Cadence Quotes

• A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.

  Peggy Noonan

  Children, Heart, Poetry

  Peggy Noonan, Steven Emerson, Brian Duffy, Thomas J. Watson, Peter Petre (1990). “Today's Best Nonfiction”

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• Find your balance and stand with it. Find your song and sing it out. Find your cadence and let it appear like a dance. Find the questions that only you know how to ask and The answers that you are content to not know.

  Mary Anne Radmacher

  Song, Sunshine, Balance

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• I try to write in plain brown blocks of American speech but occasionally set in an ancient word or a strange word just to startle the reader a little bit and to break up the monotony of the plain American cadence.

  James Laughlin

  Break Up, Block, Writing

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• But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible

  Anne McCaffrey

  Use, Speech, Fullness

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• Wit will shine Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.

  John Dryden

  Shining, Lines, Harsh

  "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham" l. 15 (1684)

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• Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear.

  Michael Cunningham

  Should Have, Fiction, Delight

  "Found in Translation". Article by Michael Cunningham, www.nytimes.com. October 2, 2010.

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• Every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure, a cadence, a quality of voice that is exclusively the writer's own, individual, unique.

  Willa Cather

  Unique, Voice, Mind

  1936 Not Under Forty, 'Miss Jewett'.

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• Strangers have crossed the sound, but not the sound of the dark oarsmen Or the golden-haired sons of kings, Strangers whose thought is not formed to the cadence of waves, Rhythm of the sickle, oar and milking pail

  Kathleen Raine

  Kings, Son, Dark

  Kathleen Raine (1989). “Selected Poems”, p.74, SteinerBooks

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• Polyphonic prose is a kind of free verse, except that it is still freer. Polyphonic makes full use of cadence, rime, alliteration, assonance.

  Amy Lowell

  Use, Kind, Assonance

  "Can Grande's Castle". Book by Amy Lowell, 1921.

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• Every time the rider forgets to regulate the cadence, the horse begins to take control.

  Nuno Oliveira

  Horse, Forget, Riders

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• Beauty addresses itself chiefly to sight, but there is a beauty for the hearing too, as in certain combinations so words and in all kinds of music; for melodies and cadences are beautiful; and minds that lift themselves above the realm of sense to a higher order are aware of beauty in the conduct of life, in actions, in character, in the pursuits of the intellect; and there is the beauty of the virtues.

  Plotinus

  Beauty, Beautiful, Character

  Plotinus (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Plotinus - Complete Enneads (Illustrated)”, p.60, Delphi Classics

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• Harmony is the inner cadence of contentment we feel when the melody of life is in tune.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Contentment, Tunes, Life Is

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• The hammers must be swung in cadence, when more than one is hammering the iron.

  Giordano Bruno

  Teamwork, Iron, Hammers

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• Melody always comes to me first before words - cadence and melody. When you're humming the melody and it's incredible and words start coming out it can build into something special.

  Yelawolf

  Special, Firsts, Incredibles

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• When your timing is off, so is your stride. When your cadence is off, you're in deep trouble as a hurdler.

  Rod Milburn

  Track, Timing, Trouble

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• It has as much to do with the energy released by linguistic fission and fusion, with the buoyancy generated by cadence and tone and rhyme and stanza, as it has to do with the poem's
  concerns or the poet's truthfulness.

  Seamus Heaney

  Fusion, Energy, Buoyancy

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996”, p.429, Macmillan

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• Learning to sing one's own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own's voices, is also the goal of any writer.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Song, Voice, Goal

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• When you are rowing well and hard, the rhythm of the stroke takes over. It drives your days and restores your nights. It imparts cadence and direction. You feel like you and the boats are one, you feel that no obstacle will put up any more resistance than the water does to your oars, you feel that hard work and grit and mental toughness will always win it for you in the end.

  Barry S. Strauss

  Hard Work, Winning, Night

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• The meaning of a poem is in the cadences and the shape of the lines and the pulse of the thought which is given by those lines.

  George Oppen

  Pulse, Shapes, Lines

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• To brisk notes in cadence beating, glance their many-twinkling feet.

  Thomas Gray

  Feet, Ballet, Notes

  Thomas Gray, John Mitford (1816). “The poems, with critical notes, a life of the author, and an essay on his poetry, by J. Mitford”, p.33

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• Wait." "Stop?" I bit my lip and nodded. "Stop everything, or just go no further?" "Just...just no further." "Done." He gathered me into his arms and kissed me, one hand tangled in my hair and the other one caressing down my back, our hearts pulsing out a cadence that the musician in me translated into a concert of lust.

  Tammara Webber

  Heart, Hair, Hands

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• Poetry is so close to music, not just in cadence and sound but in silences. That's why, to me, I can't talk about prose poems. I can talk about poetic prose.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Silence, Sound, Poetic

  "A Conversation with Pattiann Rogers". Interview with Carolyn Perry, Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.

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• The audience is invisible and that's good. Somewhere my voice is drifting through a swine barn and the sound of it seems to perk up the sows' appetite. Or a lady is listening on headphones as she jogs along a beach, running to my cadence. Or a dog sits in front of the radio, head cocked, and the sibilants excite him in some mysterious way. A dog's humorist, that's me.

  Garrison Keillor

  Running, Dog, Beach

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

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• Your cadence is your music.

  William Shatner

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I love the language. I'm just totally fascinated by the sound and the look of words and the kinds of cadences you can create with them, the various kinds of music.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Sound, Looks, Language

  "A Conversation with Pattiann Rogers". Interview with Carolyn Perry, Wayne Zade, poems.com. 2009.

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