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He grinned. โI was trying to remember all the deadly sins the other day,โ he said. โGreed,envy, gluttony, irony, pedantryโฆโ โIโm pretty sure irony isnโt a deadly sin.โ โIโm pretty sure it is.โ โLust,โ she said. โLust is a deadly sin.โ โAnd spanking.โ โI think that falls under lust.โ โI think it should have its own category,โ said Jace. โGreed, envy, gluttony, irony, pedantry, lust, and spanking.
Cassandra ClareI feel like in American fiction we're moving out of a period of intense irony, and I'm very glad about that. I feel like irony is fine for its own sake but shouldn't be the sole reason to write a book. It has been an ironic world view: that's the best way I can describe it. I'm a fan of earnestness. I feel like there's a new wave of earnestness and I'd be happy if I'm some small part of that.
Lauren GroffYou know, there's a certain irony in the fact that our lives and perhaps the lives of everyone on Earth may depend on Captain Patterson's sex appeal.
Charles BeaumontThe irony of multitasking is that it's exhausting: when you're doing two or three things simultaneously, you use more energy than the sum of energy required to do each task independently. You're also cheating yourself because your're not doing anything excellently. You're compromising your virtuosity. In the words of T. S. Elliot, you're 'distracted from distractions by distractions'.
Twyla TharpSuch techniques, including meta-discursive stuff, self-reference, irony, black humor, cynicism, grotesquerie and shock, it would be safe to say that television or televisual values rule the culture. Television is successfully using a lot of those same techniques but using them for a very different agenda, which is to sort of create an ethos and please people and to sell products to consumers.
David Foster WallaceThe irony is that I don't think we took a step backwards to make 'Group Therapy'. I think we took a step forward because it's a lot more complicated to make that kind of album. I think that album was far more produced than 'American Apathy', and it had a lot more harmony vocals and lots of intricate parts musically speaking.
Brian EbejerThere's a lot of situations where I feel irony involved when R&B and hip-hop is expressed in the indie worlds. There's a lot of times when I feel like the juxtaposition becomes a thing.
Solange KnowlesI like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.
Jim HarrisonIrony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.
Soren KierkegaardKenney knows two essential truths about melodrama: First that it is most powerful when combined with irony and understatement; and second that it is a salient feature of modern life.
Stefan KanferAvatar is the most high tech film in terms of its execution, dealing with essentially a very low tech subject; which is our relationship with nature...and in fact the irony is that the film is about our relationship with nature and how our technological civilization has taken us several removes away from a truly natural existence and the consequences of that to us.
James CameronI think Douglas [Adams] is writing with an eye to irony for adults at the same time as entertaining children.
Richard DawkinsAfter the second chapter of Days of Obligation, which is about the death of a friend of mine from AIDS, was published in Harper's, I got this rather angry letter from a gay-and-lesbian group that was organizing a protest against the magazine. It was the same old problem: political groups have almost no sense of irony.
Richard RodriguezMy films often have a very strong strain of irony, or even sarcasm, which is definitely related to homosexual camp. But it is by no means straightforward: quite often I am sincere when I appear to be sarcastic, and I am sarcastic when I appear to be sincere. I also try to contradict myself at least once a day, which is a camp must.
Bruce LaBrucePoetry teaches us things that cannot be learned in prose, such as certain kinds of irony or the importance of the unsaid. The most important element of any poem is the part that is left unsaid. So the poetry frames the experience that lies beyond naming.
Sam HamillPeople in the U.K. share my bemusement with the United States that America doesn't share with itself. They have a sense of irony, which America doesn't have, seeing as it's being run by fundamentalists who take things literally.
Bill HicksThe thing that I come across is that people think that I might actually be super aggressive, want-to-fight type in real life. The irony is that that's just not true, at all.
Zoe BellThe postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, I love you madly, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.
Umberto EcoI feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life has been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being.
Bertrand RussellWe think craft is important, and the irony has always been that horror may be disregarded by critics, but often they are the best-made movies you're going to find in terms of craft. You can't scare people if they see the seams.
James WanIf a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
W. Somerset MaughamYou were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.
Catherynne M. ValenteIrony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments.
Rainer Maria RilkePerhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently.
Dick CavettThe irony is palpable - technical access has never been greater, cultural access never weaker.
Beeban KidronWhen readers don't like the book, it's usually because they feel that romantic love is pass or somehow needs more irony.
Charles BaxterI think the irony ... is that I actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government.
Barack ObamaWould you like me to [kill you] now?" asked Snape, his voice heavy with irony. "Or would you like a few moments to compose an epitaph?
J. K. RowlingThe irony is that musical artists have enormous public voices, but behind the scenes we're voiceless, actually.
Sinead O'ConnorOn the other hand, I view the whole matter from a cosmic perspective. I don't take a position. I believe that there are no more positions to take, no certainties, no facts. Many people find this confusing about my films; they say I am hiding out behind irony. But from a cosmic viewpoint, it is eternally unimportant whether one lives or not.
Peter GreenawayI'm the type of spiritual person that doesn't speak openly about their spirituality. Irony is probably my religion.
Jonathan Raymond"And we'll call you... hmmm. Pudge." "Huh?" "Pudge," the Colonel said. "Because you're skinny. It's called irony, Pudge. Heard of it? Now, let's go get some cigarettes and start this year off right."
John GreenThere is too much emphasis on technical perfection nowadays, and not enough on what music is actually about - irony, joy, human suffering, love.
Mstislav RostropovichThat's a heavy word, but picking up a newspaper every day, how can you not despair at what's happening in the world, and how we're represented as human beings? The disappointments and corruption are dismaying at every level. And the biggest source of evil is of course religion... Everyone are tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshipping the same god.
Ridley ScottItalics provide a wonderful advantage: you see, right away, that the words are in a rush. When something exists at a slant, you can't help but consider irony.
Ann BeattieObviously cheap sentimentality isn't something any good novelist wants to traffic in, but I think it's a problem if you consider it to be the most egregious of all creative sins. I think it's a problem if you consider it the thing to be avoided at all cost. I think it's a problem of you're not willing to risk the consequences of that kind of emotionalism under any circumstances. Then you wind up in the cul-de-sac of irony.
Steve EricksonThe irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.
Nassim Nicholas TalebPeter Cooper looks at the world with an artist's eye and a human heart and soul. His songs are the work of an original, creative imagination, alive with humor and heartbreak and irony and intelligence, with truth and beauty in the details. Deep stuff. And they get better every time you listen to them.
Kris KristoffersonIn hindsight, I must have been looking for a way to write about Jewishness that somehow managed to minimize irony and self-deprecation.
Zachary LazarI came from a very different sort of background and pedigree from the people who were on "The Daily Show". I was an actor. I was sort of - the irony is that I've done as much dramatic work in my career as comedic work and I don't really think of myself as a comedian.
Aasif Mandvi