Quotes & Sayings About Small Details

Most of our lives aren't that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details. — David Byrne

It takes 500 small details to add up to one favorable impression. — Cary Grant

You can decide to invade Russia at dinner, pick Waterloo for battle on a whim. It's the details, the small stuff. Its easy to gamble a million lives. Whats hard is to see how that can hurt one single person. And if you cant keep that straight, hell, you'll lose your humanity. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you'll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball. — Anton Chekhov

A new moon teaches gradualness
and deliberation and how one gives birth
to oneself slowly. Patience with small details
makes perfect a large work, like the universe. — Rumi

Perdition awaits at the end of a road constructed entirely from good intentions, the devil emerges from the details and hell abides in the small print. — Iain M. Banks

People, as curious primates, dote on concrete objects that can be seen and fondled. God dwells among the details, not in the realm of pure generality. We must tackle and grasp the larger, encompassing themes of our universe, but we make our best approach through small curiosities that rivet our attention - all those pretty pebbles on the shoreline of knowledge. For the ocean of truth washes over the pebbles with every wave, and they rattle and clink with the most wondrous din. — Stephen Jay Gould

Graffiti is a lot easier than the canvas actually, because it's such a large format, so when you're going to such a thin detail, it's not that thin in the realm of things because it's such a big wall. This would take a small paint brush of detail, but on a huge wall, if that's the size of a building, the thinnest detail is still that big, it's a quick spray. Spray paint is easiest for me. I love spray paint. — Alec Monopoly

We are not the ones driving the boat of our behavior, at least not nearly as much as we believe. Who we are runs well below the surface of our conscious access, and the details reach back in time before our birth, when the meeting of a sperm and egg granted us with certain attributes and not others. Who we can be begins with our molecular blueprints - a series of alien codes penned in invisibly small strings of acids - well before we have anything to do with it. We are a product of our inaccessible, microscopic history. — David Eagleman

He closed the fridge door, made his last breakfast - scrambled eggs - and showered, dressed, combed his hair, left for the theater an hour early so he'd have time to linger with the newspaper over his second-to-last coffee at his favorite coffee place, all of the small details that comprise a morning, a life. — Emily St. John Mandel

It wasn't so much the discovery of a single clue, as the coming together of many small details. That moment when the sun shifts by a degree and a spider's web, previously concealed, begins to shine like fine-spun silver. Because suddenly Sadie could see how it all connected and she knew what had happened that night. — Kate Morton

To me a translator is very, very important. If the fixer is also the translator, so much the better. I have known photographers who didn't speak the language and would work in a place for weeks without one, getting by on common sense and smiles. But how many situations did they miss because they couldn't talk to someone and get the back story on details, small daily life things, etc. — Peter Menzel

But during the day ... that was life. The collection of small details that made up a shared day were what gave richness to what happened in the bed at night. — Anne Bishop

The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men. In order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes
will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish. — John Stuart Mill

We don't always know the details of our future. We do not know what lies ahead. We live in a time of uncertainty. We are surrounded by challenges on all sides. Occasionally discouragement may sneak in to our day; frustration may invite itself into our thinking; doubt might enter about the value of our work. In these dark moments Satan whispers in our ears that we will never be able to succeed, that the price isn't work the effort, and that our small part will never make a difference. He, the father of all lies, will try to prevent us from seeing the end from the beginning. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Remember that often we will not know the small details of our life mission — Sunday Adelaja

How was it that Adrian Ivashkov, who never seemed to take anything seriously was the only one among these "responsible" people who paid attention to such small details? How was he the only one to really understand the magnitude of what I was feeling? — Richelle Mead

Great battles are really won before they are actually fought. To control our passions we must govern our habits, and keep watch over ourselves in the small details of everyday life. — John Lubbock

And in that moment Dianora had a truth brought home to her with finality: how something can seem quite unchanged in all the small surface details of existence where things never really change, men and women being what they are, but how the core, the pulse, the kernel of everything can still have become utterly unlike what it had been before. — Guy Gavriel Kay

