Accents Quotes

I keep forgetting I'm speaking in an American accent sometimes. The dangerous thing is that you end up forgetting what your real accent is after a while! It's really strange; I've never done a job in an American accent before. ~ Robert Pattinson

I know that people who have been to RADA and LAMDA can smash accents and do Shakespeare: all those things that I never really trained in. ~ Vicky McClure

So I captured Italy ... but the only thing I hear from him is ze singing und ze laughing und vierd accents.
-Germany ~ Hidekaz Himaruya

Thus the city repeats its life, identical, shifting up and down on its empty chessboard. The inhabitants repeat the same scenes, with the acton changed; they repeat the same speeches with variously combined accents; they open alternate mouths in identical yawns. Alone, among all the cities of the empire, Eutropia remains always the same. Mercury, god of the fickle, to whom the city is sacred, worked this ambiguous miracle. ~ Italo Calvino

40 THINGS THAT PROVE GOD CARES ABOUT GIRLS, including He made babies so cute! and He invented Australian accents! and There are no diets in heaven! ~ Kathleen Hale

The tricky thing becomes: Do you know yourself well enough to then portray that on screen? And for me, I find that really hard. I'd rather hide behind accents and funny walks. ~ Joel Edgerton

Whoever approaches these Olympians with another religion in his heart, searching among them for moral elevation, even for sanctity, for disincarnate spirituality, for charity and benevolence, will soon be forced to turn his back on them, discouraged and disappointed. For there is nothing here that suggests asceticism, spirituality, or duty. We hear nothing but the accents of an exuberant, triumphant life in which all things, whether good or evil, are deified. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Trouble is, some accents lend themselves to comedy. ~ Martin Freeman

I hate Risk. I have for many years now. I hate that you still like Risk. I hate that you guilt me into playing with you because no one else will. I hate that you do the accents of the countries you're attacking from. And I hate that you wear a beret every time we play. God, do I hate the beret. ~ Colin Nissan

German accents and Hassidic accents aren't that romantic. They're more harsh. Although Hebrew, when spoken by certain people, sounds beautiful. There's this beautiful woman I know who speaks Hebrew, and when she speaks, it's so attractive. Maybe it's who's speaking it. ~ Janeane Garofalo

I have always like doing accents; I find it much easier to get into character for me. ~ Kevin Zegers

When I lived in India, I'd speak like an Indian to get good prices while shopping. I'm good with accents. ~ Hannah Simone

English is no problem for me because I am actually English. My whole family are English; I was brought up listening to various forms of the English accent. ~ Guy Pearce

I have a corn creamer that I love. It extracts pulp and juice from kernels, and I simmer that down into a creamed corn that has an almost mashed potato-like consistency. I add butter and hit it with chopped fresh chives at the end for an accent of color. ~ Nick Offerman

A girl can talk about my nose, my teeth or my accent - anything that gets a conversation going is fine with me. It is weird, though, the way women respond to my body. Maybe 50 percent respond positively right away, while another 25 or 30 percent need a while to adjust to my size and to realize that ordinarily my muscles are soft, just like anyone's, only bigger. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

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

I was trying to find ways of not being pigeon-holed like that. I didn't want to be tied down by my accent. I wanted to play Americans. I don't want to ever be doing the same thing twice, and I just didn't want to repeat myself. ~ Carey Mulligan

I'd never gotten to do an accent for anything that I've done, so that was really appealing because I love doing accents. Ever since I was a kid, I made it my business to try to mimic foreign accents, so it was really fun to be able to do that. I was really working on the accent to try to make it really good. ~ Megalyn Echikunwoke

I could do an American accent, if I were immersed in the accent, meaning if I were living back in Los Angeles and rehearsing and auditioning the whole time. ~ Ioan Gruffudd

I believe your own accent is inimitable, though I shall practice it in my bath. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

We used to do sock puppet shows for my auntie back in the day. Me and my friends would do accents of Englishmen, and we would sip tea and act like we were rich in front of the family, and they thought it was just hilarious, the level of perception that we had about things that we'd never experienced. ~ Keith Stanfield

Try and fit in in a New Zealand playground with an Armagh accent - it doesn't work. ~ Sam Neill

They have different accents in America " Brisbane smiled. "Just as we do here." I waved a hand. "They all sound alike to me. ~ Deanna Raybourn

