Colloquially Speaking Quotes

Critical analysis tells us not just that injustice exists, but how and why power plays take place historically and specifically, not simply as the general order of things: how injustice exists changeably rather than inevitably, politically rather than metaphysically - how our lives could have been different. Critical analysis tells us, colloquially speaking, not just what's wrong but also what we can do practically to respond. Complaint, in contrast, tells us what's wrong - unjust, racist, manipulated, sexist, and so on - but tells us nothing new about how the world can be otherwise, how we can change the world, resist injustice, do justice. ~ John Forester

We have a government that, generally speaking, does not respond to the people. ~ Christopher Reeve

What did she say?" asked Matthias.
Nina coughed and took his arm, leading him away. "She said you're a very nice fellow, and a credit to the Fjerdan race. Ooh, look, blini! I haven't had proper blini in forever."
"That word she used: babink," he said. "You've called me that before. What does it mean?"
Nina directed her attention to a stack of paper-thin buttered pancakes. "It means sweetie pie."
"Nina - "
"Barbarian."
"I was just asking, there's no need to name-call."
"No, babink means barbarian." Matthias' gaze snapped back to the old woman, his glower returning to full force. Nina grabbed his arm. It was like trying to hold on to a boulder. "She wasn't insulting you! I swear!"
"Barbarian isn't an insult?" he asked, voice rising.
"No. Well, yes. But not in this context. She wanted to know if you'd like to play Princess and Barbarian."
"It's a game?"
"Not exactly."
"Then what is it?"
Nina couldn't believe she was actually going to attempt to explain this. As they continued up the street, she said, "In Ravka, there's a popular series of stories about, um, a brave Fjerdan warrior - "
"Really?" Matthias asked. "He's the hero?"
"In a manner of speaking. He kidnaps a Ravkan princess - "
"That would never happen."
"In the story it does, and" - she cleared her throat - "they spend a long time getting to know each other. In his cave."
"He lives in a cave?"
"It's a very nice cave. Furs. Jewe ~ Leigh Bardugo

We talk about heaven being so far away. It is within speaking distance to those who belong there. Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. ~ Dwight L. Moody

My seat has been the seat of kings, and I will have no rascal to succeed me. ~ Elizabeth I

At times, I've been so absolutely terrified of what I was about to do, whether it was public speaking or performance. Whatever it was, sometimes it had me really, really shaking in my shoes, and I decided that I was going to do it no matter what. And, of course, the critic is there, and afterwards, there's this, "Was it good enough? Was it really all I wanted to say?" ~ Annie Lennox

He talking Louisiana, you speaking Tennessee. The music so different, the sound coming from a different part of the body. It must of been like hearing lyrics set to scores by two different composers. But when you made love he must of have said I love you and you understood that and it was true, too, because I have seen the desperation in his eyes ever since - no matter what business venture he thinks up. ~ Toni Morrison

You want your revenge more."
"I want both. I want everything."
She turned away from him, speaking to the street beyond the carriage window, suddenly irritated. "Oh, Michael, whoever told you that you could have everything? ~ Sarah MacLean

Samuel didn't know God was speaking to him until his mentor Eli helped him understand what was happening. ~ Jeff Goins

Never for an instant does God cease to speak; but no one thinks of opening the doors. And yet, with a little watchfulness, it were not difficult to hear the word that God must speak concerning our every act. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

They could smile back and forth without speaking, like soldiers who had fought side by side. The ~ Banana Yoshimoto

I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

In a fight between a shifter and a witch, the shifter would often win - but only if they could keep the witch from speaking, usually by severing the throat or tearing out the tongue. If the witch was powerful enough, and quick enough, physical size didn't matter. Catherine had heard of the horrible ways the witches could kill their victims. Cooking them alive from the inside out, restricting oxygen flow through the nasal and oral passages by creating a vacuum, drowning them with vapor pulled from the very air.
It made fights between shifters look almost humane by comparison. ~ Nenia Campbell

