Voice Quotes - Page 39

• I usually base my characters on composites of people I know. One trumpet player in SIDE MAN is really a mix of four different guys I knew growing up. Patsy , the waitress, is a mix of about three different people. I like doing it that way. I start with the characters, as opposed to plot, location, or some visual element. I write more by ear than by eye. I always work on the different sound of each character, trying to make sure each has a specific voice and speech pattern, which some writers could care less about.

  Warren Leight

  Growing Up, Eye, Writing

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• Yes, I am one of those people who feels that most of my work is adaptation of one sort or another. For me, it's a way to jump-start the engine. For example, some people use the technique of basing a character on a friend. They start writing with his or her voice, then at a certain point, the character takes off on his or her own. It probably no longer resembles the model, but it helped the author to get going. I find that's true of form, too. For every play I've written, I know what play I was trying to imitate. That helps me get going.

  David Henry Hwang

  Writing, Character, Play

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• I'm interested in the way that the language of labor has been suppressed in our culture, the way it has disappeared from our vocabulary and is never heard on stage. . . . I'm better at writing than I am at organizing [political action]. SLAUGHTER CITY is my small contribution. If it gives people a voice it is worth something. So often we forget what we are no longer hearing.

  Naomi Wallace

  Writing, Vocabulary, Cities

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• What is absolutely true is that any good [Television] series has a specific voice. And I think that voice is almost exclusively the domain of the executive producer. . . . As a staff writer you're not being called upon to be the great creative person. You're sort of called upon to understand the characters and their voices and put them through certain paces.

  Howard Gordon

  Character, Thinking, Creative

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• (1) Be convinced that exactness in rising is one of the most important practices in the Company and that as the day begins so the rest of the day continues; (2) give yourselves sincerely to God on going to bed in the evening, asking Him for the strength to overcome yourselves in the morning and to obey His voice without delay.

  Vincent de Paul

  Faith, Morning, Practice

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1992). “Correspondence, conferences, documents”, New City Pr

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• Behind him the Master of Ceremonies cleared his throat. His eyes took on a distant, glazed look.The Stealer of Souls, he said in the faraway voice of one whose ears aren't hearing what his mouth is saying, Defeater of Empires, Swallower of Oceans, Thief of Years, The Ultimate Reality, Harvester of Mankind, the-ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT. I CAN SEE MYSELF IN.

  Terry Pratchett

  Ocean, Eye, Reality

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “Mort: (Discworld Novel 4)”, p.312, Random House

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• Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls. Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, not fenced off, integral to that All. [...] Then it was as if One voice sounded. One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing; now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present.

  Plotinus

  Reality, Men, Soul

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• Our minds are susceptible to the influence of external voices telling us what we require to be satisfied, voices that may drown out the faint sounds emitted by our souls and distract us from the careful, arduous task of accurately naming our priorities.

  Alain de Botton

  Priorities, Soul, Mind

  Alain De Botton (2008). “Status Anxiety”, p.190, Vintage

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• He could hear trhe voices, the whispers, the sighs, of these souls who were unable to let go of their burdens. ... Pi understood this need to hold on. To let let go of his pain. It had become such a part of him. Who would he be without it? The thought frightened him. So he wandered the halls of the catacombs like the other souls who were half-dead and half-alive.

  Clare Vanderpool

  Letting Go, Pain, Soul

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• Head held high, she stepped toward the block and sank to her knees, and it was then that Akiva started to scream. His voice soared over the pandemonium - a scream to scour the souls of all gathered, a sound to drive ghosts from their nests.

  Laini Taylor

  Block, Soul, Sound

  Laini Taylor (2015). “The Complete Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.256, Hachette UK

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• People today, vampyres and humans alike, believe the earth is just a dead thing that they live on-that it is somehow wrong or evil or barbaric to listen to the voices of the souls of the world, and so the heart and the nobility of an entire way of life dried up and withered away.

  P. C. Cast

  Believe, Heart, People

  P. C. Cast, Kristin Cast (2011). “Awakened: A House of Night Novel”, p.158, Macmillan

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• Today there remain but a few small areas on the world's map unmarked by explorers' trails. Human courage and endurance have conquered the Poles; the secrets of the tropical jungles have been revealed. The highest mountains of the earth have heard the voice of man. But this does not mean that the youth of the future has no new worlds to vanquish. It means only that the explorer must change his methods.

  Roy Chapman Andrews

  Mean, Men, Secret

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• The bird Gamayun was related to Alkonost and Sirin in some vague fashion-even the most casual observer would've noticed that all three of them were not entirely birds; they had the faces and breasts of women, severe but beautiful. And when their lips opened, they sand in women's voices, deep and rich and bittersweet.

