Be Blunt Quotes

I am like God, Codi? Like GOD? Give me a break. If I get another letter that mentions SAVING THE WORLD, I am sending you, by return mail, a letter bomb. Codi, please. I've got things to do.

You say you're not a moral person. What a copout. Sometime, when I wasn't looking, something happened to make you think you were bad. What, did Miss Colder give you a bad mark on your report card? You think you're no good, so you can't do good things. Jesus, Codi, how long are you going to keep limping around on that crutch? It's the other way around, it's what you do that makes you who you are.

I'm sorry to be blunt. I've had a bad week. I am trying to explain, and I wish you were here so I could tell you this right now, I am trying to explain to you that I'm not here to save anybody or any thing. It's not some perfect ideal we're working toward that keeps us going. You ask, what if we lose this war? Well, we could. By invasion, or even in the next election. People are very tired. I don't expect to see perfection before I die. Lord, if I did I would have stuck my head in the oven back in Tucson, after hearing the stories of some of those refugees. What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, "What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off ~ Barbara Kingsolver

It's the truth. I'm sorry to be blunt about it, but girls don't like guys who are doormats. Especially pretty girls, because there's no novelty in it. Guys are hitting on them all of the time. They can't walk down the street or order a coffee or stand on a corner without some idiot making a comment about how attractive they are. And the women smile because it's easier than telling them to go fuck themselves. And less dangerous, because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her. ~ Karin Slaughter

The politician is ... trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him. ~ Edward R. Murrow

He knew he could force the issue. Be blunt. But in getting his way, he would have to watch the bright light go out of her eyes. He would see her slim shoulders slump and know he was the cause. Damn it all to hell, he didn't think he could stand that.
Yet another testament to how bad he had it for her. Women, he thought with a sigh. What had God been thinking? ~ Susan Mallery

We're becoming a planet of a thousand new major cities. The economy of the 21st century is a city-building economy. It's within our power to make it a carbon zero one, too; and to be blunt, civilization depends on our success. ~ Alex Steffen

[T]he hyphenation question is, and always has been and will be, different for English immigrants. One can be an Italian-American, a Greek-American, an Irish-American and so forth. (Jews for some reason prefer the words the other way around, as in 'American Jewish Congress' or 'American Jewish Committee.') And any of those groups can and does have a 'national day' parade on Fifth Avenue in New York. But there is no such thing as an 'English-American' let alone a 'British-American,' and one can only boggle at the idea of what, if we did exist, our national day parade on Fifth Avenue might look like. One can, though, be an Englishman in America. There is a culture, even a literature, possibly a language, and certainly a diplomatic and military relationship, that can accurately be termed 'Anglo-American.' But something in the very landscape and mapping of America, with seven eastern seaboard states named for English monarchs or aristocrats and countless hamlets and cities replicated from counties and shires across the Atlantic, that makes hyphenation redundant. Hyphenation - if one may be blunt - is for latecomers. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The phone rang. It was a familiar voice.

It was Alan Greenspan. Paul O'Neill had tried to stay in touch with people who had served under Gerald Ford, and he'd been reasonably conscientious about it. Alan Greenspan was the exception. In his case, the effort was constant and purposeful. When Greenspan was the chairman of Ford's Council of Economic Advisers, and O'Neill was number two at OMB, they had become a kind of team. Never social so much. They never talked about families or outside interests. It was all about ideas: Medicare financing or block grants - a concept that O'Neill basically invented to balance federal power and local autonomy - or what was really happening in the economy. It became clear that they thought well together. President Ford used to have them talk about various issues while he listened. After a while, each knew how the other's mind worked, the way married couples do.

In the past fifteen years, they'd made a point of meeting every few months. It could be in New York, or Washington, or Pittsburgh. They talked about everything, just as always. Greenspan, O'Neill told a friend, "doesn't have many people who don't want something from him, who will talk straight to him. So that's what we do together - straight talk."

O'Neill felt some straight talk coming in.

"Paul, I'll be blunt. We really need you down here," Greenspan said. "There is a real chance to make lasting changes. We could be a team at the key moment, t ~ Ron Suskind

There is something discordant about a team of speechwriters and political operatives hammering away to create an image of the 'real, inner' candidate. And, to be blunt, there is no necessary connection between a moving life experience and the skills necessary for leadership. ~ Jeff Greenfield

Most historical accounts were written by fallible scholars, using incomplete or biased resource materials; written through the scholars' own conscious or unconscious predilections; published by textbook or printing companies that have a stake in maintaining a certain set of beliefs; subtly influenced by entities of government and society - national administrations, state education departments, local school boards, etcetera - that also wish to maintain certain sets of beliefs. To be blunt about it, much of the history of many countries and states is based on delusion, propaganda, misinformation, and omission. ~ James Alexander Thom

Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived. ~ George Saunders

John, I'll be blunt. You truly cannot afford the luxury of even one negative thought. ~ Robin S. Sharma

I want to be blunt: We should not be fighting about equal pay for equal work, and access to birth control, in 2012. These issues were resolved years ago - until the Republicans brought them back. ~ Elizabeth Warren

Ren, that was very beautiful."
His eyes turned to my face. He smiled and reached a hand up to touch my cheek. My pulse quickened, and my face felt hot where he touched it. I became suddenly away that my fingers were still twined in his hair, and my hand was resting on his chest. I quickly removed them and twisted them in my lap. He sat up slightly, leaning on one hand, which brought his beautiful face very close to mine. His fingers moved down to my chin and, with the lightest touch, he tilted my face so that my eyes met his intense blue ones.
"Kelsey?"
"Yes?" I whispered.
"I would like permission…to kiss you."
Whoa. Red alert! The comfortable feeling I was enjoying with my tiger just a few minutes before had disappeared. I became acutely nervous and prickly. My perspective swung 180 degrees. I was, of course, aware that a man's heart beat inside the tiger's body, but, somehow, I'd shifted that knowledge to the back of my mind.
Awareness of the prince burst into my conscious mind. I stared at him, astonished. He was, well, to be blunt, he was out of my league. I'd never even considered the possibility of a relationship with him, other than friendship.
His question forced me to acknowledge that my comfortable pet tiger was actually a virile, robust example of masculinity. My heart started hammering against my ribcage. Several thoughts went through my head all at once, but the dominant thought was that I would very much like to be kissed by Re ~ Colleen Houck

I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love ... I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world. ~ Sylvia Plath

The American people frankly have been, over many, many years - to be blunt - fat, dumb and happy. If they want their children to compete with children in India, China or Korea, they better get them a far better education. ~ Eli Broad

My frustration grew. "What. Happened."
Her eyes popped open as she exclaimed, "Nothing."
… Pinching the bridge of my nose, I said, "Rhion, sweetheart, I'm going to be blunt here. I know what it feels like to have you riding me. I'm gonna say that's a hellova lot more than nothing. ~ Aly Martinez

So my words of positivity. Let me be blunt. It's gonna get really bad! I know what's coming and I wish I didn't. Why I have been advocating for people who just won't believe how bad it is gonna get. IT IS NOT POLITICAL! But I am here. YOU ARE TOO. I am looking at you in the eye. YOU WILL BE OKAY! Just STAY HOME! Put your affairs in order and ride this thing out. There IS a life after this for most of us. WE will all be a different person than we are today but that is okay! KNOW THAT! Experience changes us. Mold us. Make us who we are. YOU WILL BE FINE! WE are stronger together. What we need right now is LOVE. I'm that really liberal Cristian. I am ordained actually. ALL I say LOVE Thy Neighbor! Be kind after this and love and accept love back! Don't be proud. Accept help! There is a life after this! ~ Johnny Corn

Time, though infinite, is paradoxically also short, and, to be blunt, getting shorter. ~ James Treadwell

When it comes to diamonds, there is one power which they possess without a doubt, and that is the power to make people kill." "Are you talking about Mr. Collicutt?" I asked. "To be blunt, yes. Which is why I want you to keep well away from the church. Let me deal with it. That's why I'm in Bishop's Lacey. It's my job." "Is it?" I asked. "I should have thought it Inspector Hewitt's." "There are more things in heaven and earth than Inspector Hewitt," Adam said. "May I ask you one question?" I said, screwing up my courage. "You may try." "Who are you working for?" The air between ~ Alan Bradley

I guess I don't like the people in politics very much, to be blunt. ~ Nate Silver

Again I ask permission to be blunt." "Ambassador Abumwe, at this point I cannot imagine you being otherwise. ~ John Scalzi

Now for positivity. The Greatest Generation freed our Jewish brothers and sisters from horrors we can not even imagine. All we are asked to do is stay home. Kinda put things into prospective. Now for me to be blunt. This is a pandemic. It's going to get a lot worse. BUT know this. It does get better. SO do you part. Stay in. Order take away. DO TIP!!! Do you! Listen a great song, watch some comedy, listen to a podcast. Just take this seriously and you likely will live! ~ Johnny Corn

Every time they come close they get a shock when they find he is not rigidly Religious as they assumed. On the contrary he is a free spirited spontaneous bird who can accept as well as challenge any set of random beliefs. He is not confined by your ideal character and goodie talks that follow it. He can be open, He can be blunt, yet he knows Love is always at the forefront. ~ Rabjot Singh

There are rumors about the depraved and perverted practices of the pulchritudinous protestant puritan plutocratic penis-people priesthood, of shadowy bacchanalian polyamorous practices ... I suspect, to be blunt, someone was blackmailing him. ~ Charles Stross

