Sound Quotes - Page 40

• Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Mother, Air, People

  Augusten Burroughs (2010). “Running with Scissors: A Memoir”, p.6, Macmillan

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• A scholar's business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can't have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma.

  Tom Stoppard

  Giving, Doe, Add

  Tom Stoppard (2014). “The Invention of Love”, p.27, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.

  John Irving

  Trying

  John Irving (2016). “Trying to Save Piggy Sneed: 20th Anniversary Edition”, p.3, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The word itself has another color. It’s not a word with any resonance, although the e was once pronounced. There is only the bump now between b and l, the relief at the end, the whew. It hasn’t the sly turn which crimson takes halfway through, yellow’s deceptive jelly, or the rolled-down sound in brown. It hasn’t violet’s rapid sexual shudder or like a rough road the irregularity of ultramarine, the low puddle in mauve like a pancake covered in cream, the disapproving purse to pink, the assertive brevity of red, the whine of green.

  William H. Gass

  Yellow, Color, Green

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• I want to go on being a student," I told him. "I want to be a teacher. I'm just a reader," I said. "DON'T SOUND SO ASHAMED," he said. "READING IS A GIFT." "I learned it from you," I told him. "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED IT- IT'S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT. IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.

  John Irving

  Teacher, Love You, Reading

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• Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning.

  Alice Hoffman

  Reading, Pages Turning, People

  Alice Hoffman (2005). “Blackbird House”, p.97, Alice Hoffman

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• We could go back," he said. In the dome light of the car, his face looked hard as stone. "We could go back to your house. I can stay with you always. We can know each other's bodies in every way, night after night. I could love you." His nostrils flared, and he looked suddenly proud. "I could work. You would not be poor. I would help you." "Sounds like a marriage," I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. But my voice was too shaky. "Yes," he said.

  Charlaine Harris

  Love You, Night, Light

  Charlaine Harris (2009). “Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set”, p.941, Penguin

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• She put a wedge beside my heart And then she brought the mallet down She sang no song to guide her work I lost my heart without a sound

  Shannon Hale

  Song, Heart, Guides

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• Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.

  Charles Lamb

  Doors, Rural Life, Urban

  'Essays of Elia' (1823) 'Valentine's Day'

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• If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Keys, Voice, Trying

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• Maybe I should, I don't know leave? Because this is starting to sound like one of those reality shows I don't want to be in. Maybe you guys want to take turns in the confessional booth.

  Rachel Caine

  Reality, Guy, Want

  Rachel Caine (2008). “Feast of Fools: The Morganville Vampires”, p.94, Penguin

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• It was their secret, a secret meant for just the two of them, and she'd never been able to imagine how it would sound coming from someone else. But, somehow, Logan made it sound just right.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Happiness, Two, Secret

  FaceBook post by Nicholas Sparks from May 15, 2014

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• But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men- men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order- do we call it? - fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard or His forgiveness we must forever implore?

  Joshua Chamberlain

  Men, Air, Hands

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• If you listen, you can hear it. The city, it sings. If you stand quietly, at the foot of a garden, in the middle of the street, on the roof of a house. It's clearest at night, when the sound cuts more sharply across the surface of things, when the song reaches out to a place inside you. It's a wordless song, for the most, but it's a song all the same, and nobody hearing it could doubt what it sings. And the song sings the loudest when you pick out each note.

  Jon McGregor

  Song, Cutting, Night

  Jon McGregor (2014). “If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things”, p.8, HMH

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• I held hands with her all the time...that doesn't sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something.

  J. D. Salinger

  Girl, Moving, Thinking

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• Behind me, Marc made a soft whistling sound, clearly impressed. “That’s not standard procedure,” he said, his tone entirely too reasonable as he leaned over the stray’s body to open the back passenger-side door. “Yeah, well, I’m not your standard enforcer.

  Rachel Vincent

  Doors, Body, Sides

  Rachel Vincent (2016). “Rogue”, p.16, MIRA

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• our real fears are the sounds of footsteps walking in the corridors of our minds, and the anxieties, the phantom floatings, they create.

  Truman Capote

  Real, Anxiety, Mind

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.356, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I don't want you to describe to me—not ever—what you were doing to that poor boy to make him sound like that; but if you ever do it again, please cover his mouth with your hand.

  John Irving

  Boys, Hands, Mouths

  John Irving (2012). “A Prayer for Owen Meany: A Novel”, p.16, Harper Collins

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• Will looked up angrily, shaking his head in disbelief. Will you shut up? he said tautly. Horace shrugged in apology. 'I'm sorry' he said, I sneezed. A person can't help it when they sneeze. Perhaps not. But you could try to make it sound a little less like an elephant trumpeting in agony; Will told him.

  John Flanagan

  Sorry, Apology, Agony

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• When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark: But, when the tide rises and sharks are around, His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.

  Lewis Carroll

  Gay, Sharks, Voice

  Lewis Carroll (1913). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”, p.62, PDFreeBooks.org

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• I hear there are people who actually enjoy moving. Sounds like a disease to me - they must be unstable. Though it does have it’s poetry, I’ll allow that. When an old dwelling starts looking desolate, a mixture of regret and anxiety comes over us and we feel like we are leaving a safe harbor for the rolling sea. As for the new place, it looks on us with alien eyes, it has nothing to say to us, it is cold.

  Jan Neruda

  Regret, Moving, Eye

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• Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu'endormis. The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he sleeps will never understand. (it sounds better in french, I do what I can with my translation...)

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Dream, Sleep, Translations

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• It was quite impossible to describe. Here is what it looked like. It looked like a piano sounds shortly after being dropped down a well. It tasted yellow, and it felt Paisley. It smelled like the total eclipse of the moon.

  Terry Pratchett

  Moon, Piano, Yellow

  "Sourcery (Discworld, Book 5)". Book by Terry Pratchett, May 26, 1988.

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• Grimly, she realized that clocks don't make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave.

  Markus Zusak

  Hammers, Earth, Hacking

  Markus Zusak (2014). “Markus Zusak: The Book Thief & I Am the Messenger”, p.263, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Some stories, she’d say, the more you tell them, the faster you use them up. Those kind, the drama burns off, and every version, they sound more silly and flat. The other kind of story, it uses you up. The more you tell it, the stronger it gets. Those kind of stories only remind you how stupid you were. Are. Will always be.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Drama, Stupid, Silly

  "Haunted". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, 2005.

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