Clever Whale Quotes

Should I try to help her? Surely I was strong enough to loosen that stubborn backpack. And, in doing so, I could make a clever comment about how cold it must be outside for her nipple to get so hard. She'd laugh and toss her head back; her long blond hair would fall off her shoulders onto her back in slow motion. Thankful for my help, she'd lift up her shirt to give me a better look at her tits before I rip her clothes off and throw her down on the dirty hardwood floor.
Shit, I gotta stop watching so much porn. - Tyler Campbell, Safe With Me, Part 1 ~ Shaina Richmond

European starvation was rather more cunning and wore a series of clever masks: death came by drink, by tuberculosis, by the knife, by despair in all its manifestations. ~ Alan Furst

The Job Application

Esteemed gentlemen,
I am a poor, young, unemployed person in the business field, my name is Wenzel, I am seeking a suitable position, and I take the liberty of asking you, nicely and politely, if perhaps in your airy, bright, amiable rooms such a position might be free. I know that your good firm is large, proud, old, and rich, thus I may yield to the pleasing supposition that a nice, easy, pretty little place would be available, into which, as into a kind of warm cubbyhole, I can slip. I am excellently suited, you should know, to occupy just such a modest haven, for my nature is altogether delicate, and I am essentially a quiet, polite, and dreamy child, who is made to feel cheerful by people thinking of him that he does not ask for much, and allowing him to take possession of a very, very small patch of existence, where he can be useful in his own way and thus feel at ease. A quiet, sweet, small place in the shade has always been the tender substance of all my dreams, and if now the illusions I have about you grow so intense as to make me hope that my dream, young and old, might be transformed into delicious, vivid reality, then you have, in me, the most zealous and most loyal servitor, who will take it as a matter of conscience to discharge precisely and punctually all his duties. Large and difficult tasks I cannot perform, and obligations of a far-ranging sort are too strenuous for my mind. I am not particularly clever, and first and fo ~ Robert Walser

A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Like the whale who swallowed Jonah, we have engulfed all national dishes known to civilized man and made them in delight, if not in name our own. ~ Louis Pullig De Gouy

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice. ~ Amy Tan

A person can be utterly foolish and unknowing: as long as he knows the way to adapt, to be flexible, and how to move about, he still is not lost, but will come through life better perhaps than someone who is clever and stuffed with knowledge. ~ Robert Walser

I would probably have more in common with a whale than with a bourgeois married couple employed at worthy institutions that I would wipe from the face of the earth if it was given to me to do so. ~ Che Guevara

Get this. So he comes up to me at lunch, right? And he starts asking me all these questions about you. Like, how long have I known you, where are you from, did I ever meet your mom before she skipped town ... '
'My mom? That's weird,' Helen interrupted.
'And I start answering him with my usual flair for clever repartee,' Claire said, a bit too innocently.
'Translation: you insulted him. ~ Josephine Angelini

The stupid person's idea of the clever person. [on Aldous Huxley, in Spectator magazine, 1936] ~ Elizabeth Bowen

I wasn't necessarily the brightest in my family. I think my older sister was probably more clever, but I worked very hard. ~ Wendi Deng Murdoch

Gorgeous I called him and that he is, Maeve: you'd be surprised. And nasty I called him, and that, Maeve, was a shrewd piece of insight, for nasty he certainly is. And a clever bastard, I called him. ... Not to his face, dear. We're not all born to be heroes. But what he may not know, Maeve, is that I'm a clever bastard as well. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Many of today's world leaders have great courage: the courage to do harm. The are ill-advised, too clever, or too skillful. I think bad political systems, by which I mean systems that are not founded on a desire for justice, are mainly due to a type of short-sightedness. When politicians see things only in the short term, they inevitably only see the short-term gains. That is how they develop the type of courage that is necessary to harm others. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal.
MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen! ~ Oscar Wilde

When I try to get clever I fail, so I stick with the basic issues of human life on earth - sex, death, relationships, discovering who you are, being hurt and confused. ~ Barbara Ess

