Small Details Quotes

Think boldly. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. Don't miss small details, keep your eyes open and be modest in everything except your aims. ~ Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems! ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work, cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and do when you get to your desk. Then you'll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which real life deviates from the narrative inside your head. If you want to become better at listening to your children, tell yourself stories about what they said to you at dinnertime last night. Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you'll encode those experiences deeper in your brain. If you need to improve your focus and learn to avoid distractions, take a moment to visualize, with as much detail as possible, what you are about to do. It is easier to know what's ahead when there's a well-rounded script inside your head. ~ Charles Duhigg

It is easy to slip into self-absorption, and it is equally fatal. When one becomes absorbed in himself, in his health, in his personal problems, or in the small details of daily living, he is, at the same time losing interest in other people; worse, he is losing his ties to life. From that it is an easy step to losing interest in the world and in life itself. That is the beginning of death. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

How was it that Adrian Ivashkov, who never seemed to take anything seriously was the only one among these "responsible" people who paid attention to such small details? How was he the only one to really understand the magnitude of what I was feeling? ~ Richelle Mead

I use a little brush only for really small details. Over the years, I've started to use a much larger brush. ~ Anthony Browne

Life's small details are the ones that interest me, anyway. The big questions are too hard to parse. ~ Christina Baker Kline

―The thing about memory is that you can feel it eroding slowly, being stolen away from you by time. It starts with the way you stop hearing his voice in your head. Then it's the color of the shirt he wore last Christmas. Before you know it, your memories have become fragmented, as if the small details were grains of sand blown away by the wind. I should be grateful that I'm starting to remember you less. Instead, I felt lonely. Pieces of you that I once held dear are being ripped apart into tiny shreds of information my brain thinks I can afford to forget. I can feel my heart fighting. It loves the feel of you though for the most part, you hurt. I looked for you in places where I knew I would never find you, in faces I knew I would never recognize. I looked for you hoping that through the sheer force of my will I would find your eyes staring back. But that's the thing about memory - you can feel it eroding slowly, being stolen away from you by time. I want to remember you. But I'm no longer entirely sure I really remember you. It kills me. Have you started remembering me less too? ~ Nessie Q.

But during the day ... that was life. The collection of small details that made up a shared day were what gave richness to what happened in the bed at night. ~ Anne Bishop

I couldn't sleep for nights on end, as my brain felt like there were thoughts colliding within it; I obsessed over small details, from saving pennies and polishing each one of them to washing my clothing over and over in the washing machine. ~ Andy Behrman

I'd given her every part of me. She knew my every side, the small details, and I knew hers. We shared the things that made us significant and I'd allowed it, knowing how much it would hurt to lose it. ~ Kate Stewart

If we want to

We will become a people, if we want to, when we learn that we are not angels, and that evil is not the prerogative of others
We will become a people when we stop reciting a prayer of thanksgiving to the sacred nation every time a poor man finds something to eat for his dinner
We will become a people when we can sniff out the sultan's gatekeeper and the sultan without a trial
We will become a people when a poet writes an erotic description of a dancer's belly
We will become a people when we forget what the tribe tells us, when the individual recognizes the importance of small details
We will become a people when a writer can look up at the stars without saying: 'Our country is loftier and more beautiful!'
We will become a people when the morality police protect a prostitute from being beaten up in the streets
We will become a people when the Palestinian only remembers his flag on the football pitch, at camel races, and on the day of the Nakba
We will become a people, if we want to, when the singer is allowed to chant a verse of Surat al-Rahman at a mixed wedding reception
We will become a people when we respect the right, and the wrong. ~ Mahmoud Darwish

I see in [George H. W.] Bush a striving to be Reagan-like in the sense of having a big vision, and eschewing small details. ~ David E. Hoffman

We are focusing on the small details and hiding the misery in the world. Look at the smoker and we miss global warming, war, and the crap we eat--not the bad guys but smoking. I smoke and they talk about cancer, I eat and they talk about cholesterol, I make love, it's AIDS. Before AIDS and cholesterol and cancer there's the pleasure of making love and eating and smoking. I have to die someday, so if the thing that gave me pleasure all of my life kills me instead of me going under a truck, that's fine. Besides, why should I live so that when I die I give fresh meat to the worms? I hope that I am rotted and they don't want to eat me. F@#$ck the worms. ~ Marjane Satrapi

I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while. ~ Ruth Rendell

Remember that often we will not know the small details of our life mission ~ Sunday Adelaja

It makes you observe small details; even if it's just a kid playing with his dad, if you watch them closely, you can use that in your work. It helps you fully understand people better. ~ Diogo Morgado

Small details are a vital part of allowing a reader to make an imaginative connection with long dead historical figures. ~ Sara Sheridan

