The spiritual ambiguity growing up made me really latch onto a faith – Protestantism – that was somewhat conventional. Everyone else was rebelling against traditions and institutions, whereas I was rebelling against the upheaval and uncertainty in my family.
The conventional wisdom is that authors get only one chance in this world. If your first novel doesn’t sell, publishers and bookstores lose interest, and your career stalls, barring an act of God or Oprah.
I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I’m not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.
Shopping in the future can become an experience where conventional retailers can complement the success of online retailing. Government needs to work in partnership with the sector to help make this a reality.
Whether rich or poor, a home is not a home unless the roots of love are ever striking deeper through the crust of the earthly and the conventional, into the very realities of being, not consciously always; seldom, perhaps; the simplicity of loving grows by living simply near nature and God.
The conventional definition of reality, and the idea of ‘normal life’, mean nothing.
I mean, I’m married to an academic oncologist, a cancer doctor, okay? He and his colleagues are some of the most conscientious, devoted, hard-working, conventional bourgeois people in the known universe. They are the people that keep this society going.
Conventional wisdom suggests the primary motivator for entrepreneurs is money or wealth creation and, in fact, much of the political debate tends to center around what kind of tax or regulatory policy changes will turn corporate suits into small business adventurers overnight.
There are things so deep and complex that only intuition can reach it in our stage of development as human beings. And to Poe… well, a great logician could be an enemy to him, what he called conventional world reason.
I started to itch to do a play again and ‘Macbeth’ came to the surface in my mind. I never thought I would do it in a conventional way. A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn’t interest me.
I think there will be a 200-story skyscraper someday. However, it will require a developer who will not think in conventional terms and for whom economic restraints won’t apply.
Our memories are convenient lies we create, cribbing images from others’ experiences. We discard the personal specifics which don’t conform to the ideal conventional beauty created by art directors and cinematographers.
There were certainly more conventional and predictable paths that I could have taken in life, but I believe in being true to oneself and following the thing that sets your soul on fire. For me, that is music.
I’ve always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it.
My definition of freedom is still ruled by the reluctance to live a conventional life, from Emilio Salgari’s pirates.
Conventional wisdom tells us to avoid taking unalterable action while at a low point in life. I have never been conventional.
The most important lesson of New Labour is this: Every time we made progress we did it by challenging the conventional wisdom.
No doubt relinquishing our nuclear arsenal would irritate Washington but what would the U.S. rather have, the U.K. able to assist in military operations or an ill-equipped conventional force and a nuclear arsenal which will never come into play?
The only thing that makes a book YA is that it is about teenagers, and it is written in a very conventional, non-artsy, non-pretentious way. YA is not the place for the oblique or the cryptic. If it is in any way experimental in form, it is not YA.
I’m not a sex symbol, at least in the conventional sense.
I have grown up believing that when an individual excels at what he does, it makes him desirable. I am a living example that lack of conventional good looks shouldn’t hinder you from being awesome.
I was attracted to filmmaking in college because of my love of storytelling. You can have such an impact and reach a broader audience than conventional journalism.
There’s a conventional reaction when you see a star: You anticipate he’ll be a part of a particular denouement down the road, so you don’t worry for that character.
I try to live holistically and avoid conventional medicine.
A conventional crime story is simple – it’s just a corpse in the river or something, and a detective with an alcohol problem.
I think I always had an unconventional career because I didn’t fit the mould of the conventional heroine.
Conventional wisdom holds that setting a timetable for getting American troops out of Iraq would be a mistake.
Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story.
Conventional turbines only work up to 200 feet, but capturing a small fraction of the global wind energy at higher altitudes could be sufficient to supply the current energy needs of the globe.
Not many directors have the courage to make movies that are against conventional, commercial norms.
Unlearning is gaining importance as workplaces are moving towards agile, collaborative working models. While conventional education adds to our knowledge, unlearning will become the new learning in the coming decade, as concepts and ideas keep evolving.
Islamic fundamentalists in dark areas of Libya rifled through leftover stockpiles of conventional, chemical, and biological munitions from Muammar Gaddafi’s rule. Who knows where they are now?
But in a lot of ways my poems are very conventional, and it’s no big deal for me to write a poem in either free verse or strict form; modern poets can, and do, do both.
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
I know I’m not a conventional beauty. You can read a lot of painful things on the Internet, which criticise you aesthetically – but as far as I’m concerned, that’s not what an actress is.
Conservatives have welcomed Trump’s attacks on the establishment, have cheered his boldness, and have applauded his courage. He has taken on hitherto taboo issues like immigration enforcement and has demonstrated the hollowness of what passes for conventional wisdom.
I remain a very reluctant member of the Conservative Party. On the principle that one sort of ought to. Unfortunately, in 21st-century Britain I have no political home whatever. I get very sickened at the conventional right-wing label.
The 1960s were about releasing ourselves from conventional society and freeing ourselves.
I am exhausted by traditional memoir. I am exhausted by the architecture of the conventional novel.
Conventional wisdom is not always the best wisdom.
Rap is really just too conventional. Everybody does the same thing. No one ever pushes the box.
Microcredit has shown how you can reach out to people that conventional banking cannot. It has demonstrated that it’s a doable proposition.
The reason Jennifer Lawrence is allowed to be a body-positive role model to young girls and ‘chubby’ women is because she is representative of conventional beauty.
I think maybe even one of the reasons I became an actor was actually to hide. I mean, it sounds paradoxical because, of course, people are standing up in a public place and encouraging other people to look at them. So that’s not the conventional definition of hiding.
States are like people. They do not question the awful status quo until some dramatic event overturns the conventional and lax way of thinking.
Much of the conventional wisdom associated with Vietnam was highly inaccurate. Far from an inevitable result of the imperative to contain communism, the war was only made possible through lies and deceptions aimed at the American public, Congress, and members of Lyndon Johnson’s own administration.
Adam Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting are anything but conventional, and you can’t frown on Steve Waugh for playing his slog-sweep because it’s so effective.
As for Tenacious D, of course it could work as a full length movie; all it requires is a great writer and great director with an ability to think outside of conventional film comedy.
My father belongs to a different generation altogether. He has spent most of his time working hard to make our lives comfortable, and ours is more of a conventional father-son relationship rather than one of friends.
It will be a pity if women in the more conventional mould are to be phased out, for there will never be anyone to go home to.
Performance art can involve the audience with taste, smell and sounds not available with electronic media and not practical with conventional theater. This is due to the usually small audience.
Guy Rivers, a conventional piece as regards the love affair which makes a part of the plot, is a tale of deadly strife between the laws of Georgia and a fiendish bandit.
We’ve recognized that natural gas would be the fastest-growing of the conventional fuels: oil, natural gas, coal. And so, we see the important role that natural gas will play globally and, more importantly, the important role it will play in the U.S. in terms of meeting future energy demand.
