For him and everyone else, death is only a banality.

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Its images of death have a soothing banality, like a greeting-card message from the world beyond.

NEWYORKER: Ghost

Pirate cosplay allows people to escape the banality of work-a-day life, he said.

CNN: Real pirates don't say 'Aaaarrrr'

And yet, for all its banality, this is a highly entertaining production, which keeps the majority of its audience amused for hour after hour.

ECONOMIST: Theatre

Last month he presented his government with a 12-point economic programme of dizzying banality, seemingly the work of his Kremlin advisers.

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The large office buildings, arranged in a spiraling cluster around the memorial sector, will be a far more proportionate and elegant addition to the skyline than the twin towers' bruising banality.

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The cinematographer, Frederick Elmes, produces an even, gray light that is quite handsome in a neutralizing way but also sobering and almost punitive it says that the American banality in which the characters live is all there is.

NEWYORKER: Broken Flowers

The Atlantic headlined its story "The Banality of Seth MacFarlane's Sexism and Racism at the Oscars" and opened with a vignette of the host's brief introduction of Meryl Streep: "Our next presenter needs no introduction" before walking away.

CNN: Sorry, Seth MacFarlane, but not everybody loved you

Yet the very banality of his character his vanity, his garrulousness, his guilt makes him a rather heartening case.

NEWYORKER: The Oath