Reading Voice Quotes

Harriet Levin [is] a shining poet in her generation ... The dynamics of her language and her vigorous voice distinguish all her poems. Levin's fearless willingness to tackle any subject combines with her subtle intelligence to produce a rare reading experience, the moving, psychologically sophisticated and intriguing work of a poet with both guts and craft ~ Molly Peacock

In the early '90s, when I really started to find my voice, I was reading a lot of books, and I was moved by the writers, like Chinua Achebe, and I wanted to be able to write rhymes that were as potent as what I was reading. ~ Mos Def

The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you. ~ Thomas Lux

All of the narration in 'Smile' is first-person. Most of the books that I grew up reading had first-person narrators for some reason. My diaries were written in this voice, and since this story is autobiographical, it just felt like a natural extension. ~ Raina Telgemeier

And even with the book closed, the voices do not stop--there are echoes and reverberations that seem to leap off the pages and mischievously leave the novel tingling in our ears. ~ Azar Nafisi

The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large. ~ Aberjhani

We are savages insides. We all want to be the chosen, the beloved, the esteemed. There isn't a person reading this who hasn't at one point or another had that why not me? voice pop into the interior mix when something good has happened to someone else. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I'm a voice for children's books and children's reading. ~ Malorie Blackman

Being a writer is a solitary life. So the little part of me that's an actor still enjoys the theatrical part of reading and doing the voices and telling the story. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

Yet because her needs and yearnings are real and pressing, she must find some way to express them: she puts into body what she cannot yet put into words. Her eating disorder serves as her voice, her attempt to express and meet her needs and desires without directly asking for anything. ~ Sheila M. Reindl

The deep roar of the ocean.

The break of waves on farther shores that thought can find.

The silent thunders of the deep.

And from among it, voices calling, and yet not voices, humming trillings, wordlings, and half-articulated songs of thought.

Greetings, waves of greetings, sliding back down into the inarticulate, words breaking together.

A crash of sorrow on the shores of Earth.

Waves of joy on--where? A world indescribably found, indescribably arrived at, indescribably wet, a song of water.

A fugue of voices now, clamoring explanations, of a disaster unavertable, a world to be destroyed, a surge of helplessness, a spasm of despair, a dying fall, again the break of words.

And then the fling of hope, the finding of a shadow Earth in the implications of enfolded time, submerged dimensions, the pull of parallels, the deep pull, the spin of will, the hurl and split of it, the fight. A new Earth pulled into replacement, the dolphins gone.

Then stunningly a single voice, quite clear.

"This bowl was brought to you by the Campaign to Save the Humans. We bid you farewell."

And then the sound of long, heavy, perfectly gray bodies rolling away into an unknown fathomless deep, quietly giggling. ~ Douglas Adams

Kings have no friends,' Stannis said bluntly, 'only subjects and enemies.'
'And brothers,' a cheerful voice called out. ~ George R.R. Martin

It was obvious to early Jewish interpreters that the word "land" in the Jeremiah passage meant "the land" which was promised to Israel and which was also inhabited by Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon ( Jeremiah 27:3). It was also clear to them, as it is to most modern scholars, that the Jeremiah passage was reading off the pages of Genesis ~ John Sailhamer

My reading and drawing drew me away from the ordinary interests, and I lived a great deal in the world of imagination, feeding upon any book that fell into my hands. When I had got hold of a really thick book like Hugo's 'Les Miserables,' I was happy and would go off into a corner to devour it. ~ Jacob Epstein

Austin's voice was low and gruff with unspoken promises of pleasure. "I need you." He offered me no other explanation, no argument, no rationalizations, just that he needed to be with me, plain and simple. ~ D.T. Dyllin

It is impossible that the whisper of a faction should prevail against the voice of a nation. ~ Lord John Russell

Something in his voice stopped her from asking any more questions and he went on: 'So you see, Octavia, we need you and you need us. Between us we can be a family instead of three lonely people. ~ Betty Neels

I barely noticed. I was still reeling from the sight of Falin. Of him standing beside her. Of him touching her. My mouth went dry, and even Malik's soulful voice faded to a buzz in my ears. Something in my chest had frozen. Maybe it was my lungs, because I couldn't seem to breathe.
He's with her. And of course, he was. Look at her. ~ Kalayna Price

