Clumsiness Quotes

Stop being astounded by the realization that sex is the object of such misunderstanding and of such automatic clumsiness that it implies either a universal loathing or a universal veneration (which are much the same thing).

Philippe Sollers

Sex, Realization, Loathing

Philippe Sollers (1994). “Watteau in Venice: A Novel”, Scribner

52 Copy quote

Show source
My balance is really bad. I just hope my clumsiness doesn't show through.

Kim Kardashian

Balance, Shows

7 Copy quote
Whatever the medium, there is the difficulty, challenge, fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials.

Helen Frankenthaler

Challenges, Fascination, Problem

Helen Frankenthaler, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (1980). “Helen Frankenthaler prints, 1961-1979”, HarperCollins

27 Copy quote

Show source
Of all the things that oppress me, this sense of the evil working of nature herself -my disgust at her barbarity -clumsiness -darkness -bitter mockery of herself -is the most desolating.

John Ruskin

Evil, Darkness, Bitterness

7 Copy quote
I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Talkers

Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Jean Wade Gayles (2003). “Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.21, Univ. Press of Mississippi

18 Copy quote

Show source
Sometimes kindness can be delivered in a clumsy way.

Ruta Sepetys

Kindness, Way, Sometimes

Ruta Sepetys (2011). “Between Shades of Gray”, p.107, Penguin

10 Copy quote

Show source
Sometimes kindness can be delivered in a clumsy way. But it's far more sincere in its clumsiness than those distinguished men you read about in books. Your father was very clumsy.

Ruta Sepetys

Kindness, Father, Book

Ruta Sepetys (2011). “Between Shades of Gray”, p.107, Penguin

8 Copy quote

Show source
I rather like a certain clumsiness in a work of art.

Edgard Varese

Art, Certain, Works Of Art

16 Copy quote
The key, I would say to any fledgling humorist starting out, is to make sure that sloppiness is part of your recipe. That way they come to expect fumbling and clumsiness and they say, "Oh, it must be a charming part of his personality."

Nick Offerman

Keys, Personality, Sloppiness

"Interview: Nick Offerman on his ‘Simpsons’ voice and TV life after ‘Parks and Recreation’". Interview with Daniel Fienberg, uproxx.com. October 3, 2014.

4 Copy quote

Show source
In the arts, foolhardiness is always harmful; even worse, however, is clumsiness.

Franz Grillparzer

Art

4 Copy quote
I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker. It has always been hard for me to say exactly what I mean in speech But if I have written a clumsiness, I may erase it.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Mean, Speech, May

Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Jean Wade Gayles (2003). “Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.21, Univ. Press of Mississippi

10 Copy quote

Show source
Sorry. I have technical difficulties making it through a room without bumping into something. Thank God my clumsiness is only restricted to the ground. I’d probably kill myself diving if I was this bad underwater. (Tory)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Sorry, Thank God, Underwater

Sherrilyn Kenyon (2008). “Acheron: A Dark-Hunter Novel”, p.498, Macmillan

4 Copy quote

Show source
Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication--but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.

Isaac Asimov

Communication, Men, Mind

Isaac Asimov (1986). “Foundation Trilogy”, Del Rey

18 Copy quote

Show source
To disguise nothing, to conceal nothing, to write about those things that are closest to our pain, our happiness; to write about our sexual clumsiness, the agonies of Tantalus, the depth of our discouragement-what we glimpse in our dreams-our despair. To write about the foolish agonies of anxiety, the refreshment of our strength when these are ended; to write about our painful search for self, jeopardized by a stranger in the post office, a half-seen face in a train window, to write about the continents and populations of our dreams, about love and death, good and evil, the end of the world.

John Cheever

Dream, Pain, Writing

"From the Sixties—I" by John Cheever, www.newyorker.com. January 21, 1991.

17 Copy quote

Show source
Its subtlest, most appealing accomplishment may be in how other characters respond to Gregorius' precipitous swerve onto the spiritual path. (...) That said, Night Train to Lisbon is a very long, ambitious book that's feverishly overwritten. (...) Think of W.G. Sebald recast for the mass market: stripped of nuance, cooked at high temperature and pounded home, clause after clause. Some of the clumsiness derives from Barbara Harshav's inelegant translation -- we're often aware of her struggle -- but she can't be blamed for the pervasive bloat.

Michelle Huneven

Spiritual, Struggle, Book

4 Copy quote
Both the artist and the lover know that perfection is not loveable. It is the clumsiness of a fault that makes a person lovable.

Joseph Campbell

Artist, Perfection, Faults

5 Copy quote
. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.

Virginia Woolf

Solitude

Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.407, Wordsworth Editions

16 Copy quote

Show source
Show me a novelist – or, indeed, a reader – who wasn’t a socially awkward, self-conscious adolescent, prone to clumsiness and excessive reading and I’ll… well, I’ll probably bang my shoulder on the door frame as I storm out. Many of the most unforgettable female fictional protagonists are gauche, self-doubting, plain and think too much.

Charlotte Mendelson

Reading, Thinking, Doors

4 Copy quote
To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.

Dan Simmons

Sex, Pain, Mistake

Dan Simmons (2011). “Rise of Endymion”, p.403, Spectra

10 Copy quote

Show source
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.

Steven Pinker

Baby, Age, Tourists

4 Copy quote
Perhaps we were each allotted only a certain amount of love - enough for only an initial meeting - a serendipitous clumsiness. When it leaves to find others, the difficulty begins because we are faced with our humanness, our past, our very being.

Simon Van Booy

Past, Enough, Certain

Simon van Booy (2014). “The Secret Lives of People in Love”, p.225, Oneworld Publications

4 Copy quote

Show source