I am trying to write novels for properly clever people, but I also want them to be proper novels that also stick in a person’s mind and have an atmosphere about them.
I get tired of comedies where there are a bunch of funny guys and a beautiful woman who doesn’t do anything funny. And I don’t like books where there’s a rough-and-tumble boy and a really clever, snotty girl. That’s just not my experience with teenagers.
Bush is very clever. When the debate should have been about the deterioration of our cities and the lack of action by government, he sent in his idiot to make an outrageous statement about Murphy Brown.
It takes a clever man to turn cynic and a wise man to be clever enough not to.
A clever, imaginative, humorous request can open closed doors and closed minds.
Honestly, I just assume that whatever is going to happen to me is going to happen. There it goes: someone is there, someone isn’t there. This girl is here. This food is here. I think the clever people are the ones who do a little as possible.
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!
Trees are great. Don’t get me started about how clever they are, how oxygen-generous, how time-formed in inner cyclic circles, how they provide homes for myriad creatures, how – back when this country was covered in forests – the word for sky was an Old English word that meant ‘tops of trees.’
Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
I am all for high art but I owe it to myself to be clever about it and do commercial things too.
You just have to be clever about who you work with. Had I done Gap or H&M, there’s no way Louis Vuitton would have wanted to work with me. So you hold out for the big ones.
We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.
I’ve been composing music all my life and if I’d been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to music college.
Appeasement was never a very clever policy, and it should not be our option today.
I think there are different kinds of comedians, and I prefer the clowns who are going: ‘I’m an idiot, aren’t we all a bit like this, laugh at me.’ Whereas, a lot of other comedians are saying: ‘Aren’t I clever? You want to be me, aren’t I cool? Revere me.’ Which is fine. But that’s not my bag.
A lot of the tabloid stories are written so well, they’re very clever and very funny. But you have to focus on what’s really important and not read them – don’t dive into it and don’t get caught up in it.
I never had any friends beyond a certain superficial level. We hate to admit weaknesses. We were raised to want to get ahead, to be good and clever and successful. You’re just ashamed to open up.
Awards sell tickets, and they’re a clever publicity stunt.
Before I made ‘Sweetback,’ I had a three-picture deal with Columbia and enough juice, if I was real clever with it, to proclaim that I wanted to do an independent film.
Wall Street is littered with clever plans to use financial instruments to change behavior – carbon trading, for example. Some have changed the world, and others failed miserably.
The biggest problem of all is that it’s very difficult to tell my daughter, ‘Swearing is not clever or funny,’ because I earn a living by swearing.
From a gameplay standpoint, I’ve said for years that hero, fiction, and tone have nothing to do with the idea that choices have consequences. And that’s really what I’m interested in. I care about you showing how clever and creative you are.
Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.
