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cliché
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  • And, inevitably, as in every convict cliche I'd ever heard, he claimed innocence.†   (source)
  • I'd heard all the cliched warnings about the perils of falling for someone you only knew online, but I ignored them.†   (source)
  • The five-pointed star was now a virtual cliché in Satanic serial killer movies, usually scrawled on the wall of some Satanist's apartment along with other alleged demonic symbology.†   (source)
  • He had a way of turning cliches inside out like that.†   (source)
  • And mine to him are no less cliched.†   (source)
  • Some clichés I understood only when they came into my heaven full speed.†   (source)
  • The word "hackneyed" here means "used by so, so many writers that by the time Lemony Snicket uses it, it is a tiresome cliché."†   (source)
  • My father is fluent in cliche.†   (source)
  • Any cliche you've ever heard used to describe Clint Eastwood, those were Eleanor's eyes.†   (source)
  • Now she lives in a big house in La Canada and quotes cliched bigotry at me for wanting to marry you.†   (source)
  • Different race, same macho cliches.†   (source)
  • For Wendy, it was discovering truth in a cliche: her breath was taken away.†   (source)
  • Yeah, I know, I'm a walking cliché—go in as a boy, come out as a man and all that.†   (source)
  • She had an endless store of cliches.†   (source)
  • IT'S A CLICHE, BUT IT'S TRUE: YOU FORM TIGHT friendships in war.†   (source)
  • He was still at risk of winding up a cliche of free market capitalism: the inventor whose brainchild would lead to profit for others and nothing for himself.†   (source)
  • And Charles Schulz had Snoopy write it because it was a cliche, and had been one for a very long time, way back when your favorite beagle decided to become a writer.†   (source)
  • It all swirls together, cliches mixing with your own emotions, and in the end you can't tell one from the other.†   (source)
  • But it seemed like such a cliché after what we'd just done.†   (source)
  • What an awful cliché.†   (source)
  • I prefer these well-meant cliches to the talk we heard before we got married.†   (source)
  • "If I made a joke about just dropping in," he said, "would you write me off as a cliché?"†   (source)
  • Clichés and stereotypes such as "beatnik" or "hippie" have been invented for the antitechnologists, the antisystem people, and will continue to be.†   (source)
  • Hers was a well-worn cliché but one we could already see was steeped in truth.†   (source)
  • "Your instinct is to say all the cliches people babble out in cases like this.†   (source)
  • Strangely, as bored as I was with clichés, her inflection gave them something new, and set me thinking for a little while at least.†   (source)
  • He said, "Even though you'd thrive at all three schools, you scorn them for being a cliche of achievement.†   (source)
  • 'I'm a walking cliche.†   (source)
  • He laughed: "No, nobody lives without clichés— what?"†   (source)
  • It was then that I first understood the cliché of feeling the cold in one's bones.†   (source)
  • The draugr had zero respect for zombie clichés.†   (source)
  • The point is he turned our whole thing into a cliché.†   (source)
  • (She smiles happily at this cliché of clichés) Everybody say it's got to do with them bombs and things they keep setting off.†   (source)
  • Although in the candlelight it was hard to be sure which cliché was a more appropriate description.†   (source)
  • I've never broken up with anybody before, and all the cliches keep running through my head.†   (source)
  • But most gangsters were, as the cliché assures us, two-bit gangsters.†   (source)
  • He was the original on which the cliche was based.†   (source)
  • While the cliche "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" had been echoing in my brain over the almost six years of waiting, I had to consider the truth it offers, like most hoary, oft-repeated ideas.†   (source)
  • "Empowerment" is a cliche in the aid community, but it is truly what is needed.†   (source)
  • In a discipline in which athletes bored newsmen to death with clichés and blandly politic statements, Pollard was a singularly fresh interview, articulate, irreverent, and self-deprecating.†   (source)
  • He didn't say anything as patently cliched as that they were all looking for the same thing, justice.†   (source)
