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Quotes About Detail

So, Justo's not being disingenuous when he says he identifies each piece of fish with the name and reputation of his chef. That—at that level of fine dining—is The System, where every server, every cook has to look at every little detail as having the potential to bring down the temple. Everything—absolutely everything—must be right. Always.
~ Anthony Bourdain
Enormous simplifications were possibly necessary to carry a deeper truth than lay on the surface of a mass of unsorted detail. That was, after all, what happened when history was written; many, if not most, of the true facts discarded.
~ Anthony Powell
Have you tried to drive a harpoon through a body? No? Tut, tut, my dear sir, you must really pay attention to these details.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Doyle
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
Can you recall that the tracks were sometimes like that, Watson,"--he arranged a number of bread-crumbs in this fashion--: : : : :--"and sometimes like this"--: . : . : . : .--"and occasionally like this"--. : . : . : . "Can you remember that?" "No, I cannot.
~ Arthur Conan Doyle
Somehow it doesn't seem appropriate to detail for you how to properly go about organizing a revolt--and likewise it seems kind of silly to exhort you to look, if you should suddenly start receiving mysterious letters of courtship, for possible inkstains on the fingers of the fellow you quarrel with the most.
~ Sherwood Smith
Shh, let me finish," Mama said, and banged her elbow into my ribs. "Remember, now. Neither small nor tight. A roomy waist and a pleat. For God's sake, a pleat.
~ Sholem Aleichem
A button! What's a button, eh? To a bachelor, my dear friend, a button is an important thing. An entire world.
~ Sholem Aleichem
The same diversity in their ways of formation and the same rules for its solution hold good also for the innumerable medley of dream contents, examples of which I need scarcely adduce. Their strangeness quite disappears when we resolve not to place them on a level with the objects of perception as known to us when awake, but to remember that they represent the art of dream condensation by an exclusion of unnecessary detail.
~ Sigmund Freud
after all the years of waiting, the interested world could at least see the magnificent complexity of the undertaking, the detail, the filigree work, the sheer intricacies of exactitude that the editors were bent on compiling.
~ Simon Winchester
The supernatural virtue of justice consists of behaving exactly as though there were equality when one is the stronger in an unequal relationship. Exactly, in every respect, including the slightest details of accent and attitude, for a detail may be enough to place the weaker party in the condition of matter, which on this occasion naturally belongs to him, just as the slightest shock causes water that has remained liquid below freezing point to solidify.
~ Simone Weil
what would Poirot do? Poirot wouldn't flap around in a panic. He'd stay calm and use his little grey cells and recall some tiny, vital detail which would be the clue to everything.
~ Sophie Kinsella
A flawless cup: how delicate and fine The flowing curve of every jewelled line! Look, turn it up or down, 'tis perfect still-- But holds no drop of life's heart-warming wine.
~ Henry Van Dyke
Brain Rule #6 We don't pay attention to boring things. • The brain's attentional "spotlight" can focus on only one thing at a time: no multitasking. • We are better at seeing patterns and abstracting the meaning of an event than we are at recording detail. • Emotional arousal helps the brain learn. • Audiences check out after 10 minutes, but you can keep grabbing them back by telling narratives or creating events rich in emotion.
~ John Medina
There is a certain kind of respect for authenticity today that there wasn't back in the days when they did 'Cleopatra ' where everything looked like a giant motel. People want to have it be authentic in the look, and authentic in the way people behave.
~ John Milius
No, it wasn't an accident, I didn't say that. It was carefully planned, down to the tiniest mechanical and emotional detail. But it was a mistake.
~ John Paxton
They took him inside, where it was warm, and then they fed him, taking care to follow every detail of the instructions they had received from the Army, into an enormous machine.
~ John Smith
If we describe someone we dislike intensely, a single state-ment usually does it. But if, instead, we are forced to describe the person in great detail, eventually there will be some quality we appreciate.
~ Ellen J. Langer
Don't go into great detail describing places and things, unless you're ­Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
~ Elmore Leonard
Sometimes I'll spend an hour writing a tiny email. I work on it until I've created the illusion that I've dashed it off in three minutes. If I make a typo, I let it stand. Sometimes in fact I correct the typo without thinking, and then I back up and retype the typo so that it'll look more casual. I don't know why.
~ baker nicholson ii
if I put something in the oven before it had come to temperature, or if I got the steam going before I had everything chopped, that sort of triviality (or so I thought) was precisely reflected in the color and shape of the final product.
~ Banana Yoshimoto
Not that the making of tea can ever really be regarded as a petty or trivial matter and Miss Clovis did seem to have been seriously at fault.
~ Barbara Pym