Quotes & Sayings About Understated

Sam Temple kept a lower profile. He stuck to jeans and understated T-shirts, nothing that drew attention to himself. He had spent most of his life in Perdido Beach, attending this school, and everybody knew who he was, but few people were quite sure what he was. He was a surfer who didn't hang out with surfers. He was bright, but not a brain. He was good-looking, but not so that girls thought of him as a hottie.
The one thing most kids knew about Sam Temple was that he was School Bus Sam. He'd earned the nickname when he was in seventh grade. The class had been on the way to a field trip when the bus driver had suffered a heart attack. They'd been driving down Highway 1. Sam had pulled the man out of his seat, steered the bus onto the shoulder of the road, brought it safely to a stop, and calmly dialed 911 on the driver's cell phone.
If he had hesitated for even a second, the bus would have plunged off a cliff and into the ocean.
His picture had been in the paper. — Michael Grant

The Stockholm street style is distinctive, with ensembles that exemplify the city's understated elegance. — Aslaug Magnusdottir

Mirabelle? Mirabelle Bevan? Well, I'll be blowed!"
Mirabelle started, almost spilling her drink. It took her a moment to realize who the handsome man was, now his hair was greying at the edges and he was out of uniform. Puffing laconically on a cigarette, martini in hand, he wore a lounge suit and an understated silk tie with a discreet regimental insignia woven into the fabric.
"Eddie," she smiled. "What are you doing here? — Sara Sheridan

So many great truths must be very gently introduced, with voices soft and the truths themselves understated. — Neale Donald Walsch

They whirled around in the light dance of a duchess entering a ball - majestic yet understated - a spiraling splash of purity of color that took shape under nature's watch. A newly-sculpted garden burst forth, glistening in an afternoon sun. It welcomed the dusty pink rose, who stood beside its fellows, basked themselves in their own serenity of white, triumphant red, or cheery yellow. It swayed in the breath of a wind, caressing each and becoming more. It was a mixture of quiet and thunderous, light and dark, shyness and boldness. It was a mixture of the quiet strength and overwhelming courage that the human soul might wish to one day possess. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

I've always gone for the more understated look. — Nancy Reagan

Glamour to me is about remaining graceful and understated. — Kate Winslet

The importance of momentum in your organization cannot be understated! — Miles Anthony Smith

We all recall what is or was important to us and are astonished when it slips other people's minds. Perhaps we dismiss as irrelevant matters of crucial concern to those we love. That's life as most of us experience it, and which few movies document with such understated acuity as 'Boyhood' does. — Richard Corliss

The bigger the canvas, the better I do. I'm not so good at understated, kitchen-sink kinds of parts. — Christopher Reeve

Fuck, he'd looked good. Really good. All golden-boy California hotness, big and blond and sexy as fuck. With those soulful brown eyes - surprising on a blond guy. It's an understated sexiness, though. Jamie Canning never flaunted his looks in all the time I'd known him. Sometimes I think he's not even aware of how goddamn attractive he is. — Sarina Bowen

My life had a tendency to spread, get flabby, to scroll and festoon like the frame of a baroque mirror, which came from following the line of least resistance. I wanted my death, by contrast, to be neat and simple, understated, even a little severe, like a Quaker church or the basic black dress with a single strand of pearls ... — Margaret Atwood

It is greatly understated to compare humans to an absorbent sponge, a glowing fuse; they are each an innumerable harmony, a living self that has an effect on all of the forces that surround them. — Johann Gottfried Herder

When his eyes land on me, something about his expression changes - like he recognizes me from somewhere, too. I look back, appraising him quickly. He's kind of beautiful, in an understated, comfortable-looking way - the kind of guy who doesn't mind seeing a rom-com with you and gives you his hoodie when you're cold. — Emery Lord

The writer of 'The Red Road,' Aaron Guzikowski, deserves the credit. The fact that the dialogue is so understated is what makes this show so appealing, especially as an actor. — Martin Henderson

She was a damn good kisser, maybe the best I'd ever had the immense pleasure of kissing. It helped that her lips were like pillows and she tasted sweet. Not like strawberries or peaches. Sunshine and sweet - her own brand of it. Plus there was desperation in the kiss, an understated but raw passion I couldn't recall ever experiencing before.
Or maybe that had been me. Maybe I'd been the passionate, desperate one. No matter. Either way, she'd stolen my breath, robbed me of thought and sense. She was a master thief, and I loved her for it. — Penny Reid

