Overblown Quotes & Sayings

Most people here agree that the rhetoric got overblown on both sides of the Atlantic before the Iraq war, and it was a disagreement among friends over the timing, not the substance, of the Iraq war. — John S. Tanner

My garden all is overblown with roses,/ My spirit all is overblown with rhyme, — Vita Sackville-West

When faced with unbridled wildness of reality, dinosaurs fall into fevered delusions of grandeur. In fits of madness, they recreate the world in their own overblown image, bull-dozing the wild and replacing it with a wasteland that reflects their own emptiness. Where there was once the incredibly complex diversity of nature, there is now the dead simplicity of asphalt and concrete. — Curious George Brigade

Of course, it is only a legend. Still, most legends germinate from a seed of truth and feed on the imagination of Man. We need our demons: they are symbols, overblown maybe, often exaggerated, but effective. They offer simple confrontations between Good and Evil. War, famine, and pestilence are much less straightforward. — Jan Siegel

It was through this odor that he saw the museums and discovered the mystery and the profusion of baroque genius which filled Prague with its gold magnificence. The altars, which glowed softly in the darkness, seemed borrowed from the coppery sky, the misty sunlight so frequent over the city. The glistening scrolls and spirals, the elaborate setting that looked as if it were cut out of gold paper, so touching in its resemblance to the creches made for children at Christmas, the grandiose and grotesque baroque perspectives affected Mersault as a kind of infantile, feverish, and overblown romanticism by which men protect themselves against their own demons. The god worshipped here was the god man fears and honors, not the god who laughs with man before the warm frolic sea and sun. — Albert Camus

She did it, though she hated opera. She hated everything about it. The overblown sense of drama. The violence and lewdness. No one had ever died of heartbreak in Reverie. Betrayal never led to murder. Those things didn't happen anymore. They had the Realms now. They could experience anything without taking risks. Now, life was Better than Real. — Veronica Rossi

In the comic-book world, there tends to be an overblown sense of tradition. Bad habits die hard. There are ways I think the form could work more effectively if we lost the bad habits that were created before we were born. — Frank Miller

I'm really a pussycat and this [bad-boy] image has been totally overblown for 30 years. Sure, I used to rumble a little but I don't do that stuff anymore. I'm an old man now. When you reach your 50s, you realise that if you don't mellow, you won't last. — George C. Scott

When I'm writing the book I'm laughing at just how overblown the characters seemed. How full of himself he seems. But I didn't get far enough in the series to really drive the joke of it home. — Jhonen Vasquez

Overblown responsibility was a part of my preoccupation with myself. — Susan Vreeland

When I grew up, there were locked cabinets in public libraries. You needed parental permission if you were under eighteen. I was let down by the overblown reputations of some hardcore fictional works. — Allan Gurganus

I knew I had an unreasonable attachment to her, and an overblown protective instinct for reasons we'd already discussed. — Juliette Jones

to have a physical body and to work with it and to work with the forces of nature to mold it into the highest expression of joy, and to keep it always by using it to learn how to overcome disease, impairment and as today's cutting edge, non-funded, objective, purposeful science says, one day, even death? What if short-term excitement and intensity created by the overblown desire to win at all cost could be replaced by a more durable excitement in an intensity springing from the heart of the physical athletic experience itself? It would soon be discovered that sports and physical activities reformed and refurbished with integrity, not buy-offs are the best possible path to personal enlightenment and social transformation for this new millennium. — Don Tolman

9/11 was a hugely overblown event that only assumed its overarching importance a) because it was done to the United States and b) because of the way the U.S. reacted. — Martin Jacques

Everybody knocks my female figures. They say they're overblown, that women don't look like that. And I agree. certainly all women don't look like my paintings. But you cant deny some women do look like that. I don't want to paint just another woman. A painting, it's something important; you want to look at it, maybe forever. Who wants to look at just an ordinary hero forever? You want the ultimate, you pull out the stops and do everything in extremes. The extreme in beauty, if it fits; the extreme in ugliness if it fits; the extreme in terror if this is what's required. You know, I think this is one reason that so many people enjoy my stuff, because all of these extremes are jammed into it. — Frank Frazetta

Fear is often bred of an imagination that couldn't let something be what it actually was. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Scientism is in fact a mug's game, a grab bag of disparate accusations that are mostly inaccurate or overblown. Nearly all articles criticizing scientism not only fail to convince us that it's dangerous, but don't even give any good examples of it. In the end, as Daniel Dennett argues, scientism is a completely undefined term. It just means science that you don't like. — Jerry A. Coyne

