Stammer Quotes

A great writer is always like a foreigner in the language which he expresses himself, even if this is his native tongue. At the limit, he draws his strength from a mute and unknown minority that belongs only to him. He is a foreigner in his own language: he does not mix another language with his own language, he carves out a nonpreexistent foreign language within his own language. He makes the language itself scream, stutter, stammer, or murmur. ~ Gilles Deleuze

You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To ~ Samuel Beckett

Rake," came the succinct reply. "Oh, all right," Lillian grumbled. "I suppose he is a rake. But that may not be an impediment to his courtship of Lady Natalie. Some women like rakes. Look at Evie." Evie continued to snip doggedly through the brocade ribbon, while a smile curved her lips. "I don't l-like all rakes," she said, her gaze on her work. "Just one." Evie, the gentlest and most soft-spoken of them all, had been the one least likely to capture the heart of the notorious Lord St. Vincent, who had been the definitive rake. Although Evie, with her round blue eyes and blazing red hair, possessed a rare and unconventional beauty, she was unbearably shy. And there was the stammer. But Evie also had a reserve of quiet strength and a gallant spirit that seemed to have seduced her husband utterly. "And that former rake obviously adores you beyond reason," Annabelle said. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The teachers tried everything, even pleading, but Tomas was in the habit of addressing them only in Latin, a language he spoke with papal fluency and in which he did not stammer. Sooner or later they all resigned in despair, fearing he might be possessed: he might be spouting demonic instructions in Aramaic at them, for all they knew. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

But here we call it Spring, when a young man's fancy turns,
fitfully, lightly, to idling in the sun,
to touching in the dark. And the old man's?
To worms in their garden box; stepping aside
a moment in a poem that will remember,
fitfully, who made it and the discord
and stammer, and change of heart and catch of breath
it sprang from. A bending down
lightly to touch the earth. ~ David Malouf

I have such bad memories, sitting in the back of a classroom, being told, you know, everybody is going to read a paragraph, and skipping ahead to my paragraph and being mortified and trying to read it enough times so that I wouldn't stutter and stammer, getting called on, even in high school. ~ Vince Flynn

A stammering man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It is an excess of delicacy, excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow creature, that makes him stammer. ~ Thomas Carlyle

From my earliest days I have enjoyed an attractive impediment in my speech. I have never permitted the use of the word stammer. I can't say it myself. ~ Patrick Campbell

And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. ~ Samuel Beckett

This stammer got me a home in Beverly Hills, and I'm not about to screw with it now. ~ Bob Newhart

Amy looked up at him. Their faces were very close. She remembered when those dark expressive eyes would make her quiver inside, when being this close would make her blush and stammer. Not anymore, though. ~ Jude Watson

As long as we keep our native language on our tongue, we will penetrate so much more deeply the distinctiveness of each language. Here we will find gaps, there superfluity; here riches, there a desert, and we will be able to enrich the poverty of the one with the treasures of the other. For, in what precise relationship do language and mentality stand? Whoever masters the entire scope of one language surveys a field full of thoughts, and whoever learns to express himself precisely in it thereby gathers for himself a treasure of clear concepts. The first words we stammer are the foundation stones of our knowing, and our nurse-maids are our first teachers of logic. ~ Johann Gottfried Herder

Yeah?' Kit asks tersely. He glances over Todd's shoul-der at me. 'Do you love him?' he asks me, nodding his head at Todd. The directness of the question stuns me. My mouth falls open. What the . . . ? 'Do you love him?' he demands again. 'Kit, it's none of your business,' I stammer, feeling the weight of Todd's gaze on me. 'Fine,' he says. 'It's none of my business. I have no right to ask you − I get that − but you need to speak to me. If you send me away, I'm just going to keep coming back until you do. ~ Mila Gray

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them. ~ Christopher Morley

I may be deprived of eloquence, but my mind can never be a dumb. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

But despite its shared nature, language is also dangerous, a potentially isolating enterprise. Not all players are equal. In fact, Wittgenstein was by no means always a successful participant himself, frequently experiencing extreme difficulty in communication and expression. In an essay on fear and public language, the critic Rei Terada describes a scene repeated throughout Wittgenstein's life, in which he would begin to stammer while attempting to address a group of colleagues. Eventually, his stuttering would give way to a tense silence, during which he would struggle mutely with his thoughts, gesticulating all the while with his hands, as if he was still speaking audibly. ~ Olivia Laing

