Cliche Quotes

I know it's a cliche, but the whole family is just whacked. I mean, we're all out of our minds. They're the funniest, most eccentric bizarre people I've ever met, my siblings. ~ Dana Carvey

A great maxim of personal responsibility and mature achievement: "Do it yourself" is now the enthroned cliche for being occupied with nonessentials. ~ Louis Kronenberger

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of cliches. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought. ~ H.L. Mencken

It's a bit cliche, but you can't go wrong by writing what you know. Even if you're a horrible writer, your own knowledge and experience is unrivaled. Nobody knows what you know like you know what you know. The way you see things is pretty unique. ~ Issa Rae

Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary cliche. But the femme fatale expresses woman's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all of men's relationships with women. ~ Camille Paglia

I don't believe that old cliche that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad they can't sit still. ~ Ashton Kutcher

I think British men build up the idea of us French girls having some magic extra sex appeal so much, they lose their heads. I can't really understand the whole thing - but it makes me laugh. It's such a cliche to think all French girls are well dressed, elegant, sophisticated and sexy. Some are utter slobs, I promise you that. ~ Eva Green

Write as precisely and as lucidly and as richly as you can about what you find truly mysterious and irreducible about human experience, and not obscurely about what will prove to be received opinion or cliche once the reader figures out your stylistic conceit. There's all the difference in the world between mystery and mystification. ~ Paul Harding

I really do feel like Los Angeles is my home now and, as cliche as this sounds, I felt like I found myself here and I really know who I am now. There was a long period like I was drifting or floating through life, and now I feel like I have a definitive target - and future. ~ Ryan Kwanten

When you have to play a character that seems to be a relatively decent person and seems to be like yourself, I think the trick in that kind of character, so that you don't become a cliche, is to find where their weaknesses are. ~ Jennifer Beals

I know that there's a customary cliche about librarians being what crass people might call "hard-asses". ~ Leah Thomas

That was when something hit me. The white suit he was wearing wasn't just a fashion choice. I mean, who actually dresses like that? Nobody, at least nobody in reality. Yeah, Ok, his big friend was in standard spook/secret service/bodyguard gear, but this guy? He was a walking cliche. It was like somebody said to me, Hey Chris, can you imagine a Colombian drug lord for me please? And this guy had popped up as the end result. ~ Luke Smitherd

Because I am well read, I know what a terrible cliche it is to shout, "I *hate* you. I never *asked* to be born," so I refrain. ~ Caitlin Moran

It's a cliche, but it's true that all the fun lies in baddies, grotesques and comic roles. ~ Mark Gatiss

You need cliches. Cliches are what people respond to. ~ Matthew Vaughn

Paris is an unsolved puzzle. She inspires me in a way that other places don't. And she demands more of me. Just try to write about her without bumping into cliche after cliche. ~ M.J. Rose

You have to go through the darkness to truly know the light. This may sound like a cliche, but it's true nonetheless. Often the greatest doubts occur just before a breakthrough. ~ Surya Das

As cliche as it sounds you complete me and I complete you ~ James D. Wilson

Frankly, it's depressing, each night sleeping in someone else's home. I miss having a roof to my name. Our situation isn't an 'All in the Family' cliche, but it's still easy to see reality in plain terms: I live with my in-laws, and I can't say when that will change. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

Clarity Cliche--polished package
that wraps the unwrappable
Here it is, your day

from "Nightly News" in The News: Poems ~ Jeffrey Brown

Because I've been so bad at looking after myself, how would I ever look after a kid? But the old cliche applied: they handed her to me, and my world turned upside down - and I realised I was now going to be vulnerable in more ways than I expected. ~ Ken Bruen

Contrary to the cliche', genuinely nice guys most often finish first or very near it. ~ Steve Forbes

Why weren't we born in the same era?" he lamented. She eased past him neither here nor there, looked over her shoulder and whispered, "How mundane and cliche would that be? ~ Donna Lynn Hope

Do you think maybe your writing isn't going anymore because you're unhappy? Because you're not living the life you could? A life worth writing about? You must know that cliche-write what you know-but what do you know, Bree, when you shut the world out? ~ Holly Bourne

