This sheaf of paper with gaudy cover glued to the spine is not the book. The book is not an object on the table, it is an event in the readers mind.... The book, therefore is only finished when someone reads it. - Lois McMaster Bujold
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man. - William Shakespeare
Evil possesses an instinct for theater, which is why, in an era of gaudy and gifted media, evil may vastly magnify its damage by the power of horrific images. - Lance Morrow
As a people we practiced excess. Excess in everything - pleasure, gaudy display, endless toil, and death. Vagrant children slept in the alleys. Ragpicking was a profession. A conspicuously self-satisfied class of new wealth and weak intellect was all aglitter in a setting of mass misery. - E.L. Doctrow
The downside, my beauty, is that you’re in a fogged glass bubble that’s as far out of my reach as I can imagine. I wish you would use your gaudy engagement ring to cut a hole through the glass to be able see me. - A.Wilding Wells
Harrogate saw them going along Blount Avenue Sunday morning. They wore outfits all cut from the same bolt of cloth and in the church pew standing six across they looked like a strip of gaudy wallpaper cut into those linked dolls madfolk pass their time in fashioning. - Cormac McCarthy
Costly thy habit [dress] as thy purse can buy; But not expressed in fancy - rich, not gaudy. For the apparel oft proclaims the man. - William Shakespeare
The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day Is crept into the bosom of the sea. - William Shakespeare