The Italian word 'stanza' means 'a room', and a room is a good way to conceive of a stanza. A room, generally speaking, is sufficient for its own purposes, but it does not constitute a house. A stanza has the same sense of containment, without being complete or independent. ~ James Fenton

If hell comes as a result of my speaking the truth, then let it come. ~ Harry Lennix

But when I roamed New York City, knowing so much and capable of speaking so nicely, and yet so lonely, and often hungry and cold, I learned the joke at the core of American self-improvement: knowledge was so much junk to be processed one way or another at great universities. The real treasure the great universities offered was a lifelong membership in a respected artificial extended family. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Minimalism is saying all by saying nothing. ~ Will Advise

One night, the Duarte girl, sang poems set to music in a voice so clear I felt my soul rise up inside my ear. In a garden of clematis, with servants dressed like Gypsies placing candles in the trees, we assembled on the grass, between a Belgian wood and {the Duchess of Lorraine}'s glassy pond. In a pale orange gown I read two pieces I'd prepared...When the ladies clapped their approval in the dark, everything, to me, was suddenly bright and near. ~ Danielle Dutton

As I said before, I took to miniature painting without a completely whole heart, on the advice of my elders and betters. Generally speaking, I do not think that one should ever take another person's advice in the things of life that really matter, but follow the dictates of the still small something in one's innermost self. But 'they' advised, and I bowed to the advice; and in this particular instance it was a good thing I did, because the advice turned out to be so resoundingly wrong that it turned me into another direction altogether. If I had gone on working in oils I might very well have been a dedicated but unsuccessful painter to this day. ~ Rosemary Sutcliff

I love you," she said, speaking clearly so that there might be no confusion. "I love you utterly and completely. I love your elegant hands and the way you smile with only one side of your mouth - when you smile at all - and I love how grave your eyes are. I love that you let me invade your house with nearly my entire family and yours, and never even turned a hair. I love that you made love to me when I asked you, purely for politeness' sake, and I love that you got mad at me later and made me make love to you. I love that you let Her Grace and her puppies construct a nest out of your shirts in your dressing room. I love that you've spent years selflessly saving people in St. Giles - although I want you to stop right now. I love that you killed a man for me, even if I'm still mad at you about it. I love that you saved my letters before we even knew each other well, and I love the curt, overly serious letters you wrote to me in return."

She looked at him very seriously.

"I love you, Godric St. John, and now I'm breaking my word. I will not leave you. You may either come with me to Laurelwood or I'll stay here with you in your musty old house in London and drive you mad with all my talking and relatives and… and exotic sexual positions until you break down and love me back, for I'm warning you that I'm not giving up until you love me and we're a happy family with dozens of children."

She paused at that point because she'd run out of breath ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Is it worth it to be born if you cannot remember it later? And, technically speaking, had I ever been born? Other people, of course, said that I was. As far as I know, I was born in late April, at sixty years of age, in a hospital room. ~ Umberto Eco

It seems a miracle that young children easily learn the language of any environment into which they were born. The generative approach to grammar, pioneered by Chomsky, argues that this is only explicable if certain deep, universal features of this competence are innate characteristics of the human brain. Biologically speaking, this hypothesis of an inheritable capability to learn any language means that it must somehow be encoded in the DNA of our chromosomes. Should this hypothesis one day be verified, then lingusitics would become a branch of biology. ~ Niels Kaj Jerne

Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

For one of the peculiarities about prejudice is that it seems always to speak from the heart; it seems, in some daring way, to be speaking the truth, to be saying what others secretly believe, but do not have the courage to say themselves. And the man who speaks against prejudice can often come to seem like the peddler of shopworn banalities, while the voice of prejudice can seem bold and original; a lone voice with the power to drown out others, the power to subdue. ~ Aatish Taseer

Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil but then also do no evil. ~ Amit Abraham

