Turn Of Phrase Quotes & Sayings

[What a great way to describe how a city takes its unique "shape"...beautiful turn-of-phrase by Kieran Shields(!)]:

"It was a city of slopes, curves, and dips carved by glaciers and now criss-crossed by a network of angled streets and blocks, unfettered by any sense of regularity and uniformity. Portland's maze of cobbled roads was the result of two and a half centuries of fisherman and merchants driven by immediate necessity and that economy of steps that occurs naturally in a place where winters often lasted five months out of the year. — Kieran Shields

Reading is sometimes thought of as a form of escapism, and it's a common turn of phrase to speak of getting lost in a book. But a book can also be where one finds oneself; and when a reader is grasped and held by a book, reading does not feel like an escape from life so much as it feels like an urgent, crucial dimension of life itself. — Rebecca Mead

You know that this vignette and that vignette belong side by side, you know that a certain turn of phrase you've been saving will probably work best within a given section of the narrative. As in a jazz performance, writing lives or dies by what's produced in that moment. But that moment is attended by long preparation. — Teju Cole

I always have a pad of paper and a pencil within reach, to catch on the wing this turn of phrase which strikes me as felicitous, that idea which I hope to be able to examine more closely in the light of day. — Roger Martin

Blake . . . it's inevitable," I said, repeating the words I'd learned. "You've seen it on the horizon. You know what's coming. Paradise is always lost."
"That's a convenient turn of phrase," he said. "But paradise is never lost. Only destroyed. — Heidi Heilig

At these moments I need my reading easy and quick; I need to turn the pages without knowing it. I don't have the bandwidth to wonder about the underlying meaning of the exact word chosen to phrase how one turned around or analyze just why an object was described in a certain — Lauren Leto

And when you write a poem within the accepted poem-form, making it sound like a poem because a poem is a poem is a poem, you are saying "good morning" in that poem, and well, your morals are straight and you have not said SHIT, but wouldn't it be wonderful if you could ... instead of sweating out the correct image, the precise phrase, the turn of a thought ... simply sit down and write the god damned thing, throwing on the color and sound, shaking us alive with the force, the blackbirds, the wheat fields, the ear in the hand of the whore, sun, sun, sun, SUN!; let's make poetry the way we make love; let's make poetry and leave the laws and the rules and the morals to the churches and the politicians; let's make poetry the way we tilt the head back for the good liquor; let a drunken bum make his flame, and some day, Robert, I'll think of you, pretty and difficult, measuring vowels and adverbs, making rules instead of poetry. — Charles Bukowski

To a literate reader, a crisp sentence, an arresting metaphor, a witty aside, an elegant turn of phrase are among life's greatest pleasures. And — Steven Pinker

Which means you have to have a good vocabulary to do magic. And you have to be able to think on your feet. And be brave enough to speak up. And have an ear for a solid turn of phrase. — Rainbow Rowell

What's the matter?" asked the teacher, seeing her bewildered fact.

"Why - why," said Elizabeth Ann, "I don't know what I am at all. If I'm second-grade arithmetic and seventh-grade reading and third-grade spelling, what grade am I?"

The teacher laughed at the turn of her phrase. "you aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school. You're just yourself, aren't you? What difference does it make what grade you're in! And what's the use of your reading little baby things too easy for you just because you don't know your multiplication table? — Dorothy Canfield

Six months ago when she first came up with the idea to kill Wilson, back when she was living in Memphis, she'd started going to church again. Since she was spending so much time thinking about sinister things, the least she could do, she reasoned, was to think about God and his love twice a week at church so that she wouldn't become a total sociopath. And rather than kill other people who were stand-ins for the person she really wanted to kill, like serial killers did, she'd be kind and generous to others and hone in on the one who deserved to die. And her plan had worked extremely well. Since she'd started planning to kill Wilson, and then decided to destroy his family instead, she felt no animosity toward anyone but him. Almost none at all! — Elizabeth Stuckey-French

