Vowels Quotes

• Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.

  Bill Cosby

  Funny, Mom, Children

  Twitter post from Nov 02, 2009

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• Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Missing You, Playing Jazz

  1954 In Look, 10 Aug.

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• Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech. (1976 Penthouse interview)

  Patti Smith

  Color, Soul, Letters

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• Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much. Language consists of five basic sounds produced by the vocal cords. They are the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The other sounds are consonants produced by air pressure: s, f, g, and so forth. Do you believe some combination of such basic sounds could ever explain who you are, or the ultimate purpose of the universe, or even what a tree or stone is in its depth?

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Believe, Reality

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.31, Penguin

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• With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Gun, Teeth, Speak

  "Fight Club". www.imdb.com. 1999.

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• School is consonantal in its unchanging schedule. God, full of possibility, is a vowel. Death: the ultimate consonant.

  Myla Goldberg

  School, Schedules, Possibility

  Myla Goldberg (2005). “Bee Season”, Anchor

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• French is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels. It requires the utmost subtlety.

  Alma Gluck

  Trying, Way, Difficult

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• When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.

  David Longstreth

  Writing, Thinking, Sound

  "Dirty Projectors". Interview with Brandon Stosuy, pitchfork.com. July 2, 2012.

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• I don't use my lips. I use my tongue to make - create the vowels.

  Dolora Zajick

  Use, Tongue, Lips

  "For Opera Powerhouse Dolora Zajick, 'Singing Is Connected To The Body'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. March 19, 2014.

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• The big political news, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced he's running for governor of California, and already, people are chanting, 'Four more vowels, four more vowels.

  Craig Kilborn

  Running, California, People

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• Life's a wheel of fortune and y'all can't buy a vowel.

  Lil' Kim

  Philosophy, Wheels, Fortune

  Song: Who's Number One?, Album: The Notorious K.I.M.

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• For my convalescence, I had to exercise my voice only with vowels. It is a medical rule after a long loss of voice.

  Nana Mouskouri

  Loss, Exercise, Voice

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• Every poet knows the pun is Pierian, that it springs from the same soil as the Muse?a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance.

  Louis Untermeyer

  Spring, Soil, Shifting

  1965 Bygones.

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• God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No bellyand no bowels, Only consonants and vowels.

  John Crowe Ransom

  Writing, Pewter, Dinner

  1955 Poems and Essays,'Survey of Literature'.

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• Brute animals have the vowel sounds; man only can utter consonants.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Animal, Men, Sound

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the table talk”

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• I'm going to say a phrase or terminology or vowel that I don't know how to attack .

  Lake Bell

  Phrases, Know How, Terminology

  "Actress Lake Bell, first female voice of Apple ads, is taking over Hollywood one project at a time". Interview with Jason Guerrasio, www.businessinsider.com. November 30, 2015.

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• Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but ay, And that bare vowel ay shall poison more Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice. I am not I,if there be such an ay, Or those eyes shut,that make thee answer ay: If he be slain say ay,or if not,no: Brief sounds,determine of my weal or woe.

  William Shakespeare

  Eye, Sound, Poison

  William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1773). “Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet. Othello. Appendixes”, p.82

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• When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they’re talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.

  Bobby McFerrin

  Song, Moving, Talking

  "Sing Your Prayers: An Interview With Bobby McFerrin". Omega Institute Interview, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 11, 2012.

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• I invented the colors of the vowels!--A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green--I made rules for the form and movement of each consonant, and, and with instinctive rhythms, I flattered myself that I had created a poetic language accessible, some day, to all the senses.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Blue, Color, White

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• [On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.

  Jessica Mitford

  Exercise, Simple, Appreciate

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• We can translate word and letter into color - [Arthur] Rimbaud stated that in his color vowels, words quote "words" can be read in silent color.

  William S. Burroughs

  Color, Letters, Arthur

  Source: realitystudio.org

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• If you are serious about volleyball, the only months to stop playing are those without a vowel.

  John Kessel

  Sports, Volleyball, Months

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• Bill Door was impressed. Miss Flitworth could actually give the word "revenue", which had two vowels and one diphthong, all the peremptoriness of the word "scum.

  Terry Pratchett

  Doors, Two, Giving

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• On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.

  Ron Rash

  Character, Focus, Trying

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• Sygmnd was a poor Austrian who'd lost all the vowels in his name in a boating accident.

  Woody Allen

  Funny, Humorous, Names

  Woody Allen (2007). “Mere Anarchy”, Random House Incorporated

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