The poetry of the new year is problematically punctual. An impeccable guest who arrives on time when you are running frantically behind schedule. Catching you precisely at that awkward stage of housecleaning when the contents of closet and cupboard are strewn across the room and there is no sensible place left to sit down. No, you haven't had a chance to change the guest room towels, your clothes or your habits. It is at this stage that you begin to stammer out apologies and resolutions. The visitor fixes you with a gaze that breaks like dawn over your clutter and chagrin. 'What a beautiful life,' murmurs your guest, pressing an oddly shaped package into your hands. Gladness rises in the heart like a cloud of hummingbirds. Always the same, unpredictable, utterly original gift. You consider the paradox of that as you hold it between your palms. Like freshly kneaded dough: this brand new day. ~ Pavithra K. Mehta

POWER: The ability to make our fellow humans squirm, sweat and stammer on command. Often regarded as an aphrodisiac; actually a potent laxative that, whenever ingested by people in high places, causes everyone below to run for cover. ~ Rick Bayan

Choochiness is yet another British term that has no precise meaning, but, like pornography, you know it when you see it. The way I have things stacked up, choochiness is a particularly British amalgam of cuddlywuddliness, cutesypiedness, and butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouthedness that embraces everything from shops named The Ketch to Hugh Grant's stammer. It is a grating and often maddening behavioral pattern that makes others want to reach out and pinch the choochster's cheeks while secretly longing to stuff a hand grenade right down his throat. "Paul McCartney is choochy; John Lennon is not," says my brother-in-law, Max, who fled England for France in 1976, largely to escape from rampant choochiness. "Paul McCartney: choochy. John Lennon: not choochy. That's the difference." THERE ~ Joe Queenan

Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak. ~ Margaret Weis

Living with a stammer is difficult. It's a daily uphill struggle with emotional baggage weighing you down. You can't be the person you want to be. ~ Gareth Gates

Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world. Mrs Winterson objected to what I had put in, but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story's silent twin. There are so many things that we can't say, because they are too painful. We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It is a version, but never the final one. And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold. When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. Mrs Winterson would have preferred it if I had been silent.

Do you remember the story of Philomel who is raped and then has her tongue ripped out by the rapist so that she can never tell? I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-di ~ Jeanette Winterson

I think three or four years ago, people would have said my biggest weakness was that sometimes I was awkward on television, with my stammer, but I think they'd say that much less now. ~ Ed Balls

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer. ~ Peter Ustinov

It's a bright shadow," Clem said with fierce intensity, and Rowley's throat closed. For the words, and their meaning, and for Clem's open look, without the nervous apprehension and the hint of a stammer. For the trust that allowed him in moments like this to drop his ever-present guard. Hell ~ K.J. Charles

When God descends to us he, in a certain sense, abases himself and stammers with us, so He allows us to stammer with Him ~ John Calvin

In a few short months, I had gone from a friendly, optimistic, confident woman to a confused girl with a nervous stammer who second-guessed every thought that went through her head and rationalized every bad decision she made. ~ Holly Madison

Holy Scripture is so exalted that there is no one in the world ... wise enough to understand it so fully that his intellect is not overcome by it. Nevertheless, man can stammer something about it. ~ Angela Of Foligno

You've been shot," she tells Rachel.
"You shot me, you crazy bit - "
"We don't have time for the ER protocol crap, Mom," I cut in. "She knows she's been shot. She's alert. Help. Her."
Mom nods. She looks at Rachel's clenched fist where it's balled against her lower stomach. "I'm sorry I shot you. I need to look at that. Please."
Rachel gives her The Stank Eye. Rachel is very good at The Stank Eye.
"I'm a nurse, remember?" Mom says, her voice dripping with impatience. "I can help you."
Rachel inhales and eases her hand away from her stomach, but I can't bring myself to look at it so I just watch Mom's face to maybe gauge how bad the wound is. I imagine dark blood and entrails and…
"What the…?" Mom gasps. As an ER nurse, Mom's seen a lot of things. But by her expression, she's never seen this. I'm thinking it must be way serious. Also, I'm thinking I might throw up.
Until Rachel slaps a handcuff around Mom's wrist. "I'm sorry, Nalia. I hope you understand." Then she clinks the other end of the cuff around her own wrist. I steal a glance at Rachel's very clean, very intact, very non-bloody-entrails T-shirt.
Rachel is a smart woman.
Mom lunges for her, hands aiming for her throat. Rachel pulls some karate-chop-move thing and slams Mom against the door behind her. "Knock it off, hon. I don't want to really hurt you."
"You…you told Galen you'd been shot," I stammer. "I heard you tell him that. Why would you lie to him?"
Ra ~ Anna Banks