People don't tend to employ me. I'm the wrong personality type. Or rather, people do tend to employ me for a short time and then they sack me. A film broker once told me, as she terminated my contract, that I have a misleading sort of face.
"You're pretty", she complained. "Your features are symmetrical and there was an article in Grazia that says human beings are programmed to find those with symmetrical features more pleasing to they eye. So this isn't my fault, I was simply responding to a biological imperative. You've even teeth, so when you smile, you look ... sweet, I suppose. But you're not, are you?"
"I hope not," I said.
"You see, there you go again. You're a smart-arse and you've no ability to filter your thoughts
"
"And my thoughts are often abrasive."
"Exactly."
"I'll just get my brushes and sponges and leave."
"If you would. — Marian Keyes

I believe that the creative impulse is natural in all human beings, and that it is particularly powerful in children unless it is suppressed. Consequently, one is behaving normally and instinctively and healthily when one is creating - literature, art, music, or whatever. An excellent cook is also creative! I am disturbed that a natural human inclination [creative work] should, by some Freudian turn of phrase, be considered compulsive - perhaps even pathological. To me this is a complete misreading of the human enterprise. One should also enjoy one's work, and look forward to it daily. — Joyce Carol Oates

Let's suppose that you want to say, "I am a jerk." IN the 18th century, you would have to go around person to person and utter the phrase individually to each one of them. However, here in the third millennium, with our advances in telephone communication, it is possible to say "I am a jerk" to a thousand people at a time by forgetting to turn off your cell phone and having it ring during a performance of Death of a Salesman. — Steve Martin

The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn't worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed. — Jeff Greenfield

Grandma Harken was sharpening her garden shears. Her hands slowed on the file and she said finally, "He'll get in trouble and he'll figure it out. Best to do it without us standing over him. It's the only way anybody ever learns to clean up after themselves. — Ursula Vernon

We can go somewhere more private if you'd like ... Buck I whisper softly in his ear, pulling back almost as slowly as the wicked grin spreads across my face. His perverse smile hides nothing. I have him now, hook, line and zipper. — Dennis Sharpe

Writers are outsiders, and usually not by their own choosing. It's why they're writers. If they didn't feel alienated from human experience, they wouldn't feel so drawn to writing to make sense of their lives. It's not the outsider's facility for language that makes her a writer - many a student body president or homecoming queen can turn a phrase - but her ability to howl at the moon, on the page. — Karen Karbo

Pandora, possessed by the unleashed contents of her box. — Salman Rushdie

Chaler, who had finished his ale, left the cup where it was, making no effort to procure more, indicating that he was capable of what the natural philosopher calls "learning behaviour," which turn of phrase pleases us so much that we cannot resist making use of it. — Steven Brust

You loved me."
It wasn't a question, but he answered it readily. "I do. More than life. My heart. I didn't just pick a sweet turn of phrase to name you, but spoke from my soul when I named you thus. Without my heart I couldn't live. And I couldn't breathe without you."
"Are you a man who has more than one heart?"
"Nay. Only this one. But it's bitter and dark now from the pain I've brought you. — Karen Marie Moning

Bryan finds that appeals to character are effective for adults as well. His team was able to cut cheating in half with the same turn of phrase: instead of "Please don't cheat," they changed the appeal to "Please don't be a cheater." When — Adam M. Grant

The phrase "going to sleep" has always given me great anxiety. I don't like doing things I'm bad at, and I have been told since I was very young that I am a bad sleeper. As soon as I become prone, my head will begin to unpack. My mind will turn on and start to hum, which is the opposite of what you need when you begin to switch off. It is as if I were waiting the whole day for this moment. Trying to go to sleep is often when I feel most engaged and alive. My brain starts to trick me into thinking this is the moment it should turn on and start working overtime. It is a problem. I need some rest. I have a lot to do. — Amy Poehler

