Tricky Quotes & Sayings

All in all, we might think we like choice, but the question of which choices count and which do not is very, very tricky. — Kent Greenfield

Gender is used as a control mechanism that's just wrong. Gender is never anything to struggle with; gender is something to play with. Once you're free of the rules that all these hierarchical, oppressive systems place on gender, that's the tricky part. — Kate Bornstein

If the quality of my Christianity lies in my ability to be more inclusive than the next pastor, things get tricky because I will always, always encounter people - intersex people, Republicans, criminals, Ann Coulter, etc. - whom I don't want in the tent with me. Always. I only really want to be inclusive of some kinds of people and not of others. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Honesty is a complex and tricky thing, and we don't want to be honest all the time. — Dan Ariely

It was immediately apparent that it was full of tricky ingredients to balance. In fact, I found it very intriguing. What held me back from saying yes to the producer was that I wasn't sure who could play Truman. — Peter Weir

How do you know you love someone?" he'd asked his dad when he was kid.
"Huh. That's a tricky one. I suppose you know you love someone when you want to make them happy."
It was as good an answer as any, Cole thought. The word didn't have to come laden with expectations. It didn't have to be difficult. It didn't mean forever, or a commitment. Love could be as ephemeral as a single breath. That didn't make it a lie. — Lisa Henry

I'm such a fan of actors and also enjoy watching them work so that I can help their acting in any way I can. Sometimes it walks a tricky line because you want to be entertaining to some degree. But honesty is always entertaining to me. I'm a big Woody Allen and Spike Lee fan, and I find their films to be very honest. — Dito Montiel

Losing a chunk of your memory is a tricky thing, a deep-sea quake triggering shifts and upheavals too far distant from the epicenter to be easily predictable. — Tana French

I do notice a lot of people who want to shock to get laughs. It's such a tricky thing; you don't want to make rules about it. There's nobody more hilarious than Dave Attell, and he'd break every rule you set up. But he's funny. — Andy Kindler

The trees took my voice and scattered it to pieces. Winter made skeletons of the forest, see, made camouflage tricky 'less you know what you're doing, and I know exactly what I'm doing. He weren't going to find no tracks nor footprints nowhere in this forest what weren't his, I know better'n that. Kreagar looked all around, up high and 'neath brushes, but I've always been good at hiding. — Beth Lewis

Climate change is "some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects." — Dmitry Medvedev

Sauce is certainly ancestral to French cooking. The technique is very tricky, but it's also very fundamental. — Daniel Boulud

He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights.
'White to play and mate in two moves.'
Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates. — George Orwell

Having done Spaced, I can't even remember it being that difficult on Spaced, but we know what the end's going to be like. We know why we're putting in this amount of work, or why a shot might be particularly tricky, because we know that what we do is create a whole package. It's the writing, the performances, and the style of camerawork, that's what we're working toward, and we're prepared for that. — Simon Pegg

If you can't beat them. Join them — Jim Henson

I think it's quite tricky for actors to release albums. It's difficult, because I'm an actor, you know, I'm not a musician. I love singing, but I don't have a big repertoire of songs that I've written; I mean, I've got a few, but nothing that I could fill an album with, and I don't want to do it just for the sake of it. — Ewan McGregor

I just do my thing and try each show to be more honest about why I am and who I am. It's quite tricky and actually nerve-racking to do that. It's kind of a happy train wreck. — Craig Ferguson

If, for instance, you put in a Malay officer who's very religious and who has family ties in Malaysia in charge of a machine gun unit, that's a very tricky business. We've got to know his background ... I'm saying these things because they are real, and if I don't think that, and I think even if today the Prime Minister doesn't think carefully about this, I and my family could have a tragedy. — Lee Kuan Yew

The past is a tricky thing. Sometimes it's etched in stone. And other times, it's rendered in soft memories. But if you meddle too long in deep, dark things... Who knows what monsters you'll awaken? — Emily Thorne

It's tricky to be such an independent person, from Canada. It doesn't matter how incredible your work is, if you're an unknown person and you're from Toronto, people's eyes glaze over immediately as soon as you introduce yourself. — Shary Boyle