He's wearing black jeans and an amazingly hot black biker jacket over a white T-shirt.His normally casual bedhead is not perfectly styled bedhead. He also has light blue skin, but his tattoo are understated, just dots in a straight line that go ear from ear, crossing the bridge of his nose. He props himself against the doorway, and my head goes blank.
"I like the viney things you have going on there."
I clear my throat because it has suddenly gone dry.
"Thanks. You look very ... " I trail off because i almost said elf-a-licious — Leah Rae Miller

Of course one's sense of identification with the nation is inflected by all kinds of particulars, including one's class, race, gender, and sexual identification. ... But [regarding] national character ... , aside from references to a national aesthetic - literary, musical, and choreographic, there are two poles I reference: minimalist and maximalist. I love them both - the cryptic poems of Emily Dickinson folded up in tiny packets and hidden away in a box, the sparse, understated choreographies of Merce; but also the "trashy, profane and obscene" poems of Whitman and Ginsberg, [and] Martha Graham's expressionism. I am, myself, a minimalist. But I love distortion guitar and the wild exhibitionism of so many American artists. Also, these divisions are false. Emily Dickinson, in fact, can be as trashy and obscene as the best of them! Anyway, Dickinson and Whitman are at the heart of this narrative. They are the Dancing Queen and the Guitar Hero. — Barbara Browning

In Advance of All Parting is a tough, unsentimental examination of marital grief. Musically elegant and inventive, understated and passionate, the poems give us a profound glimpse into how the events of a life can form a center of gravity that fixes the self in its force field. Theres a cold, truth-telling clarity about them that makes them as unsettling as they are beautiful. Ansie Baird has created a richly-drawn world in which this elemental drama plays out, and the result is vivid, startling poems in which pain has left its indelible tracks. — Chase Twichell

The window gave onto a view of dove-gray roofs and balconies, each one containing the same cracked flowerpot and sleeping feline. It was as if the entire city of Paris had agreed to abide by a single understated taste. Each neighbor was doing his or her own to keep up standards, which was difficult because the French ideal wasn't clearly delineated like the neatness and greenness of American lawns, but more of a picturesque disrepair. It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I love Buster Keaton and I love physical comedy when it's done in an emotionally understated way. I just like to play it, and I need the attention. — Demetri Martin

You do care, you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it all. — J.K. Rowling

Gabbe stepped forward. "Cam's right. I've heard the Scale speak of these shifts." She was tugging on the sleeves of her pale yellow cashmere cardigan as if she would never get warm. "They're called timequakes. They are ripples in our reality."
"And the closer he gets," Roland added, with his usual understated wisdom, "the closer we are to the terminus of his Fall, the more frequent and the more severe the timequakes will become. Time is faltering in preparation for rewriting itself."
"Like the way your computer freezes up more and more frequently before the hard drive crashes and erases your twenty-page term paper?" Miles said. Everyone looked at him in befuddlement. "What?" he asked. "Angels and demons don't do homework? — Lauren Kate

The role of race cannot be understated in an era of fervent social Darwinism. For decades the Balkans had enacted in microcosm the racial hatreds at great-power level. In consequence the Balkan states were likely, indeed expected, periodically to blow a head gasket over racial and religious differences and threaten a major confrontation by dragging their powerful sponsors into the local mess. — Paul Ham

Even the most understated ceremony involves a certain respect for ritual and pageantry. No one plays more of a significant role than the bride's attendants. — Vera Wang

The importance of knowing for certain that you have been saved cannot be understated. We do not know how many days, hours, or minutes God has granted us here to have an opportunity to make a choice. — Kimberly McRae

People that complete other people's vision are understated. — Bjork

Let's just say that my father is a very powerful man."
"That's a little understated, don't you think? ... You know, seeing how he's the Grim fucking Reaper. — Larissa Ione

The Japanese have become so smitten with the Western condiment - its texture as silky as a kimono, its tang as understated as the tang of Zen - that today they have a word for mayonnaise junkie: mayora. — Tom Robbins

My style is understated because everything I wear, I want it to have an effortless feel to it. I always want to be comfortable in my clothes and feel like myself, but I like to usually throw in some edge in there somewhere, even just with a leather jacket. But overall, always gotta keep it classy! — Tori Kelly

Haydon was more than his model, he was his inspiration, the torch-bearer of a certain kind of English calling which - for the very reason that it was vague and understated and elusive - had made sense of Guillam's life till now. — John Le Carre

Hugh Grant does a great job with his style. Somehow understated yet timeless and seems to get it. He does it on and off camera. — David Lauren

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said. — Jim Rohn

The boss had a long list of reasons for letting me go
most of which, I am ashamed to admit, were generously understated. It's true, for instance, that I hogged the photocopier for hours on end and snapped at whoever politely
deferentially
inquired about how much longer I would be. I was intent on achieving definitively sooty, penumbral effects to ensure that copies looked like copies, and that, of course, took time. Some days I spent entire afternoons reproducing blank sheets of paper, ream after ream, to use instead of the "FROM THE DESK OF
" notepads the boss kept ordering for each of us. — Gary Lutz