One of the problems of this genre is that there are cliches everywhere, and you've got to be careful and watch out. Our rule with cliches is to either gently acknowledge them and make fun of them, or do something else. Milady is, in one sense, a villain because she does bad things. ~ Adrian Hodges

Phones and soundtracks and Muzak and fountains replace genuine and unpredictable human contact with a seamless soundtrack from a bad movie and a cliche that makes us believe we must all be happy. ~ Margaret Heffernan

The personal appropriation of cliches is a condition for the spread of cultural tourism. ~ Serge Daney

I do feel like the world is a better and happier place now that my son is here. That's so cliche, but it's true. I just have a new perspective; I'm more driven. Also, the thing that stands out to me is that I'm not as selfish. Before you have a child, you're doing everything for yourself. But now it's about what's best for him, and I'm enjoying that shift. ~ Tia Mowry

You make me love books and the words inside them, because they talk about you. I know they do, they tell me that I love you, not as cliché as I write it, but in the warmest, deepest, calmest words I could ever read. I love you, like the books say it. And I'll find a better way to say it one day. ~ Nema Al-Araby

The cliche had it that kids were the future, but that wasn't it: they were the unreflective, active present. They were not themselves nostalgic, because they couldn't be, and they retarded nostalgia in their parents. Even as they were getting sick and being bullied and becoming addicted to heroin and getting pregnant, they were in the moment, and she wanted to be in it with them. She wanted to worry herself sick about schools and bullying and drugs. ~ Nick Hornby

Faith isn't for the faint of heart.
Both Courage and naivete
are required. To grasp its art,
you must look the other way
when all the omens seem to say
you will not get what you desire,
so, though it may be cliche,
I put my faith in fire.

-Saint Margaret (pg 165) ~ David Elliott

I'm very much aware of the dangers of becoming a cliche. Mr. Anger, someone who gets meaner, angrier on record. ~ Trent Reznor

Oh, my god," Augustus said. "I can't believe I have a crush on a girl with such cliche wishes."
"I was thirteen," I said again, although of course I was only thinking "crush crush crush crush crush". I was flattered but changed the subject immediately. ~ John Green

There's always the cliche of the choir shouting and clapping. OK, you have to do that, but there's also introspective parts, parts where you just follow someone that's preaching. There's lots of different emotions and moods that a service requires. ~ Wynton Marsalis

When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said. ~ Jincy Willett

The cliche is that misery loves company. Another is that there is fellowship among thieves. But thieves do not seek the consoling presence of the fellowship of police officers. Sinful misery does not love the company of purity. ~ R.C. Sproul

So here I am. Twenty-eight years old, with thirty looming on the horizon. Drunk. Fat. Alone. Unloved. And, worst of all, a cliche, Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones put together, which was probably about how much I weighed ... ~ Jennifer Weiner

I'm not a guy who likes cliches. I don't think that stereotypes and cliches are the end of the line, when it comes to a performance. ~ Chris Bauer

For any character, male or female, I think it's important to have ... it's cliche to say a flawed character, but to really think about the good and the bad and make sure that both are present, and it doesn't just become a glossed over icon of perfection. ~ Jane Jensen

I know it's a cliche, but I didn't want to work in an office. ~ Paul O'Grady

I think the diva is kind of a cliche. My definition of a diva is somebody whose talent does not match what they're trying to play, so all this temperament comes out. ~ Glenn Close

I did art; I made furniture. I didn't want to be a cliche - the Beatle's son who became a musician. ~ James McCartney

It sounds like a cliche but there are no shorts cuts. You have to be very dedicated and challenge yourself everyday to be better. ~ Casey Stoney

She remained silent. There was nothing left to say. He'd said it all the night before. He had to end it. He could never leave his wife. And, in fact, she had known this. Although she loved him - and truly she did - he wasn't hers. He belonged to his wife. She'd earned him. It didn't matter that he was her first love or that she was his passion. It didn't matter that they had loved one another for more than half their lives. It didn't matter that he had married his wife on the rebound. It didn't matter that he didn't love the woman. It didn't even matter that they had turned into some soap-opera cliche. He was married to someone else and that meant that she was leftovers and destined to remain on the periphery in the shadow of another woman's marriage. But no more. She was well and truly sick of it. ~ Anna McPartlin

There was a fine line between love and hate you heard that cliche all the time. But no one told you that the moment you crossed it would be the one you least expected. You'd fall in love and crack open a secret door to let your soul mate in. You just never expected such closeness one day to feel like an intrusion. ~ Jodi Picoult

His jaw clenched. "Okay, so I guess trying to let you down easy was a bad idea--"

"This is your idea of letting me down easy? Breaking up with me so you can screw other girls? Without feeling guilty? Are you serious?"