  • Slapping his hand against the desk in a small hotel room, Kevin Houston said, "You need to promise me: don't start this story at BUD/S that is so cliche.†   (source)
  • It wouldn't matter a bit that it was the most ridiculous, most clichéd, most commercial piece of tripe the drugstore world has to offer.†   (source)
  • It says something about my mother, and her utter and total belief in the love stories she not only wrote but lived, that she was able to say this then, not two hours after her fifth marriage had dissolved in a puddle of deceit, bad cliches, and discarded Ensure cans.†   (source)
  • Unfazed, Trey trumps Mom's cliched hand.†   (source)
  • "Cm, no. That's so cliché," I say.†   (source)
  • So often the material he had to work with was thin and paltry, and he had to patch something together with a few superlatives, cliches, and false notes of glory in order to commemorate the life, and bolster a sense of loss over the death.†   (source)
  • Normally, he drapes his arm over my shoulders as we walk in, in a clichéd display of ownership, and then once that's established, I'm released.†   (source)
  • I know it's a cliche, but that night I made love as if it might never happen again.†   (source)
  • What about the cliche of the artist who leaves his wife and children so he can paint?†   (source)
  • "That's such a common phrase, such a cliche, and so unflattering.†   (source)
  • Bishop Long's comfortable house in Mitchellville, Maryland; his Cadillacs; his finely cut suits; some nearly destitute members of his flock giving their last dime— these drew a few nasty TV broadcasts a few years back, full of unholy cliches.†   (source)
  • That's cliché as heck, but it's true.†   (source)
  • And your reactions won't be the ones of the person sitting next to you; one man's cliche is another man's revelation.†   (source)
  • Clichés have a basis in fact.†   (source)
  • ...and all his adult life he has lived life pretty much like he wanted. The price, from time to time, is jail, and every time he goes in my momma dies a little more inside. I know it is a cliché to say that, but...†   (source)
  • "No nuances there, only an unproven cliché," muttered Conklin.†   (source)
  • That's what I want to do with my paintings, find a unique language, obliterate the clichés.†   (source)
  • Clichés on the wing: moths to the flame.†   (source)
  • I thought briefly of the clichés, about how you were suppose to see your life flash before your eyes.†   (source)
  • It was a cliche, Nancy would answer.†   (source)
  • Melissa couldn't hear what they said then, but she could taste what passed between them, cliched and daylight: Jessica vanilla.†   (source)
  • I left Mance and the referees and joined my teammates, who had encircled Coach Byrum, listening to him exhort us to win in an endless string of cliches that made up the impoverished language of sport.†   (source)
  • And I wouldn't dare say anything negative to Beanie right now (especially considering my level of expertise in such matters), and besides, I just don't want to rain on her parade (which according to Miss Tyler is a tired old cliché and should never be used in good writing).†   (source)
  • If these phrases seem like clichés, they nevertheless had real meaning to those who wrote them.†   (source)
  • Clichés.†   (source)
  • So did I, till it got to be a cliché.†   (source)
  • What was the original reason for this cliché?†   (source)
  • Not just with objective wonder at the rising of a truth, fragmentary or not, up through what often seemed to be an impenetrable mass of prejudices, cliches, and bromides.†   (source)
  • Those are clichés.†   (source)
  • I have studied objectively the anthropological arguments, the accepted cliches about cultural and ethnic differences.†   (source)
  • But you also have all the old clichés.†   (source)
  • After two years studying what rewrite men did with the facts I phoned them, I knew thatjournalism was essentially a task of stringing together seamlessly an endless series of cliches.†   (source)
  • Every kind of cliché parading as new wisdom.†   (source)
  • The cliche might have gone on and on except for the accident of his moving in with the Bensons.†   (source)
  • I could myself, given several hours and plenty of luck, just by rubbing two dry cliches together.†   (source)