Nothing like a cheap shot, right?' He snorted blood from his nose. 'I'm disappointed. I thought even terrorists had principles.'
'Can it,' Nasira said, towering over him with her P90 leveled at his head. 'If we need patriotic paramoralisms, we'll give Jack Bauer a call.'
Denton grimaced, pulled himself upright. 'And if I need overblown alliteration, I'll give you a call. — Nathan M. Farrugia

The notion that people won't sin as long as you keep them well supplied with guilt and holy terror is a bit overblown. — Robert Farrar Capon

As I looked at her from the side, I became newly aware of the softness of the curves of her face. Nagato said she was the "potential for evolution." According to Asahina, she was a "time warp." Koizumi treated her as "God." Then what about me? What did "Haruhi Suzumiya" mean to me?
Haruhi was Haruhi and nobody else. I wasn't going to use such overblown language to dodge the question. But I didn't happen to have a decisive answer. Isn't that natural? If someone points to the classmate sitting behind you and asks, "What is she to you?" How are you supposed to respond? ... No, sorry. Guess that's still dodging the question. Haruhi wasn't just a classmate to me. Of course, she also wasn't the "potential for evolution" or a "time warp," much less "God." She couldn't possibly be. — Nagaru Tanigawa

I had always been told that you shouldn't clean the litter box when you're pregnant, because of your cat. And I think that is overblown - unless you have, like, three kittens in your house that are living outside and eating raw meat, this shouldn't really be a significant source of concern. — Emily Oster

I was spoiled and I was arrogant. I was very demanding, had an overblown image of who I was and got a reputation for being difficult. And rightfully so. — Judge Reinhold

I think a cyber-terrorism attack is overblown, though the threat exists. I think al Qaeda and other groups are more interested in symbolic terrorism, like what they did to the World Trade Center - suicide bombers or something that really has an effect and is meaningful to people. — Kevin Mitnick

Between the lapels of his subdued charcoal suit, he'd worn a silky red tie. A gold Rolex had circled his wrist, and an overblown blonde had been bonded on his side like a suction cup. The man clearly liked to accessorize. — Rachel Gibson

But the Grateful Dead, as the fanatic fans point out, are a way of life: someone else's. Twentieth-century teenagers, especially American ones, have been brilliant at creating their own culture, their own music, clothes, and point(s) of view. It's sad and fraudulent that the kind of wholesale worship of some historical way of life has settled over so many young people, infecting them like a noxious gas ... I love the dead
grew up in the thrall of Shakespeare and Hank Williams and James Dean. And I adore the Rolling Stones. But there's a difference between cherishing "Satisfaction" and wearing Keith Richards' hair while doing Keith Richards' drugs. I don't want to be Keith Richards. I wanna be me. Not
like the neo-Deadheads
just another extra in an overblown costume drama about something that wasn't that interesting the first time around. — Sarah Vowell

You get to a point in life where it suddenly occurs to you that you don't need all the things you once thought you did
that it's really, well, convoluted. My life feels overblown sometimes, and I don't want it to be. I want it to be streamlined. So I'm living a much more unscripted life now than I have in a long time. — Jennifer Lopez

Reconciliation will not work if it puts a higher value on symbolic gestures and overblown promises rather than the practical needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in areas like health, housing, education and employment. — Warren Mundine

This is Lovecraft's best terrible story. It is so artificial...and so overblown...and so ludicrous...that it slithers-through tiramisu-rich prose that might as well be heavy metal lyrics ("a wolf-fanged ghost that rode the midnight lightning")-all the way to the summit of high camp. — Kenneth Hite

It seems so ridiculous to me,' he said, 'that a person should be expected to lock themselves into a suit of clothes. I mean like the suit of clothes of an engineer or a doctor or a geologist and then the skin grows over it, over the clothes, I mean, and that person can't ever get them off. When we are given a chance to explore the whole world of inner and outer reality and to live in a way that takes in the spiritual and the physical and the whole range of the beautiful and the terrible available to mankind, that is pain as well as joy and turmoil. This way of expressing myself may seem overblown to you, but one thing I have learned to give up is intellectual pridefulness ... — Alice Munro

She had thought, instinctively, that Victoria had a remarkably beautiful face. The face showed an alert awareness of life: her lips- full, overblown like clown-lips liable to laugh at the slightest provocation. She thought that her features were not chiseled but almost rugged, handsome, like a colloquial swear-word or a Vermeer peasant-girl, and a knock out at that. An overdone face, like one having two chins, two noses, that was big and abundantly cheerful but at the same time, there was a peculiarly puffy look about those eyes.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') — Kunal Sen