What brings us anywhere? You take one turn instead of another, you meet one woman instead of another, you have good health or you don't, luck vies with misfortune, you break down and arrive at Bellevue in your bathrobe on a Saturday morning or - what was his father's antique phrase - you pulled up your socks and got on with things. Your heart adapted to changing times. Your body did. Or it did not and you passed your days in a muffler of regret. And that was what they called intelligent design. — Ward Just

To almost no one's surprise, Astrid said, "Dune, by Frank Herbert. 'I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the Fear has gone there will be nothing.'"
She and Lana together spoke the last phrase of the incantation. "'Only I will remain. — Michael Grant

Solomon counted out the coins very slowly and in silence, and then said, "Are you certain you weren't born Jewish?"
"No," said Dodger. "I've looked. I'm not, but thanks for the compliment. — Terry Pratchett

You said these guys are your cousins? Is that, like, for real? It's, like, not a turn of phrase?"
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Well, I refer to my bluds as cuz, sometimes. Is it like that, or is they real blood relatives?"
"Yes, four of them are cousins. One of them is my twin brother. I'm sure you can guess who."
"Who?"
"Yes."
"No, who?"
"Exactly." The Doctor's gaze was in some far-off place, his voice low and monotone. "He was always the troublesome one. He instigated the rift, cemented the separation. Blabbed to the Beeb. I can never forgive him for that. Never. — Mark Speed

It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor modern, girt about on every side by clocks and chimes...For we are all so busy, and have so many far-off projects to realise, and castles in the fire to turn into solid habitable mansions on a gravel soil, that we can find no time for pleasure trips into the Land of Thought and among the Hills of Vanity. — Robert Louis Stevenson

What happened was that, all unconscious of what this ennui meant, I wearied of the motion, wearied of the jobless seas of alcohol, wearied of the blunt, bluff, hearty, and totally meaningless friendships wearied of wandering through the forests of desperate women, wearied of the work which fed me only in the most brutally literal sense. Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be the only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home, But again, I think I knew, at the very bottom of my heart, exactly what I was doing when I took the boat for France. — James Baldwin

Spring is gray and miserable and rainy for three or four weeks while the snow melts. The ditches turn into creeks and everything you own is clammy as a frog belly. Then one morning, you walk outside and the sun is out and the clover has grown over the ditches and the trees are pointed with leaves, like ten thousand green arrowheads, and the air smells like..." and here he had to fumble for a phrase, "like a roomful of stately ladies and one wet dog. — Josiah Bancroft

Standing at the original Victorian counter was a man in a long black leather coat. His hair had been grown to counteract its unequivocal retreat from the top of his head, and was fashioned into a mean, frail ponytail that hung limply down his back. Blooms of acne highlighted his vampire-white skin. — Julia Stuart

You know why I've survived in this job, year after year, lousy assignment after lousy assignment, with no counseling whatsoever? Because I have a keen appreciation of the ludicrous. Also because I have no choice. — Kage Baker

When in Rome; burn it. — Iain M. Banks

Stories are the collective wisdom of everyone who has ever lived. Your job as a storyteller is not simply to entertain. Nor is it to be noticed for the way you turn a phrase. You have a very important job
one of the most important. Your job is to let people know that everyone shares their feelings
and that these feelings bind us. Your job is a healing art, and like all healers, you have a responsibility. Let people know they are not alone. You must make people understand that we are all the same. — Brian McDonald

The kernels of wheat entered the aperture virtually in single file, as if passing between a thumb and an index finger. To mill any faster risked overheating the stone, which in turn risked damaging the flour. In this fact, Dave explained, lies the origin of the phrase "nose to the grindstone": a scrupulous miller leans in frequently to smell his grindstone for signs of flour beginning to overheat. (So the saying does not signify hard work as much as attentiveness.) A wooden spout at the bottom of the mill emitted a gentle breeze of warm, tan flour that slowly accumulated in a white cloth bag. I leaned in close for a whiff. Freshly milled whole-grain flour is powerfully fragrant, redolent of hazelnuts and flowers. For the first time I appreciated what I'd read about the etymology of the word "flour" -- that it is the flower, or best part, of the wheat seed. Indeed. White flour has little aroma to speak of; this flour smelled delicious. — Michael Pollan