  • 'Jupiter' and 'Never panic' and 'Anyone who says A must say B' and 'The Moor has done his work, the Moor can go'-none of these cliches, these vulgar commonplaces, appeal to me.†   (source)
  • JEAN: [from the bathroom] Just cliches!†   (source)
  • It was the quintessence of every melodic cliche Reich had ever heard.†   (source)
  • The class laughed along with him, but I always thought cliches got a bum rap.†   (source)
  • Now let me string still more cliches together for your amusement: It happened gradually.†   (source)
  • I could think of several reasons, cliches.†   (source)
  • What's more he talks in cliches, and commonplace arguments leave me cold.†   (source)
  • A CREATIVE WRITING TEACHER at San Jose State used to say about cliches: "Avoid them like the plague."†   (source)
  • The coalition outstations in northern Kunar and the observation posts (OPs) surrounding them were mortared and shot at almost daily, but that was nothing compared to the Pech River Valley, which was the Wild West, Indian Country, Ambush Alley, and other wartime cliches rolled up into one huge disadvantage if you're the outsider trying to gain a foothold.†   (source)
  • Did he really imagine he'd made the discovery all by himself, that it hadn't been one of the grand old cliches for a thousand thousand years?†   (source)
  • He listened to our cliches, to our unnatural official tone, and he thought it was because he was second-rate, a nonentity, that we talked like this.†   (source)
  • "I want to like Jar Jar, because hating Jar Jar is so cliché, but he was the worst," Daisy said.†   (source)
  • Don't y'all think it's kind of a cliche to have a picnic in a graveyard on Halloween?"†   (source)
  • There isn't a thing Tara says that isn't a cliché.†   (source)
  • At the risk of sounding cliched, I've been expecting you.†   (source)
  • This fall/middle-age cliche was pretty creaky in the knees long before he got hold of it.†   (source)
  • If at First You Don't Succeed… …TRY, TRY a cliché.†   (source)
  • My life there was entirely new, and as near to a cliché as I could make it.†   (source)
  • You know that old cliche: Men want her, and women want to be her.†   (source)
  • That is from my cliché repertoire for incoming students.†   (source)
  • Amanda Spitterton-Watts, the biggest cliche in school.†   (source)
  • Here is another cliche my creative writing teacher would have scoffed at; like father, like son.†   (source)
  • My students knew: It's not just whether you win or lose, it's how you play the cliché.†   (source)
  • I was the embodiment of every writer's worst fear: a cliche.†   (source)
  • But the aptness of the cliched saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliche.†   (source)
  • That's a cliché my parents always told me, and it applies far beyond prom night.†   (source)
  • They're a new audience, and they're inspired by clichés.†   (source)
  • I love a lot of pop culture clichés, too.†   (source)
  • Of course, of all the clichés in the world, I love football clichés the most.†   (source)
  • To use a cliche, Renault, we are locked on the horns of a dilemma.†   (source)
  • But even though all the clichés seemed appropriate, he still wasn't sure what to do.†   (source)
  • "Oh, God, I'm a cliché," he said in despair.†   (source)
  • "That's a little clichéd," Hassan called out from the candy aisle.†   (source)
  • I had almost made it through the year without lapsing into total cliche but had now missed the mark.†   (source)
  • It sounds cliché, but I mean an in-depth characterization.†   (source)
  • The cliché of time passing slowly usually has to do with idleness and inactivity.†   (source)
  • But as the old cliché went, better safe than sorry.†   (source)
  • I know it sounds like a cliché, but I found out from the dry cleaner, of all people.†   (source)
  • It is true, the cliché, about people being in such a hurry.†   (source)
  • I told you once before my dad was the King of Cliché.†   (source)
  • I found only one reason for this cliché and it does not apply to our case.†   (source)
  • The old cliche that experience is the best teacher proved itself to me with a vengeance.†   (source)
  • "About last night," I start, and I realize how clichéd that sounds.†   (source)
  • I hate that more than anything—being part of a cliché.†   (source)
  • No, Charlie would say, a colloquial expression was different from a cliche.†   (source)
  • Her momma kind of didn't, but that is often the way of it, cliché or not.†   (source)