Love does not involve emotions, then?" he asked her with a smile.
"It is not ruled by them," she told him. "Love is liking and companionship and respect and trust. Love does not dominate or try to possess. Love thrives only in a commitment to pure, mutual freedom. That is why marriage is so tricky. There are the marriage ceremony and the marriage vows and the necessity for fidelity -all of them suggestive of restraints, even imprisonment. Men talk of life sentences and leg shackles in connection with marriage, do they not? But marriage out to be just the opposite -two people agreeing to set each other free, — Mary Balogh

When we're putting out records that people are responding to, it's amazing. And it's obviously what we shoot for every time. It's a tricky balancing act. But as long as it's sort of a righteous idea, then you're good to go. — El-P

I'm so grateful that I can play and that I can execute what I hear in my head, because that's the tricky part. — Alicia Keys

I'd always worried but kissing's not so tricky. Your lips know what to do, just like sea anenomes know what to do. Kissing spins you, like Flying Tea-Cups. Oxygen the girl breathes out, you breathe in. — David Mitchell

The secret is not just to be stunning, which I find comes rather easily, to be honest. The tricky thing is getting exactly the right level of stun for the occasion. — Melody Malone

I think that charity is a tricky thing, because a lot of times, people equate charity with handouts. I don't believe in handouts. — Rainn Wilson

It is tricky because I do wear a lot of vintage on the red carpet, and usually when I'm getting ready, I'll say, 'We need to make sure that I don't look like I'm in a Scorsese film today.' Sometimes I do something a little bit more modern with my hair. You have to mix it up. — Christina Hendricks

The uniform has a hundred pockets, big flat pockets for deliveries and eensy narrow pockets for gear, pockets sewn into sleeves, thighs, shins. The equipment stuck into these multifarious pockets tends to be small, tricky, lightweight: pens, markers, penlights, penknives, lock picks, bar-code scanners, flares, screwdrivers, Liquid Knuckles, bundy stunners, and lightsticks. A calculator is stuck upside-down to her right thigh, doubling as a taxi meter and a stopwatch. On — Neal Stephenson

Managing university finances is very tricky business. We're nonprofits. We're not supposed to accumulate large surpluses. — Richard Levin

Olive's private view is that life depends on what she thinks of as "big bursts" and "little bursts." Big bursts are things like marriage or children, intimacies that keep you afloat, but these big bursts hold dangerous, unseen currents. Which is why you need the little bursts as well: a friendly clerk at Bradlee's, let's say, or the waitress at Dunkin' Donuts who knows how you like your coffee. Tricky business, really. — Elizabeth Strout

The business is a very tricky obstacle course, and you should be very clear about work begetting work. If you're not working, you're not interesting. — Elisabeth Rohm

Empresses," Vix said in disgust. "They're always trouble, the tricky bitches. Emperors might forgive you if you cross them, but never empresses. — Kate Quinn

It's relatively easy to act nice and normal in front of a crowd, or in public. The tricky part is doing it in private. — Robert Black

you were to ask Christians around the world what God wants from the people he has saved, most would probably answer "obedience." There is great truth in that answer, but it is not enough. If the sovereign God's primary goal in sanctifying believers is simply to make us more holy, it is hard to explain why most of us make only "small beginnings" on the road to personal holiness in this life, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it (see Catechism Q. 113). In reality, God wants something much more precious in our lives than mere outward conformity to his will. After all, obedience is tricky business and can be confusing to us. We can be obedient outwardly while sinning wildly on the inside, as the example of the Pharisees makes clear. In fact, many of my worst sins have been committed in the context of my best obedience. — Barbara R. Duguid

Never use tricky or irrelevant headlines ... People read too fast to figure out what you are trying to say. — David Ogilvy

Often the most tricky questions are the ones we secretly know the answers of.
What are you running from?
What are you waiting for? — Sanhita Baruah

Plants are tricky. Many are edible, but one false mouthful and your dead — Suzanne Collins

He'd set down his drink and leaned in. "Fine. You want me to elaborate, I will. Here's the deal: I'm a guy. Generally speaking, we're pretty simple folk. I know women always want to think we have these deep, romantic, and emotionally angsty thoughts going on in our heads, but in reality? Not so much. You women have layers and you're complicated and mysterious and you say one thing, but you really mean another, and it's this whole tricky package that intrigues us and scares us and challenges us all at the same time. But men aren't like that. You talk about me not letting you in, but maybe what you don't realize is this: there is no in." He pointed to himself. "It's all right here on the surface, Jessica. What you see is what you get. — Julie James

