The Detail Quotes

#1. The play is independent of the pages on which it is printed, and 'pure geometries' are independent of lecture rooms, or of any other detail of the physical world.

G.H. Hardy

#2. Good design is thorough, down to the last detail.

Dieter Rams

#3. Such being the nature of mental life, the business of psychology is primarily to describe in detail the various forms which attention or conation assumes upon the different levels of that life.

Samuel Alexander

#4. I'm proud of Lord of the Rings. I think it's a once in a lifetime role, and a once in a lifetime film. It was made with so much care and passion and meticulous detail and everybody was so behind it.

Sean Bean

#5. Any one detail, followed through to its source, will usually reveal the general state of readiness of the whole organization.

Hyman Rickover

#6. Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.

Malcolm Bradbury

#7. I sketch in a way that people can nearly do the dresses without me coming in for a fitting. Every single detail, every proportion, every cut
everything.

Karl Lagerfeld

#8. The artist should fear to become the slave of detail. He should strive to express his thought and not the surface of it. What avails a storm cloud accurate in form and color if the storm is not therein?

Albert Pinkham Ryder

#9. Somehow whether or not the war is winnable is beyond our scope, an irrelevant detail. We don't do it to win anymore; we do it because it's what we know how to do. Get ready to go. Get ready to come back. And the moments in between we mark on the calendar. It's our battle rhythm.

Angela Ricketts

#10. Intricately plotted, beautifully paced, The Music of the Spheres is an elegant historical novel rich in detail, at times Dickensian in its description of London. Elizabeth Redfern has made an exciting debut.

Martha Grimes

#11. The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion; emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.

Gustave Flaubert

#12. The more personal, revealing and sniveling, the more interesting...I wanna feel like I'm snooping, peeking thru the keyhole into somebody's, anybody's, private hell...no detail is too petty if it's honest...

Aline Kominsky-Crumb

#13. Expression is not a matter of passion mirrored on the human face or revealed by a violent gesture. When I paint a picture, its every detail is expressive.

Henri Matisse

#14. God does not look at our suffering from afar. It is an intimate event to him. He is the author of every detail, speaking the suffering as it occurs.

Ben Palpant

#15. We can all see God in exceptional things, but it requires the culture of spiritual discipline to see God in every detail.

Oswald Chambers

#16. For theater, the fashion had to have a certain grandeur that would read on the stage while also flattering the actress. The same thing applies when doing a wedding dress, but the treatments can be more delicate and there can be much more detail.

Austin Scarlett

#17. I always plan the whole story in some detail, long before I start writing the actual thing. But even doing that, I find that there is plenty of room for spontaneity. Often the characters will lead the story off in a direction I hadn't originally intended!

Raymond Buckland

#18. Fastidious attention to detail makes the difference between an OK service and first class service.

Ben Elliot

#19. I have always been obsessed with America, the geography, the history, and, of course, the music. I've been lucky enough to have travelled through the country a lot, and, in a kind of anorak way, I've noted which states I've visited and which ones I've been to most often and all that sort of detail.

Tim Rice

#20. Being a quarterback, the way I believe is there's always so much room to improve. Any little detail. I always cut up the film and try to watch what I can improve on, whatever little detail it is.

Russell Wilson

#21. The thing about research is that there's no end. You constantly have this fear that an expert who knows more than you will call you out on some detail in your book.

Gene Luen Yang

#22. Here is the worst possible way for you to try to figure out if your idea solves somebody's problem: Ask them. The vast majority of entrepreneurs seem to think that explaining their concept in detail to a few people and then asking whether it's a good idea constitutes validation. It does not.

Laura Klein

#23. Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.

Natalie Goldberg

#24. When you introduce things that most readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you can eliminate from fiction is the description of things that most readers have seen.

Haruki Murakami

#25. When I was born, my parents - my mother especially - couldn't come to terms with that fact that they had another baby girl. I know these stories in detail because every time a guest visited, or there was a gathering, they repeated this story in front of me that how I was the unwanted child.

Kangana Ranaut

#26. All we're trying to do is word the world. Detail is one way we do that. We enumerate, notate, name the things seen.

Eamon Grennan

#27. Molecular genetics, our latest wonder, has taught us to spell out the connectivity of the tree of life in such palpable detail that we may say in plain words, "This riddle of life has been solved."

Max Delbruck

#28. I love detail, like drawing what's on top of someone's coffee table. Maybe there's a little bowl of butterscotch candies on it, next to the four TV remotes.

Roz Chast

#29. Larry David's armor is his dissatisfaction with the world down to the smallest detail, and up to the whole ghastly arrangement. He won't win, but he'll enjoy losing.

Tom Shales

#30. While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically; hence the story of Indian life will not be told in microscopic detail, but rather will be presented as a broad and luminous picture.

Edward S. Curtis

#31. We demand that people should be true to the pictures we have of them, no matter how repulsive those pictures may be: we prefer the true portrait in all its homogeneity, to one with a detail added which refuses to fit in.

Pamela Hansford Johnson

#32. Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.