He stands in the kitchen doorway, a black figure surrounded by the yellow light background, the small details of his face unseen from the darkness of the living room. His left shoulder leans slightly against the threshold, a pistol suspended from the left hand, dangling in the yellow space between the hip and the dark. ~ Frank Turner Hollon

Great entrepreneurs are often great listeners and they can spot patterns and pick up on small details in customer stories. ~ Alexander Osterwalder

People are made up of so many small details. Some - like the smell of cookies baking - we can recreate. Or at least try. ~ Victoria Schwab

Why should it be any surprise that people find solace in the most intimate literary genre? Poetry slows us down, cherishes small details. A large disaster erases those details. We need poetry for nourishment and for noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it more successfully than any news channel we could name. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

I learned no detail was too small. It was all about the details. ~ Brad Grey

If you can see the little things and the small details around you as big things, you're enlightened! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The small details of life often hide a great significance. ~ Margaret Atwood

I think that one of the things that I can do is I seem to have the ability to zoom in super tight for very small details, but then jump back for sort of that big picture perspective. And I think that ultimately, that's one of my strengths, because you have - every detail matters. ~ Henry Selick

I think it's the small things, the smaller episodes and details that I linger on and try to draw meaning from, just personally. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Whenever I'm writing a book, small details from my life always creep in. ~ Kevin Henkes

In a major matter no details are small. ~ Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

What is commonly called 'women's intuition' is mostly a woman's acute ability to notice small details and changes in the appearance or behaviour of others. It's something that, throughout history, has bewildered men who play around - and are invariably caught. ~ Allan Pease

He closed the fridge door, made his last breakfast - scrambled eggs - and showered, dressed, combed his hair, left for the theater an hour early so he'd have time to linger with the newspaper over his second-to-last coffee at his favorite coffee place, all of the small details that comprise a morning, a life. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

Often, when we have a crush, when we lust for a person, we see only a small percentage of who they really are. The rest we make up for ourselves. Rather than listen, or learn, we smother them in who we imagine them to be, what we desire for ourselves, we create little fantasies of people and let them grow in our hearts. And this is where the relationship fails. In time, the fiction we scribble onto a person falls away, the lies we tell ourselves unravel and soon the person standing in front of you is almost unrecognisable, you are now complete strangers in your own love. And what a terrible shame it is. My advice: pay attention to the small details of people, you will learn that the universe is far more spectacular an author than we could ever hope to be. ~ Beau Taplin

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind. ~ Anton Chekhov

The worst of such stories is that the triumphant romancers can always be put to confusion and crushed by the very details in which real life is so rich and which these unhappy and involuntary story-tellers neglect as insignificant trifles. Oh, they have no thought to spare for such details, their minds are concentrated on their grand invention as a whole, and fancy any one daring to pull them up for a trifle! But that's how they are caught. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In big and small details, Jesus perfectly fulfilled the prophecies of the suffering servant. ~ Chris Bruno

The more unstable life is the less one likes the small details to alter. ~ Graham Greene

I find significance in all kinds of small details when I run; I'm hyper aware of my surroundings, the sensations in my body, and the thoughts running through my mind. Everything is clearer, heightened. ~ Kristin Armstrong

In descriptions of Nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture. For instance, you'll have a moonlit night if you write that on the mill dam a piece of glass from a broken bottle glittered like a bright little star, and that the black shadow of a dog or a wolf rolled past like a ball. ~ Anton Chekhov

The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events. ~ Jim Jarmusch

Most of our lives aren't that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details. ~ David Byrne

Motherhood has most definitely changed me and my life. It's so crazy how drastic even the small details change - in such an amazing way. Even silly things, like the fact that all of my pictures on my cell phone used to be of me at photo shoots - conceited, I know! - but now every single picture on my phone is of Mason. ~ Kourtney Kardashian

The story ended with a moral: Large Enterprises Depend Upon Small Details. Jeremy couldn't see why it couldn't have just as well been: It's Wrong To Trap Nonexistent Women in Clocks, or: It Would Have Worked With A Glass Spring. ~ Terry Pratchett

I'm not sure I could write a straight urban fantasy any more than I could write a straight contemporary story. I would end up being intimidated by all the small details. ~ Anne Bishop

Seinfeld has his way of telling jokes - and I'm not comparing myself to Seinfeld, his genius is observing the small details of everyday life and finding humor in it. ~ Nick Kroll

The greater the scope in implementing an activity, the greater the need for strict attention to small details. ~ John Shirley

For the 99 percent of the time we've been on Earth, we were hunter and gatherers, our lives dependent on knowing the fine, small details of our world. Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine. ~ Janine Benyus

Happiness hides in life's small details. If you're not looking, it becomes invisible. ~ Joyce Brothers

And Tiffany knew that if a witch started thinking of anyone as "just" anything, that would be the first step on a well-worn path that could lead to, oh, to poisoned apples, spinning wheels, and a too-small stove ... and to pain, and terror, and horror and the darkness. ~ Terry Pratchett

Isn't this the weekend of Xander Eckhart's party?"