Be hard.
Be blunt.
Don't water down
your soul.
Be real.
Be yourself.
Don't change for
the audience.
Take on
the world.
Don't flow
with the tide. ~ Avijeet Das

I do not enjoy the promotional side of being a writer, to be blunt about it. Even with the little amount that is expected of me, which is nothing compared to the life of an artist. Writers can live in obscurity and come out of the woodwork with a book, then go back in. Artists don't have that luxury. ~ Rachel Kushner

Sometimes you just have to be blunt and say, 'I rock. ~ Sylvia Day

Foreigners are mystified by the whole business while thoughtful Americans – there are several of us – are equally mystified that the ruling establishment of the country has proved to be so mindlessly vindictive that it is willing, to be blunt, to overthrow the lawful government of the United States – that is, a president elected in 1992 and reelected in 1995 by We the People, that sole source of all political legitimacy, which takes precedence over the Constitution and the common law and God himself. ~ Gore Vidal

The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow. ~ Claudia Rankine

I don't think I picked up the guitar in the first place as a way of getting women. There are probably better ways of doing it. ~ James Blunt

Anything I had to say seemed shallow beside the depth of his grief. Words are awkward tools at best, too blunt for delicate tasks. ~ Mark Lawrence

I have a forgiveness weakness in me that I hate because it means I'd probably forgive the man who removed my heart with a blunt knife if he said he needed it more than me. ~ Trent Dalton

I am fluent in snark.
Bethany only notices snark when snark grabs her off the sidewalk, throws her in the back of a sketchy van with tinted windows, drives to the middle
of the Meadow-lands in the dead of night, and uses a heavy blunt instrument
to smack her repeatedly about the head as it screams, "I'M SNARK. DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME? I'M SNARKY SNARKY SNARK!" And even then she's like, "Ohhhh? Snark? Is that you? ~ Megan McCafferty

Katya liked the asshole-Wulf, she admitted to him. She liked that he was brash and blunt and even sometimes rude. ~ Stylo Fantome

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you'll dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

God has given every man an opportunity and a chance to re-write his or her story; it is up to you to use a blunt pen or a ball point . I have chosen a ball point and this is just the beginning. ~ Bayode Ojo

Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like. ~ Plato

So I don't really have much rivalry, or if there is any, I don't really know anything about it. Because, you know, I'm not around girls like that. The friends I have in the business, I'm always really happy for them. I think we're always happy for each other. That sounds crap, but it's true. ~ Emily Blunt

All means prove but blunt instruments, if they have not behind them a living spirit. ~ Albert Einstein

The adjective so often coupled with mercy is the word tender, but God's mercy is not tender; this mercy is a blunt instrument. Mercy doesn't wrap a warm, limp blanket around offenders. God's mercy is the kind that kills the thing that wronged it and resurrects something new in its place. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

I was never a girl that dreamt of being a princess and I never dreamt about my wedding day. I hated pink and I hated fairies. I only liked hanging out with boys. I remember throwing a tantrum if my mum put me in pink. I wasn't a particularly girly girl. ~ Emily Blunt

I stared at Jenna's profile until she slowly turned to look at me. "What?" she asked.
"I'm about to fuck the shit out of you."
Her eyes widened. Damn. Was that too blunt?
"Romantically, of course," I quickly added, just in case. "Also, you look really pretty today. Have I told you that? ~ J. Daniels

Well, you wear underwear. That helps. ~ Emily Blunt

...[A]s much as she burned to come, she wanted Olive to know without a doubt that this - that they - were about more than sex. She whispered, "On that note, I haven't forgotten that I owe you a very fancy, very private dinner date." Clearly pleased by the comment, Olive caught a lock of her hair and gave it a playful tug. "As much as I appreciate that, right now you're all I want to eat...Kate groaned at the sensation of yet more wetness seeping from her body, drawn out by Olive's blunt language and the slight pain of having her hair pulled. She ducked out of Olive's grip, shooting her a mock dirty look. "Keep doing that and you'll really have a mess to contend with." "Promise?" Olive's eyes flashed with pure, sinful mischief. "Now will you please sit on my face already? ~ Meghan O'Brien

People think you're being dishonest because you're just too blunt. ~ Holland Roden

After all, she had announced at our introduction in September that she "simply loves children," Miss Fabricant, with a blunt snub of a nose like a Charlotte potato and hips like Idahos, the infeasible assertion seems to decode, "I want to get married. ~ Lionel Shriver

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects. ~ Lester B. Pearson

I'm interested in being part of a majority in the Senate. ~ Roy Blunt

How blunt are all the arrows of thy quiver in comparison with those of guilt. ~ Robert Blair

We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint, ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong - this is the ancient, unerring way to liberty and we must follow it. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

