Clumsy Quotes - Page 7

• At 11, 12 I thought I was clumsy, ugly, a mess, an unappealing person, but I did have the gift of the gab. I had the school record at Haberdashers for consecutive detentions for simply speaking out of turn.

  Simon Schama

  School, Records, Ugly

  "Lunch with Mariella: Simon Schama". Interview with Mariella Frostrupv, www.theguardian.com. June 19, 2010.

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• In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.

  Robert Reed

  Couple, Cutting, Effort

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• You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic, clumsy and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.

  H. G. Wells

  Artist, Wish, Bombs

  H. G. Wells (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of H. G. Wells (Illustrated)”, p.8287, Delphi Classics

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• There is also a particular frustration that I have with language. It's so clumsy. And the reason I'm feeling that is more because on your breathing and your intonation than the actual words.

  Arca

  Frustration, Breathing, Feelings

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type - as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer - an insipid one or a clumsy one - but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes and gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can write. People who hang around writers for years - as producers did - who are much smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write.

  Ben Hecht

  Girl, Children, Eye

  "Elegy for Wonderland" by Ben Hecht, Esquire Magazine, March 1959.

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• Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.

  Walt Kelly

  Self, Hands, People

  Walt Kelly (1974). “Pogo revisited: containing the complete volumes of The Pogo poop book, Instant Pogo [and] The Jack Acid Society black book”, Simon & Schuster

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• A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.

  Umberto Eco

  Inspirational, Funny, War

  Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.50, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• As I look back at the span of the Cold War in those early days, in the '50s, for example, there was a great deal of Soviet propaganda here in the United States, but it was clumsy, and it was anchored to a lot of ideological support in certain circles in America itself.

  Alexander Haig

  War, Circles, America

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• I'm not clumsy, I'm just accident prone.

  Daniel Radcliffe

  Accidents

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I am terribly clumsy, so there is a plethora of walking into lamp-posts, falling over, dropping things, and ruining sofas.

  Matt Smith

  Fall, Lamps, Dropping

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.

  Abraham Verghese

  Patient, Exam, Heartbeat

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• International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.

  Rebecca West

  Gestures, Imperfect, International

  "The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews".

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• Instead of things I'm good at, it might be faster to list the things I can't do. I can't cook or clean the house. My room's a mess, and I'm always losing things. I love music, but I can't sing a note. I'm clumsy and can barely sew a stitch. My sense of direction is the pits, and I can't tell left from right half the time. When I get angry, I tend to break things. Plates and pencils, alarm clocks. Later on I regret it, but at the time I can't help myself. I have no money in the bank. I'm bashful for no reason, and I have hardly any friends to speak of.

  Haruki Murakami

  Regret, House, Half

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• After perhaps thirty meters, just as a soldier turned around, the girl was felled. Hands were clamped upon her from behind and the boy next door brought her down. He forced her knees to the road and suffered the penalty. He collected her punches as if they were presents. Her bony hands and elbows were accepted with nothing but a few short moans. He accumulated the loud, clumsy specks of saliva and tears as if they were lovely to his face, and more important, he was able to hold her down.

  Markus Zusak

  Girl, Boys, Doors

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• I do like Christmas on the whole.... In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year.

  E. M. Forster

  Christmas, Holiday, Years

  E. M. Forster (2016). “Howards End: England Literature”, p.68, 谷月社

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• Angel is right,"said Dr. G-H quickly. "This is my clumsy way of demonstrating." "Demonstrating what?" I was barely able to keep a snarl out of my voice. "How to get yourself beat up in one easy step?

  James Patterson

  Angel, Voice, Drs

  James Patterson (2010). “Maximum Ride: Fang: Dystopian Science Fiction”, p.50, Random House

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• He'd only been gone two seconds, but the room got brighter when they were together, as if they were two elements that became brilliant in proximity. At Sam's clumsy efforts to carry the vacuum, Grace smiled a new smile that I thought only he ever got, and he shot her a withering look full of the sort of subtext you could only get from a lot of conversations whispered after dark. It made me think of Isabel, back at her house. We didn't have what Sam and Grace had. We weren't even close to having it. I didn't think what we had could get to this, even if you gave it a thousand years.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Dark, Thinking, Years

  Maggie Stiefvater (2014). “Shiver Series (Shiver, Linger, Forever, Sinner)”, p.509, Scholastic Inc.

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• I'm home! Yuki-Kun, Tohru-Kun, I'm home! Oh, and let's not forget Stupid-clumsy-Kyo-Kun-who-lost-yet-another-fight!" -Shigure

  Natsuki Takaya

  Stupid, Home, Fighting

  ""Fruits Basket"". Manga series by Natsuki Takaya, July 1998–November 2006.

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• Let's save some time here. I grow weary of your clumsy bluffs. In the case of an abduction, the LEP will send a crack Retrieval team to get back what has been lost.. You have done so. Excuse me while I titter. Crack team? Honestly. A Cub-Scout patrol armed with water pistols could have defeated them.

  Eoin Colfer

  Team, Water, Cracks

  Eoin Colfer (2014). “Artemis Fowl:”, p.108, Penguin UK

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• I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Song, Believe, Character

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.102, Ultramarine Publishing

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• There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Hate, Years, Squad

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• . . .only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.

  John Boyne

  Trying, Way, Sides

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• I am sorry the only outlet for her troubled mind was in clumsy foreplay with an inadequate partner." He threw the rest of her sandwich at the swinging door as she passed through it.

  Jennifer Armintrout

  Sorry, Doors, Mind

  Jennifer Armintrout (2008). “Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning\Blood Ties Book Two: Possession\Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes\Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night”, MIRA

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• What did I care about my hammer, about my bolt, about thirst or death? There was, on one star, on one planet, on mine, the Earth, a little prince to be consoled! I took him in my arms. I rocked him. I told him, 'The flower you love is not in danger...I'll draw you a muzzle for your sheep...I'll draw you a fence for your flower...I' I didn't know what to say. How clumsy I felt! I didn't know how to reach him, where to find him...It's so mysterious, the land of tears.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Stars, Flower, Love Is

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• Frank didn’t drop you on purpose,” she said. “He’s not like that. He’s just a little clumsy sometimes.” “Oops,” Leo said, in his best Frank Zhang voice. “Dropped Leo into a squad of enemy soldiers. Dang it!

  Rick Riordan

  Squad, Voice, Soldier

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