Wherever you go, there you are. Your emptiness goes with you. Maddening. Things that help: writing, reading, water, walks, forgiving myself every other minute, practicing easy yoga, taking deep breaths, and petting my dogs. These things don't fill me completely, but they remind me that it is not my job to fill myself. It's just my job to notice my emptiness and find graceful ways to live as a broken, unfilled human ...
If there's a silver lining to the emptiness, here it is: the unfillable is what brings people together. I've never made a friend by bragging about my strengths, but I've made countless by sharing my weakness and my emptiness. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

You felt she'd done a thousand secret things to her eyes. They needed no haze of cigarette smoke to look at you out of sexy and fathomless, but carried their own along with them. New York must have been for her a city of smoke, its streets the courtyards of limbo, its bodies like wraiths. Smoke seemed to be in her voice, in her movements; making her all the more substantial, more there, as if words, glances, small lewdnesses could only become baffled and brought to rest like smoke in her long hair; remain there useless till she released them, accidentally and unknowingly, with a toss of her head. ~ Thomas Pynchon

I don't know if I am cut out to playing a bad character or not - I really should give it a shot. I would like to play the voice of a baddie, but that's really just a cop-out! ~ Lindsay Lohan

The voice of the intellect is soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endless rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind. ~ Sigmund Freud

The truly wide taste in reading is that which enables a man to find something for his needs on the sixpenny tray outside any secondhand bookshop. ~ C.S. Lewis

Fish are unable, of course, to speak for themselves about how we treat them. They have ways of communicating with each other and, in some cases, even with other species of fish, as the groupers and eels do. As with most animals, their inability to communicate directly with us puts them at a disadvantage. They cannot argue for their rights or how they might best be treated or farmed or managed in the wild. Most animals have no voice that we can hear, unless we speak up for them. And even if an animal could talk, would we listen? ~ Virginia Morell

She blinked up at him in confusion. "What happened?"
"The horse reared and fell." Christopher's voice came out in a rasp. "Tell me your name."
"Why are you asking me that?"
"Your name," he insisted.
"Beatrix Heloise Hathaway." She looked at him with round blue eyes. "Now that we know who I am…who are you?"

At Christopher's expression, Beatrix snickered and wrinkled her nose impishly. "I'm teasing. Really. I know who you are. I'm perfectly all right."
Over Christopher's shoulder, Beatrix caught sight of Leo shaking his head in warning, drawing a finger across his throat. ~ Lisa Kleypas

In appearance, this locus is a simple one; a matter of pure reciprocity: we read a text in which the writer is in turn reading to us. But it isn't a text, it's a mirrror. It offers us at last that enchantment of the double. ~ Santiago García

Plainly, such an approach does not exclude other ways of trying to comprehend the world. Someone committed to it (as I am) can consistently believe (as I do) that we learn much more of human interest about how people think and feel and act by reading novels or studying history than from all of naturalistic psychology, and perhaps always will; similarly, the arts may offer appreciation of the heavens to which astrophysics cannot aspire. ~ Noam Chomsky

Embrace what works and discard what doesn't. ~ S.A. Tawks

The home is the child's first school, the parent is the child's first teacher, and reading is the child's first subject. ~ Barbara Bush

Really, Nan could be very odious when she liked. Yet somehow she [Gay] didn't hate her as before. She felt very indifferent to her. She found herself looking at her with cool, appraising eyes, seeing her as she had never seen her before. An empty, selfish little creature, who had always to be amused like a child. ...A girl who posed as a sophisticate before her country cousins but who was really more provincial than they were, knowing nothing of real life or real love or real emotion of any kind. Gay wondered, as she looked, how she could ever have hated this girl - ever been jealous of her. She was not worth hating. Gay spoke at last. She stood up and looked levelly at Nan. There was contempt in her quiet voice.