Style, not least, adds beauty to the world. To a literate reader, a crisp sentence, an arresting metaphor, a witty aside, an elegant turn of phrase are among life's greatest pleasures. — Steven Pinker

I suppose I ought to think up some dramatic, quotable phrase for Public Information and the history books, but I'm damned if any of them come to mind. Besides, admitting the truth wouldn't sound too good ( ... ) The truth, Russell, is that now the moment's here, I'm scared shitless. Somehow I don't think even Public Information could turn that into good copy. — David Weber

But it is a very difficult thing to change the future.
The slightest turn of phrase ... action and the human soul.
The future changes direction based on those things. — CLAMP

He was tall and slim and had dark hair and young women found him fascinating.

This sort of thing happens often enough, even with boys as mortal as dirt. There's always one who learned how to brood early and often, and always girls who think they can heal him.

Eventually the girls learn better. Either the hurts are petty little things and they get tired of whining or the hurt's so deep and wide that they drown in it. The smart ones heave themselves back to shore and the slower ones wake up married with a husband who lies around and suffers in their direction. It's part of a dance as old as the jackalopes themselves. — Ursula Vernon

They say some people ' cast a thin shadow', a turn of phrase that fitted my father like a glove. Too weak, too kind, he couldn't even say goodbye to my mother and me when he left. Weak and pathetic, pathetic and sad - that Dad. — Rika Yokomori

Unfortunately, there's still a market for rubbish. I picked up a recently written fantasy book at the weekend, and one character said of another: "He will grow wroth." Oh, my God. And the phrase was in a page of similar jaw-breaking, mock-archaic narrative. Belike, i'faith ... this is the language we use to turn high fantasy into third-rate romantic literature. "Yonder lies the palace of my fodder, the king." That's not fantasy - that's just Tolkien reheated until the magic boils away. — Terry Pratchett

The men were less interesting to look at, but nearly all had that air about them that I could sometimes detect in Will
of wealth and entitlement, a sense that life would settle itself agreeably around them. — Jojo Moyes

With every line he teaches her, the world grows a little wider. She had never known before how words could sing,how a turn of phrase could unlock a window in her mind. — Rosamund Hodge

To be described is to be seduced. Shit. One turn of phrase. One thing noticed that she'd never noticed. It works always. — Dave Eggers

I come from a land afar and a land up high. My abilities are only eclipsed by my excellent turn of phrase and if you open your mind, they could be your abilities too. — Thomas William Shaw

Then I imagine this is how other people feel when they find my pink Post-it. But this one is bright blue and it's written in black Sharpie. It says, You are the silver lining. I love that phrase and the fact that it came from John Milton. "Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud / Turn forth her silver lining on the night?" So somebody out there thinks I'm the bright side of a dark cloud. — Ann Aguirre

I always think incipent miracles surround us, waiting only to see if our faith is strong enough. We won't have to understand it; it will just work, like a beating heart, like love. Really, no matter how frightened and discouraged I may become about the future, I look forward to it. In spite of everything I see all around me every day, I have a shaky assurance that everything will turn out fine. I don't think I'm the only one. Why else would the phrase "everything's all right" ease a deep and troubled place in so many of us? We just don't know, we never know so much, yet we have such faith. We hold our hands over our hurts and lean forward, full of yearning and forgiveness. It is how we keep on, this kind of hope. — Elizabeth Berg

Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phrase, not current as far as I know in the language of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging suspicion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if I had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. — James Baldwin

Pleased as punch. That's an odd-sounding turn of phrase, isn't it? How can a punch be pleased? It's punch. Rum and lemons and such. And if it's the other sort of punch they mean, a punch in the face- well that doesn't sound very pleasing at all, does it? — Gail Dayton

I was obsessed with country music when I was a kid, and it's definitely had a huge influence on the way I write songs. I was always attracted to songs that had a brilliant pun or a clever turn of phrase, but came from a dark, bitter place. As a writer, I've always gravitated towards that feeling. — Teddy Thompson

