Here's the deal: the extraordinary becomes ordinary really quickly. One minute, everything is new and amazing, the next it's expected.
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
I hate the word 'ought' - it always implies something dull, cold, and commonplace. The 'ought nots' of life are its pleasantest things.
I've always been a super regular guy.
It seems to me divorce is so common now. It ought to be more institutionalized. It's like a head-on collision every time. It's supposed to be a surprise but it's commonplace.
I didn't want to admit that I was falling into a cliche.
For easy things, that may be got at will, Most sorts of men do set but little store.
Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
I'm afraid of being average. I have a real fear of being just another linebacker.
Really, I'm just a normal kid.
The word 'mundane' has come to mean 'boring' and 'dull', and it really shouldn't - it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from the latin mundus, meaning 'the world'. And the world is anything but dull: The world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.
Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace.
I'm like every waitress in every diner; I'm like every mom driving her kids to school. I'm nothing special at all.
The universal subjugator, the commonplace.
It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.
I am normal. In fact, I think I might be more normal than anyone else.
Shockingly, I'm pretty normal.
We live very ordinary lives.
Commonplace minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding.
I'm actually as common as mud. I'm not particularly well read, or bred. But the way I look... I seem to have this sort of 'aristocratic' demeanor.
I'm just a guy. There's nothing special about me.
Day-to-day things, the mundane, are what keeps the motor running. How extraordinary the ordinary really is, a tool we all use to keep going, a template for sanity.
The problem with dragons is that everyone uses them. All the time. When that happens, they become commonplace. A lot of people think you can just throw them into a story and suddenly whatever you're writing is 28% cooler. But that doesn't work. All that does is make dragons into some boring cliche.
I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.