  • It is a cliché to call it a simple time, but it was.†   (source)
  • It seems a cliché now, to see it on movie screens.†   (source)
  • They have destroyed the cliche that whenever Negroes move into an area the property values go down.†   (source)
  • The Munford defensive end who lined up across from Michael Oher obviously took one look at him and saw a high school football cliché: the fat kid they stuck on the offensive line because there was no place else to put him except the tuba section of the band.†   (source)
  • I know it's a cliché and it's probably off the mark, but I keep thinking of you sitting in a tent at a makeshift table, with an oil lamp burning beside you while the wind blows outside.†   (source)
  • Some of it was as heartbreaking as it was cliché: decrepit shacks rotting away, stray dogs begging for food, and old furniture strewn on the lawns.†   (source)
  • Strangely; with less than a century of sexual writing as standard practice, there is almost nothing left but cliche.†   (source)
  • Such a cliche.†   (source)
  • It's such a cliché, you know?†   (source)
  • This is one of our favorite games, where one of us creates the beginning of a cliched tagline and the other finishes it.†   (source)
  • For the last couple of centuries, since Wordsworth and the Romantic poets, the sublime landscape—the dramatic and breathtaking vista—has been idealized, sometimes to the point of cliche.†   (source)
  • You'd think that these components, these archetypes, would wear out with use the way cliche wears out, but they actually work the other way: they take on power with repetition, finding strength in numbers.†   (source)
  • Just got to keep on keeping on, that's what Mama Mo says, and when she says it—her sureness, each word emphasized, as if it really were a viable life strategy—the cliche stops being a set of words and turns into something real.†   (source)
  • I roll in on fumes—a cliche I've never put to practice—park the car, and take in the view: a migration of the elderly, scuttling like broken insects on walkers and canes, jerking oxygen tanks toward the bright lights.†   (source)
  • A Recovering Jerk IT IS an accepted cliché in education that the number one goal of teachers should be to help students learn how to learn.†   (source)
  • But it will be easier for you to learn the basics of football than for me to learn a new set of life clichés.†   (source)
  • As I see it, the reason clichés are repeated so often is because they're so often right on the money.†   (source)
  • I love clichés.†   (source)
  • "We're not a cliché," she said.†   (source)
  • It may also be worth noting some common rhetorical pitfalls: self-righteousness, prescribing for others, advertisements for self, cliche, and disguised attack.†   (source)
  • I guess I'd go with the standard clichés-I'd like him to be handsome, kind, intelligent, and charming-you know, all those good things that women want in a man.†   (source)
  • I was nineteen years old, a college dropout, living in my parents' house, unemployed, a layabout, a cliche.†   (source)
  • I might have weeks or I might have months and though it's a cliché, it's true that so many of the things I once believed to be important no longer are.†   (source)
  • "But that's such a cliche," I said.†   (source)
  • She'd always considered such things touristy and unbearably clichéd, but Jonah had enjoyed their outings, and surprisingly, so had she.†   (source)
  • She tossed off some typical cliche about Pandora being sorry, but she looked more miserable than vindictive.†   (source)
  • I know it's a cliché, but it's true.†   (source)
  • The man was the master of Hollywood clichés, and Jeremy glanced at the clock again, thinking it was way too early for this.†   (source)
  • She had grown quite accustomed to the clichés of other people's lives as well as her own increasing dissatisfaction with Medallion.†   (source)
  • The creatures snarled like she'd just thrown holy water on them (and please, that's such an untrue cliché about vampyres).†   (source)
  • What a cliche, I thought acidly.†   (source)
  • Her mother was a walking cliché of southern womanhood, having grown up wearing frilly dresses and being presented to the community's elite at the Savannah Christmas Cotillion, one of the most exclusive debutante balls in the country.†   (source)