My father, you must know, who was originally a Turkey merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of - - , was, I believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether 'twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived. As a small specimen of this extreme exactness of his, to which he was in truth a slave, he had made it a rule for many years of his life, - on the first Sunday-night of every month throughout the whole year, - as certain as ever the Sunday-night came, - to wind up a large house-clock, which we had standing on the back-stairs head, with his own hands: - And being somewhere between fifty and sixty years of age at the time I have been speaking of, - he had likewise gradually brought some other little family concernments to the same period, in order, as he would often say to my uncle Toby, to get them all out of the way at one time, and be no more plagued and pestered with them the rest of the month.

It was attended but with one misfortune, which, in a great measure, fell upon myself, and the effects of which I fear I shall carry with me to my grave; namely, that from an unhappy association of ideas, which have no connection in nature, it so fell out at length, that my poor mother could never hear the said clock wound up, - but the thoughts of some other things unavoidably popped into her head. ~ Laurence Sterne

Now, it is our understanding that his Majesty Grom is requesting an unsealing from his mating with the Common Paca?"
"That is correct," Antonis says, rolling his eyes. "Poseidon's beard, but this is repetitive."
Tandel ignores the elder king's bluster. "It is also our understanding that Prince Galen requests, in exchange for his help, and the help of Emma the Half-Breed, that he is permitted to mate with Emma as if she were full-blooded Syrena."
"You have that correct," Galen answers gruffly.
Tandel pauses. "And do the Royals have any more requests at this time?"
"Yes," Emma says, to Galen's surprise. She's never held back from speaking what's on her mind. But she never acknowledged herself as a Royal until now. "Because of my Half-breed status, and the fact that I've lived on land all my life, I would like for the Royals to be able to visit me here whenever they like. I know that under the current laws, that's not allowed, but I want that changed."
"You might as well agree to that, Tandel," Antonis says. "Or else you'll be holding another tribunal for the Royals, because all of us intend to be visiting land more often I think."
"Actually I won't be visiting land," Galen says. He turns to Emma. "I'll be living here." Tears pool in her eyes. He catches one sliding down her cheek and kisses it away. Her reaction just confirms what he'd suspected all along. That she's been worried about it. How it would work out between them, where would they l ~ Anna Banks

A thought can be cast down by speaking out loud words of resistance and words of God. ~ Sunday Adelaja

If it is considered speaking knowledgeably about malaria by having spent a few weeks traveling into malaria endemic zones and fallen sick from being infected with it, then what is it considered by having lived in the very same malaria endemic zones for years without being infected by it? ~ T.K. Naliaka

Reflect that you could have written the book so much better yourself, if only you had the time and the inclination for the task; and that the literate won't be listening, if you're speaking on air, or doing more than glance at your review, if it appears in print; and go right ahead! There will be no reprisals. If the author is young and struggling, he won't dare to expose your pretensions; and if he is well established he won't think it worth while to do so. ~ Georgette Heyer

Nothing touches our lives but it is God Himself speaking. Do we discern His hand or only mere occurrence? ~ Oswald Chambers

Ron and Hermione weren't speaking to each other. ~ J.K. Rowling

A character has a distinctive voice - you should be able to hear them in your head and conduct a conversation with them while you're out walking. If the answers surprise you, you know it's the character speaking and not you. ~ Jeanette Winterson

What sort of an imaginary voice is that? I asked myself, suppose Columbus had heard an imaginary voice telling him to sail west. And because of it he had discovered the New World and changed human history ... We would be hard put to defend the use of the term 'imaginary' then, for that voice, since the consequences of its speaking came to affect us all. Which would have constituted greater reality, an 'imaginary' voice telling him to sail west, or a 'real' voice telling him the idea was hopeless? ~ Philip K. Dick

He's speaking in the tone of voice that everyone uses when they're about to break you apart. Gentle - kind, even - like they can make the news sound better just by speaking in a lullaby voice. ~ Lauren Oliver