He always contrives to seem no more than one and a half inches away from whatever is the conventional wisdom. ❋ Jim Sleeper (2011)
When Gloria, Vera's employer, gets a shot at the lead role in a high-calorie weeper called "The Belle of New Orleans" that also has a small but choice part for a slave, Vera contrives through elaborately silly means to audition for the part. ❋ Terry Teachout (2011)
It's the story of a lonely middle-aged widower who contrives to find a new love by staging phony auditions for a TV show, then dating the most appealing actress. ❋ Steve Dollar (2011)
It contrives terms and categories that are natural to our instincts but not to our existence. ❋ Unknown (2010)
Sansom contrives to have Shardlake's legal work take him to the vicinity of Portsmouth, so that on his ride south he becomes friendly with a vivid array of soldiers who bicker, brawl and "sing bawdy versions of courtly love songs." ❋ Patrick Anderson (2011)
The intriguing "Phaedra" 2007 is only superficially about the Greek myth of Theseus's wife, who lusts after her stepson Hippolyt and, when he rejects her, contrives his death and commits suicide. ❋ Heidi Waleson (2011)
That thing that seemingly contrives against me to make the deployment trudge completely unbearable. ❋ Unknown (2009)
What ever man contrives or devises is an artifice, a thing of art not of nature, and therefore artificial. ❋ Unknown (2010)
Mantel contrives an unusual solution to the problem of idiom. ❋ Unknown (2010)
At the dreadful ending, when she contrives to escape him, one is hardly sure which one of them has betrayed the other. ❋ Tessa Hadley (2011)
Mr. Obama evidently lacks the je ne se qua to address the blatant economic lies that characterize the paraoiac interpretation of Marxism that contrives to hide behind God in the US. ❋ Unknown (2009)
If we're especially lucky tonight, they may decide to have their first shot before the 118th minute, although such caution tends not to matter when the other team contrives to miss all four of their penalties Brazil even managed to make Holland look deadly from 12 yards and your goalkeeper plays a blinder. ❋ Unknown (2011)
But in today's secular society, Mr. Davies says, such an awareness no longer exists: The young, ignorant of history, enjoy a false sense of permanence, while our historians are too specialized to appreciate the ultimately fleeting nature of all that man contrives. ❋ Henrik Bering (2012)
Within days he contrives to drive a car while uninsured, start a relationship with another woman without notifying anyone, go hookey from his job and break the terms of his curfew. ❋ Unknown (2012)
If, on the other hand, you're capable of making sense of such postwar English novels as, say, Kingsley Amis's "Lucky Jim," then you'll have a pretty good idea of what's going on, and Mr. Gold's direction is so passionately precise that it contrives to make most of the rough places plain enough. ❋ Terry Teachout (2012)
We left Rob well and I calld on Mr Evans, now Doctor Evans, who is totally lame from his chest downwards, yet he contrives to perform the duties of his school, and the duties of the pulpit too. ❋ Unknown (2009)
This, in a way that Hollywood never contrives, was war: real chaos, real gallantry, real death. ❋ Peter Preston (2010)
