction of the spirit. — A. C. Cuza

Here's the thing: If you're taking roles that aren't intimidating you, and I think this is a cliche that a lot of actors say, but if it's not intimidating you, then why are you doing it? — Matt Lauria

I do not see how my agreeing to marry a scruffy old brute will have the power to keep a fire-breathing dragon locked beneath a mountain. And if I don't agree to marry him, will I truly be fed to the dragon? That is savage, and inhumane, and crazy. — Bethany Wiggins

I know it is something of a cliche to say that love makes all things possible, but I believe it does. It is not a magic wand that can be waved over life to make it all sweet and lovely and trouble free, but it can give the energy to fight the odds and win. — Mary Balogh

Do you think maybe your writing isn't going anymore because you're unhappy? Because you're not living the life you could? A life worth writing about? You must know that cliche-write what you know-but what do you know, Bree, when you shut the world out? — Holly Bourne

The cliche about autism is that the syndrome impedes the ability to love, and I began this research interested in how much a parent could contrive to love a child who could not return the affection. Autistic children often seem to inhabit a world on which external cues have limited impact; they may seem to be neither comforted by nor engaged with their parents are not motivated to gratify them. — Andrew Solomon