That clever folk care less for what ye think than why ye think it. ~ John Barth

To Miss Cooper
Cousin,
Conscious of the Charming Character which in every Country, and every Clime in Christendom is Cried, Concerning you, with Caution and Care I Commend to your Charitable Criticism this Clever Collection of Curious Comments, which have been Carefully Culled, Collected and Classed by your Comical Cousin
The Author ~ Jane Austen

Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale. ~ J.K. Rowling

Why did you come back here, then? Why risk it? Couldn't you find a place where you wouldn't have any other Packs to deal with?"
He cupped my face in his hands, his thumb gently brushing a snowflake from my eyelashes.
"You know why I came back."
My heart started beating against my ribcage as if it was trying to break free. "The fried chicken they serve at The Farmhouse?"
"I came back for you, Scout."
I had to say something. Something clever. Something dazzling. Something to make this moment perfect.
"I hope the snow sticks. ~ Tammy Blackwell

There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen]."

"Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations… like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images…"

"What is this one obsession?"

"I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it."

"There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'"

"Inside the rain?"

"When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain… as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well."

"It's strange y ~ Jonathan Cott

I'm going to photograph every single person to enter and leave this tattoo parlour."
Finbar rolled his eyes. "And they'll hate that, because people who get dragons drawn on their backs are normally so shy about other people noticing them. ~ Derek Landy

The child had wanted attention. She had just asked to be noticed. But she was given an assessment. 'What a clever girl! ~ Peter Hoeg

I am Detective Inspector Me. This is my partner, Detective Her."
The traffic warden frowned. "Her?"
"Me," said Stephanie.
"Him?"
"Not me," said Skulduggery. "Her."
"Me," said Stephanie.
"You?" said the traffic warden.
"Yes," said Stephanie.
"I'm sorry, who are you?"
Stephanie looked at him. "I'm Her, he's Me. Got it? ~ Derek Landy

You might even ask me to apply my 'theory' to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness. I'm not sure I could answer this, to be honest. ~ Julian Barnes

Here's a mystery for you. Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that'll do. ~ Charlie Brooker

A book that is written for the quirky, mischievous, and decidedly irreverent-minded modern reader, Confessions from the Comments Section will appeal to anyone who enjoys a clever, no-holds-barred roast of our contemporary cultural chaos. ~ Jonathan Kieran

For the clever and lucky, all roads are open! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The law, as manipulated by clever and highly respected rascals, still remains the best avenue for a career of honourable and leisurely plunder. ~ Gabriel Chevallier

For many years Minos has been lucky to have in his court the most gifted inventor, the most skilled artificer outside of the Olympian forges of Hephaestus. His name is Daedalus and he is capable of fashioning moving objects out of metal, bronze, wood, ivory and gemstones. He has mastered the art of tightly coiling leaves of steel into powerful springs, which control wheels and chains to form intricate and marvellous mechanisms that mark the passage of the hours with great precision and accuracy, or control the levels of watercourses. There is nothing this cunning man cannot contrive in his workshop. There are moving statues there, men and women animated by his skill, boxes that play music and devices that can awaken him in the morning. Even if only half the stories of what Daedalus can achieve are true then you can be certain that no more cunning and clever an inventor, architect and craftsman has ever walked this earth. ~ Stephen Fry

The great Chinese classics have always said that it's better not to fight; that the clever man achieves his ends without violence; that a battle delayed is better than a battle fought. ~ John Keegan

I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted. ~ Jean Cocteau

He forced himself forward trying to seem innocent without acting like someone who was guilty who was trying to act innocent. ~ James Dashner

I was one of five very clever kids, the other kids were cleverer than I was and still are and are very achieving. The girls were always first at everything and I was always 101st! ~ Anthony Minghella

She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. ~ Oscar Wilde

The whirligig featured a drummer, a trumpet player, a clarinetist, and a man with a trombone. It was a leap beyond the spouting whale, with more figures, a six-bladed propeller, and a much more complex system of rods and pivots that made the instruments dip and rise as if the musicians were marching. ~ Paul Fleischman

I think that you are only obliged to be a humorist from the age of 18 until you turn 30. Past the age of 30 I don't think there is any obligation to be clever at all. ~ Garrison Keillor