I spent the weekend after our date wishing I could stab him with my fluffy-duck pen and staring at the phone hoping he'd call. Dating is a very tricky business. — Cath Crowley

Spin is a tricky thing. When you're trying to avoid it - say, on a tee shot, where sidespin puts you in the trees - it's easy to make it happen. — Ernie Els

Truth was such a tricky thing when it came to children. When was it good medicine and when was it poison — Jane Roper

It's tricky to say 'never,' but I will never have plastic surgery. — Lili Taylor

We were living in California, and it just wasn't conducive for the lifestyle that we wanted with kids. Los Angeles is tricky to get around, there's paparazzi to deal with, and I had this feeling that I just wanted to move back to Australia. — Chris Hemsworth

Some acts are tricky. Eartha Kitt was tricky in a wonderful, old-style way. She did yoga on the piano and put her hands over her ears when the other acts were on. — Jools Holland

Discerning the will of God is a very tricky thing, partly because, you know, the little voice in my head can either be God's voice or it can be my own ego doing a magnificent impression of God's voice. — Gene Robinson

And my parents' separation was tricky. But my mum had always been really honest with me, and treated me like an adult even when I was really young, so I knew they hadn't been getting on. — Lisa Snowdon

It'd be tricky to read into my lyrics - some are autobiographical, but sometimes I just like the sound of words. — Max Tundra

But you are never the same once you have acquired the knowledge that there is no self that will not crumble. We are told to learn self-reliance, but it's tricky if you have no self on which to rely. — Andrew Solomon

They were tricky, those demons. Could they be trusted? Of course they could be trusted. She'd created them. She owned them. They wouldn't lead her astray. — Rachel Cohn

Trouble is, finding a girl is still a tricky situation, like choosing a hat." He flips off his hat and sweeps a finger along the edge of the brim. "Like, maybe you've had your eye on a fine-looking French number, but when it finally falls onto your head, it loses its appeal... Or maybe you've been told all your life that bison felts are the only hats worth wearing. And when something different comes along, say alligator suede, even though it's the most worthy thing you've seen in your life, you might leave it in the window"--he taps his chin--"until you realize no other hat will fit just right. — Stacey Lee

It's funny; it's a real balancing act. In TV, everybody's talking about authenticity. In order to make 'Dirty Jobs' authentic, I really can't be overly informed. The minute I am, I become a host ... It's a very tricky business paying a tribute to work, because TV is very bad at it. — Mike Rowe

I would suppose I learned how to write when I was very young indeed. When I read a child's book about the Trojan War and decided that the Greeks were really a bunch of frauds with their tricky horses and the terrible things they did, stealing one another's wives, and so on, so at that very early age, I re-wrote the ending of the Iliad so that the Trojans won. And boy, Achilles and Ajax got what they wanted, believe me. And thereafter, at frequent intervals, I would write something. It was really quite extraordinary. Never of very high merit, but the daringness of it was. — James A. Michener

Childhood is a tricky business. Usually something goes wrong. — Maurice Sendak

I wanted to take my writing to another level. I wanted to write stuff that was personal for real. It's one thing to write a lyric that sounds nice in that line - that's not very tricky - but it's a different thing to write something that sounds nice and actually comes from someplace real. — Tove Styrke

I'd love to thwart the Census form, but I want a constitutional basis for doing it - and here's the tricky thing. I think even constitutional purists would tell you that just because something isn't in the Constitution does not mean the government cannot do it. — Mark Davis

I think the relationship between memory and time is a very deep and tricky one, to tell you the truth. I don't consider memory another sense. I do consider memory that which allows us to think that time flows. — Brian Greene

Most of us came out of Popeye, so turning Popeye into something believable was tricky enough. — Gil Kane

Tricky the paths a long love might follow, like the spiral down twists of a raindrop on a windowpane. — Kevin Barry

You learn that Hollywood has its own rules, sometimes. And it's tricky, and sometimes you can't see what's coming around the corner. — Ice Cube

We're living in a very tricky world, and unless we become analytical and expose the tricknology, people will become sucked into that. It is very easy, it is very, very easy. — Assata Shakur

I felt different, changing. Like today was my day, if I could just figure out how. Like danger, but my danger, sweet tricky urgent luck, tumbling through the air, heads or tails? — Tana French

