Aplomb Foscarini Quotes

Grim grey-cloud morning . . . brightened up, for me at least, by the first review of my new novel, 'Billionaires' Banquet'. A tad early, but the Scottish Review of Books clearly just couldn't wait to share the glad tidings! Phew! Quote: 'Brilliant! . . . a suavely compelling, ceaselessly inventive entertainment . . . delivered with delirious aplomb . . . Butlin is both a master farceur and a merciless satirist.' Will be giving it a nervous first airing tomorrow at the Aye Write festival (treading the boards with the great Carl MacDougall). Fingers crossed, please! ~ Ron Butlin

Anyone watching her would have thought her cold, indifferent, but this was the only way she knew to tackle her deepest troubles, to shoo them aside as if they were a cloud of summer gnats, and deal with the task at hand brusquely and efficiently. Hannah always thought of it as her mother's Englishness, that ability to equalize problems so that a scuffed shoe and an impending disaster were almost equally distasteful, but both were born with aplomb. ~ Laura L. Sullivan

Arousal and embarrassment warred for space inside her, but she managed both with equal aplomb - she was nothing if not an excellent multitasker. How long have you been there? ~ Jill Shalvis

I lift the corner of my sheets.

He shakes his head.

Just for a second?

Shakes it again. / know myself, he says.

I'd heard him use these very same words before. They meant I'm dying to, but may not be able to hold back once I start, so I'd rather not start. What aplomb to tell someone you can't touch him because you know yourself. ~ Andre Aciman

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and jumped when I turned and found Ren's brother standing behind me as a man.
Ren got up, alert, and watched him carefully, suspicious of Kishan's every move. Ren's tail twitched back and forth, and a deep grumble issued from his chest.
Kishan look down at Ren, who had crept even closer to keep an eye on him, and then looked back at me. He reached out his hand, and when I placed mine in it, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it, then bowed deeply with great aplomb. "May I ask your name?"
"My name is Kelsey. Kelsey hayes."
"Kelsey. Well, I, for one, appreciate all the efforts you have made on our behalf. I apologize if I frightened you earlier. I am," he smiled, "out of practice in conversing with young ladies. These gifts you will be offering to Durga. Would you kindly tell me more about them?"
Ren growled unhappily.
I nodded. "Is Kishan your given name?"
"My full name is actually Sohan Kishan Rajaram, but you can call me Kishan if you like." He smiled a dazzling white smile, which was even more brilliant due to the contrast with his dark skin. He offered an arm. "Would you please sit and talk with me, Kelsey?"
There was something very charming about Kishan. I surprised myself by finding I immediately trusted and liked him. He had a quality similar to his brother. Like Ren, he had the ability to set a person completely at ease. Maybe it was their diplomatic training. Maybe it was how their mother raised the ~ Colleen Houck

Aplomb. I had managed to portray myself as a good Jew and, ~ Jon Ronson

My murdered poets drew from deep wells, even if they were presently hidden from me. They spoke the same words as the monks, as the Conquistadores, as our Dictator General, but coaxed a language anew from the charred bones they'd been tossed. I had taken comfort that we had been lying for millennia, erasing whole races of writers, executing texts with aplomb. It wasn't new. And someone had always been pressing hidden words from quill to parchment backed by stone. Whispering them into someone's ear. Even if the parchment was burned and the hand chopped off and thrown into the same fire, the stone remained. Only there were the words legible. ~ Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes

Cooking without remuneration" and "slaving over a hot stove" are activities separated mostly by a frame of mind. The distinction is crucial. Career women in many countries still routinely apply passion to their cooking, heading straight from work to the market to search out the freshest ingredients, feeding their loved ones with aplomb. [...] Full-time homemaking may not be an option for those of us delivered without trust funds into the modern era. But approaching mealtimes as a creative opportunity, rather than a chore, is an option. Required participation from spouse and kids is an element of the equation. An obsession with spotless collars, ironing, and kitchen floors you can eat off of---not so much. We've earned the right to forget about stupefying household busywork. But kitchens where food is cooked and eaten, those were really a good idea. We threw that baby out with the bathwater. It may be advisable to grab her by her slippery foot and haul her back in here before it's too late. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Maisie was next, and stepped up to vote. She wondered how many hands had trembled already today, holding their pencils over the ballots, with all the little boxes. Did most women take to their new, belated right with aplomb, or did they take their time, marveling over the beauty of it all, the silent speech that would be heard?
Or did they think, like she did, that there was a long queue behind her and she had to get to work.
She wrote a thick X, drew over it twice, and dropped the paper in the ballot box.
That's how you spell a shout. With an X. ~ Sarah Jane Stratford

Wicked, to be sure." He repeated the word as though tasting it, his gaze now following her finger's progress. "Perhaps you'd better punish me."


Good Lord, what next? "Punish you, indeed." She advanced her finger just to the base of his erection and stopped. "Suppose I were to walk out of this room and leave you here alone until you remembered your decency. Would that be punishment enough?"


He smiled as though he were teaching her chess and she'd just made a clever move. "Maybe." His eyes came to her face, and wandered in leisurely, thorough fashion down her body and back to her still finger. "Or maybe you ought to touch yourself. Pleasure yourself, and force me to watch."


"Now I know beyond question that you've confused me with someone else." Aplomb had company: his every shameless utterance was waking strange--or not so strange--sensations that spiraled from her core on out. "And I doubt you would take it as punishment, quite."