Flight 2039 to Boston is now boarding at gate 14A," a voice announced over the PA system.
Nellie sighed. "I love Irish accents." She paused. "And Australian accents. And English accents." A dreamy look came over her face. "Theo had an awesome accent."
Dan snorted. "Yeah, there was just that one tiny problem. He turned out to be a two-timing, backstabbing thief. ~ Rick Riordan

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I felt comfortable within mystery's shroud. It was all I knew. Being mysterious meant I had the advantage over others. But I didn't want an advantage over Ashley. I knew her… and I wanted her to know me as well. Mystery was fascinating and all, but why bother looking at a shrouded painting when you could see it all under the full light? A painting is so much more beautiful when you can witness every one of its quirks, kinks, flaws, and accents. That's how I wanted Ashley to see me. I didn't want to be shrouded with only part of me being available for anyone anymore. ~ David R. Torres

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company. ~ Gaston Bachelard

It was once said that this is the land of the free. There is, I believe, a statue out there in the harbor, with something written on it about "Give me your hungry ... your oppressed ... give me pretty much everybody"-that's the way I remember it, anyway. The idea of America is a mutt-culture, isn't it? Who the hell is America if not everybody else? We are-and should be-a big, messy, anarchistic polyglot of dialects and accents and different skin tones ... We need more Latinos to come here. And they should, whenever possible, impregnate our women. ~ Anthony Bourdain

I think the Northern Ireland accent is one of the most beautiful in the world. ~ Colum McCann

I just went home to Illinois, and I asked my family, 'Are you guys planning on talking in those accents the whole time I'm home?' And my mother said, 'You used to talk like that, too, Tasha.' And I said, 'Yes, but you see, I've reinvented myself. Do you have any idea who I think I am?' ~ Natasha Leggero

I don't judge people by their accent, or how they word things, or how grammatically correct their speech is. Some of the smartest men in the world couldn't spell. I judge a person by their character. ~ Larry The Cable Guy

Tell me the truth - do you think I've lost my Southern accent? I feel it comes back to me only when I'm shouting at fights or at baseball games. ~ Cleo Moore

The very winds whispered in soothing accents, and maternal Nature bade me weep no more. ~ Mary Shelley

I played a lot of leaders, autocratic sorts; perhaps it was my Canadian accent. ~ Leslie Nielsen

So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in stronds afar remote. ~ William Shakespeare

After The Beatles came on the scene everyone started putting on a Liverpudlian accent. ~ John Lennon

England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents. ~ Stephen Daldry

A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn't there ~ Stephen Fry

Her frocks are built in Paris, but she wears them with a strong English accent. ~ Hector Hugh Munro

I, of course, don't have an accent. This is just how things sound when they are pronounced properly. ~ Jimmy Carr

I understand English; I read and write English perfectly, but the accent won't go away. ~ Sofia Vergara

Both my parents are immigrants. I've seen different struggles they've had. There's a reason you don't see me using accents. I don't do impressions of my folks. When I'm doing a crappy impression of my folks, and you're laughing, I'm thinking, 'When my parents talk to people, when they walk away do people do impressions of them? Do they laugh?' ~ Hari Kondabolu

As long as our voiced were in harmony, it didn't matter that our accents were at war. ~ Carsten Jensen

I like playing accents, and doing things like that, it was fun. It was fun. ~ Albert Finney

I love doing accents because it takes you one step away from yourself and allows you to embody someone else's character. ~ Mia Wasikowska

I worked the drive-through at McDonald's and tried out different accents - Italian, Russian, Irish. ~ James Franco

And what is sin?' said Cotgrave.
'I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and if the pebble that you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning?
'Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is. ~ Arthur Machen

The speakers use all accents of sincerity and sweetness, and they continuously praise virtue; but they never speak as if power would be theirs tomorrow and they would use it for virtuous action. And their audiences also do not seem to regard themselves as predestined to rule; they clap as if in defiance, and laugh at their enemies behind their hands, with the shrill laughter of children. They want to be right, not to do right. They feel no obligation to be part of the main tide of life, and if that meant any degree of pollution they would prefer to divert themselves from it and form a standing pool of purity. In fact, they want to receive the Eucharist, be beaten by the Turks, and then go to heaven. ~ Christopher Hitchens

