Slightly Wrong Quotes & Sayings

When somebody is a little bit wrong - say, when a waited puts nonfat milk in your espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk - it is often quite easy to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But if somebody is surprisingly wrong - say, when a waiter bites your nose instead of taking your order - you can often be so surprised that you are unable to say anything at all. Paralyzed by how wrong the waiter is, your moth would hang slightly open and your eyes would blink over and over, but you would be unable to say a word. — Lemony Snicket

Brad Bird is fond of saying that music is the easiest thing that can derail a film because if it slightly goes a degree off track it will take the viewer in the wrong emotional direction. To work with people who actually care about that is a good thing. — Michael Giacchino

Merit. Have you finally decided to ditch the zero and get with the hero? Ethan cleared his throat - loudly - while I bit back a smile.
I didn't see anything wrong with reminding Ethan that I had other options. Even if they were slightly goofy options I'd never actually take advantage of. — Chloe Neill

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

I think we are all slightly down in the dumps after another loss. We may be in the wrong sign ... Venus may be in the wrong juxtaposition with somewhere else. — Ted Dexter

In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong. — Carl Sagan

When it comes to animal agriculture, there is conventional, which is really hideous, and "compassionate" or "certified humane" or whatever, which *may* be *slightly* less hideous. But it's all torture. It's all wrong. These "happy" gimmicks are just designed to make the public feel better about exploiting animals. Don't buy the propaganda of "happy" exploitation. Go vegan and promote veganism. — Gary L. Francione

I think there's a greater detriment with our escalating progression toward the opposite extremity - the increasingly common ideology that assures people they're right about what they believe. And note that I used the word "detriment." I did not use the word "danger," because I don't think the notion of people living under the misguided premise that they're right is often dangerous. Most day-to-day issues are minor, the passage of time will dictate who was right and who was wrong, and the future will sort out the past. It is, however, socially detrimental. It hijacks conversation and aborts ideas. It engenders a delusion of simplicity that benefits people with inflexible minds. It makes the experience of living in a society slightly worse than it should be. — Chuck Klosterman

Flaw laden intellect shows faults in others. If you deviate even slightly in the wrong direction, you will see everyone at fault. — Dada Bhagwan

A weight lands on me, and a strong doubt that I will not be able to fully commit to the ideas of this strange religion out here in the cold north. I look at the girl's pale skin flushed slightly across her high cheekbones and wonder if she, perhaps, is Katherine Redford and the article we read was wrong. Maybe her ruse is an old woman but she is, in fact, a young girl. There is something more comforting in that idea, to be healed by a child uninterested in fame or money. A girl as young as her would not seek to inveigle or exploit hopeless people such as us, but an adult might. — Annie Fisher

You waved at Soren while I fought to look neutral because I was taken with you and slightly enraged for no reason. Enraged is the wrong word,but I felt like I wanted to kick you in the shins and then make you banana bread. I wanted to key your car and take you out for dim sum. It was admiration,passion and that voice of yours all mushing together and disarming me,making me want to smash something and kiss someone. — Mary-Louise Parker

I think that we want to be led slightly astray when we're being told a story. Just a little wrong footed. — Kelly Link

Some TV shows are like really good novels in that there are enough episodes that you start to have your own feelings about how the characters should act. When the scriptwriters go slightly wrong, when they make the character make a left turn that he or she wouldn't do, you know enough about the characters to say, "No, that's not what she would do there. That's wrong." You can actually argue with a TV show in a way that you can't do as much with movie - you inhabit a TV show in the way you inhabit a novel. — Nicholson Baker

There has to be something wrong when spurning reproduction doesn't make Gabriella and me the "mavericks" we'd both have prided ourselves as in our younger days but standard issue for our era. Surely the contemporary absorption with our own lives as the be-all and end-all ultimately hails from an insidious misanthropy - a lack of faith in the whole human enterprise. In its darkest form, the growing cohort of childless couples determined to throw all their money at Being Here Now - to take that step aerobics class, visit Tanzania, put an addition on the house while making no effort to ensure there's someone around to inherit the place when the party is over - has the quality of the mad, slightly hysterical scenes of gleeful abandon that fiction — Lionel Shriver

Is that all?" asked the butler. His slightly melodic accent was nearly impossible to place. It could have been British, but it wasn't any British accent I had ever heard. The words Old English came to mind, too. As in old, old English. This, I'm certain, was a psychic hit, but I could have been wrong. Just how old Franklin was remained to be seen. "Thank you, Franklin. That will be all," said Kingsley, waving him off. The butler nodded. "If you and the lady need anything else, please do not hesitate to rouse me from a deep and satisfying sleep." "We won't, Franklin. Now, off you go! — J.R. Rain