It becomes tricky, and you start to think about the cramps rather than just actually what you're trying to do on the court, which is obviously win the match. — Andy Murray

People who have never done theatre before, and have only worked in front of a camera, would find it very difficult, I think, to know how to command a stage and work with the logistics of being on stage. They're very different. The theatre is quite tricky, actually. — David Wenham

But that was the thing with anger. That was the tricky thing about pain. Sometimes it was hiding around a corner just waiting to slice you from stomach to throat. — Sunil Yapa

"Simple" is a tricky word, it can mean a lot of things. To us, it just means clear. That doesn't always mean total reduction, or minimalism - sometimes, to make things clearer, you have to add a step. — Jason Fried

When you're younger, it's hard because you're finding your identity, and then for 12 hours out of the day, you have to be a different person. So that's a tricky phase - as far as figuring who you are out and then figuring out the people that you're working with. — Hilarie Burton

Not everybody wants to have the same career. I think what's difficult is when you have two people that do something very, very similar and they both, say, want the limelight. That's very tricky. — Tori Amos

Kilimanjaro is a pretty tricky climb you know, most of it's up until you reach the very very top, and then it tends to slope away rather sharply. — Graham Chapman

Working with kids can be tricky because they can be pretty unpredictable. — Laetitia Casta

Common sense is a very tricky instrument; it is as deceptive as it is indispensable. — Susanne Katherina Langer

That's why it is so dangerous to use infatuation as a sign to pursue a relationship. If you and I don't know the difference between infatuation and love, we are destined to make some of the dumbest and most regrettable decisions we'll ever make. These bad decisions come with heavy and painful price tags. So you see, it's imperative in this tricky business of "falling in love" that we take the time to clearly define what we mean by the word "love." The investment will pay off handsomely. We can actually learn how to avoid future relational baggage and how to recognize authentic love relationships when we clarify two crucial issues: (1) what love is, and (2) what the difference is between love and infatuation. — Chip Ingram

Invisibility was a tricky thing to get right. It had to do with blocking the way people saw you -- with absorbing light instead of reflecting it. — Lesley Howarth

I write in order to understand the images. Being what my agent ... somewhat ruefully calls a language playwright, is problematic because in production, you have to make the language lift off the page. But a good actor can turn it into human speech. I err sometimes toward having such a compound of images that if an actor lands heavily on each one, you never pull through to a larger idea. That's a problem for the audience. But I come to playwriting from the visual world - I used to be a painter. I also really love novels and that use of language. But it's tricky to ask that of the theatre. — Ellen McLaughlin

It's always a tricky thing, trying to make aid sustainable. — Liya Kebede

I think the only thing for me, the tricky thing with the footnotes, is that they are an irritant, and they require a little extra work, and so they either have to be really germane or they have to be kind of fun to read. — David Foster Wallace

Chemistry's a tricky thing, and if I'm not feeling it, I'm not gonna pretend. — Faith Sullivan

The word 'demand' is a tricky word when used by our gender. When used by men, it's part of their vernacular. — Robin Wright

Of course, the tricky thing about these little questions was that, once I started asking them, it was hard to stop. — Jenna Miscavige Hill

When I'm in a tricky situation I often think: 'What would Beyonce do?' It helps. — Laura Carmichael

And last week, when he finally began to erase it, he noticed something very strange: the accent on the letter E was actually formed from a piece of materiel. We all watched as he stared at the letter E for a very long time. Then he slowly unpeeled the rolled-up cloth fro the blackboard and unfurled the biggest pair of polka dot panties anyone in the room had ever seen. — Jennifer Allison

The schematics are a little bit tricky, but once you get it down you're able to really program an entire show. Every song has a lot of different guitar sounds in it, so that's what it is. — Annie E. Clark

There were tiny moments, like this, when the grief came on strong out of nowhere. It was sneaky, and tricky, and you couldn't see it coming until it was already there. It came with the mundane, simple tasks: My mother would never be hanging pink streamers at my shower. I would never lean over to someone and conspiratorially whisper, My mother is crazy. She would never become a grandmother. Laura — Megan Miranda

Trust is a tricky thing. It can bite you hard when you least expect it to. — Steph Campbell

We too often act from scripts generated by the crises of long ago that we've all but consciously forgotten. We behave according to an archaic logic which now escapes us, following a meaning we can't properly lay bare to those we depend on most. We may struggle to know which period of our lives we are really in, with whom we are truly dealing and what sort of behaviour the person before us is rightfully owed. WE can be a little tricky to be around. — Alain De Botton