I used to look like a deer in headlights on the red carpet. You step out of the car and it's bedlam. Everyone's got crazy eyes. ~ Emily Blunt

Mean people are no fun. ~ Thom Filicia

It is a cliche, and it is also true, that humor springs from existential pain - from a need to blunt the awareness that life is essentially a fatal disease of unpredictable symptoms and unknown duration. ~ Gene Weingarten

Public education is an investment in our future. ~ Matt Blunt

Emily and I have some funny scenes where we quarrel and it gets quite heated, the mother-daughter relationship. You know, film mothers and daughters adore each other. And some don't. But how could you not love Emily Blunt? But I think I'm just one of those people who's always discontented. ~ Jacki Weaver

I'm on a health kick! I'm drawn to cheeseburgers, so I've got to just try and keep it on an even keel. ~ Emily Blunt

Things take a long time, but when it's right things move fast. ~ James Blunt

I had a non-existent knowledge of Queen Victoria's early years. Like everyone else, I thought of her as an old lady dressed in black. My mom had told me about her, though, that she had a very loving relationship with Albert, that they had lots of kids, and that he died young. ~ Emily Blunt

My grandparents live in Cley, and my dad now has the windmill which is a guest house. So I've spent much time up there, but a lot of it was at school as well, and my dad was sent abroad so often as well with the army. ~ James Blunt

For a start, the salary begins to have an attraction and addictiveness all of its own. A regular paycheck and crack cocaine have that in common. In addition, and more to the point, working too long for other people can blunt your desire to take risks. This last factor is crucial, because the ability to live with and embrace risk is what sets apart the financial winners and losers in the world. ~ Felix Dennis

As we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony [Abbott] and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion "climate change is crap" or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world. ~ Nick Minchin

The reason I prefer the sledgehammer to the rapier and the reason I believe in blunt, violent, confrontational forms for the presentation of my ideas is because I see that what's happening to the lives of people is not rapierlike, it is not gentle, it is not subtle. It is direct, hard and violent. The slow violence of poverty, the slow violence of untreated disease. Of unemployment, hunger, discrimination. This isn't the violence of some guy opening fire with an Uzi in a McDonald's and forty people are dead. The real violence that goes on every day, unheard, unreported, over and over, multiplied a millionfold. ~ George Carlin

There's every reason to think SSRIs blunt your ability to fall and stay in love. ~ Helen Fisher

I know nothing about pistols and revolvers, which is why I usually kill off my characters with a blunt instrument or better with poisons. Besides, poisons are neat and clean and really exciting ... I do not think I could look a really ghastly mangled body in the face. It is the means that I am interested in. I do not usually describe the end, which is often a corpse. ~ Agatha Christie

The southern half of Riverskin was indistinguishable from Flyside, which it adjoined. It was cheap and not too violent, crowded, mostly good-natured. It was a mixed area, with a large human majority beside small colonies of vodyanoi by the quiet canal, a few solitary outcast cactacae, even a little two-street khepri hive, a rare traditional community outside of Kinken and Creekside. Southern Riverskin was also home to some of the city's small number of more exotic races. There was a shop run by a hotchi family in Bekman Avenue, their spines carefully filed blunt so as not to intimidate their neighbours. There was a homeless llorgiss, which kept its barrel body full of drink and staggered the streets on three unsteady legs. ~ China Mieville

But this was not what Blue was told. Again and again, she had her fingers spread wide, her palm examined, her cards plucked from velvet-edged decks and spread across the fuzz of a family friend's living room carpet. Thumbs were pressed to the mystical, invisible third eye that was said to lie between everyone's eyebrows. Runes were cast and dreams interpreted, tea leaves scrutinised and séances conducted.
All the women came to the same conclusion, blunt and inexplicably specific. What they all agreed on, in many different clairvoyant languages, was this:
If Blue was to kiss her true love, he would die. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Local and state governments have outrun the federal government. The EPA has served notice that it will enact a rule requiring CO2 reductions by major emitters in the absence of major legislation. But it's a blunt instrument that is a little more difficult to use than a legislative remedy. ~ Al Gore

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days. ~ Terry Pratchett

Tracer lighting up the sky.
It's another families' turn to die.
A child afraid to even cry out says,
He has been here.
And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness. ~ James Blunt

Even the purest and most high-minded scientist finds it expedient sometimes to assault the fortress of truth with the blunt weapon of trail and error. sometimes it works beautifully. ~ Isaac Asimov

The days had become a confusion of catastrophes; what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening. ~ David Benioff

I would rather die than betray his trust."
"That's not saying much, seeing as you're already dead," Ron observed.
"Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe," said Nearly Headless Nick in affronted tones. ~ J.K. Rowling

Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe. ~ J.K. Rowling