There is no right or wrong way when it comes to romance. Every love story is slightly different. That makes each one beautiful. Love is worth experiencing, no matter what forms it comes in. Whether dark or light, each is special. The pages are blank and ready to be written. Don't turn away just because it isn't traditional. The beauty is in the story itself. — Charisse Spiers

The James Bond movies and the comic books had it all wrong. You did not need elaborate contraptions, complicated plans, and futuristic doomsday weapons to wipe out of all of humankind. All you needed was a fully realized vision and an intense focus. All you needed to do is give a little push to what was already happening; what was inevitable.
All you had to do is get one group of people who believe in an invisible man in the sky to get really pissed off at another group of people who believe in a slightly different version of the same invisible man in the sky. — James J. Caterino

Books bend space and time. One reason the owners of those aforesaid little rambling, poky secondhand bookshops always seem slightly unearthly is that many of them really are, having strayed into this world after taking a wrong turning in their own bookshops in worlds where it is considered commendable business practice to wear carpet slippers all the time and open your shop only when you feel like it. — Terry Pratchett

I hate that rule that says write about what you know, it leads to too many British novels about marriages going slightly wrong. Write about what you don't know, just act as though you do. — Jeff Noon

I glanced in the first open door and stopped short. Desks. Four tiny desks. A wall of faded posters of alphabet animals. A blackboard, still showing the ghost of numbers. I blinked, certain I was seeing wrong.
Derek nudged my legs, telling me to get moving. I looked at him, and I looked at the classroom.
This was where Derek had grown up. Four tiny desks. Four little boys. Four young werewolves.
For a second, I could see them - three boys working at the three clustered desks, Derek alone at the fourth, pushed slightly away, hunched over his work, trying to ignore the others.
Derek nudged me again, whining softly, and I looked down to see him eyeing the room, every hair on his neck on end, anxious to get away from this place. — Kelley Armstrong

And the Queen was there, in front of her. She was much taller than Tiffany, but just as slim; her hair was long and black, her face pale, her lips cherry red, her dress black and white and red. And it was all, very slightly, wrong. Tiffany's Second Thoughts said: It's because she's perfect. Completely perfect. Like a doll. No one real is as perfect as that. "That's not you," said Tiffany, with absolute certainty. "That's just your dream of you. That's not you at all." The Queen's smile disappeared for a moment and came back all edgy and brittle. "Such rudeness, and you hardly know me," she said, sitting down on the leafy seat. She patted the space beside her. — Terry Pratchett

It occurred to him that he didn't care much for these hedge animals. It had always seemed slightly perverted to him to clip and torture a plain old hedge into something that it wasn't. Along one of the highways in Vermont there had been a hedge billboard on a high slope overlooking the road, advertising some kind of ice cream. Making nature peddle ice cream, that was just wrong. It was grotesque. — Stephen King

My streets, my cistern. My old house. Its beams, floorboards and staircase creaked slightly, almost imperceptibly, with a dry, uniform, almost constant cracking sound. What's wrong? Where does it hurt? It seemed to be complaining of aches in its bones, in its centuries-old joints. — Ismail Kadare

had been like wandering into the wrong carnival sideshow, the kind that left one feeling sick and slightly soiled. — John Connolly

New York is on a grid system, so it's slightly less challenging logistically, but Londoners are more relaxed in their selling approach. With that intense shopping service in New York, it's easy to get carried away and make a wrong purchase. Here, there's a different flow. You are left to explore, and individuality is key. — Erin O'Connor

For a theory to be scientific it must be capable of being refuted by the evidence. Given that we have had three decades of rising temperature followed by a decade of stable and slightly falling temperatures worldwide, how many decades would you require before you are convinced that the theory on which you are committing £400bn of taxpayers' money might be slightly wrong? — Peter Lilley