I think the tricky balance, the most important thing more than the horror is to have a compelling story, compelling drama, a show about great characters that you care about and you want to come back every week to see what they're up to. — Oren Peli

Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt. — Douglas Rushkoff

The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living. — Ann Patchett

When I was preparing for one term's work in the Botvinnik school I had to spend a lot of time on king and pawn endings. So when I came to a tricky position in my own games I knew the winning method. — Garry Kasparov

It was not as good as riding Dancer, but there were places Dancer could not go, and this did not shame Bran the way it did when Hodor carried him in his arms like a baby. Hodor seemed to like it too, though with Hodor it was hard to tell. The only tricky part was doors. Sometimes Hodor forgot that he had Bran on his back, and that could be painful when he went through a door. — George R R Martin

[When I was with the wrong man], it felt like our relationship was a gigantic puzzle - a huge existential and emotional quiz that, if I applied myself to enough, I would solve and gain the result of True Love. After all, the ingredients for us to be the perfect couple were there ... The problem was just that he was unhappy. I knew that. I knew it in my bones. When I found the way the way to make him happy, everything would be fine. He was broken, and I was going to fix him - then the good bit of our relationship would start to happen. We were just in the tricky, early bit of love, where I'd undo all the bad stuff and let him finally be who he was, secretly, inside. Secretly, inside, he did love me. My steadfastness would provide it. If it didn't work, it was simply because I hadn't tried hard enough. — Caitlin Moran

'Toybox' is that kind of game that will stretch your mental capacity by doing very simple things like solving an easy puzzle of shooting aliens. You'll just need to do everything at the same time to make it through alive. Just to make things tricky, the tasks change every week so you can't get used to any set. — Rob Manuel

I think the voice over actually enhances the various moments instead of compensating for something that's lacking. Voice over can be tricky. It can be dangerous because its over used or inappropriately used. I think in this case it informs the story. — Claire Danes

That's the tricky thing these days: being able to surprise people. — Joseph Kosinski

It is a tricky business to know when you should set goals and objectives in order to achieve a focus, and when you would be better off dealing with the acceptance and management of your current reality so you can later step into new directions and responsibilities with greater stability and clarity. Only you will know the answer to that, and only in the moment. — David Allen

Fate is a tricky animal. Those who believe they harness it, often find a difficult beast to master. — Daniel McHugh

We kiss for a long time, a good long time. I don't even notice that it's cold and I forget to be afraid because that's just how good a kisser he is. His lips move above my lips. My lips ache for the touch of him, the softness of his skin. We keep kissing. My hands wrap themselves in his hair. His hand presses me close into him, as close as I can be against him, and he is solid, strong, amazing. My hands leave his hair and journey down to the sides of his face, still tingling.
"We should keep going," he says, voice gruff and husky again. I love when his voice sounds like that, deeper than normal. His lips puff out a little more, too. "You're blushing."
I pull my lips in against each other like I'm still trying to taste him. I move my snowshoes off of his snowshoes. It's tricky.
"You're a good kisser," I say.
"So are you. — Carrie Jones

If the demand for self-knowledge is willed by fate and is refused, this negative attitude may end in real death. The demand would not have come to this person had he still been able to strike out on some promising by-path. But he is caught in a blind alley from which only self-knowledge can extricate him. If he refuses this then no other way is left open to him. Usually he is not conscious of his situation, either, and the more unconscious he is the more he is at the mercy of unforeseen dangers: he cannot get out of the way of a car quickly enough, in climbing a mountain he misses his foothold somewhere, out skiing he thinks he can negotiate a tricky slope, and in an illness he suddenly loses the courage to live. The unconscious has a thousand ways of snuffing out a meaningless existence with surprising swiftness. — C. G. Jung

When I'm following someone, I'm listening to a bear bell strapped to their packs. When I'm leading on a climb, like on a rock, I like to feel my way through it on my own, so I know the tricky moves and where to place gear. — Erik Weihenmayer

Tricky was a plain-faced man with a very handsome voice - a voice like the sound of a clarinet, at once liquid and penetrating, and lovely to listen to. — Sarah Waters

Celebrity is a very tricky area to navigate. — Minnie Driver