By habitus, I mean dispositions that inhere and mold the deepest, subtlest, intricate structures of personhood, are constituted and emergent in the most elusive folds and lineaments of consciousness, and are articulated in lastingly resilient, enduring textual tapestries of experience, orientations, desires. The range of habitus is deep and broad: habitus forms the long arc of evolutionary developments and arrangements of the body in action and at rest, posture, gait, stance, and gesture; it is the silent teacher of the phonemic alphabet, determining subtle distinctions of timbre and tone, accents and intonations in voice articulations; it is the subcutaneous, ingrained dynamic inhering in daily competencies, executed flawlessly and yet seemingly unconsciously, such as balancing huge loads the size of a person's body weight on the head as Kikuyu women often do, or walking fearlessly on narrow glacial paths through plunging cliffs as the Sherpas do, or weaving in and out of traffic while engaged in deep conversations on a cell phone as Californians do. Habitus describes the imbrication of structure and culture in desire. It is what defines subtle distinctions of taste, those almost ineffable differences of sweetness, succulence, spiciness, and bitterness in food and drink; the raging fetishes and unbidden cravings that shadow sexuality; the fickle difference between scents that intoxicate or trigger upheavals of wretching. Habitus, then, is "human nature" understood as the dee ~ Omedi Ochieng

So it wasn't Peggy I was interested in, not her tears, her crumpled looks. She reminded me too much of myself. It was her comforters I marvelled at. How they seemed to bow down and declare themselves in front of her.
What had they been saying? Nothing in particular. All right, they said. It's all right, Peggy, they said. Now, Peggy. All right. All right.
Such kindness. That anybody could be so kind.
It is true that these young men, brought to our country to train for bombing missions on which so many of them would be killed, might have been speaking in the normal accents of Cornwall or Kent or Hull or Scotland. But to me they seemed unable to open their mouths without uttering some kind of blessing, a blessing on the moment. It didn't occur to me that their futures were all bound up with disaster, or that their ordinary lives had flown out the window and smashed on the ground. I just thought of the blessing, how wonderful to get on the receiving end of it, how lucky and undeserving was that Peggy. ~ Alice Munro

The Glasgow accent was so strong you could have built a bridge with it and known it would outlast the civilization that spawned it ~ Val McDermid

Our accents are clothing for our thoughts, my dear," Wayne said. "Without them, everything we say would be stripped bare, and we might as well be screaming at one another. Oh ~ Brandon Sanderson

Their perfect English accents. As if serving all their vowels on a fine set of tongs. ~ Colum McCann

She goes on the set with headphones and gives you notes. She's terrific and I always run to her now, because she is just great to work with, as well as very good at different accents. ~ Albert Finney

For the next half-hour or so there was nothing to be done but sit and suffer it. We had Madame Tetrazzini trilling about the hissing and sissing of the needle, like a princess at the back of a cave with the sea monster snuffling outside it. We had Señor Caruso searching bravely for The Lost Chord in a forest of alien English vowel sounds. We had McCormack's Kathleen Mavourneen, Clara Butt longing for her Ain Folk in accents suggesting that they might be found somewhere south of Hyde Park, a tenor whose name I forgot summoning Jerusalem, Jerusalem, and everybody looking devout over their empty teacups. ~ Gillian Linscott

I havent lost my culture, just my accent. ~ Charlize Theron

I tend to land roles that are somewhat villainous for some reason. Usually, people blame it on the accent. ~ India De Beaufort

Lady Cinderford,' said the Dowager, referring to her widowed sister-in-law in accents of loathing, 'will act as hostess at Stanyon over my dead body!'
'That would be something quite out of the ordinary way,' murmured the Earl. ~ Georgette Heyer

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

I couldn't give a sh*t what they have to say. As soon as I go home and see my husband [James Thornton of Holby Blue fame] and pick up my dog and cuddle him, that's all that matters. I couldn't care if some theatre reviewer thinks my American accent sounds a bit Welsh. ~ Joanna Page

It's funny because if you ever ask anyone in England to try and do a Beatles accent, no one knows what they really sound like. If you ask anyone in America, they would try and give it a go. English people just know their songs. ~ Aaron Johnson