I may have stumbled
and stammered at
your unexpected push,
but the breeze
anchored me
and I learnt the
art of survival ~ Vijaya Gowrisankar

Men think they already know me. But as they get closer and closer, they become that 14-year-old again. A lot of men do stammer and blush a little bit. ~ Cindy Morgan

I was just as black as I had been the day that I was born. Therefore, when I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to stammer, not to curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize, for example, a rent strike. When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto? ~ James Baldwin

Most often when I stammer
That's my brain
Correcting my grammer. ~ Joyce Rachelle

Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You're a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You're twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you'd have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth ~ Isaac Babel

Do not tease me, Dani. It's not a game you want to play if you don't intend to follow through."
"I-I wasn't . . . I wouldn't," I stammer.
"You did, and I have no doubt you'll have the brilliant idea to do it again. The next time you allude to those dirty thoughts I know you have about me, don't think for a second that I won't drag you to the closest bed to show you just how fucking dirty they'll get. ~ Harper Sloan

I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for a moment, breathing softly down. Growing up, the 'Our Father' was lovely, made for me, the 'Hail Mary' was gorgeous, and 'Glory Be to the Father' was an absolute nightmare. ~ Colm Toibin

Don't compliment me in the middle of an argument. It won't make me stammer or blush, and it just makes you look desperate. ~ Suzanne Enoch

I knew all about Edward VIII's abdication, George VI becoming the king and having a stammer, but nothing about how he got rid of it. ~ Geoffrey Rush

Before all this happened, I always used to see my stammer as being a negative, all my life, but then when I went on 'Pop Idol,' and the first time I saw it on television, it was really, really bad, but also it made me stand out; it made people remember me. So for the first time in my life, it worked to my advantage. ~ Gareth Gates

Fear the soldier who stammers, for he is very fast at pulling the triger. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Let your virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if you must speak of it, then do not be ashamed to stammer about it. Then speak and stammer: "This is my good, I love this, thus I like it entirely, thus alone do I want the good. I ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The one thing I cannot stand is when I do interviews, when I interview people, and I listen to the tapes and I hear myself talking and sort of stumble and stammer, or I hear the horrible sound of my own voice, or God forbid I see myself on video, there is that complete revulsion with seeing how I occur in the world. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Something I always tell students is, when you're writing something, you want to write the first draft and you want it to come out easily in the beginning. If you're afraid to say what you really have to say, you stammer. You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write. ~ Sandra Cisneros

His gaze was fixed so intently on me that, though I had been determined to look him in the eye as his equal, I found myself having to stare down at the corner of the table in order to stammer out a word. ~ Karen Maitland

I had this terrible stammer, so I couldn't really speak properly until I was 16 or 17. ~ Carly Simon

I had a stammer through adolescence. Any fun I'd had performing in school plays disappeared and only came back at 18, when the stammer started to go. Then I thought: 'Well, perhaps I can show off now.' ~ Charles Dance

You know how these things are supposed to work, right? The good-looking popular guy suddenly shows interest in the mousy girl from the country. Everyone hates her for it, but she starts to gain confidence in herself. Then the guy betrays her and regrets it. It's awful, but afterward she 'finds herself,' realizes she doesn't need him, and maybe there's some other stuff that happens" - he waggles his fingers in the air - "and finally she turns into the most beautiful girl ever because she likes herself. But it won't work at all if you don't stammer and blush and pretend you don't like me." She's ~ N.K. Jemisin

I see,' agreed Rule. 'You are going to be the Sacrifice.'