George Orwell

#33. If the article mentions some celebrity-perhaps a recently dead politician-the author will want to mention some pointless detail from her last meeting with that person or the emotions she experienced when learning of the subject's death.

David Brooks

#34. There's one detail I've always remembered: He told me how long it takes the light from the stars to reach through space to us.
How most of the points of light we see actually no longer exist. We're just seeing the remnants of what was
ghosts of what use to be.

Carrie Ryan

#35. I wrote three novels in six months, with a clarity of focus and attention to detail that I had never before experienced. This type of sublime creative energy is characteristic of the elevated and productive mood state known as hypomania.

Ayelet Waldman

#36. Don't unpack your heart. One detail tells the truth.

Ian McEwan

#37. In some instances, the accuracy of past-life memories can be objectively verified, sometimes with remarkable detail.

Stanislav Grof

#38. Dennis, please. I don't know what-"
"Shut the fuck up, and stop playing me for an idiot. And secondly, and more importantly, I've unearthed some disturbing information about you which I want to discuss in more detail before I fill you with holes.

Simon Kernick

#39. That is the way I have always worked. I draw a plan and work out every detail on the plan before starting to build. For otherwise one will waste a great deal of time in makeshifts as the work goes on and the finished article will not have coherence. It

Henry Ford

#40. Here's the general theory: To clarify, add detail. Imagine that. To clarify, add detail. And clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don't start throwing out information, instead fix the design.

Edward Tufte

#41. A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail.

John Foster Dulles

#42. I do like to work on a Marvel method, so if I've got the opportunity, and the writer is happy to do it, I like to have a writer detail what happens on a page, but not saying what happens in every scene.

David Lloyd

#43. Some of the best moments I've ever written have come about because someone, somewhere, blew my preconceptions out of the water and dropped a detail in passing that took the work in an entirely new, entirely unexpected, direction.

Greg Rucka

#44. was probably significant that he was physically short-sighted. He could not recognise people until almost upon them. Their faces were like so many buns. Good-natured buns, he would have said, but Harriet did not agree. She saw them in detail and did not like them any the better for it. He

Olivia Manning

#45. One of the problems with sex education ... is that it also strips kids - especially girls - of their modesty to have every detail of anatomy, physiology and condom usage made explicit.

James Dobson

#46. A dog can be a living work of art, a constant reminder of the exquisite design and breathtaking detail of nature, beauty on four paws.

Dean Koontz

#47. No matter what happens i choose to value the memories of the good times, grow from the lessons of the bad times because i don't regret a single moment of it, every detail made me who i am.

Tilicia Haridat

#48. I love words. I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail. I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum. I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over. In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#49. The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail.

Charles R. Swindoll

#50. Going far beyond that call of duty, doing more than others expect, this is what excellence is all about! And it comes from striving, maintaining the highest standards, looking after the smallest detail, and going the extra mile. Excellence means doing your very best. In everything! In every way.

Jack Johnson

#51. Like many people out there, I'm inspired by the level of attention to detail, design and execution of Apple products.

Ren Ng

#52. When you pay attention to detail, the big picture will take care of itself.

Georges St-Pierre

#53. In a film muddied by fictional detail, the new Spielberg production 'Fifth Estate's portrayal of the 'Guardian's work with Wikileaks is accurate in describing the running dispute between journalists who wanted to redact documents to make them safe and Julian Assange, who wanted no such restraint.

Nick Davies

#54. How do you think the Dharma is able to describe the death process in such detail? It's not a whole bunch of lamas sit around speculating on what might happen. It's because they actually go through it. Frequently.

David Michie

#55. Ever since I was a child I have been a strong believer in the principle that to under-stand how anything works you need to take it apart and look at it in detail. This principle that worked with toys also works pretty well with search.

David Amerland

#56. Bit by bit, putting it together ...
Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art.
Every moment makes a contribution,
Every little detail plays a part.
Having just the vision's no solution,
Everything depends on execution,
Putting it together, that's what counts.

Stephen Sondheim

#57. Why the rifle? Everybody knows you can't shoot.
Who were these everybodies and would they like to stand in front of me, preferably within ten feet, so I could discuss this issue in greater detail.

Ilona Andrews

#58. Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.

Rose Tremain

#59. With practice, you build the road to accomplish your goals. Excellence lives in attention to detail. Give your all, all the time. Don't save anything for the walk home.

Ethan Hawke

#60. But I am not going to give every detail. Some things lose their fragrance when opened to the air, and there are stirrings of the soul which cannot be put into words without destroying their delicacy.

John Beevers

#61. Come to think of it, an Aes Sedai would probably follow a man off a cliff, too, if only to explain to him - in detail - all the things he was doing incorrectly in the way he went about killing himself.

Robert Jordan

#62. Here's a Challenge: Study a complicated topic in such detail that anyone interested can nod their head and understand as you explain specific concepts within the topic.

Albert Einstein

#63. For the first time since hearing about the Treaty of Versailles in detail, Mondaugen found himself crying. They'll drain his juices, he thought; caress his bones with their paw-pads, gag on his fine white hair.

Anonymous

#64. Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication. Or, worse, to fault viewers for a lack of understanding.