I will not counter the insanity of the PATRIOT Act with an overblown fear of my rights being taken away. — Penn Jillette

In TV, and in particular in commercials, you don't really need to explain very much at all - you just say he's a spy and he's a little bit theatrical and overblown and smug and he's not very good at his job. — Rowan Atkinson

People always worry that buying tech products today carries a risk of obsolescence. Most of the time, that fear is overblown. — Walt Mossberg

The market has a simple way of whittling all excessive pride and overblown egos down to size. After all, the whole idea is to be completely objective and recognize what the marketplace is telling you, rather than try to prove that the thing you said or did yesterday or six weeks ago was right. The fastest way to take a bath in the stock market or go broke is to try to prove that you are right and the market is wrong. — William O'Neil

I don't want to see any art-writing gobbledygook or overblown words in an essay about me. If a smaller, simpler word will do - use it. — Doris McCarthy

Right in front of us on a screen that looks to be at least twenty feet high and twice as wide, the extremely awful movie Myra Breckinridge is being shown in very lurid living color. As Raquel Welch, Mae West, and John Houston cavort before us like overblown figures from a fever dream by Hieronymus Bosch, Gram and I look at one another in horror. Both of us know we have entered another dimension. Gram Parsons and I are now in the twilight zone. — Robert Greenfield

The cases of great mathematicians with mental illness have enormous resonance for modern pop writers and filmmakers. This has to do mostly with the writers'/directors' own prejudices and receptivities, which in turn are functions of what you could call our era's particular archetypal template. It goes without saying that these templates change over time. The Mentally Ill Mathematician seems now in some ways to be what the Knight Errant, Mortified Saint, Tortured Artist, and Mad Scientist have been for other eras: sort of our Prometheus, the one who goes to forbidden places and returns with gifts we all can use but he alone pays for. That's probably a bit overblown, at least in some cases. But Cantor fits the template better than most. And the reason for this are a lot more interesting than whatever his problems and symptoms were. — David Foster Wallace

When I was starting as an anime director I wanted to be known for great things. I never wanted to be known for some overblown toy commercial. — Yoshiyuki Tomino

And what people want to own, of course, is real estate. So a dental hygienist with bad credit making forty thousand dollars a year felt that she deserved to park her ass in a million-dollar home. With a little creative financing, and as long as housing prices continued to rise, she believed that she could afford a million-dollar home. And as long as the dental hygienist continued to pay interest on the mortgage for the million-dollar home, as long as housing prices continued to rise, as long as more loan officers approved more loans for more dental hygienists with bad credit who could continue to pay the interest on their overblown mortgages, housing prices would indeed stay stratospheric, and banks could print money based on that certainty. And, like your nursery rhyme, that was the house that Jack built." Kalchefsky — Jade Chang

There are ridiculous people having ridiculous, overblown weddings all over the planet. — K.E. Belledonne

An overblown conscience is an empty conscience. — Pascal Bruckner

Romance is quite an overblown word. This idea of chocolates and champagne and that's it. There's more to love than that. Romance is quite a soppy word. Love is much more important. — Joanna Lumley

A speaking, a crisis, people's lives in tatters, the future of the colony in doubt. And I cry in relief because an overblown computer program is speaking to me again, — Orson Scott Card

I simply don't think that putting every bit of energy I have into parenting-at the expense of my career, marriage and social life-will be the difference between Layla becoming homeless or the president. But too many women are made to believe that every tiny decision they make-from pacifiers to flash cards-will have a lasting impact on their child. It's a recipe for madness. It also reveals an overblown sense of self-importance. — Jessica Valenti

I would really like to have had the guts and the energy and so on to be able to write about, you know, people having battles with the DHSS. But I ... I haven't. They're dull things. I mean, I'm an arty person. OK, I write overblown, purple, self-indulgent prose. So fucking what? — Angela Carter

I think the whole obsession with old gear is completely overblown. You don't need old-fashioned gear to make a great-sounding record. You don't even need [analog] tape. — Tony Visconti

[...] Howard Phillips Lovecraft of Providence, Rhode Island, for cultivating a florid and overblown prose style that covered the entire spectrum from purple to ultraviolet and took sixteen volumes of interminable epistles to get to the point [...] — Charles Stross