His gaze locked with mine and a slow grin appeared on his face. He didn't look like he had last night. More like he did every day at school. Worn jeans. A black henley instead of a T-shirt and beat-up sneakers, but goodness, I couldn't think.
Okay. Not true. I could think, but I was thinking things I really had no concept of. I was thinking about those full, slightly curved lips and how they must feel in places...other than my forehead or cheek. I was thinking about his hands and how strong they were and the oddly pleasant calluses on his palms. I was thinking about...about a lot of things - things that now didn't feel so wrong since he was actually single.
Noticing my near-prone position, Ainsley looked over her shoulder. "Oh, my good God almighty," she murmured. "That's him?"
"Yes," I whispered. That was so him. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Most people believe they know how they themselves think, how others think too, and even how institutions evolve. But they are wrong. Their understanding is based on folk psychology, the grasp of human nature by common sense ¾ defined (by Einstein) as everything learned to the age of 18 ¾ shot through with misconceptions, and only slightly advanced over ideas employed by the Greek philosophers — E. O. Wilson

Vimes shook his head. "That always chews me up," he said. "People killing one another just because their gods have squabbled - " "Oh, they've got the same god, sir. Apparently it's over a word in their holy book, sir. The Elharibians say it translates as 'god' and the Smalies say it's 'man.'" "How can you mix them up?" "Well, there's only one tiny dot difference in the script, you see. And some people reckon it's only a bit of fly dirt in any case." "Centuries of war because a fly crapped in the wrong place?" "It could have been worse," said Carrot. "If it had been slightly to the left the word would have been 'liquorice. — Terry Pratchett

Caroline was slightly taken aback (shocked would be much too strong a word to describe her feelings). It was difficult to know what to say to Widgeon. The whole affair seemed so topsy turvy, so typical of the topsy turvy conditions of modern life. She had tried to help her country by Growing More Food, and all she had got for the trouble involved was more trouble. She had received countless forms to fill up; she had been visited by inspectors who seemed to think it was within their province to be rude to her, and who treated her as if she were trying to defraud the authorities of their just and lawful due, and she had been fined quite heavily for doing something she did not know was wrong. Somewhat naturally Caroline felt annoyed and the opportunity to break the law without any risk at all tempted her considerably. — D.E. Stevenson

I begin, then, with some remarks about 'the meaning of a word.' I think many persons now see all or part of what I shall say: but not all do, and there is a tendency to forget, or to get it slightly wrong. In so far as I am merely flogging the converted, I apologize to them. — J.L. Austin

MINDS ARE UNIQUE. They go wrong in unique ways. My mind went wrong in a slightly different way to how other minds go wrong. Our experience overlaps with other people's, but it is never exactly the same experience. — Matt Haig

Roetown, of mixed economy, neither boom nor bust, just ordinary times - that is, hard - had a slightly run-down aspect, I suppose. But in a pleasing way, like a man you love who has buttoned his coat up wrong. — Yann Martel

I said no," Jimmy said. His voice quavered slightly under the blazing heat of her glare, but his words were as solid as a sealant weld. "Captain Smith says it's wrong."
"And I say it's right," Kulasawa snapped. "Why listen to him instead of me?"
"Because he's my boss." Jimmy looked at me. "And because I trust him."
He turned back to Kulasawa. "And because he's never needed a gun to tell me what to do. — Timothy Zahn

The best start-ups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful start-up are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed. — Peter Thiel

There's something wrong with my brain, it doesn't work properly! I can hear the same pitch in both ears, whereas for most people, if you listen to one pitch in one ear, it's slightly different in the other. That's how your brain works out direction. — Aphex Twin

A few miles away across the East River was the apartment he could never get used to, the job where he had nothing to do, the dozen or so people he knew slightly and cared about not at all: a fabric of existence as blank and seamless as the freshly plaster wall he passed. Soon his wife would return from New Jersey. Soon everyone would be back, and things would go on much as they had before. From the street outside came the sound of laughter and shouting, bottles breaking, voices droning in the warm air, and children playing far past their bedtime. It all meant nothing whatever to Lowell. Standing in the parlor of a house no longer his, listening to the voices of people whose lives were closed to him forever, contemplating a future much like his past, he realized that it was finally too late for him. Everything had gone wrong, and he had succeeded at nothing, and he was never going to have any kind of life at all. — L.J. Davis

was right then that I knew I'd called the wrong person. I should have dialed Oscar, my slightly younger brother, instead. He was the levelheaded one in my life, the basketball player studying mechanical engineering. — Mariana Zapata

Back in Beijing, it was 9:56 A.M. - four minutes before the race's start - and Phelps stood behind his starting block, bouncing slightly on his toes. When the announcer said his name, Phelps stepped onto the block, as he always did before a race, and then stepped down, as he always did. He swung his arms three times, as he had before every race since he was twelve years old. He stepped up on the blocks again, got into his stance, and, when the gun sounded, leapt. Phelps knew that something was wrong as soon as he hit the water. There was moisture inside his goggles. He couldn — Charles Duhigg