"Yes." Jordan held her breath in a silent plea. Don't ask if I'm bringing anyone. Don't ask if I'm bringing anyone.

"So are you bringing anyone?" Melinda asked.

Foiled.

Having realized there was a distinct possibility the subject would come up, Jordan had spent some time running through potential answers to this very question. She had decided that being casual was the best approach. "Oh, there's this guy I met a few days ago, and I was thinking about asking him." She shrugged. "Or maybe I'll just go by myself, who knows."

Melinda put down her forkful of gnocchi, zoning in on this like a heat-seeking missile to its target. "What guy you met a few days ago? And why is this the first we're hearing of him?"

"Because I just met him a few days ago."

Corinne rubbed her hands together, eager for the details. "So? Tell us. How'd you meet him?"

"What does he do?" Melinda asked.

"Nice, Melinda. You're so shallow." Corinne turned back to Jordan. "Is he hot?"

Of course, Jordan had known there would be questions. The three of them had been friends since college and still saw each other regularly despite busy schedules, and this was what they did. Before Corinne had gotten married, they talked about her now-husband, Charles. The same was true of Melinda and her soon-to-be-fiancé, Pete. So Jordan knew that she, in turn, was expected ~ Julie James

ALL HE COULD SEE, IN EVERY DIRECTION, WAS WATER. It was June 23, 1943. Somewhere on the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, Army Air Forces bombardier and Olympic runner Louie Zamperini lay across a small raft, drifting westward. Slumped alongside him was a sergeant, one of his plane's gunners. On a separate raft, tethered to the first, lay another crewman, a gash zigzagging across his forehead. Their bodies, burned by the sun and stained yellow from the raft dye, had winnowed down to skeletons. Sharks glided in lazy loops around them, dragging their backs along the rafts, waiting. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

Finally, let me share a feeling of mine, I hope it will not be misinterpreted as pride. I am seventy four now. But still, if they give me a duty in the wooden hut where I used to stay when I was a mentor long years ago, I will gladly run there and try to fulfill that duty. Perhaps, some of our friends can see that task as a simple and trivial one. But I have not underestimated this duty and would never do so. Even today, some people may consider our having lessons with the small circle of young scholars here as a simple and trivial job. However, in my opinion, this is the most important occupation that can take human to the highest levels. ~ M. Fethullah Gulen

These games inspire laughter, spontaneity, ensemble building, physical and vocal expression, concentration, self-discovery/reflection, self-esteem, and, ultimately, I believe, good health. They get adults, and teenagers too, playing again, which is no small feat. ~ Hannah Fox

War teaches us honesty. Honesty with ourselves. For war is a merciless debunker; it debunks great and small alike....When bombs are crashing and fires raging, people are exactly what they are -- nothing more, nothing less. At such times you have the sensation of standing morally naked in public, and you will never be able to forget it, try as hard as you may. ~ Rulka Langer

I think, How small my life seemed then. How little I wanted for myself. How little I expected of myself and those who claimed to love me. ~ Liza Palmer

Ah, this is fine," he cried triumphantly, holding up a small medallion on a chain. He dusted it off, and engraved on one side were the words "WHY NOT?" "That's a good reason for almost anything - a bit used perhaps, but still quite serviceable. ~ Norton Juster

It is in a small village in the Pyrenees where no one knows me 7that my life will come to a close ... There is not enough time remaining for me to write all the letters I would like to write ... ~ Walter Benjamin

As God has not made anything useless in this world, as all beings fulfill obligations or a role in the sublime drama of Creation, I cannot exempt from this duty, and small though it be, I too have a mission to fill, as for example: alleviating the sufferings of my fellowmen. ~ Jose Rizal

That's what I love about the Internet. Even if it's small-scale and you're just posting on a forum, that's an uncensored expression. That's what I love. ~ Felicia Day

The only measure of your worth and your deeds will be the love you leave behind when you're gone. ~ Fred Small

This is deeply disturbing. Congress provided loans to help businesses hurt by the Sept. 11 attacks, not to be used as an accounting gimmick to cover up this administration's failure to provide for small businesses. ~ John F. Kerry

He lay on his side, looking out at the sea. So blue at this time of day, so vibrant as the afternoon died around it. He lay there feeling the breeze on his face and the sea spreading out forever under the darkening sky and he felt so small, so utterly human, but it wasn't a debilitating feeling. It was an oddly proud one. To be a part of this. A speck, yes. But part of it, one with it. Breathing. ~ Dennis Lehane

I want to cultivate the seed that was placed in me until the last small twig has grown. ~ Kathe Kollwitz

