Quotes About Nuance

I like moral judgment to emerge from the reader. We are being sold a very simplistic morality by our leaders at a time when nuance and understanding are at a premium.

Any time you stop looking at evil as a black and white thing, it's helpful. So the fact that there won't be any obligatory Islamic terrorist stereotypes in movies any more, that'd be helpful.

Ah, these double meanings," she said. "Who invented the English language, I wonder? He did not do a stellar job of it, whoever he was.

Never underestimate the big importance of small things

She had not learned from reading it that adultery was good or that we should all become shysters. Did people all go on strike or head west after reading Steinbeck? Did they go whaling after reading Melville? Are people not a little more complex than that?

Issues are never simple. One thing I'm proud of is that very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.

This idea of purity and you're never compromised, you're always politically woke and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities.

Subtlety is a lost art. - Ada

An expert whose argument reeks of restraint or nuance often doesn't get much attention.

When you are consumed with the rightness or wrongness of a given issue—whether it's fracking or gun control or genetically engineered food—it's easy to lose track of what the issue actually is.

Careful writers and discerning readers delight in the profusion of words in the English lexicon, no two of which are exact synonyms. Many words convey subtle shades of meaning

An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words.

It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.

The existence of language is, in a way, a continual denigration of words.

Never write if you can speak, never speak if you can nod, never nod if you can wink.

There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.

illustrates the complex relationship between language and message. Words are intricate enough, but the way they are said adds a while extra dimension to the problem of interpretation.

Remind yourself that other people's jobs aren't so simple.

But this show reminds me that there are other aspects to me besides the fact that I'm a funny chick.

Repeat after me. 'Robocall' is not a bad word.

I tend to gravitate toward reporters who cover all aspects of the story: from personal aspects to the big picture that answer the 'so what' of a story.

As I've said repeatedly, Republicans are very good at describing things in black and white; Democrats are very good at describing the 11 shades of gray.

I tend to enjoy roles that I very closely identify with: fringe people and complicated characters, who might even be bad guys, or bad characters that have one redeeming quality.

My favorite thing that I'm learning, in particular, is that the type of love between an immigrant parent and their child growing up in America is a particular nuanced type of love.