"As a heart attack."

The last thing I thought before I picked up my econ textbook and hurled it at him: How can he use such a piece-of-shit cliche in a moment like this? ~ Tammara Webber

It sounds like a cliche, but it ... you do sing about what you know about. And I grew up in a small town, and I grew up in a place where your whole world revolved around friends, family, school, and church, and sports. ~ Kenny Chesney

It seems like a cliche, but you do grow up a lot faster when you travel a lot, go through things like this interview, spend time away from home and hang around with other actors. It's inevitable that you're not going to have a so-called normal childhood. ~ Matt Dillon

Playing the misunderstood character has been really interesting to me. But I think after too long, that also becomes a little bit of a cliche. Or that's all you're expected to do. I didn't want that to be the totality of what my career was. ~ Anne Dudek

Cliches and adjectives permeated my prose. ~ Dick Schaap

In my home, I listen to music; I play music: I play guitar and I play ukelele. And I swim and I ride a bike and I do all the things that everybody else does. ~ Charles Dance

Maybe this is kind of cliche, but animals, well, dogs, are what I do for a living. One reason I like spending time with them so much is they seem to think people are really good. They live with us, and obey our rules, most of which make no sense to them. And the main reason they do it is because they like us. When I watch them, sometimes I'm so blow away by how enthusiastic they are about everything we do that I have to go out and buy them something squeaky or chewy. Just because I love proving to them that it's not a mistake to see the world as a great benevolent place. I hope one day to react to something with as much pure ecstasy as I see in Chuck's face every time I throw the ball. Sometimes he looks so happy, it reminds me of the way blind people smile way too big because they can't see themselves. And if none of this links to anything in you, well ... I think you don't know who I am. ~ Merrill Markoe

On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true. ~ James Surowiecki

So I think I sometimes will put a cliche in and then just pad it out so you're not noticing. ~ Matthew Vaughn

You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking."
All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder. ~ Milan Kundera

Desi, Desi, Desi what am I going to do with you? (Kyrian)
Don't you dare take that flippant tone with me! (Desiderius)
Why ever not? (Kyrian)
Because I am not some scared little Daimon to run cringing from you. I am your worst nightmare. (Desiderius)
Must you resort to cliches? C'mon, Desidisastrous, couldn't you think of anything more original than that B-movie dialogue staple? (Kyrian) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

A drunk truck driver ran over me. I was in a Volkswagen. It was horrible. It sounds like a cliche, but anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I give a lot of credit to my dad, who was a very strong guy. ~ Robert David Hall

The war against the cliche has become the new cliche. ~ Marty Rubin

Redeeming subjects from cliche is its own pleasure and privilege. ~ Leslie Jamison

We long ago ceased expecting that a President speak his own words. We no longer expect him actually to know the answers to questions put to him. We have, in effect, come to elect newscasters-and by a similar process: not for their probity or for their intelligence, but for their "believability."

"Hope" is a very different exhortation than, for example, save, work, cooperate, sacrifice, think. It means: "Hope for the best, in a process over which you have no control." For, if one had control, if one could endorse a candidate with actual, rational programs, such a candidate demonstrably possessed of character and ability sufficient to offer reasonable chance of carrying these programs out, we might require patience or understanding, but why would we need hope?

We have seen the triumph of advertising's bluntest and most ancient tool, the unquantifiable assertion: "New" in what way? "Improved" how? "Better" than what? "Change" what in particular? "Hope" for what?

These words, seemingly of broad but actually of no particular meaning, are comforting in a way similar to the self-crafted wedding ceremony.