  • Though it has long been considered a sexist cliché, this experiment has proven that women are always late.†   (source)
  • "Or they wouldn't be clichés," she finished and switched to automatic drive so that she could warm her hands in her pockets.†   (source)
  • Same old clichés.†   (source)
  • Some sort of cliché?†   (source)
  • This time it had been necessary to rise to the material, to struggle to find words for a man who had been a master of words, who had devoted his entire existence to resisting the cliche in the hope of introducing to the world a new way of thinking and writing; a new way, even, of feeling.†   (source)
  • That's so cliche."†   (source)
  • He is inundated with Howardisms suddenly; all true, those old and wrinkled maxims, proverbs, clichés.†   (source)
  • "It's not a cliché to me."†   (source)
  • And the look on her face, with her eyes upward, a small smile playing on her lips, I don't know how to describe it without sounding like one of these cliched magazine articles, but she seemed so at one with the music.†   (source)
  • (She smiles happily at this cliché of clichés) Everybody say it's got to do with them bombs and things they keep setting off.†   (source)
  • I like animal clichés.†   (source)
  • Uh, I did notice that, as I had suspected, their uniforms had a lot of basic black in them (you'd think that a group of people so up on the arts would recognize a cliché when one goes walking by in boring Goth black.†   (source)
  • Clichés, clichés.†   (source)
  • Some people say, "Where annual elections end, tyranny begins " Although clichés develop for a reason, people often use them for cases to which they do not apply.†   (source)
  • In a moment I recognized that I was in the midst of the most cliched action thriller, as jackbooted marshals with submachine guns and high-powered rifles swarmed the tarmac—and I was one of the villains.†   (source)
  • It's a cliche," I admit.†   (source)
  • Football is a cliché, down here.†   (source)
  • I know it is a cliché, but it really did have a Sears, Roebuck catalog on the floor, and a sawn-off broom handle, to do in the five-inch centipedes and black widow spiders and the odd snake.†   (source)
  • It is a cliché to say I learned something about other people and other cultures, but it is true; I had begun that process with my first interview as a reporter, of course, but Harvard was a Sam Walton Wholesale Warehouse of information and experiences.†   (source)
  • Ezra looked, talked, and acted like a huge southern cliche, a parody who was unaware that his type had been catalogued and identified over and over again.†   (source)
  • His reputed crime, very much resembling that of Artiste, had been so classic as to take on the outlines of a grotesque cliché: he had ogled, or molested, or otherwise interfered with (actual offense never made clear, though falling short of rape) the simpleton daughter, named Lula—another cliché! but true: Lula's woebegone and rabbity face had sulked from the pages of six metropolitan newspapers—of a crossroads storekeeper, who had instigated immediate action by an outraged daddy's…†   (source)
  • Cliche from one of those modern novels.†   (source)
  • Any sort of cliches both revolutionary and patriotic.†   (source)
  • These doctors are all the same-they think in cliches.†   (source)
  • She loved turns of phrases that grated on Hans Castorp's nerves simply because they were cliches or the latest shabby slang—"Isn't that the limit!" or "Bowl me over!"†   (source)
  • I'm talking nonsense, I know, but I would rather babble away and at least partially express something difficult than reproduce impeccable cliches.†   (source)
  • "The only thing wrong with that old cliché," said Toohey, "is the erroneous implication that 'a crowd' is a term of opprobrium.†   (source)
  • Then, a year's study of the lean, clear precision of Caesar, the magnificent structure of the style—the concision, the skeleton certainty, deadened by the disjointed daily partition, the dull parsing, the lumbering cliché of pedantic translation: "Having done all things that were necessary, and the season now being propitious for carrying on war, Caesar began to arrange his legions in battle array.†   (source)
  • If there was any cliche which he did not use, it was because he had not yet heard it.†   (source)
  • I surrender is too much of a cliché.†   (source)
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