I visit the Swiss parliament building, a building that manages to be grand and ornate yet at the same time understated. Every nation has its iconic figures, statues that neatly sum up what the nation is all about: the Marines hoisting the flag at Iwo Jima; Lord Nelson, looking regal, in London's Trafalgar Square. The Swiss have someone known as Nicholas the Reconciler. His statue is on display here. He has an arm outstretched, palm facing downward, as if to say, "Calm down, everyone; let's talk about this rationally." It's very Swiss. — Eric Weiner

So Pabrai added the following checkpoint to his list: when analysing a company, stop and confirm that you've asked yourself whether the revenues might be overstated or understated due to boom or bust conditions. — Atul Gawande

Well, let's start with the maxim that the best writing is understated, meaning it's not full of flourishes and semaphores and tap dancing and vocabulary dumps that get in the way of the story you are telling. Once you accept that, what are you left with? You are left with the story you are telling.
The story you are telling is only as good as the information in it: things you elicit, or things you observe, that make a narrative come alive; things that support your point not just through assertion, but through example; quotes that don't just convey information, but also personality. — Gene Weingarten

Some men find the cool, disinterested, and understated attractive. Makes them think you're deep. — J.D. Robb

Overstated planning is the backbone of understated elegance. — Molly O'Neill

There's one thing about Black Sabbath which should not be understated: If Black Sabbath is missing any one of its members it's no longer Black Sabbath. — Henry Rollins

He had that certain confidence in his bearing, that democratic interest in his surroundings, and that understated presumption of friendliness that are only found in young men who have been raised in the company of money and manners. It didn't occur to people liek this that they might be unwelcome in a new environment - and as a result they rarely were. — Amor Towles

Throughout his career, W.G. Sebald wrote poems that were strikingly similar to his prose. His tone, in both genres, was always understated but possessed of a mournful grandeur. — Teju Cole

I'm not over the top; I'm not wacky. I'm fairly understated, and that reflects in the way I sing. — Sade Adu

I'm designing what I want. If it's a man's coat with a pair of skinny-leg jeans, I'll do that. It's whatever my mood is. But it's about style, and it's about an understated taste that's cool. — Ralph Lauren

The casting of 'Slumdog Millionaire' is a dream. Anil Kapoor, as the sleazy TV host, diamonds winking in his earlobes, has never been better; the quietly understated Irrfan Khan turns in another bravura performance as the police inspector whose questioning brings out Jamal's story. — Shashi Tharoor

Where are you going?"
"My God, you're like the plague."
"A masterfully crafted, powerfully understated, and epic parable of timeless moral resonance? Why, thank you. That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me," he said.
"The disease, Noah. Not the book."
"I'm ignoring that qualification. — Michelle Hodkin

The award for the most understated booth at AWE went to Occipital, a company that Ars learned about in 2014 when it released the Structure Sensor, a Kickstarter-backed light scanner that could be attached to an iPad for 3D scans of the world around you. Outside — Anonymous

If I could, I'd take the food and art of Italy, for example, couple it with the quiet, understated personality of France and the orderliness of Germany, the cinematic and literary wit of Britain, and blend it into one utopian, and ultimately dystopian, probably, civilization. — Tsh Oxenreider

What is classical music if not the epitome of sensuality, passion, and understated erotica that popular music, even with all of its energy and life, cannot even begin to touch? — Lara St. John

In hindsight, though, I might have overdone it by adding that flour, which means before I depart for Abigail's cottage I need to tidy up this room." "If you're moving out, I'm moving with you," Thaddeus said, slipping up beside Millie and taking hold of her hand. Elizabeth was the next to move. She reached out and put her arm around Millie's middle, leaning in to rest her head against Millie's side. "I'm coming too," she said as she snuggled closer right as Millie smiled and placed a quick kiss on top of Elizabeth's paste-covered head. Everett's heart immediately took to the unusual act of lurching, no doubt due to the sight of Millie's understated affection. Ladies of society always made a big production out of kissing their children when company was present, but Millie . . . Her kiss had been the real thing, a show of regard for a child who'd caused her no small amount of trouble. Expecting — Jen Turano

My early novels were very understated and English. Fourteen years ago, I met and married my American husband, and as I learned more about his background and culture, I became interested in using American voices. — Laurie Graham

It was typical George Stout: detailed, timely, and understated. Here was a man that was never hurried. Who was careful. Punctual. Precise. An expert and a precisionist makes his analysis first, he always said, then his decision. — Robert M. Edsel

