Cliched Quotes

I know it sounds cliched, but if we just treated each other as we'd like to be treated ourselves, we'd all be doing a lot better. ~ Marsha Thomason

We've had science fiction novels where China is dominant; we've had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it's all about getting away from that cliched old tired idea that the future belongs to the West. ~ Alastair Reynolds

From folk to tribal to Cab Calloway, Cole Porter, Gershwin to the Rolling Stones, whose first record was all covers, to country-western, bebop, blues, and even the referencing in classic hip hop to cliched love ballads of the '80s or whatever - that is kinda gone, and that's just terrifying to me. ~ Cat Power

I get bored with the constant probing for the cliched tears of the clown, the dark side of the comic. ~ Chris Lilley

Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa. ~ Ella Leya

I like the feeling that I'm giving young women self-confidence. It sounds so cliched, but it can be very moving. ~ Shirley Manson

I don't like to be in delineated moments. I don't like it when your reality feels prescriptive. I don't like Christmas holidays and their pseudo-joy. I don't like New Year's Eve. I don't like anything that feels like an established electromagnetic paradigm is pulling you into it's cliched forebear's footsteps. ~ Russell Brand

My story wasn't one of those cliched stories of being an ugly duckling, I had a pretty good time at school. But then I think being six foot by the age of 15 meant that I couldn't help but be noticed, and that was when my physical being felt quite painful - I could not any longer walk into a room without being noticed. ~ Erin O'Connor

I love art, but not in a cliched, luvvie way. ~ Imogen Poots

I've always felt, with 'The Iliad,' a real frustration that it's read wrong. That it's turned into this public school poem, which I don't think it is. That glamorising of war, and white-limbed, flowing-haired Greek heroes - it's become a cliched, British empire part of our culture. ~ Alice Oswald

And here I was at the end of my trip, with everything just as fuzzy and unreal as the beginning. It was easier for me to see myself in Rick's lens, riding down to the beach in that cliched sunset, just as it was easier for me to stand with my friends and wave goodbye to the loopy woman with the camels, the itching smell of the dust around us, and in our eyes the feat that we had left so much unsaid. There was an unpronounceable joy and an aching sadness to it. It had all happened too suddenly. I didn't believe this was the end at all. There must be some mistake. Someone had just robbed me of a couple of month in there somewhere. There was not so much an anticlimactic quality about the arrival at the ocean, as the overwhelming feeling that I had somehow misplaced the penultimate scene. ~ Robyn Davidson

I think film had a terrible effect on horror fiction particularly in the 80s, with certain writers turning out stuff as slick and cliched as Hollywood movies. ~ Poppy Z. Brite

So, I guess motherhood and the threat of not being able to pay my rent inspired me to be a novelist. But as far as what inspired me to be a writer, it's the stories. It sounds very cliched, but the stories rise up and demand to be told. They always have done, long before I became a writer. ~ Gayle Forman

I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically.
A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength.
[From a 1986 Fangoria interview] ~ James Cameron

When you're acting, you're escaping and hiding behind something. It's cliched to say, but there's a safety there. ~ Tamsin Egerton

As cliched as it sounds, if you have an original voice and an original idea, then no matter what anybody says, you have to find a way to tell that story. ~ Damon Lindelof

They are filled with earnest nonsense, the sort of things that a boy writes to his sweetheart, but which somehow, when they are meant for you, never feel tired or cliched or anything other than absolutely tender and true. ~ Natasha Solomons

Good fiction is about asserting the beauties of the world, inventing a new, positive thing. Where am I going to get that? And it should be original; it should not be cliched. So the way I looked at history was not to accuse it of failure. ~ Orhan Pamuk

I don't feel the need to direct. I tried to get other people to direct Dances, but they wouldn't do it. They all thought it was too long. One director wanted to cut the Civil War sequence. Another thought the white woman was very cliched. ~ Kevin Costner

I'm very particular who I work with. I'm not interested in portraying women with a cliched, generic look. I'm interested in a model who I can take a portrait of. ~ Tim Walker

When I think about what would make me happy, I am struck by how basic my desires are. I want to feel that I'm progressing through life; I want a meaningful relationship and an engaging career. I want to live in a place that feels like home. What I want is what everyone wants - so ordinary as to be cliched. Why is that so hard to find? ~ Christina Baker Kline

So often in TV, when you have an antagonist who's supposed to be the 'big baddie,' it's so easy for them to become cliched. ~ Michelle Forbes

It's very cliched to go, 'You're not punk.' We don't care if we are, and we don't care if we aren't. ~ Joel Madden