"Darling, I would take it as torture." Again he twisted against his bonds, so much power at her mercy. "Because you'd taunt me with it, wouldn't you? You'd place yourself where I could nearly reach you. And you'd say things to inflame me, but never touch me at all. I'd have to lie here helpless, watching you give yourself what you won't take from me." He sucked in a breath. "Start now, if you would. ~ Cecilia Grant

He ambled towards the abyss again,
Acquiescing to the adroit turns of his
Abtenauer, his Altai horse, his Appaloosa,
His Ardennais, and his Australian Brumby…..
Agilely each equine adumbrates the aesthetics
Of aestivating, much like aficionados of nature
And much like ailurophiles, too……
Ambrosial aromas attract his attention to the
Assemblage of amaranth foliage growing
At the abyss's edge. "Anglophile!" "Antediluvian!"
"Aplomb!" "Apocryphal!" "Apophenia!" "Apothecary!"
Each petal calls out to him as he captures their vision in his
Aqueous humor. Now an arabesque they display,
Then some archipelago formation, as they (those purple perennials)
Give in to the Wind's whimsy. "What's in my arsenal?" He asks himself.
"Do I have Authenticity, like Astrophysics and Astronomy?"
"Am I at last in my Autumn, torn asunder by Avarice?
Shall I now step toward Winter to wither and waste away, without rebirth?"
The Summer's azure skies call him back, reminding him of his herd.
Homeward he must turn. The pony pushes him back to the plain.
And, as he trudges away from the abyss, the warriors of darkness -
His old battle buddies who left him behind as they raced toward Providence -
Rattle in his mind with their Paleolithic war toys, on the war path, chanting:
"The greatest battles we face are in the silent chambers of our own souls….."


-----from the poem 'Summ ~ Mariecor Ruediger

The earl narrowed his eyes as he hopped off his bay gelding and surveyed the deep green expanse of lawn surrounding the ancestral home. The graceful house, built atop and around an ancient abbey, wore its centuries of accretion with aplomb, as if it had always perched atop this
gentle slope. In the slanting late afternoon sun, the fading red-brick walls glowed. "My God, I hate the country," he said. ~ Jenny Holiday

When you are in love, you are in an aura of aplomb in the midst of adversity. ~ Debasish Mridha

It took me several years of such periods of being alone to learn how to care for myself, at least at table. I came to believe that since nobody else dared feed me as I wished to be fed, I must do it myself, and with as much aplomb as I could muster. Enough of hit-and-miss suppers of tinned soup and boxed biscuits and an occasional egg just because I had failed once more to rate an invitation! ~ Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

The dead man's companions at the counter started to their feet, but halted as Voynod with great aplomb turned to face them. "Take care, you dunghill cocks! Notice the fate of your fellow! He died by the power of my magic blade, which is of inexorable metal and cuts rock and steel like butter. Behold!" And Voynod struck out at a pillar. The blade, striking an iron bracket, broke into a dozen pieces. Voynod stood non-plussed, but the bravo's companions surged forward.

"What then of your magic blade? Our blades are ordinary steel but bite deep!" And in a moment Voynod was cut to bits. The bravos now turned upon Cugel. "What of you? Do you wish to share the fate of your comrade?"
"By no means!" stated Cugel. "This man was but my servant, carrying my pouch. I am a magician; observe this tube! I will project blue concentrate at the first man to threaten me!" The bravos shrugged and turned away. Cugel secured Voynod's pouch, then gestured to the landlord. "Be so good as to remove these corpses; then bring a further mug of spiced wine. ~ Jack Vance

The Just and the unJust inhabiting the same body, so close you can't pry us apart, but we are not friends. He speaks, I edit. He plays, I work. He is famously convivial, I am a recluse. And at the end of the evening, when I'm exhausted and yearning for bed, knowing there's an assignment to complete, he stays on, anything to keep me in the closet a little longer. And when the inevitable question comes, he answers it with aplomb, holding his glass -

Don't mind if I do. ~ Ward Just

Los Angeles is a true postmodern city. Here, we celebrate with equal aplomb the high and the low. I am just as influenced by the punk rock attitude of local skate and surf cultures as I am by old-school glamour and stardust. ~ Liz Goldwyn

Excuse me," Max replied, indignant. "These lacerations and bruises are not because of the men who came to kill me. With my usual aplomb, I have dealt with those scumbags.""Uh-huh. Then what did happen?" "Why do we have to discuss that? Our lives are in danger." Charlie gazed at her sister for a few moments before guessing, "Squirrels again?""They started it!" "It's nice to see that nothing has really changed since we last saw each other. ~ Shelly Laurenston

As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop. ~ Gustave Flaubert

When the Sovereign pushed against me, I bent like Gold should, with grace, with dignity. But now she cuts at me, and beneath the grace, beneath the aplomb, her knife will strike iron. We make for Mars, and for war. ~ Pierce Brown

All the sentences in Madame Bovary could be examined with wonder, but there is one in particular that always stops me in admiration. Flaubert has just shown us Emma at the piano with Charles watching her. He says, "She struck the notes with aplomb and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad, bareheaded and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand."

The more you look at a sentence like that, the more you can learn from it. At one end of it, we are with Emma and this very solid instrument "whose strings buzzed," and at the other end of it we are across the village with this very concrete clerk in his list slippers. With regard to what happens to Emma in the rest of the novel, we may think that it makes no difference that the instrument has buzzing strings or that the clerk wears list slippers and has a piece of paper in his hand, but Flaubert had to create a believable village to put Emma in. It's always necessary to remember that the fiction writer is much less immediately concerned with grand ideas and bristling emotions than he is with putting list slippers on clerks. ~ Flannery O'Connor