She looked up at him rather shyly. 'It c-can't signify to you, can it? Except that I know I'm not a Beauty, like L-Lizzie. But I have got the Nose, sir.'

Rule surveyed the Nose. 'Undoubtedly, you have the Nose,' he said.

Horatia seemed determined to make a clean breast of her blemishes. 'And p-perhaps you could become used to my eyebrows?'

The smile lurked at the back of Rule's eyes. 'I think, quite easily.'

She said sadly: 'They won't arch, you know. And I ought to't-tell you that we have quite given up hope of my g-growing any taller.'

'It would certainly be a pity if you did,' said his lordship.

'D-do you think so?' Horatia was surprised. 'It is a great trial to me, I can assure you.' She took a breath, and added, with difficulty: 'You m-may have n-noticed that I have a - a stammer.'

'Yes, I had noticed,' the Earl answered gently.

'If you f-feel you c-can't bear it, sir, I shall quite understand,' Horatia said in a small, anxious voice.

'I like it,'said the Earl. ~ Georgette Heyer

Poor human weakness! With your words, your languages, your sounds, you speak and stammer - you define God, the heaven and the earth, chemistry and philosophy, and you cannot express, with your language, all the joy that you derive from a naked woman - or a plum pudding. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Why do you say that you love me?" He turns his head in my direction, still frowning.
"Because I do," I stammer. "I love you, Noel Walker- everything about you, even when you scrowl at me like you're doing right now. I love you even though you're grumpy and try to shut me out all the time. I love you even though you try your hardest to push me away. I love all the parts of you - the broken parts that you try to hide most of all. ~ Mila Gray

For me to write, I need to work my way back out of one home, consider another, and find the no-man's-land in between. I need to go to one Andre, unwrite that Andre, choose the other Andre across the way, only then go looking for the middle Andre, whose voice will most likely approximate the voice of an Andre able to camouflage all telltale signs that English is not his mother tongue, but that neither is French, nor Italian, nor Arabic. Writing must almost have to fail - it must almost not succeed. If it goes well from the start, if I am in the groove, if I come home to writing, it's not the writing for me. I need to have lost the key and to find no replacement. Writing is not a homecoming. Writing is an alibi. Writing is a perpetual stammer of alibis. ~ Andre Aciman

I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant. ~ Bob Newhart

Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech. We are enamored and enchanted by God's power. We stutter and stammer about God's holiness. We tremble before God's majesty ...
and yet, we grow squeamish and skittish before God's love. ~ Brennan Manning

I've stammered all my life, and it's fair to say that my stammer has shaped my life. It's made me make some decisions that I'm sure I wouldn't have if I didn't suffer with this affliction. ~ Gareth Gates

One fine day you decide to talk less and less about the things you care most about, and when you have to say something, it costs you an effort . . . You're good and sick of hearing yourself talk . . . you abridge . . . You give up … For thirty years you've been talking . . . You don't care about being right anymore. You even lose your desire to keep hold of the small place you'd reserved yourself among the pleasures of life . . . You're fed up … From that time on you're content to eat a little something, cadge a little warmth, and sleep as much as possible on the road to nowhere. To rekindle your interest, you'd have to think up some new grimaces to put on in the presence of others . . . But you no longer have the strength to renew your repertory. You stammer. Sure, you still look for excuses for hanging around with the boys, but death is there too, stinking, right beside you, it's there the whole time, less mysterious than a game of poker. The only thing you continue to value is petty regrets, like not finding time to run out to Bois-Colombes to see your uncle while he was still alive, the one whose little song died forever one afternoon in February. That horrible little regret is all we have left of life, we've vomited up the rest along the way, with a good deal of effort and misery. We're nothing now but an old lamppost with memories on a street where hardly anyone passes anymore. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Thank You! Thanks very much. NMH couldn't make it,but we're Ashland Avenue, and we're here to rock!" No, I think. You're Ashland Avenue and you're here to suck.
We thought Neutral Milk Hotel was playing?" and I look down and say, "Me
I stammer for a second, and then say "too. I'm here for them too."
The girl leans into my ear to shout above the atonal arrythmic affront to decency that is Ashland Avenue. "Ashland Avenue is no Neutral Milk Hotel. ~ John Green