Accents Quotes - Page 23

• Once, BBC television had echoed BBC radio in being a haven for standard English pronunciation. Then regional accents came in: a democratic plus. Then slipshod usage came in: an egalitarian minus. By now slovenly grammar is even more rife on the BBC channels than on ITV. In this regard a decline can be clearly charted... If the BBC, once the guardian of the English language, has now become its most implacable enemy, let us at least be grateful when the massacre is carried out with style.

  Clive James

  Grateful, Style, Enemy

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• If something is not right we give out about it. He is almost a Yorkshireman with a Portuguese accent.

  Neil Warnock

  Soccer, Football, Giving

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• I have always been English, ever since I emigrated from England and since the kids in Canada beat me up at the age of twelve for having an East London Cockney accent. I thank them for the cockney taunts because the beatings turned me on to boxing. But on a serious note Canada has been kind to me.

  Lennox Lewis

  Kids, East London, Boxing

  "Lennox Lewis Answers Your Questions". "Talking Point: Forum", news.bbc.co.uk. December 21, 1999.

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• I have to say that, though it sounds so superficial, the accent really does help. I like having accents preparing for a part.

  Emily Mortimer

  Sound, Doe, Helping

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I'm sometimes asked 'Can you lose the accent?'and I say 'No, but I can put on another one'.

  Ewan McGregor

  Sometimes, I Can, Loses

  2001 In In Style, Sep.

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• America has had an influence on me, as has going out with a Cuban-American guy and having lots of American friends. But I am still fundamentally British and speak with a British accent and feel very English.

  Lily Cole

  America, Guy, Going Out

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I think American audiences are open to people with accents and different nationalities being on the screen.

  Jamie Bamber

  Thinking, Different Nationalities, People

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• My voice falls into Southern drawl when I am tired, drunk, or in trouble. Too often, my accent is attacked by all three of these realities.

  Jennifer Harrison

  Fall, Tired, Reality

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• Like every normal person, I hate my voice. And I am not the only one who hates my voice. The voiceover gets a lot of strong reactions. A lot of people love it, and a few people truly hate it and pronounce the films are unwatchable because of my Latvian accent. But it also has a certain level of theatricality, and everything is important for a manic character.

  Signe Baumane

  Strong, Hate, Character

  "Animating the Unspeakable". Interview with Isabel Ortiz, logger.believermag.com. May 14, 2015.

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• It's not that I don't understand it. But people think if you speak with an English accent it somehow makes you smarter.

  Billy Bob Thornton

  Thinking, People, Speak

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Her frocks are built in Paris, but she wears them with a strong English accent.

  Hector Hugh Munro

  Fashion, Strong, Paris

  Saki, Hector Hugh Munro (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)”, p.303, Delphi Classics

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• A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You're always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare.

  Ethan Hawke

  Crazy, Fighting, Ideas

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• If we did not know all His retorts by heart, if we had not taken the sting out of them by incessant repetition in the accents of the pulpit, and if we had not somehow got it into our heads that brains were rather reprehnsible, we should reckon Him among the greatest wits of all time. Nobody else, in three brief years, has achieved such an output of epigram.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jesus, Taken, Heart

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• I am not interested only in telling a story, but I want to tell it my way. I don't want my accent, my temperament, my narrative style to be compromised to fit into a mold of the Hollywood type.

  Haile Gerima

  Style, Mold, Hollywood

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• My mother and my father had very, very strong Scots accents. We were Australian, and in those days when I was young, I spoke with a much more of an Australian accent than I have now. However I knew that if I went to England to become an actor, which I was determined to, I knew that I had to get rid of the Australian accent. We were colonials, we were Down Under somewhere, we were those little people Over There. But I was determined to become an Englishman. So I did.

  George Ogilvie

  Mother, Strong, Father

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• But jest apart--what virtue canst thou trace
  In that broad trim that hides thy sober face?
  Does that long-skirted drab, that over-nice
  And formal clothing, prove a scorn of vice?
  Then for thine accent--what in sound can be
  So void of grace as dull monotony?

  George Crabbe

  Nice, Long, Grace

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• Sometimes, one gesture comprises an entire drama, the accent of one word ruins an entire existence, and the indifference of one glance kills the happiest passion.

  Honore de Balzac

  Drama, Passion, Gestures

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• And it is a singular truth that, though a man may shake off national habits, accent, manner of thinking, style of dress,--though he may become perfectly identified with another nation, and speak its language well, perhaps better than his own,--yet never can he succeed in changing his handwriting to a foreign style.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Men, Thinking, Style

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• Accent and emphasis are the pith of reading; punctuation is but secondary.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Reading, Punctuation, Emphasis

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• Here's a viewer's guide to BP media briefings. Whenever you hear someone with a British accent talking about this on behalf of British Petroleum they are not telling you the truth. That's the bottom-line.

  Anthony Weiner

  Media, Talking, Lines

  YouTube Channel "Douglas Johnston"/"Weiner says anyone from BP with a British accent is lying", www.youtube.com. June 07, 2010.

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• The only silver lining I can find is that British accents aren't sexy anymore.

  Bill Maher

  Sexy, Silver, British

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• Nine times out of 10 when people do a tribute album or tribute songs for somebody, it's what I call 'white boys playing reggae'. They know they can't, we know they can't, so they sing like they can't and play like they can't. They gently make fun of the idiom or sing in a false accent.

  David Lee Roth

  Song, Fun, Boys

  "Roth still 'Runnin' with the Devil' on bluegrass tribute". John Gerome, The Associated Press, June 5, 2006.

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• Half of my mum's family is Welsh. I remember when I was a kid she used to read to me, and witches and wizards in books always had a Welsh accent, so I guess I took it from that really.

  Keira Knightley

  Book, Kids, Wizards

  "The Edge of Love - Keira Knightley interview". Interview with Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• So, if I ever played Napoleon it would be with an Italian accent. He was an outsider, which also interests me.

  David Suchet

  Italian, Would Be, Outsiders

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• As soon as you start acting in an accent, you're sort of out of your comfort zone. Maybe people start getting used to accents after a long period of time. But as soon as you do that, it's not so much as capturing the sound of the way other people speak, it's being able to actually be and move around in the sound.

  Ben Mendelsohn

  Moving, Long, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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