Edward Tufte

#65. The motif must always be set down in a simple way, easily grasped and understood by the beholder. By the elimination of superfluous detail, the spectator should be led along the road that the artist indicates to him, and from the first be made to notice what the artist has felt.

Alfred Sisley

#66. As a coach, your high standards of performance, attention to detail and - above all - how hard you work set the stage for how your players perform.

Don Shula

#67. For the things in the chair, perfect to the last, subtle detail of microscopic resemblance - or identity - were the face and hands of Henry Wentworth Akeley.

H.P. Lovecraft

#68. Do not fight the thing in detail: turn from it. Look ONLY at your Lord. Sing. Read. Work.

Amy Carmichael

#69. It may be that poetry makes life's nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.

Frank O'Hara

#70. I went to Europe three times, I read dozens and dozens of books, I studied thousands of photos. But I always supplemented that research with imagination; research might give you detail, but imagination supplies the direction in which to apply all that detail.

Anthony Doerr

#71. Neeley came home and he and Francie were sent out for the weekend meat. This was an important ritual and called for detail instructions by mama.

Betty Smith

#72. We can remind ourselves of the reasons to strive for good style: to enhance the spread of ideas, to exemplify attention to detail, and to add to the beauty of the world.

Steven Pinker

#73. The suspicion that a rival is loved is painful enough already, but to have the love that he inspires in her confessed to one in detail by the woman whom one adores is without doubt the acme of suffering.

Stendhal

#74. Muhammad may have been, there is one detail that should not be lost in the tumult and confusion

Reza Aslan

#75. The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.

Adam Smith

#76. Imagination applied to the whole world is vapid in comparison to imagination applied to a detail.

Wallace Stevens

#77. The deliberate effort of memory for small detail is a social grace that will take a person far.

Carolyn Haines

#78. Perhaps, if you knew you were going to die, your senses crammed in as much detail as they could while they still had the chance ...

Terry Pratchett

#79. The secret of a good lie is don't overly explain, and throw in one good detail.

Sue Monk Kidd

#80. Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.

Theophile Gautier

#81. Sometimes when our lives are out of control, the only thing that makes us feel secure is to swing in the opposite direction. To control every last detail.

Elle Casey

#82. One thing I'd learned in my career as witch-about-town: the things people didn't want to talk about were just the things that needed to be discussed in detail.

Katherine Lampe

#83. So many people want to live their lives and their dreams through their own Facebook page or their Twitter page. They want to show every detail of their life to everyone in the world. That scares me because I don't have any Facebook page or Twitter I don't like it, I don't want it.

Emmanuel Petit

#84. 'Cold Case Files' and similar shows do bang up business, which points to a certain thirst for details in the viewership, but it seems like all the news chat shows continue to force the myth that Americans can't stand detail and have no interest in an idea that can't fit on a bumper sticker.

Hal Sparks

#85. When you are dealing with approximately two-plus hours every few years to do a story, you don't have the luxury of having excessive screen time to explore, in detail and in-depth, lots of other subsidiary or ancillary supporting characters.

Michael Uslan

#86. Later, he was to decide that Andrew's life had been fractally weird. That is, you could take any small piece of it and examine it in detail and it, in and of itself, would turn out to be just as complicated and weird as the whole thing in its entirety.

Neal Stephenson

#87. I looked around and thought about my life. I felt grateful. I noticed every detail. That is the key to time travel.

Amy Poehler

#88. When I look at my career, the bulk of it has been television, and I love working in television. But there's a speed at which you do it. You're doing seven to ten pages a day on a series, and it's hard to feel like you're doing the detail-oriented work that I like to do.

Sarah Paulson

#89. In the successful organization, no detail is too small to escape close attention.

Lou Holtz

#90. Forget? No." Conner frowned. "It has been decades, and I still remember every detail about her: her smell, her touch, the way her voice hummed in my ears. Why would I want to forget any of that? Those memories are my treasures.

H.L. Burke

#91. But now I am glad that I went into detail from the first, for there is something so strange about this place and all in it that I cannot but feel uneasy.

Bram Stoker

#92. realist works I look for detail; 'Look at the eyelashes!

David Nicholls

#93. In this country, we were not into detail. Europe developed detail." "Why do you think that is?" "Weather. The whole history of England consists of finding things to do out of the weather. Which tells you why Russia was even worse. That's why Russian novels have 182 characters: bad weather.

Ken Jennings

#94. Wouldn't it be surprising if a 911 caller actually did begin to describe the tragedy in alarming detail? And dwell on the details, swooning in their splendor?

Michael A. Arnzen

#95. One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail.

Pablo Picasso

#96. bBecause he simply doesn't see his dreams in detail, the kind of details that drive a person to pack their shit, to move.

Caroline Kepnes

#97. If you care to be a master or to make a true success of your profession, the smallest detail of your work must be done with thoroughness. To be thorough in medicine means that in the ever alluring present, we do not forget the past.

David Murray Cowie

#98. I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end.

Drew Barrymore

#99. Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.

Samuel Johnson

#100. I'm not an easy customer. My attention to detail could probably drive you mad. My eye still always goes toward the single flaw.

L'Wren Scott