In big and small details, Jesus perfectly fulfilled the prophecies of the suffering servant. — Chris Bruno

On small, informal projects, a lot of design is done while the programmer sits at the keyboard. "Design" might be just writing a class interface in pseudocode before writing the details. It might be drawing diagrams of a few class relationships before coding them. It might be asking another programmer which design pattern seems like a better choice. Regardless of how it's done, small projects benefit from careful design just as larger projects do, and recognizing design as an explicit activity maximizes the benefit you will receive from it. — Steve McConnell

I studied him the way I studied all the people in my life, noticing the changes of his mood, the times when the edge of his patience came into view, even small physical details like the sickle-shaped scar on the top of his right forearm and the small flourish he made with his hand whenever he set down a tool, as if he was brushing bad air away from it. — Roland Merullo

Society has to get a grip and put a tax on carbon. Of course, there is much that flows from that, and it is a complex situation. The small details of something such as climate change are political and social, and they are a lot about fairness and how we rebalance towards a fairer society. — Richard Rogers

Art's power of persuasion resides in the small personal details of one's own story, and if it weren't for my struggle with dyslexia, I doubt I'd ever have become a writer or known how to teach others to write. — Philip Schultz

How did the muskrat discover our composter in the first place? Chased there by a predator scare, a waft of citrus scent carried to the creek by the evening thermal, or some adventurous urge to journey beyond the safety of the creek? The latter, admittedly anthropomorphic possibility appeals to me. While it's important not to get so far into such projections of human qualities into non-human realities that they begin to masquerade as fact, it's equally important to recognize that they provide openings for affection not unlike those that enable our affections for fellow human beings. Drawn into closer observation of the small details of muskrat behavior, the hand-like deftness of their front paws, their cat-like grooming, the contrast between their nervousness on land and their confident ease in the water, I quickly realized that I'd been observing more than one, perhaps several, individuals. I looked upon them with growing affection, with friendship. — Reg Darling

I left out certain details, but while these were important to me, they would have been to no one else: they were those moments, those parts of life, which are so purely personal and private that you can no more share them than you can share your heart or brain: in all of us there is that small and unsurrenderable core that...well, that in the end determines everything. — Edwin O'Connor

But of course, very few people are Dexter. This is generally a good thing, but in this case it came in handy to be me. Four months after reading a story in the paper about a missing boy, I read a similar story. The boys were around the same age; details like that always ring a small bell and send a Mister Rogers whisper trickling through my brain: Hello, neighbor. — Jeff Lindsay

He stands in the kitchen doorway, a black figure surrounded by the yellow light background, the small details of his face unseen from the darkness of the living room. His left shoulder leans slightly against the threshold, a pistol suspended from the left hand, dangling in the yellow space between the hip and the dark. — Frank Turner Hollon

It's sad that in a world of billions, people can still feel isolated and alone. Sometimes all it takes to brighten up someone's day is a smile or kind word, or the generous actions of a complete stranger. Small things, the tiny details, these are the things that matter in life - the little glint in the eye, curve of a lip, nod of a head, wave of a hand - such minuscule movements have huge ripple effects. — Shaun Hick

I see in [George H. W.] Bush a striving to be Reagan-like in the sense of having a big vision, and eschewing small details. — David E. Hoffman

You've got to make an effort to get the details right, because even through someone picks it up and knows it's a novel, they know someone's made it up and they know it's not real, if you make a small mistake they will cease to imaginatively engage with the story. — Sara Sheridan

The title of Ultracrepidarian critics has been given to those persons who find fault with small and insignificant details. — William Hazlitt

If we look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it all seems. It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with protozoa. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly and struggle with one another. Whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect — Irvin D. Yalom

Your love doesn't end because you find out that he's not related to you by blood. I believe that love transcends such small details as family lineage. — Delancey Stewart

