The phrase "a mere quirk" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe something that is a minor or insignificant peculiarity or characteristic.
Example: "His habit of humming while he works is just a mere quirk that makes him unique."
Alternatives: "a simple oddity" or "a trivial peculiarity."
This summer's extravagance has been more than a mere quirk.
So when Michel Houellebecq, hailed as France's greatest living novelist, failed to turn up for part of a promotional book tour in the Netherlands and Belgium in 2011, it might have been brushed aside as a mere quirk or oversight.
Of course, Americans may confound skeptics again by continuing to shop, and many economists don't think stronger growth recently can be dismissed as a mere quirk of the inventory cycle.
The past haunts women spared the firsthand suffering by what Lee calls a mere quirk of time.
It was an engaging and tense hour from start to finish, with satisfying pay-offs for those of us that enjoy Castiel's inclusion in the story; a delicious return for Mark Sheppard, who can chew scenery in his sleep and steal scenes with the mere quirk of an eyebrow; and a suitably messy send-off for Dick.
Yet this was no mere quirk but rather a glimpse into the future – the era of bands being signed on the strength of their MySpace "friends" was just around the corner.
GP Having shared eight goals, a red card and a penalty kick between them, competing coaches Owen Coyle and Peter Vermes ordinarily might have shrugged and shook hands at full-time, putting the result down as a mere unaccountable quirk.
Fernyhough has based his research on the hunch that talking to ourselves and hearing voices — phenomena that he sees as related — are not mere quirks, and that they have a deeper function.
The rush of events is filtered through her elaborate network of relations and friends: she navigates between her father-in-law ("the colonel") and her own left-leaning parents as if their differences were mere quirks, plots protests over games of canasta and notes that a young man has been executed only to follow this news with the observation that so-and-so has brought her wonderful guava candy.
When one pretends that politics have no role, problems can be viewed as mere quirks of chance and of character.
It results from mere quirks of processing, and it always involves illusion (or else is accidentally veridical).
