Word: cliches
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...employs four assistant writers, but he does three-quarters of the show himself. He takes their drafts and rewrites them completely-between the lines. Groused one writer: "The only reason he hired us was because he likes to work on dirty paper." Gripes Allen: "Most writers just jump from cliché to cliché." He himself is so afraid of clichés that he even shies from saying "hello" to friends...
...sermon, and who takes pains to put more prayer than thought into its preparation; is a safe conservative in his political and economic views; delivers special addresses only to groups of no social significance or consequence; keeps clear of the great issues of our time by handing them the cliché treatment; has no bad habits; addresses his spouse as "dearie"; and covers himself with a protective coating of expected piety...
...knowledge of animal and country lore (in private life he is an ardent naturalist), and his ability to make genuinely dramatic such absurdities as the thrilling rescue of Maria by the Lilliputian rat-cavalry. The best things in Mistress Masham's Repose are the mischievous parodies of human clichés-of-thought-as when Captain, a dog, muses on the virtues of his owner, the cook...
...memory of his arrival as Ambassador last May, gave Manhattan banqueters an echo of his surprise at U.S. diplomatic conventions. "I presented a letter of credence to the President," said he, "and of course I had to have the speech that goes with it. It was full of clichés and would have been a terrible thing to read, but then I discovered that I didn't have to read it. All we did was shake hands. I presented my letter and the speech and then I found I didn't even have to listen...
Confessional Clichés. As a running news story, it was short on facts. Fingerprints seemed to tie 17-year-old Collegian William George Heirens to the brutal Suzanne Degnan murder, perhaps to a couple of others. When word got around that he had talked (after an injection of sodium pentothal), headline writers" decided it was a confession, dusted off their favorite cliches about "truth serums...