A Quote by Dan Savage

When you're a writer, you want to try to avoid cliches. Unfortunately, when you're writing about marriage or family, all cliches seem to apply.

Dan Savage

Quote Topics

About Apply Avoid Cliches Family Marriage Seem Try Unfortunately Want Writer Writing

Quote Author

Dan Savage
American - Writer
Born: October 7, 1964

Beware of clichés. Not just the clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

Geoff Dyer

To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.

Martin Amis

I don't think there are any clichés I try to avoid. As soon as I spot a cliché, I go for it. I feel like clichés are the most useful thing in songwriting. They're the tool on which you build all the rest of the song.

Stephin Merritt

Clichés are what good writing is all about. Because our lives are basically clichés.

Sylvester Stallone

The only valid reason to use clichés is in the speech of a character. Cliches are indications of sloppy writing. The writer does not respect the scene he is trying to dramatize enough to fashion it through precise prose and imaginative imagery. From the book Dare to be a Great Writer: 329 Keys to Powerful Fiction by

Leonard Bishop

People forget that keeping a band together is hard; man, it's really hard. All the cliches apply about living in each other's pockets; of it being a relationship, a marriage, a family.

Dean Wareham

Don't avoid the cliches - they are cliches because they work!

George Lucas

Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.

Umberto Eco

Always try in interviews to avoid the cliches about the problems of public life.

Jack Nicholson

Most artists try to avoid cliches, but it's pretty hard to avoid them if you yourself end up being one.

Daryl Hall

I've never understood why artists, who so often condescend to the cliches of their own culture, are so eager to embrace the cliches of cultures they know nothing about.

Brad Holland

Most people try to avoid cliches. It's my ambition in life to try to get 'em right!

Philip Schultz

I try my best to not just avoid cliches but to write with some meaning.

Amanda Shires

I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.

Umberto Eco

I'm not a guy who likes cliches. I don't think that stereotypes and cliches are the end of the line, when it comes to a performance.