  Ekaterina Sedia

  Beautiful, Fashion, Bird

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• I stayed under the moon too long.I am silvered with lust.Dreams flick like minnows through my eyes.My voice is trees tossing in the wind.I loose myself like a flock of blackbirdsstorming into your face.My lightest touch leaves blue prints,bruises on your mind.Desire sandpapers your skinso thin I read the veins and arteriesmaps of routes I will traveltill I lodge in your spine.The night is our fur.We curl inside it licking.

  Marge Piercy

  Dream, Eye, Moon

  Marge Piercy (2013). “What Are Big Girls Made Of?: Poems”, p.69, Knopf

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• ...there was a blond misty boy sitting beside me, and he looked at me, and I at him, and we were not strangers: our hands moved towards each other to embrace. I never heard his voice, for we did not speak; it is a shame, I should so like the memory of it. Loneliness, like fever, thrives on night, but there with him light broke, breaking in the trees like birdsong, and when sunrise came, he loosened his fingers from mine, and walked away, that misty boy, my friend.

  Truman Capote

  Memories, Loneliness, Night

  Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Ray Bradbury, James Baldwin, James Purdy (1962). “Some postwar American writers”

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• She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Beautiful, Hunting, Sea

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Old Man and the Sea”, p.7, Hamilton Books

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• Night was falling. Birds were singing. Birds were, it occurred to me to say, enacting a frantic celebration of day's end. They were manifesting as the earth's bright-colored nerve endings, the sun's descent urging them into activity, filling them individually with life nectar, the life nectar then being passed into the world, out of each beak, in the form of that bird's distinctive song, which was, in turn, an accident of beak shape, throat shape, breast configuration, brain chemistry: some birds blessed in voice, others cursed; some squeaking, others rapturous.

  George Saunders

  Song, Blessed, Fall

  George Saunders (2013). “Tenth of December: Stories”, p.57, Random House

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• Dead voices, lost sounds, forgotten noises, vibrations lockstepping into the abyss and now too distant ever to be recaptured!...What sort of arrows would be able to transfix such birds?

  Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam

  Arrows, Bird, Sound

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• I don't mind him not talking so much, because you can hear his voice in your heart; the same way you can hear a song in your head even if there isn't a radio playing; the same way you can hear those blackbirds flying when they're not in the sky

  Adam Rapp

  Song, Heart, Talking

  Adam Rapp (2011). “33 Snowfish”, p.35, Candlewick Press

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• I went to the springs while the sun was still up, and sitting on a rocky outcrop above the cave mouth I watched the light grow reddish across the misty pools, and listened to the troubled voice of the water. After a while I moved farther up the hill, where I could hear birds singing near and far in the silence of the trees. The presence of the trees was very strong...The big oaks stood so many, so massive in their other life, in their deep, rooted silence: the awe of them came on me, the religion.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Strong, Spring, Light

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2008). “Lavinia”, p.37, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• She swallowed and looked down at the artichoke petals piled neatly on the side of her plate. Her center certainly felt like it was melting, growing soft and wet just from the rasp of Mr. O'Connor's voice. Why should a man already devilishly handsome also have a voice that could charm birds from the sky? It simply wasn't fair.

  Elizabeth Hoyt

  Men, Sky, Bird

  Elizabeth Hoyt (2011). “Scandalous Desires: Number 3 in series”, p.123, Hachette UK

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• Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Song, Flower, Moon

  Elizabeth Goudge (1949). “Gentian Hill”

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• I took some voice lessons here and there as a teenager but nothing too serious. I started taking it more seriously when I was in Miss Saigon. I needed to improve my technique in order to survive doing that show as many time a week as I was doing it. It's not an easy show to sing, so I needed all the help I could get.

  Lea Salonga

  Teenager, Order, Missing

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• Obey the voice within - it commands us to give of ourselves and help others. As long as we have the capacity to give, we are alive

  Kirk Douglas

  Inspiration, Helping Others, Long

  Kirk Douglas (2001). “Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning”, p.256, Simon and Schuster

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• A willingness to vocalize feelings. How important it is to be willing to voice one's thoughts and feelings. Yes, how important it is to be able to converse on the level of each family member. Too often we are inclined to let family members assume how we feel toward them. Often wrong conclusions are reached. Very often we could have performed better had we known how family members felt about us and what they expected.

  Marvin J. Ashton

  Love, Feelings, Important

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