The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That's why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be. — Gore Vidal

Until the thirst for power parched his throat, he was a fearless and noble lord. — Lloyd Alexander

If I hear an interesting turn of phrase on TV, I'll repeat it back - I just like to roll it around on my tongue. The same goes for dialog: I'll either speak it aloud or whisper it. I definitely sit in front of my computer and mutter. People have mentioned it. — Terence Winter

Thomas Teal, a luminous translator of Jansson's twin talent for surface and depth, simplicity and reverberation in language, and someone who knows exactly how to convey her gift for sensing the meaning embedded in the most mundane act or turn of phrase. — Ali Smith

Of course," said Mik, without missing a beat. "However, as cool a word as samurai is, I don't think it's what we really mean. We just want to be able to kick ass, right?" "Well, definitely don't phrase it that way. We'd probably just become highly skilled at kicking people in the ass. Don't turn your back on them," she intoned. "They never miss. — Laini Taylor

A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place. — Mary Wollstonecraft

That was the first time a younger girl who looked dashing in glasses had said something like that to me. Well, that phrasing suggests that this was the first time that someone who was a girl; my junior; and also good-looking in glasses had said something like that. That's a bit of a misleading turn of phrase. Allow me to correct myself. That was the first time I had heard something like that from a girl who looked good in glasses, or from a girl who was my junior, or from a girl who was a xenor. Heck, no girl has ever taken an interest in me, as far as I can remember. — Torii Nagomu

Taste speaks through a turn of phrase, a curl of the lip, a shrug of the shoulder: it makes an atmosphere. — Irving Howe

Being surrounded by toadies does not mean you are respected; it means you are the head toad. — Jo Goodman

Al shook his head. "Honestly," he said. "How can you use such things?"
Mary Frances finished her thought. Use was an interesting word, the word for tools, talents, whores. She wanted to say, At least I'm using something, but she looked at his face, and she couldn't. — Ashley Warlick

I need you to get inside Wayne's head. I need someone who thinks a bit left field and in your own unpleasant way, Helen Walsh, you're a genius.
He had a point. I'm lazy and illogical. I've limited people skills. I'm easily bored and easily irritated. But I have moments of brilliance. They come and they go and I can't depend on them but they do happen. — Marian Keyes

A man who can seduce with a turn of phrase will not disappoint in the bedroom. — Adriana Trigiani

But Onar turned out to be a poor lover, certainly the worst of Yoke's
few partners thus far. Onar stinted on the foreplay, made a long messy
fuss of his prophylactic preparations, and was up for at most sixty
seconds of actual coitus. As a final turn-off, Onar said something British
when he came, something like "Cor blimey," or "Top drawer," or "Bit of
all right" - Yoke's outraged brain disdained to retain the phrase. — Rudy Rucker

The only talents he possessed were delusions of adequacy. — Jodi Taylor

You have to have a good vocabulary to do magic. And you have to be able to think on your feet. And be brave enough to speak up. And have an ear for a solid turn of phrase. And you have to actually understand what you're saying - how the words translate into magic. — Rainbow Rowell

After all, if you're going to kick authority in the teeth, it helps to have a manic smile on your face and a middle finger outstretched. Or, at the very least, armed with an ironic turn of phrase. Just ask any well meaning punk. Or Bob Dylan. — Unknown

I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory — Diane Ackerman

Jack watched Tara glide around the dance floor with the best man, a knot of jealousy threatening to strangle him. Just the phrase 'best man' raised his ire. Who had come up with that turn of phrase anyway? — Dawn M. Turner

Middlemarch offers what George Eliot calls, in a wonderfully suggestive turn of phrase, "the home epic"- the momentous, ordinary journey traveled by most of us who have not even thought of aspiring to sainthood. The home epic has its own nostalgia - not for a country left behind but for a childhood landscape lost. — Rebecca Mead