I don't want to be cliched, but Buckingham Palace is beautiful, and the old red telephone booths are really interesting to me. I've always wanted to see those. ~ Alessia Cara

Hale." Kat sighed. "The headmaster's car? Really? That's not to cliched for you?"
What can I say?" He shrugged. "I'm an old-fashioned guy. Besides, it's a classic for a reason." He leaned against the window. "It's good to see you, Kat."
Kat didn't know what to say. It's good to see you, too? Thanks for getting me kicked out? Is it possible you've gotten even hotter? I think I might have missed you? ~ Ally Carter

I'm a believer in getting punched in the face. I know it sounds cliched, but to me, fighting is a metaphor for life. ~ Frank Grillo

He looked down at her. "Have you found that peace?"
Yes, she had. But it was so corny and cliched that she couldn't bring herself to admit it.
"A wise man once told me that peace has to come from within. We have to learn to like ourselves before we can find our place in the world. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I just want to do everything. I don't want to sound soppy or too cliched, but that's the way it is. ~ Kylie Minogue

Interviewer ...In the case of "American Psycho" I felt there was something more than just this desire to inflict pain--or that Ellis was being cruel the way you said serious artists need to be willing to be.

DFW: You're just displaying the sort of cynicism that lets readers be manipulated by bad writing. I think it's a kind of black cynicism about today's world that Ellis and certain others depend on for their readership. Look, if the contemporary condition is hopelessly shitty, insipid, materialistic, emotionally retarded, sadomasochistic, and stupid, then I (or any writer) can get away with slapping together stories with characters who are stupid, vapid, emotionally retarded, which is easy, because these sorts of characters require no development. With descriptions that are simply lists of brand-name consumer products. Where stupid people say insipid stuff to each other. If what's always distinguished bad writing -- flat characters, a narrative world that's cliched and not recognizably human, etc. -- is also a description of today's world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In da ~ David Foster Wallace

When you die I bet you want real life, pure real life, eulogies that are unpoetic and messy, smeared with tears and truisms, cliched as hell, the kind of stuff a person means. ~ Kate Hattemer

My beauty ethos? Well, I'd love to tell you it's something like 'less is more,' but honestly, it all starts with happiness. If only someone could bottle that up - when I'm happy, I'm at my most radiant and glowing. It does me better than any product ever could. And I stand by how cheesy and cliched that sounds. ~ Solange Knowles

I have read books that are so cliched and lazy, my eyes have bled. But I also have read books marketed under the chick-lit umbrella that are so honest, clever and gritty that I've wanted to give up writing and paint walls instead. ~ Jojo Moyes

I love you," he writes again and again. "I can't bear to live without you. I'm counting the minutes until I see you." The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe. ~ Christina Baker Kline

At the time, when you're being dissected and judged it's pretty brutal, but in hindsight it's great and - it sounds cliched - you do come out the other side better and stronger. ~ Kate Bosworth

Sorry has got to be the most over-used cliched get-out clause in the history of mankind. Tossed out flippantly without any real meaning or substance. ~ Siobhan Davis

I automatically leaned back, my head fitting into that spot between his neck and his shoulder. Again, the cliched romantic in me wondered how we seemed to fit so perfectly, two pieces of a jigsaw, and have such different, clashing personalities... I didn't care how bad we were for each other or that he'd be off to college soon; I just remembered that I was in love with him. ~ Beth Reekles

Though it's impossible for us to legislate one's thoughts and feelings, we still need things like affirmative action in place because without measures like it, people in charge would not have, sadly, enough impetus to do, as cliched as it sounds, the right thing. ~ Jonathan Coleman

I was, like, a total cliched '80s child. I had Barbies, obviously, as well as My Little Ponies and Cabbage Patch Kids, but I used to destroy them. I used to draw all over their faces and cut off their hair. ~ Natalie Portman

Twin, sagging is seriously lame. It's so cliched gang-wannabe circa 1990s. Hotties should just say no to it. ~ P.C. Cast

One thing I would say is that I think in any environment that you work in, there's always going to be one or two people who you don't like. But there just wasn't that on 'Games Of Thrones'. I know it sounds cheesy and cliched, but it was like a big family. ~ Alfie Allen

My best investment, as cliched as this sounds, is the money I've spent developing myself, via books, workshops and coaching. Leadership begins within, and to have a better career, start by building a better you. ~ Robin S. Sharma

I really feel like the first day I went to drama school and I went up on stage, that I found my vocation. It's kind of a cliched thing to say but I really feel like it was what I was meant to do. ~ Diane Kruger