Whether or not a spouse is "respecting the other's space," is a matter of debate; whether or not he is being unfaithful is a matter of discernible fact. The author of his own marriage vows is like the supporter of the subjective assertion. He is voting for codependence. He neither makes nor requires an actual commitment. He'd simply like t ~ David Mamet

Nothing is a cliche when you're living it. ~ Ben Lerner

All plots are cliche. ~ Jincy Willett

'Hope and change' has become a cliche in our nation, and it is daunting to think that any American could hope for change from what God has blessed. ~ Billy Graham

The cliche was always that 'everybody's a critic,' but it becomes truer every day. Long before reviews appear in the traditional outlets, you can now usually discover - somewhere in the thickets of the Internet - reactions to shows from people who've seen them in previews. ~ Ben Brantley

To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve. ~ Roger Ebert

How to avoid cliche at the root of conception? Practice sincerity. If we've come by ... material honestly, through our own personal experience or imagination, we may rightly claim it as our own ... The way to make material your own is to look for it in yourself ... It should be a story that only you can tell, as only you can tell it. ~ Peter Selgin

I had started acting when I was 7, and I was always wrong. I would always get to the very end [of the audition], but I wasn't a perfect package of one thing. I wasn't a cliche, and it always worked against me. I wasn't pretty enough to play the popular girl, I wasn't mousy enough to be the mousy girl. Then there was a TV show that Toni Collette was starring in. And when a role to play a girl who was struggling with identity came, I thought: "Oh, this is what I was supposed to do. Everything's leading up to this moment." I was 18. I was like, "This is it." I didn't get it. And I was devastated. ~ Brie Larson

He brought me flowers. Again. Maybe totally cliche, but I loved it just as much this time as I had the last. More, really, because this time he knew how much it would mean to me. And he'd shared with me what it meant to him. ~ Sibylla Matilde

It's a cliche, and in a way it's a conservative idea about fiction, but I did learn the hard way that plot does need to dictate the story. ~ Rachel Kushner

I don't know, I find that honestly, the stand-up thing in some ways is a little bit of a cliche to carry around, because people don't consider stand-ups really actors. ~ Jim Gaffigan

We do not serve a distant and detached God who spouts encouraging cliches safely from the sideline. Instead, he enters into our suffering. Jesus did it in the Incarnation and his Spirit does it in us now. God will never leave us alone in our suffering. ~ Rick Warren

I hate stereotypes and I hate cliche. ~ Scarlett Thomas

Then there's the silliest of all cliches, 'on a pace for' 'Pace' is a figment of the mathematician's imagination. ~ Leonard Koppett

I think it's sad that there seems to be one definition of beauty in Hollywood/New York. It's such a cliche, but I think it's true that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. ~ Julianne Nicholson

It's such a cliche thing to say. I want to choreograph, I want to direct, I want to act, I want to write music, I want to play music, I want to sing. For me, it's never-ending. I want to do it all, really. ~ Derek Hough

After two years studying what rewrite men did with the facts I phoned them, I knew that journalism was essentially a task of stringing together seamlessly an endless series of cliches. ~ Russell Baker

I remember being in college knowing I didn't want to go anymore. I wanted to try and become an actor. There is a something in me, with a risk of sounding cliche, that I just had to do it. I knew from an early age that acting was my path. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

If your mind is at work, we're in danger of reproducing another cliche. If we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we'll come up with something original. ~ Peter Falk

I'm like a bad musical cliche because I bring my guitar on the road and try to write songs in hotel rooms. ~ Moby

Everyone can write a cliche. What's rare is to write them often and unashamedly enough that people quote it as if it's some deep shit. ~ Jimmy Lo

Perhaps cliche is nothing more than the weight of the past pinning down your mind. In this sense, imaginative freedom is a way of finding the future, though it isn't so easy to do. ~ Damon Galgut

I don't necessarily look for what I respond to in a script. I look for things that scare me, and take that as an indication that I should probably do it. I don't want to be bored. I look for challenges. I look for a variety of different things because it's so easy to go the cliche route. ~ Liana Liberato

It's an old - and true - cliche that VCs rarely actually say 'no' - more often they say 'maybe', or 'not right now', or 'my partners aren't sure', or 'that's interesting, let me think about it' ~ Marc Andreessen

Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings. ~ Eric Hoffer

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal. ~ John Lennon

To me the most important thing is a good story, though I know how cliche that sounds. ~ Josh Trank

When I look back I can't believe how my parents managed, but the cliche is true. We didn't have money, but we were rich in so many other ways. ~ Joaquin Phoenix

It's a cliche, but there really is no handbook about the celebrity thing; you have to figure it out as you go along. ~ Nathan Lane

The champions of militant Islam are, of course, misogynists, woman-haters; they are also misologists
haters of reason. Their armed doctrine is little more than a chaotic penal code underscored by impotent dreams of genocide. And, like all religions, it is a massive agglutination of stock response, of cliches, of inherited and unexamined formulations. ~ Martin Amis

Cliche refers to words, commonplace to ideas. Cliche describes the form or the letter, commonplace the substance or spirit. To confuse them is to confuse the thought with the expression of the thought. The cliche is immediately perceivable; the commonplace very often escapes notice if decked out in original dress. There are few examples, in any literature, of new ideas expressed in original form. The most critical mind must often be content with one or the other of these pleasures, only too happy when it is not deprived of both at once, which is not too rarely the case. ~ Remy De Gourmont

Please, don't torture me with cliches. If you're going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors. ~ Dean Koontz

It's crucial that I kind of keep up, without drifting into the backslapping land of cliche and lifetime achievement awards. ~ Robert Plant

It is a cliche that human beings are fascinated by size
mountain peaks, high buildings, and whales. We are also amazed by miniatures
a flea on a mouse, a flea on a trapeze, the Last Supper carved on the head of a pin. ~ Rosamond Purcell

But apart from these lazinesses of logic, what makes the story so tired is the failure of the writer to reach for anything but the nearest cliche'. "Shouldered his way," "only to be met," "crashing into his face," "waging a lonely war," "corruption that is rife," "sending shock waves," "New York's finest," - these dreary phrases constitute writing at its most banal. We know just what to expect. No surprise awaits us in the form of an unusual word, an oblique look. We are in the hands of a hack, and we know it right away, We stop reading. ~ William Zinsser

Look, I've got incredible pride for my family. I've absolutely fallen into that cliche of a dad who could just happily talk about my daughter endlessly. ~ Christian Bale

My best feature would have to be my hair. That sounds so cliche - but my hair is like a separate entity. ~ Jake T. Austin

I hate to repeat lines, to say the same damned thing. I try to rewrite cliches and make what I say sound fresh. ~ Gary McCord

...if I have a daughter I will tell her she can do anything, and I will mean it, because I have no other intention of informing her otherwise. As my mother did with me, and my mother's mother before her, I shall simply hide the truth from her. I will tell her that despite what others may whisper, there is no difference between her and any boy. I will tell her to work her hardest and try her best. And that if one day she looks around and finds that, despite her very best efforts, lesser men have superseded her, then she probably could have done better. These words may not be true, nor will they be fair, but I would hope that they ensure she never becomes a victim of her own femininity. I hope she will be empowered to pick herself up, study harder, work longer, and exceed her own expectations. I don't want my daughter to break any glass ceilings. I'd rather she never even contemplated their existence. Because glass ceilings, closed doors, and boys clubs are notions, they're ideas, and they're not tangible. You can't see, touch, or feel them. They can only exercise power over us if we choose to believe in them. So why lay down your own gauntlet? The cliche rings true, if you reach for the moon, you might just land on the stars. Throw a glass ceiling into the works, and it can only get in the way. And I suspect that deep down, every woman who ever truly excelled thought exactly this way. I doubt they ever gave much thought to the fact that they are women. I think they just really ~ Amy Mowafi

Honestly, you got to take care of the people that take care of you. I know that sounds like cliche, or borderline phony, but that's the case. The reason I've had the fans that I have is because I've been consistent over the years and kept coming back and doing the same runs. I'm never going to stop doing the cities I've gone through. I'm only going to add. ~ Gabriel Iglesias

I just really like fun, cool, interesting, quirky girls. And sometimes you find that in 6'2 model bodies and sometimes they're short and brunette. All shapes and sizes - it's really about the personality. That sounds cliche, but it's so freaking true! ~ Dylan O'Brien