Now when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes and dispositions between two or more domestic races, or between nearly-allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that all are descended from a common progenitor who was thus endowed; and consequently that all should be classed under the same species. The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man. — Charles Darwin

The Christian faith is meant to be lived moment by moment. It isn't some broad, general outline
it's a long walk with a real Person. Details count: passing thoughts, small sacrifices, a few encouraging words, little acts of kindness, brief victories over nagging sins. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We disregard them, we say they forget, because they have not the words to make us remember ... By the time they learn to speak they have forgotten the details of their complaints, and so we never know. They forget so quickly, we say, because we cannot contemplate the fact that they never forget. — Margaret Drabble

We lie to ourselves about the smallest details, and we lie to ourselves about our largest life choices. — Cortney S. Warren

The naturalist is a civilized hunter. He goes alone into the field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance. He begins the scanning search for which cognition was engineered. His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry — E. O. Wilson

Think boldly. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. Don't miss small details, keep your eyes open and be modest in everything except your aims. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband's mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, though her stationary had stunk of baby powder and rose perfume. Sally was starch, cedar, her dead grandmother sandalwood, her uncle, swiss cheese. People told her she smelled like garlic, like chalk, like nothing at all. Lotto, clean as camphor at his neck and belly, like electrified pennies at the armpit, like chlorine at the groin. She swallowed. Such things, details noticed only on the edges of thought would not return.
'Land,' Mathilde said, 'odd name for a guy like you.'
'Short for Roland,' the boy said.
Where the August sun had been steaming over the river, a green cloud was forming. It was still terrifically hot, but the birds had stopped singing. A feral cat scooted up the road on swift paws. It would rain soon.
'Alright Roland,' Mathilde said, suppressing as sigh, 'sing your song. — Lauren Groff

Watching Joel sip his iced tea and listen to stories of my childhood, the ones my mom told at all of the family gatherings, I felt my heart warm. He'd been there too. And as she spoke in scattered memory he was probably filling in the small details that had been lost and forgotten in time by everyone else. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

It makes you observe small details; even if it's just a kid playing with his dad, if you watch them closely, you can use that in your work. It helps you fully understand people better. — Diogo Morgado

For the 99 percent of the time we've been on Earth, we were hunter and gatherers, our lives dependent on knowing the fine, small details of our world. Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine. — Janine Benyus

I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while. — Ruth Rendell

The more unstable life is the less one likes the small details to alter. — Graham Greene

Often, when we have a crush, when we lust for a person, we see only a small percentage of who they really are. The rest we make up for ourselves. Rather than listen, or learn, we smother them in who we imagine them to be, what we desire for ourselves, we create little fantasies of people and let them grow in our hearts. And this is where the relationship fails. In time, the fiction we scribble onto a person falls away, the lies we tell ourselves unravel and soon the person standing in front of you is almost unrecognisable, you are now complete strangers in your own love. And what a terrible shame it is. My advice: pay attention to the small details of people, you will learn that the universe is far more spectacular an author than we could ever hope to be. — Beau Taplin

To our Creator, a small detail is a big deal. — Todd Stocker

I love 'Anna Karenina.' It's in the top five books on my list. Tolstoy is unsurpassed in combining the grand with the trivial, that is, the small details which make up life. — Susan Minot

Life's small details are the ones that interest me, anyway. The big questions are too hard to parse. — Christina Baker Kline

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed. — Ernest Hemingway,

The director, Antoine Fuqua, relies on small details, which anchor the vigilante-as-saint myth in at least a minimal degree of reality. — David Denby

It is an ancient belief, going back to classical antiquity, that specialization of any kind is illiberal in a freeman. A man willing to bury himself in the details of some small endeavor has been considered lost to these larger considerations which must occupy the mind of the ruler. — Richard M. Weaver