"I suppose you came here to hurt me, Nan. You haven't - you can never hurt me again. You've lost the power. I think I even feel a little sorry for you. You've always been a taker, Nan. All through your life you've taken whatever you wanted. But you've never been a giver - you couldn't be because you've nothing to give. Neither love nor truth nor understanding nor kindness nor loyalty. Just taking all the time and giving nothing - oh, it has made you very poor. So poor that nobody need envy you. ~ L.M. Montgomery

My bullshit metre is reading that as false'. ~ Charlaine Harris

That voice… My voice, it was my voice. How did Flora have my voice? How could I have thrown it away? The only time I was ever happy under the sea was when I was singing, and I sewed my mouth shut in the hopes that a boy I barely knew could kiss it open again. ~ Louise O'Neill

Listen to the voices. ~ William Faulkner

She was a great and insatiable reader, surprisingly well acquainted with the classics of literature, and unexpectedly lavish in the purchase of books. Her neighbours never forgot to mention, in describing her, the awe-inspiring fact that she 'took in the English Times and the Saturday Review, and read every word of them,' but it was hinted that the bookshelves that her own capable hands had put up in her bedroom held a large proportion of works of fiction of a startlingly advanced kind, 'and,' it was generally added in tones of mystery, 'many of them French. ~ Edith Somerville

If democracy is the voice of the people, then the AP is its stenographer. ~ Peter Arnett

I was reading a poem by my idol, Wallace Stevens, in which he said, 'The self is a cloister of remembered sounds.' My first response was, Yesss! How did he know that? It's like he's reading my mind. But my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I've been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I'm spinning through the same sounds I've been hearing in my head all my life. If I go on this way, I'll get old too fast, without remembering any more sounds than I already know now. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people? How do you jump off one moving train, marked Yourself, and jump onto a train moving in the opposite direction, marked Everybody Else? I loved a Modern Lovers song called, 'Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste,' and I didn't want to waste mine. ~ Rob Sheffield

This is what my
voice sounds like
I don't need to be
talking to
someone else
To hear it ~ David Levithan

I would have done whatever it took to save you.' His voice and his expression were grave. 'Even if that meant I had to spend eternity in Hell. ~ Sylvain Reynard

I never knew a sorrow that an hour of reading could not assuage, a great man had once said. Let's put it to the test. ~ Anna Gavalda

Before I could open any more pictures, I was interrupted by the ring of my cell phone. Scrambling for my purse, I fished out the phone, hoping the noise wouldn't wake the baby.
"Hello?"
"How's it going?" Dane asked.
I relaxed at the familiar voice. "I'm having a fling with a younger man," I told him. "He's kind of short for me, and there's a little incontinence problem ... but we're working to get beyond all that."
-Ella & Dane ~ Lisa Kleypas

Message
I heard a cry in the night,
A thousand miles it came,
Sharp as a flash of light,
My name, my name!
It was your voice I heard,
You waked and loved me so
I send you back this word,
I know, I know! ~ Sara Teasdale

Reading will give you lasting pleasure. ~ First Lady Laura Bush

Billos ran. He tore down the shore, bounded up on the rock, and dove into the air.
The warm water engulfed him. A boiling heat knocked the wind from his lungs. The shock alone might kill him.
But it was pleasure that surged through his body, not pain. The sensations coursed through his bones in great unrelenting waves.
Elyon.
How he was certain, he did not know. But he knew. Elyon was in this lake with him.
Billos opened his eyes. Gold light drifted by. He lost all sense of direction. The water pressed in on every inch of his body, as intense as any acid, but one that burned with pleasure instead of pain.
He sank into the water, opened his mouth and laughed. He wanted more, much more. He wanted to suck the water in and drink it.
Without thinking, he did just that. The liquid hit his lungs. Billos pulled up, panicked. He tried to hack the water from his lungs, but inhaled more instead. No pain. He carefully sucked more water and breathed it out slowly. Then again, deep and hard. Out with a soft whoosh. He was breathing the water!
Billos shrieked with laughter. He swam into the lake, deeper and deeper. The power contained in this lake was far greater than anything he'd ever imagined.
"I made this, Billos."
Billos whipped his body around, searching for the words' source. "Elyon?" His voice was muffled, hardly a voice at all.
"Do you like it?"
"Yes!" Billos said. He might have spoken; he might have shouted-- ~ Ted Dekker

I tried to be just a singer of standards when I was starting out. And there was nothing special enough about my voice to make it that far. So I feel a bit like Rod Stewart. Once you've had that rock career, people will give you that chance where otherwise they might not. ~ Nellie McKay