Most of the time Marilyn's mother remained unconscious, her breath labored and erratic. One morning before dawn, she suddenly opened her eyes and looked clearly and intently at her daughter. "You know," she whispered softly, "all my life I thought something was wrong with me." Shaking her head slightly, as if to say, "What a waste," she closed her eyes and drifted back into a coma. — Tara Brach

She had understood all that he had said, with no way of knowing what he meant. It was as though he himself existed here in this town in this state in translation, ambiguous, slightly wrong, too highly colored or wrongly nuanced. Within him was the original, which no one could read. — John Crowley

For suddenly it had changed into that gear when time is slower - as when, falling off a ladder, one has time to think: I shall land so, just there, and I must turn in the air slightly ... All this in a space of time normally too short for any thought at all. But we are wrong in dividing the mind's machinery from time: they are the same. It is only in such sharp emphatic moments that we recognize this fact. — Doris Lessing

There is romantic nonsense these days about the beauty of death, about the terrible end becoming the lovely beginning, and I think that's wrong, a diminution of the beauty of life. Death is as terrible as birth is wonderful. The laws of physics and nature - not romance - dictate this. It occurs to me that sometimes even nature - raw, silent, solemn, and joyous nature - fears, even if only slightly, rot. — Rick Bass

The fourth estate came together in an unprecedented professional consensus. They chose insulting the other side over trying to understand what motivated them. They transformed opinion writing into a vehicle for high moral boasting. What could possibly have gone wrong with such an approach? [...] Put this question in slightly more general terms and you are confronting the single great mystery of 2016. The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn't all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn't accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it's time to consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away. — Thomas Frank

And then, from behind me: "I thought about you. Every day."
I froze, my hand still holding the canvas flap.
Cal's voice was slightly hoarse as he continued. "Three weeks is a long time to wonder where someone is. All that time, I thought maybe I'd done the wrong thing, telling you to find the Brannicks.
I turned around then. I wanted to make a joke, or say something sarcastic, anything that would cut the tension enveloping us. Instead, I said, "I thought about you, too. — Rachel Hawkins

I will miss
my chest exploding
you coming home late
not turning on the light
always waking me up

I will miss
the sudden burst of safety
when you look at me
or hold my hand
or say something like
"let's go home"

I will miss
the years I lost
on something or someone.
The pieces didn't fit, shaped wrong
the timing slightly off.

I loved you like I always will. — Charlotte Eriksson

Diana, would you marry someone for money?" I asked her out of the blue one afternoon during her lunch break. Without missing a beat, she made a contemplative noise. "It depends.How much money?"
It was right then I knew I'd called the wrong person. I should have dialed Oscar, my slightly younger brother, instead. He'd always been wise beyond his years. Diana...not so much.
I only told her the partial truth. "What if someone bought you a house?"
She "hmmed" and then "hmmed" a little more. "A nice house?"
"It wouldn't be a mansion, you greedy whore, but I'm not talking about a dump or anything either." I figured at least. — Mariana Zapata

She paused and unexpectedly stroked her fingers down the feathers of his neck.
He froze. She couldn't know how intimate that seemed, or how sensitive he was to her touch even through the sleek covering of eagle feathers. Pleasure at being petted ran down his spine.
He should say something or step away. He did neither. Instead, ever so slightly, he leaned into her touch.
It was wrong of him, but his wrong button seemed to be broken, and he didn't care. — Thea Harrison

Scott is gone.
I've had two days with this truth. This truth and me, we're acquainted now, past the shock of our first unhappy meeting and into the uneasy-cohabitation stage. Its barbs are slightly duller than they were that first night, when even breathing felt agonizing and wrong. Tootsie and Marjorie hovered over me, waiting to see whether I'd collapse, while Mama looked on, white-faced, from her rocker by the fire. "Gone?" I would whisper, to no-one in particular. I, too, waited for me to be overwhelmed - but all that happened was what happens to anyone who has lost their one love: my heart cleaved into two parts, before and foreverafterward. — Therese Anne Fowler

If you are slightly different, if your face doesn't fit, they judge you and consign you and throw away the fucking key.
They never, ever stop to think that THEY might be wrong, that THEY are making a mistake. Don't get me wrong, I haven't been the victim of a massive miscarriage of justice - I'm not saying that - BUT I know what it's like to be stinking judged before people have even bothered to find out what you are about. They have boxed me off into the ugly group even before I have opened my gob.
SOCIETY IS SHIT. — Rae Earl

