Arsene has most of the media in his pocket now and is almost – almost – affecting the officials so that you can’t tackle an Arsenal player. That’s something he’s very clever at working on and it’s almost working in his favour, you can see that.
Be completely honest – have you ever met someone who you thought was truly clever or interesting or witty who wore fawn?
I never dreamt I could be an author when I grew up. It just didn’t occur to me, because I thought you had to be a) academic, so go to university, things like that, and I didn’t think I was clever, or b) dead because I just assumed all the authors in the library were dead.
If you’re going to take a jab at someone, you should at least have a bit more of a personal relationship with them. I feel like you can be funny and clever, as opposed to just outright vile.
If you’re too methodical, too fearful, you’re not going to win. But the clever thing is to make the calculation correctly about where and when to go over the top. You’ve got to know when to push it and when to come back.
I would have been happy teaching music in schools – I still would be, and I still might be, although I don’t know if I’m clever enough.
I was a weedy kid, not like one of those working-class men who can accommodate not being academically clever by physical strength and prowess.
One way to think of the tax system is as a massive Swiss cheese. Each hole is an exemption created by a chancellor in pursuit of good headlines – a hole waiting to be filled by the clever accountants who work for Starbucks or Jimmy Carr.
Dad wanted me to act because it was a clever way of boosting my confidence.
Advisers who think that they are very clever while all around them are a bit thick, and that all the problems of the world would be solved if the thick listened to the clever, are liable to be disappointed.
I sang ‘American Pie’ a lot in my stage set. It had a knack of uniting an audience in a sing-along. It’s a clever song about American history but wrapped in a fantastic tune.
I learned from both my parents that you had to be clever.
Usually, the leaders appear in the moment of the highest stress, when it is time, speaking symbolically, to go to the barricades. Then people, clever, capable, but focused on their own tasks, will leave their immediate occupations and go to the barricades, because there is nowhere to hide.
A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible.
If somebody does a task really badly, then that’s better for us than if they do it really well. We always tell people when they get back to the green room after doing a task that they’ve cocked up, ‘You’ve actually really won that task, because people remember them more than the geniuses.’ No one likes the clever people.
Compared with my brother, I always felt like Richard III, some clever humpbacked thing who surpassed him in the end. He was the one who read books, but I became the writer. He painted and drew, but I was the one who got accepted by the High School of Music and Art.
The more you know about somebody’s back story, the deeper you can delve into that well, and the more your comedic choices resonate full-body instead of just being quick, quippy one-liners that are just like a bunch of people trying to be clever. Because after a while, cleverness is just really obnoxious!
It was Martin O’Neill who said, ‘You’re a central midfielder.’ He put faith into players. He was very clever at getting into players’ heads, leaving little remarks to make me believe more. The players at Villa all moved up another level under him.
There are many comics around who don’t really have a feel for comedy. They can say outrageous things, have clever thoughts, and deliver some funny angles. But they are not genuinely funny.
I don’t really wanna talk about politics, I’m not clever enough.
I do believe that even if you’re the most clever person around and you figure out the ‘whodunit’ and you’re not surprised – that shouldn’t prevent you from enjoying the story.
When I was a little girl, I told everyone I was going to marry a very clever scientist and have ten children. I would always draw the children, and they included blond-haired twin boys whom I named Theodore and Frederick: Teddy and Freddy for short.
I wanted to be clever, but being funny came first. That’s how you know someone is clever. They don’t come out and tell you pi to 13 places – they tell you a joke.
I like to believe my suspense novels marry the strong characters from my romance writing past, with the twisty, clever plots of my mystery writing present.
I’ve always felt that improv looks and feels more clever when you’re there to experience it live than when you have the degree of separation that television creates. Television raises expectations.
As a quick, tricky player, I’ve been told that I don’t go down enough because I’ve always tried to stay on my feet or I don’t win clever fouls around the box. But when you are quick, the fastest way to be stopped is by being fouled so it happens to me a lot, even if I don’t always maximise the opportunity.
There’s been so many different types of musicals, and it’s a funny genre because there’s a fine line between clever and stupid. It really takes a genius to know how to do it.
Playing nuts is a game like any other, neither better than tops, nor worse than cards. The game is played in various ways. There are ‘holes’ and ‘bank’ and ‘caps.’ But every game finishes up in the same way. One boy loses, another wins. And, as always, he who wins is a clever fellow, a smart fellow, a good fellow.
I think Douglas was a real one-off. He was so clever and so intelligent and so well read in real science that he could make science fiction work as well as it did. And just such fun to have around, he was just such a lovely man.
I don’t feel embarrassed by any of the music that I like. I think it’s all genuinely clever, good music.
I haven’t just got a fight IQ – and I’m clever. I’ve got that power. I’ve got that movement. I’ve got that timing.
Petruchio is a very clever guy and clearly has a lot of bravado and confidence. My feeling is that he’s broke at the beginning of the play and needs a dowry to save face back home.
I’m sure Mark Carney is a very clever young man, but I think that the government would be mad to move from inflation targeting to money GDP targeting.
A lot of consumers actively enjoy advertising, especially fashion print ads and clever TV commercials. The nostalgic cable channel TVLand features not only vintage shows but also vintage commercials.
I don’t think I see the world in terms of stupid or clever, but in terms of being able to get irony. There’s some awful statistic about only 20 per cent of Americans being able to understand irony.
Everybody’s constantly growing. In your twenties, you can learn a lot, and you can be very smart and clever and savvy. Especially these kids today. They seem like they have it all together. But let’s talk to them again when they’re 40 years old and see really who they are. Is it who they thought they were at 25?
The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.
There is no bore like a clever bore.
My parents brought us up in a very clever way, which was that they saw what we were interested in naturally, and then they encouraged whatever that may be. When I started sharing a keen interest in drama and the theater, instead of steering me away from it, they encouraged me to see plays and think about drama school.
I do wish I could write like some of the American women, who can be clever and heartfelt and hopeful; people like Lorrie Moore and Jennifer Egan. But Ireland messed me up too much, I think, so I can’t.
It is a great act of cleverness to be able to conceal one’s being clever.
My dad grew up in a mud hut and studied by candlelight. He was 14 when he got a scholarship to Russia. He was super clever – the cleverest person. He landed in 5ft of snow, and was alone at 14, studying science and engineering. He didn’t have a bed, and he slept on a table.
I think people really appreciate clever commercials, as do I. I think they’re very entertaining. You just have to wade through all the garbage. That’s one of the reasons people watch the Super Bowl. A lot of them watch it to see the commercials and not the actual game.
I think clever people think that poor people are stupid.
Mark Watson and Paul Sinha have been exactly the same – very, very clever, and very, very thick.
Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that’s fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.
I’ve never been clever with money. I will buy anything at the top of the market.
Novels are not about expressing yourself, they’re about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.
In the morning, I never cleanse. I just splash my face with water and pat it dry. I honestly think that the human body is a clever thing and that the natural oils my skin produces are best for it. Then I apply a dab of rouge, and I’m off.