Exceptional is too understated for you. I'll have to search for a better word. (Carlos) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I like to live life in an understated way because that's who I am - an ordinary guy who has experienced an extraordinary journey. — Simon Weston

Kabuki is the way that I so often write; Noh is how I would write if I were more 'spiritual,' more understated, or perhaps just older. — William T. Vollmann

It is precisely in that relationship to the Reader that you will find most of the classic faults of style: pretension, condescension, servility, obscurantism, grandiosity, vulgarity, and the like
even academicism. That's why most faults of style can be described in language relevant to human relations. Is your style frank and open ... does it have some understated agenda ... is it out to prove something it does not or cannot admit ... is it trying to impress ... show off ... is it kissing up ... groveling ... maybe just a tad passive-aggressive, with a mumbling half-audible voice that is unwilling to explain ... is it trying to convince ... overwhelm ... help ... seduce ... give pleasure ... inflict pain ... There is no area of the writer's work that is more responsive to the psychology of human connection than style. — Stephen Koch

The torpedo launch console has big square plastic buttons - Flood Tube, Open Shuttle, Ready to Fire - that flash red or green, like something Q would have built into James Bond's Aston Martin. The missile compartment has similarly retro-looking panels of buttons. They provided the setup for one of the more quotable things Murray said to me - a line that, were fewer precautions in place, could have joined "Houston, we've had a problem" or "Watch this" in the pantheon of understated taglines for calamity: "I wouldn't lean on that. — Mary Roach

My acting's very understated. I think my sad and happy don't play that differently onscreen. — Bret McKenzie

Perseverance is a virtue that cannot be understated. — Bob Riley

Understated jewellery is not for me. It's too itsy-bitsy. My husband is lucky, as I've never had a yen for real jewels. — Iris Apfel

My affection for you does not depend on those small things.'
Affection? To hear him admit it, to actually utter words of love, however understated, astonished me. — Peter Goldsworthy

Real life is - quieter, more understated. No one is backlot and nothing has a soundtrack and no one has someone cleverer than them writing their lines. And so they just say nothing and get on with it. More's the pity, if you ask me, I quite like the idea of my own soundtrack. — Matthew Crow

She doesn't even seem to have a clue that she holds an understated beauty that makes every man in this airport give her a once-over. Damn, I want to get her out of here so no one else can look at my woman. My cock twitches as I think about what I'm going to give her so she knows she's mine. — Frankie Love

Whenever I'm in sync with the trends, it's always an accident. I still love wearing clothes I've had for ten years. I think understated luxury is the chicest thing. — Padma Lakshmi

Nobody is here without a reason ... I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy - from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated - but I always
wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it. — Lily Tomlin

What I like about Yves Saint Laurent Black Opium is that it's an understated scent that's somehow familiar. — Edie Campbell

I think it's so much sexier to be understated. It's more intriguing to be sexy in a less obvious way. — Emma Watson

Part of our brand is that we're pretty understated in what we do. If you look at other technology companies, they might preannounce things, and it will be a couple years before they really happen, and they don't happen in the way they said they would. — Larry Page

I think spending a lot of time with my mom, who's a talker and a storyteller, and my dad, who has kind of a soft-spoken, understated sense of humor, I think that's how I became what I am, which is sort of an understated storyteller. — Mike Birbiglia

Chelsea was about as understated as a jackhammer. — Kimberly Derting

You don't need a sex scene to have romance! My favorite kind of romance is the understated tension of unconfessed (and certainly unconsumated) love. I think it's always more addicting to read about people who I wish would get together than to read about people who already 'been there done that'. — R.A. White

An elegant simplicity is an understated, organic aesthetic that contrasts with the excess of consumerist lifestyles. Drawing from influences ranging from Zen to the Quakers, it celebrates natural materials and clean, functional expressions, such as are found in many of the hand-made arts and crafts from this community. — Duane Elgin

Explain me to myself, you'll make me choke on my lunch. Feel sympathy for me, I'll puke monkey blood on your understated shoes. — Don DeLillo

Stand by a moment while I take my place, in this universe of understated grace, and in the mirror of my eyes, behold your face. — Alida Van Braeden

A child's bond to her mother cannot be understated, and my bond with Helen was a ragged, baffling, disheartening, chaotic mess. I felt crazy, often, around my own mother. I grew up questioning what was normal, asking what reality was and wasn't, and not trusting the outcome of different situations. She scared me and I couldn't predict her behavior, so I was often off-kilter and worried. — Cathy Lamb

Baseball endures at least in part because it is a contemplative sport that delights in nuances. Not a brazen game, eager to sell its thrills cheaply, but rather an understated affair that must be courted if its to be loved. — Kenneth Turan