I'd always somehow felt slightly as if I'd been born in the wrong country. — Christopher Hitchens

No matter how cheerful and blameless the day's activities have been, when you wake in the middle of the night there is guilt in the air, a gnawing feeling of everything being slightly off, wrong - you in the wrong, and the world too, as if darkness is a kind of light that shows us the depth we are about to fall into. — John Updike

I love the process of cutting everything out with a scalpel yourself: I don't want to have my stencils drawn up in Illustrator, then laser-cut. I like the fact that it's slightly wrong; I think it gives it a beauty. The individual and handmade will always be worth more than what a computer can do, at least until computers can learn how to make mistakes. — Ben Eine

He stood and grabbed her forearm, pulling her just ever so slightly toward him. "But if you want any help studying, let me know."

Her eyes flickered down to his lips, then back up to meet his gaze. She straightened her shoulders and exhaled. "Let me guess, you'll quiz e, and for each wrong answer I give, I'll have to take off something I'm wearing?"

Kane's mouth parted and his eyes widened as her considered the image she'd just painted for him. "Hell, kitty, I was genuinely offering to help, but your idea is so much better. Let's go with that. — Sarah Robinson

From the time we begin school, if not sooner, we are taught to be blind to our assets and only see our deficits. We are carefully marked on how many we got wrong on a test and, rarely if ever, asked how we know how to spell the ones we got right. By the time we are adults, we are well versed in every one of our limitations, skilled in our incompetence. If we were fish in an aquarium, it would be as if we kept smashing against the glass, and forgot the fact that we were perfectly capable of turning ever so slightly and swimming gracefully in the water all around us. — Dawna Markova

Jesus' words are slightly less shocking when you consider that exclusive claims to truth are more common than we know. Truth is, by its nature, exclusive. Two differing claims cannot both be right. Math teachers make exclusive claims all the time. They will tell you that the multiplication table is not up for negotiation. There are right answers and wrong ones. A doctor's prescription is an exclusive claim as well. It excludes every medication except the one that is written on the prescription paper. A person who gives you their phone number is telling you to exclude dialing all other numbers except the digits they have provided you. — Jon Morrison

We got a call from across the street that a black woman had broken into this house."
"And you were going to arrest her without even knocking on the door?"
"We had to secure her first. Um. Are you okay, ma'am?"
"Of course I am. Don't you see me?"
"Because we have her in custody. You don't have to be afraid."
"I'm not afraid of my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Theon Pinkney. She's the one who should be afraid. Four big men grabbing her and putting her in chains. What's wrong with you?"
The police stood there, slightly confused. I could see that they felt justified, even righteous, for grabbing me in Marcia's driveway. There was no question in their minds that I was a criminal and that they were on the side of the Law.
Marcia glanced at me then. We'd spent hours together but it was as if she hadn't really gotten a good look at me until seeing the tableau in her driveway. — Walter Mosley

Okay." I bounced down the stairs. "I'm decent."
He was waiting at the foot of the stairs, closer than I'd thought, and I bounded right into him. He steadied me, holding me a careful distance away for a few seconds before suddenly pulling me closer.
"Wrong again," he murmured in my ear. "You are utterly indecent - no one should look so tempting, it's not fair."
"Tempting how?" I asked. "I can change ... "
He sighed, shaking his head. "You are so absurd." He pressed his cool lips delicately to my forehead, and the room spun. The smell of his breath made it impossible to think.
"Shall I explain how you are tempting me?" he said. It was clearly a rhetorical question. His fingers traced slowly down my spine, his breath coming more quickly against my skin. My hands were limp on his chest, and I felt ligtheaded again. He tilted his head slowly and touched his cool lips to mine for the second time, very carefully, parting them slightly.
And then I collapsed. — Stephenie Meyer

Are you checking me out?" he asked, smirking slightly. His sexy southern accent made him exponentially hotter.
I felt my face blush scarlet and instantly looked down at my lap. Then I decided that I wouldn't let that embarrass me. I was checking him out, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that. The new, more confident me was pushing her way to the surface.
"I was," I said, trying to sound bold, as I took a long pull from my drink. I wasn't nearly intoxicated enough for this conversation. — Monica Alexander

If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions. — Richard P. Feynman