There were dumplings on the train, sold by grim men and women with deep lines cut into their faces by years and worry and hunger and misery. This was the provinces, the outer territories, the mysterious China that had sent millions of girls and boys to Canton to earn their fortunes in the Pearl River Delta. Matthew knew all their strange accents, he spoke their strange Mandarin language, but he was Cantonese, and these were not his people.
Those were not his dumplings. ~ Cory Doctorow

You absurd boy! Oh, Evelyn, I'm so thankful you've come, but what in the world has detained you? I've been sick with apprehension!"
There was a quizzical gleam in the gentleman's eyes, but he said in accents of deep reproach: "Come, come, Mama - !"
"It may be very well for you to say Come, come, Mama," she retorted, "but when you faithfully promised to return not a day later than -" She broke off, staring down at him in sudden doubt.
Abandoning the portmanteau, the gentleman shrugged the greatcoat from his shoulder, pulled off his hat, and mounted the remaining stairs two at a time, saying still more reproachfully: "No, really, Mama! How can you be so unnatural a parent?"
"Kit!" uttered his unnatural parent, in a smothered shriek. "Oh, my darling, my dearest son! ~ Georgette Heyer

Did I ever tell you I went to school in America?"
"What? No."
"It's true,for a year. Eighth grade. It was terrible."
"Eighth grade is terrible for everyone," I say.
"Well,it was worse for me. My parents had just seperated,and my mum moved back to California.I hadn't been since I was an infant,but I went with her,and I was put in this horrid public school-"
"Oh,no. Public school."
He nudges me with his shoulder. "The other kids were ruthless. They made fun of everything about me-my height,my accent, the way I dressed.I vowed I'd never go back."
"But American girls love English accents." I blurt this without thinking, and then pray he doesn't notice my blush.
St. Clair picks up a pebble and tosses it into the river. "Not in middle school, they don't.Especially when it's attached to a bloke who comes up to their kneecaps."
I laugh.
"So when the year was over,my parents found a new school for me. I wanted to go back to London,where my mates were, but my father insisted on Paris so he could keep an eye on me. And that's how I would up at the School of America. ~ Stephanie Perkins

Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Now that Janet and Frances were older, Grandpa would let them visit him in his study, where the parrot lived. Grandpa came from a long line of parrot-keeping men, and Polly's predecessor, a white cockatoo, had fought with Wellington's armies in the Napoleonic Wars. Janet's father's earliest memories were of the astonishing oaths known to this bird, who was then a hundred and two years old and spoke in ripe gamey accents long since gone from the world of men. Grandpa believed that there must be a fair number of such long-lived birds in Scotland - even perhaps in England - and it would have been a fine thing to have them all gathered in a great dining hall, invoking ghostly midshipmen and dragoons, violent drinkers and merry rhymesters, perhaps even occasionally a lady of refinement. This, he said, would afford a historical experience of rare value; indeed, ancient parrots should be fêted and cultivated as true archivists. ~ Elspeth Barker

Accents are always difficult in their way, but as long as you're not throwing an audience off with it, then that's all it should be. ~ Ben Mendelsohn

I have an accent, I'm limited, I have to play foreign parts - I would love to play American parts but I can't because I have an accent. You are more limited as a foreigner in every area. ~ Olivier Martinez

I spent a lot of time in London when I was growing up and I've always picked up accents without even really meaning to. It used to get me into trouble as a child. ~ Christopher Guest

I know that Philadelphians hate New York actors passing off New York accents as Philadelphian when they are quite different. ~ Jacki Weaver

Now between the meanings of words and their sounds there is ordinarily no discoverable relation except one of accident; and it is therefore miraculous, to the mystic, when words which make sense can also make a uniform objective structure of accents and rhymes. ~ John Crowe Ransom

When someone with a rural accent says, "I don't know much about politics," zip up your pockets. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"


I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut < ~ Wallace Stevens

Of little use, the man you may suppose,
Who says in verse what others say in prose;
Yet let me show a poet's of some weight,
And (though no soldier) useful to the state,
What will a child learn sooner than a song?
What better teach a foreigner the tongue?
What's long or short, each accent where to place
And speak in public with some sort of grace? ~ Alexander Pope

I'm from the South, where if you walk down the street and there's somebody behind you talking with a Southern accent, you can't tell whether it's a black or a white person. ~ Johnnie Cochran