I spent a lot of time in the White House in the public areas where reporters are allowed to go, but I spoke to people about the private quarters as well. Some of the things I learned were small, novelistic details. For example, the fact that there were still pet stains on the carpets from the Bush cats when the Obamas moved in. — Jodi Kantor

When I entertain at home, I take time and pleasure in the small details that make all the difference. Entertaining is about giving to people and sharing with them. — Valentino Garavani

The world is big but it is comprehensible, says R. Buckminster Fuller. But it seems to me that the world is not nearly big enough and that any portion of its surface, left unpaved and alive, is infinitely rich in details and relationships, in wonder, beauty, mystery comprehensible only in part. The very existence of existence is itself suggestive of the unknown - not a problem, but a mystery. We will never get to the bottom of it, never know the whole of even so small and trivial and useless and precious a place as Aravaipa. Therein lies our redemption. — Edward Abbey

Great entrepreneurs are often great listeners and they can spot patterns and pick up on small details in customer stories. — Alexander Osterwalder

Here," Trey says, fumbling for his cell phone on the bedside table. "You should call me.
Ben turns and looks at him, a small smile still playing around his lips. "Oh, should I? What's your number?"
Trey tells him, and Ben enters it into is phone, and then he takes Trey's and enters his number. "Okay," Ben says a little cautiously, "well, we'd love to have you come for a meeting. Are you seriously considering U of C? Even after what happened?"
"Oh yeah. I totally am. "What's your name again?"
Ben laughs and tells him.
I frown. Trey knows U of C is a private school. Mucho big bucks. But hey ... there's always the power of morphine to make you forget about the minor details of your life, like living above a restaurant that struggles monthly to pay bills, and considering returning to the place where some lunatic outsider came in and fucking shot you because you're gay. — Lisa McMann

I learned no detail was too small. It was all about the details. — Brad Grey

Home is less a location than a discipline. It is a way of being, a domestic, considered attention to familiar routines and the small, essential details of everyday life. From now on, I promised myself, home would be wherever I was, not the place that I one day hoped it to be. I would create it by being present. I would try to do better. — Katrina Kenison

I don't beat at the details, but I do always keep in mind that anything that isn't A) moving the story forward or B) enlarging my understanding of the central characters has to be sacrificed. I have huge folders of details - research - with a story like Netherlands. Only a very small part of it gets used. The old iceberg analogy again. — Jim Shepard

For me science is not different from art, except in the one small, crucial detail that experiments speak their own truths, not ours. — Nina Fedoroff

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body. — Ayn Rand

It really doesn't matter, are you fat or thin, large or small or whatever horrible and ungly and so on and so on..., to don't go so in details because from reading this your day becomes with more insults, my purpose is not to insult you, but to show you the path!
I know one all people can be clever if they want to be. — Deyth Banger

Still, a thrill raced through her when she thought about the one thing she would have. Camille wrapped her arms around Oscar's waist and held him, breathing in his distinctive scent. It was such a small detail about him. She wanted to discover all the small details about him, and now she could.
"Don't ever die again," Camille whispered, pressing her cheek against the hard muscle of his shoulder.
"I'll give staying alive my best shot. On one condition." He lifted her chin up to look him in the eye. "Choose me."
Choice. She'd always had it, but strangely a life without the soft padding of money and reputation made her feel as though she had more freedom than ever. She could do whatever she wanted to do, be whoever she wanted to be. And the only person she wanted to find her way with was Oscar.
"I already have," she whispered, running her hands up his arms and over his broad shoulders. — Angie Frazier

Happiness hides in life's small details. If you're not looking, it becomes invisible. — Joyce Brothers

To die for a cause is easy, to live, to be steady day after day doing the small things, taking care of the details, knowing you will be forgotten by history and still choosing to do so, that is real courage — Anonymous

There was once a strange, small man. He decided three important details about his life:
1. He would part his hair from the opposite side to everyone else.
2. He would make himself a small, strange mustache.
3. He would one day rule the world.
... Yes, the Fuhrer decided that he would rule the world with words. — Markus Zusak

I shared the details of Steve Jobs's story, because when it comes to finding fulfilling work, the details matter. If a young Steve Jobs had taken his own advice and decided to only pursue work he loved, we would probably find him today as one of the Los Altos Zen Center's most popular teachers. But he didn't follow this simple advice. Apple Computer was decidedly not born out of passion, but instead was the result of a lucky break - a "small-time" scheme that unexpectedly took off. — Cal Newport

If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work, cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and do when you get to your desk. Then you'll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which real life deviates from the narrative inside your head. If you want to become better at listening to your children, tell yourself stories about what they said to you at dinnertime last night. Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you'll encode those experiences deeper in your brain. If you need to improve your focus and learn to avoid distractions, take a moment to visualize, with as much detail as possible, what you are about to do. It is easier to know what's ahead when there's a well-rounded script inside your head. — Charles Duhigg

If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems! — Arthur Schopenhauer

Seinfeld has his way of telling jokes - and I'm not comparing myself to Seinfeld, his genius is observing the small details of everyday life and finding humor in it. — Nick Kroll

To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports. — Susan Campbell Bartoletti

I record the events of my life, filling up one notebook after another. Maybe I'm not getting the details exactly right, but it doesn't matter. The strict facts hold no currency here. What counts is the saliva I just spat on this very sheet of paper. The thick gob slowly dissolves a small circle in the text and turns the words translucent. The ink starts to bleed. The fibers loosen. If you run your fingers along this paragraph, you'll find the site where I stabbed my thumb straight through the page. There is an entire world in that hole. — Jeff Jackson

Some stories are easy to follow, and easy to tell. There is an introduction, a twist, and a happily-ever-after. And when telling the story, everyone forgets those small details, like that one quiet morning when the two of you woke wake up with the sunrise and talked about cookies. Or that night when she had her period, and the cramps were killing her, and she just needed your hug and something warm. — Andrea Tomic

Normally, when you challenge the conventional wisdom - that the current economic and political system is the only possible one - the first reaction you are likely to get is a demand for a detailed architectural blueprint of how an alternative system would work, down to the nature of its financial instruments, energy supplies, and policies of sewer maintenance. Next, you are likely to be asked for a detailed program of how this system will be brought into existence. Historically, this is ridiculous. When has social change ever happened according to someone's blueprint? It's not as if a small circle of visionaries in Renaissance Florence conceived of something they called "capitalism," figured out the details of how the stock exchange and factories would someday work, and then put in place a program to bring their visions into reality. In fact, the idea is so absurd we might well ask ourselves how it ever occurred to us to imagine this is how change happens to begin. — David Graeber

We would report the exact details of her letter to her modiste, but we fear you would be overcome. Suffice to say, the money outlaid upon hats rivals the annual income of a large estate or small country; We fail to see why one small woman needs so many hats. She is unlikely to be concealing additional heads upon her person. — Cassandra Clare

Do not be afraid of large patterns, if properly designed they are more restful to the eye than small ones: on the whole, a pattern where the structure is large and the details much broken up is the most useful ... very small rooms, as well as very large ones, look better ornamented with large patterns. — William Morris

I've always been inspired by small details that make me wander. My mother would ask me, 'What are you looking at so intensely?' I would answer, 'Everything and nothing.' She really supported my wanderings, called me Marco Polo. — Mark Bradford

I'm not sure I could write a straight urban fantasy any more than I could write a straight contemporary story. I would end up being intimidated by all the small details. — Anne Bishop

I'm not sure why, but when a person expects something to last forever, they don't notice the little things. It's only when the clock is ticking all those little things add up and become bigger. — Shannon Wiersbitzky

The idea of photography as evidence is pure bullshit. A photo is no more proof of any reality than what you may hear being said by someone in a bus. We only record details, small fragments of the world. — Marc Riboud

The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We tend to place a lot of emphasis on our circumstances, assuming that what happens to us (or fails to happen) determines how we feel. From this perspective, the small-scale details of how you spend your day aren't that important, because what matters are the large-scale outcomes, such as whether or not you get a promotion or move to that nicer apartment. According to Gallagher, decades of research contradict this understanding. Our brains instead construct our worldview based on what we pay attention to. — Cal Newport

Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements may seem, the pattern is at least familiar from our personal lives. There, too, we may find ourselves anchoring emotions of love on the way a person butters his or her bread, or recoiling at his or her taste in shoes. To condemn ourselves for these minute concerns is to ignore how rich in meaning details may be. — Alain De Botton

The greater the scope in implementing an activity, the greater the need for strict attention to small details. — John Shirley

Good innovators typically think very big and they think very small. New ideas are sometimes found in the most granular details of a problem where few others bother to look. And they are sometimes found when you are doing your most abstract and philosophical thinking, considering why the world is the way that it is and whether there might be an alternative to the dominant paradigm. Rarely can they be found in the temperate latitudes between they two spaces, where we spend 99 percent of our lives. — Nate Silver

I think it's the small things, the smaller episodes and details that I linger on and try to draw meaning from, just personally. — Jhumpa Lahiri

When playing against big teams, it's the small details that count. — Luis Garcia

I couldn't sleep for nights on end, as my brain felt like there were thoughts colliding within it; I obsessed over small details, from saving pennies and polishing each one of them to washing my clothing over and over in the washing machine. — Andy Behrman

The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events. — Jim Jarmusch

I find significance in all kinds of small details when I run; I'm hyper aware of my surroundings, the sensations in my body, and the thoughts running through my mind. Everything is clearer, heightened. — Kristin Armstrong

It takes the same effort to think small than to think big. But to think big frees you from the insignificant details. — Jorge Paulo Lemann

Holmes had cultivated the ability to still the noise of the mind, by smoking his pipe and playing nontunes on the violin. He once compared this mental state with the sort of passive seeing that enables the eye, in a dim light or at a great distance, to grasp details with greater clarity by focusing slightly to one side of the object of interest. When active, strained vision only obscures and frustrates, looking away often permits the eyes to see and interpret the shapes of what it sees. Thus does inattention allow the mind to register the still, small whisper of the daughter of the voice. — Laurie R. King

Reality so often fails when it comes to small, satisfying details, she thought. — Terry Pratchett

A lot of times, writers are told write as big as you can, and that's not untrue. But at times I think it's better to write as small as you can, to start scenes with little personal details or people who are doing average every day human things. That, to me, lets the average reader into that person's life. "Yeah I eat breakfast. I take a shower." — Don Winslow

What sort of man is this, who over and over again, gave numerous details about His death, months before it occurred, and added to each such utterance that on the third day after His decease He would rise again from the dead - and DID RISE, as even the city of Jerusalem soon came to believe? No other founder of a great world religion (or a small one) ever made such statements, or ever came forth from the dead. — Wilbur Moorehead Smith

I tried to imagine myself as an old lady, grey and wrinkled, with my life behind me. And suddenly I knew what I wanted. Not in the details, but the broad sweep of things. I wanted my life to be like one of my favourite books: a big, fat novel, each page filled with smallwritten words as though the only way to cram so much life in was to make the writing really small. I wanted to be brave, take risks, make a difference, fall in love. The characters would be colourful, the landscapes exotic. I wanted my life to be a page-turner. — Helen Douglas

It is easy to slip into self-absorption, and it is equally fatal. When one becomes absorbed in himself, in his health, in his personal problems, or in the small details of daily living, he is, at the same time losing interest in other people; worse, he is losing his ties to life. From that it is an easy step to losing interest in the world and in life itself. That is the beginning of death. — Eleanor Roosevelt

As a writer you see the big picture and how you can tell as one character, how your storyline is going to meet up with all these other storylines. And as an actor you're thinking of all the minutiae, all the very small details. — Richard Dormer