The kind of submission or resignation that he showed, was that of a man who was tired out. I sometimes derived an impression, from his manner or from a whispered word or two which escaped him, that he pondered over the question whether he might have a better man under better circumstances. But he never justified himself by a hint tending that way, or tried to bend the past out of its eternal shape.
It happened on two or three occasions in my presence, that his desperate reputation was alluded to by one or other of the people in attendance on him. A smile crossed his face then, and he turned his eyes on me with a trustful look, as if he were confident that I had seen some small redeeming touch in him, even so long ago as when I was a little child. As to all the rest, he was humble and contrite, and I never knew him complain. ~ Charles Dickens

It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive, hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

After a while he got into the rhythm of it, and started playing the private little quantity-surveying game that everyone plays in these circumstances. Let's see, he thought, I've done nearly a quarter, let's call it a third, so when I've done that corner by the hayrack it'll be more than half, call it five-eighths, which means three more wheelbarrow loads. . . . It doesn't prove anything very much except that the awesome splendor of the universe is much easier to deal with if you think of it as a series of small chunks. The ~ Terry Pratchett

On a very small scale, I kind of understand why the directors that I work with do certain things. I don't consider myself an incredible director. I'm not ready to do movies by any means. But, I feel like I can be a better actress now that I've been on the other side and kind of understand the process and more of the technical aspects of it. ~ Hayley Kiyoko

The ceiling was curved, giving the space a cave-like feel, and it was either very large, very small, or sort of normal-sized. ~ John Stephens

I crave the sweet surrender of sleep and my dreams' uncensored communication: no tiresome small talk, sucking up to impress, or tiptoeing around charged topics. Dreams are the naked truth; get ready for it. ~ Judith Orloff

Life is not a plot; it's in the details. ~ Jodi Picoult

Everybody wants you to do good things, but in a small town you pretty much graduate and get married. Mostly you marry, have children and go to their football games. ~ Faith Hill

It was like hundreds of roads he'd driven over - no different - a stretch of tar, lusterless, scaley, humping toward the center. On both sides were telephone poles, tilted this way and that, up a little, down...

Billboards - down farther an increasing clutter of them. Some road signs. A tottering barn in a waste field, the Mail Pouch ad half weathered away. Other fields. A large wood - almost leafless now - the bare branches netting darkly against the sky. Then down, where the road curved away, a big white farmhouse, trees on the lawn, neat fences - and above it all, way up, a television aerial, struck by the sun, shooting out bars of glare like neon. ("Thompson") ~ George A. Zorn

Small talk is last refuge of the insecure. ~ J.A. Rock

The rain, which had continued yesterday and last night, ceased this morning. We then proceeded, and after passing two small islands about ten miles further, stopped for the night at Piper's landing, opposite another island. ~ Meriwether Lewis

God has a global dream for his daughters and his sons, and it is bigger than our narrow interpretations or small box constructions of "biblical manhood and womanhood" or feminism; ~ Sarah Bessey

His performance was also intensely visual, with his volatile movements in front of the piano, and his cries and wild vocal accompaniment to his playing, all of which spoke eloquently of his extraordinary passion for the instrument and the music he coaxed, tickled and sometimes pounded out of him. Many critics were put off by all this, thinking it was a mere outward show- and therefore insincere. In fact it is an essential part of music-making for Jarrett, his way of achieving his state of grace… the ecstasy of inspiration. Miles Davis understood that immediately, and so did most other musicians. Jack DeJohonette says: "The one thing that struck me about Keith, that made him stand out from other players, was that he really has a love affair with the piano, it's a relationship with that instrument… Keith's hands are actually quire small but because of that he can do things that a person like myself, or other pianists with normal hand spans, can't do… it enables him to overlap certain chord sequences and do rhythmic things and contrapuntal lines and get these effects of like, four people playing the piano… But I've never seen anybody just have such a rapport with their instrument and know its limitations but also push them to the limits, transcend the instrument – which is what I try and do with the drums as well. ~ Ian Carr

The smell of hospitals is like small talk at a funeral - you know its function is to cover up something else. ~ Tim Kreider

Sometimes parents loved their sons so much that they made a romance out of their lives. They thought our youth could help us overcome everything. Maybe moms and dads forgot about this one small fact: being on the verge of seventeen could be harsh and painful and confusing. Being on the verge of seventeen could really suck. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Now the son whose father's existance in this world is historical and speculative even before the son has entered it in a bad way. All his life he carries before him the idol of a perfection to which he can never attain. The father dead has euchered his son of his patrimony. For it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled and to which he is heir, more than his goods.He will not hear of the small mean ways that tempered the man in life. He will not see him struggling in follies of his own devising. No. The world which he inherits bears him false witness. He is broken before a frozen god and he will never find his way. ~ Cormac McCarthy