I've always liked American actors particularly. Because that was my first impression. I was very enamoured of America when I was a kid because we were surrounded by American soldiers during the war, the accent was very strange to me, it was very exotic and very captivating. ~ Anthony Hopkins

A driver who thinks stop signs are suggestions and red lights are decorative accents. ~ Hailey Edwards

In the uproar, the confusion
of accents and inflections
how will you hear me when I open my mouth?
Look for me, one of the drab population
under fissured edifices, fractured
artifices. Make my various
names flock overhead,
I will follow you. ~ Li-Young Lee

Father of Light! great God of Heaven! Hear'st thou the accents of despair? Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven? Can vice atone for crimes by prayer. ~ Lord Byron

him talking in accents as unmistakably American as had been ~ William West Winter

Something I realized when I moved to America: people get these general American accents, but when they get angry or upset or excited, their original accents come out. It's something I noticed with my manager, because he's from New York, and the first time he got angry, he suddenly had this accent. ~ Margot Robbie

Accents can be a great tool to tell a story - but if you do it wrong, it pulls you right out of the movie. ~ Jeremy Renner

Christopher Reeve did such an amazing job that to give him some kind of accent or more bravado would have been wrong. Audiences wouldn't have responded to that either. ~ Brandon Routh

I like things where I can do a physical transformation, and I love accents and voices, and I'm never going to play the same character twice. ~ Jessica Chastain

The accent of one's birthplace persists in the mind and heart as much as in speech. ~ La Rouchefoucauld

The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pang even at the moment of parting; yea, even the eternal farewell is robbed of half of its bitterness when uttered in accents that breathe love to the last sigh. ~ Joseph Addison

Eccentricity is like having an accent. It's what "other" people have. ~ Oliver Sacks

You in the mood for a movie tonight?" Kate asked him a couple days later. Matt was working, and she was sitting on her customary bucket taking a break, drinking bottled water, and surreptitiously admiring him from every angle.
"I could pick something up on my way over tonight."
"Sure."
"How about Pride and Prejudice?"
"What's that?" he asked warily. It's not one of those movies where they all wear old-fashioned clothes and walk around talking in British accents, is it?"
"That's exactly what it is."
Matt groaned.
"It's romantic! Maybe one of the most romantic stories ever. ~ Becky Wade

The accent in the counter attack style of play lays on the defensive team
function, with the emphasis being on the defender's own half of the field
and letting the opponents keep the initiative of the game. This is to take
advantage of the space behind their defense for the buildup and the attack. ~ Rinus Michels

It was a tender and heart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so imbued with celestial hopes, that the music of a heavenly harp, swept by the fingers of the dead, seemed faintly to be heard among the saddest accents of the minister. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Excess of trouble may, for a time, distract and overwhelm the soul. Our Lord himself seems to have experienced somewhat of this. Our prayers, perhaps, are never more acceptable, than when they are offered in broken accents, in sighs, and groans. ~ Charles Simeon

I've always had facility with the German accent. ~ Mercedes Ruehl

I do accents. Sometimes when I've had a few drinks, I speak in different accents all night long, and then at the end of an evening someone will say to me, 'Seriously, where are you from?' ~ Rebecca Mader

Thousands of miles from Georgia, beginning that night in England, my dad became a foreign-language speaker to me – and I was utterly charmed by it. I found the foreigner in myself. ~ Robert Lane Greene

I'm in four different films this year, and I have four different accents. I sound different in every film. You have to love a character to play it well, and change in my work is what I want. ~ Robert Carlyle

The accents floating around the park sounded as varied, ~ Becky Rodgers Boyette

It's really an organic sort of process. You start off with the character on the page. You fall in love with that character and you have to represent that character well and I think it's just an evolution there. Using the accent and speaking the lines with the accent in fact opens the door to who the character really is. ~ Ioan Gruffudd

Only very rarely are foreigners or first-generation immigrants allowed to be nice people in American films. Those with an accent are bad guys. ~ Max Von Sydow

I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. ~ Wallace Stevens

I can't say I have enough experience with Hollywood to feel that I've encountered racism there. I can tell you that I did about five fruitless years of auditioning for voiceovers where I did variations on tacos and Latin accents, and my first screen role was as a bellhop on 'The Sopranos.' ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda