It is the sheer ugliness and banality of everyday life…

“Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke…

— Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Spirituality can be severed from both vicious sectarianism and thoughtless banalities. Spirituality, I have come to see, is nothing less than the thoughtful love…

— Robert C. Solomon

Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.

— T. S. Eliot

My life is short. I can't listen to banality.

— V. S. Naipaul

“A plain circular bullet is widely disdained for its banality.”

— Carolina de Bartolo

The great work of art is the complete banality, and the fault with most banalities is that they are not banal enough. Banality here…

— Asger Jorn

Understanding a people's culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity...It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it…

— Clifford Geertz

I was filled with angst in college, that I struggled with the question of my future, the meaning of my life - spoiled sheltered…

— Elizabeth Kostova

Language is in decline. Not only has eloquence departed but simple, direct speech as well, though pomposity and banality have not.

— Edwin Newman

I really like the idea of banality and repetition being used to generate the image, which are simple and unobstructed and not captivated by…

— Doug Aitken

“There seemed no particular object in avoiding banality from the start, as the evening showed every sign of developing into a banal one.”

— Anthony Powell

On the subway today, a man came up to me to start a conversation. He made small talk, a lonely man talking about the…

— John Doe

Fight fire with fire. If you must have bores, always put them together or at the same table ... bores have an effervescent chemical…

— Elsa Maxwell

What concerns me most is the horrible degradation our notions of truth, civility, and decency have undergone. Also the way that language has been…

— George Saunders

Once you start rewriting, you're not able to stop. With each draft the fundamental banality and worthlessness of the material becomes more evident even…

— Barry N. Malzberg