Writers Voice Quotes

A waterfall cannot be silent, just as the wisdom! When they speak, the voice of power speaks! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Some time ago I discovered that I could no longer speak aloud or read aloud from a stage, even for the sake of hearing the effect that my writer's voice produced on listeners. Now, curiously, the more I merely try to live, the more reclusive I become, the vainer I am. At last I am as vain as the one who instantly voices his silence inside me. ~ John Hawkes

The writer's voice, the honesty and candor that is present in that voice, is what must be written upon the page. ~ Edmond Rostand

What really makes for readability is not clarity but attitude: the attitude of your prose toward out elusive friend the Reader and the role you invent for that invented being in your invented world. ~ Stephen Koch

When a writer has deep thoughts, I expect him to also have a deep voice. And if he doesn't, he should remain silent and let his writer's voice do all the speaking for him. ~ Jarod Kintz

A writer's voice emanates from their interest and compulsions that absorbs them completely. Only by fully committing himself or herself to a pet subject or issue can the writer develop a thematic tone that speaks to other people with authority and serenity. The quality of their literary voice is the crucial part of the writer's legitimacy, and their authenticity cannot come from mimicking other writers' style, but must evolve naturally from their inner sanctity and must flow effusively from an inner necessity. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The Guild is the authoritative voice of American writers. ~ Scott Turow

And yet I know that expressing oneself necessarily means being different. The writer's voice is a singular one, solitary. Art is nothing other than the freedom to express oneself in any language, in whatever manner, dressed any which way. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

Tin House magazine is a port in the storm for people who love language. It is unfailingly excellent, and committed to publishing new voices in addition to delivering freaky-fresh work from established writers. ~ Karen Russell

Much more than a 20th-century village storyteller, Cees Nooteboom stands as an impressive and inimitable voice among contemporary writers. ~ Linda Simon

A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice line the stroke of an artist's brush- is the thumbprint of her whole person- her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms. ~ Patricia Lee Gauch

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too! ~ Lori Lansens

An excess of development can undermine the most ephemeral but distinctive tool a writer possesses: authorial voice. A writer's voice is as individual and marked as a thumbprint, and is a playwright's truest imprimatur. It is as innate as breathing, and can be as unique as any genetic code. By its very singular nature, it is seldom born in the act of collaboration. True authorial voice always pre-dates the first rehearsal of a text. And it is - and will always be - an author's most distinguishing and valuable feature. ~ David Wright

A voice is a product of the writer's own Pandora Box of insight, insecurities, bravado, modesty, humility, affection, understanding, and confidence. In short, a voice reflects the writers' sangfroid. The tenor of the writer's voice also reflects their insecurities, self-doubt, egotism, testiness, and the ability to identify with their mental and physical infirmities. The inflection that distinguishes a writer's pitch from other wordsmiths' tone reflects their collective lifetime of mundane, tranquil, disturbing, and passionate experiences. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers. ~ James Wolcott

I just have to be able to follow and enjoy the writer's voice and the writer's point of view. Liking what the person has to say is not really important to me. ~ Wesley Morris

Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it. ~ Aimee Bender

The Allatians believe that they have a writing system superior to all others. Unlike books written in alphabets, syllabaries, or logograms, an Allatian book captures not only words, but also the writer's tone, voice, inflection, emphasis, intonation, rhythm. It is simultaneously a score and a recording. A speech sounds like a speech, a lament a lament, and a story re-creates perfectly the teller's breathless excitement. For the Allatians, reading is literally hearing the voice of the past.

But there is a cost to the beauty of the Allatian book. Because the act of reading requires physical contact with the soft, malleable surface, each time a text is read, it is also damaged and some aspects of the original irretrievably lost. Copies made of more durable materials inevitably fail to capture all the subtleties of the writer's voice, and are thus shunned.

In order to preserve their literary heritage, the Allatians have to lock away their most precious manuscripts in forbidding libraries where few are granted access. Ironically, the most important and beautiful works of Allatian writers are rarely read, but are known only through interpretations made by scribes who attempt to reconstruct the original in new books after hearing the source read at special ceremonies. ~ Ken Liu

It's a fairly simple rhetorical trick, the comic laundry list of the traveler's experiences, but it also calls attention to the writer's powers of observation and establishes that the writer's voice, rather than the subject matter, will be the star of the show. But it brings with it the risk of seducing the reader into loving the narrator and loathing the people described. Wallace called this 'the Asshole Problem. ~ Christian Lorentzen

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves. ~ Leo Tolstoy

If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing. ~ Kingsley Amis

The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.

These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.

While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy. ~ Julian Assange

In terms of literary history, the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is seen as a landmark. The volume contains many of the best-known Romantic poems. The second edition in 1800 contained a Preface in which Wordsworth discusses the theories of poetry which were to be so influential on many of his and Coleridge's contemporaries. The Preface represents a poetic manifesto which is very much in the spirit of the age. The movement towards greater freedom and democracy in political and social affairs is paralleled by poetry which sought to overturn the existing regime and establish a new, more 'democratic' poetic order. To do this, the writers used 'the real language of men' (Preface to Lyrical Ballads) and even, in the case of Byron and Shelley, got directly involved in political activities themselves.

The Romantic age in literature is often contrasted with the Classical or Augustan age which preceded it. The comparison is valuable, for it is not simply two different attitudes to literature which are being compared but two different ways of seeing and experiencing life.

The Classical or Augustan age of the early and mid-eighteenth century stressed the importance of reason and order. Strong feelings and flights of the imagination had to be controlled (although they were obviously found widely, especially in poetry). The swift improvements in medicine, economics, science and engineering, together with rapid developments in both agricultural and industrial t ~ Ronald Carter

I lost my voice and my best friend too
On swift, fierce winds and wings of blue,
The cold rain fell where beams had shone,
So I wrapped up tight and safe. Alone.

But I missed my friend, I missed my voice,
And my heart still whispered of another choice
To break out of my binding, safe, and warm,
And see what the world looked like after the storm.

So I struggled free and was greeted by
Colorful brushstrokes across the sky,
The melody of the summer breeze
And blue wings like mine in hazel trees.

On the soft, sweet air of the mountain glade,
We gathered together in cool, green shade,
And told our stories, beginnings to ends,
And found our song in the hearts of new friends. ~ Elaine Vickers

I suffer from the same frustration that every decent American suffers from. That is, that you begin to wonder whether decent liberal instincts, decent humanitarian instincts, can actually penetrate the right-wing voice, get through the steering of American opinion by the mass media. ~ John Le Carre

I've auditioned for musicals a lot, but I think my voice didn't really match what they were looking for. I went to school for musical theater for a year and dropped out. Legit musicals are not quite my forte. ~ Cristin Milioti

Writing is painting with words! ~ Avijeet Das

That voice that talks badly to you is a demon voice. This very patient and determined demon shows up in your bedroom one day and refuses to leave. You are six or twelve or fifteen and you look in the mirror and you hear a voice so awful and mean that it takes your breath away. It tells you that you are fat and ugly and you don't deserve love. And the scary part is the demon is your own voice. ~ Amy Poehler

Jayne Anne Phillips ... is at the height of her powers in Lark and Termite ... This is a major novel from one of America's finest writers. ~ Robert Olen Butler

Where will I find you now that my heart is yours?
Where should I search? I don't know where to look.
You fill my heart with desire and love,
The perfume of the lotus, the grace of a dove.
But then the dove flies far, far away,
All that is left is a song for my harp strings to play.
A voice in my memories like an angel of grace,
Where can I find you? Do you know how I pray?
Where will I find you now that my love belongs to you?
Wherever your heart beats, I'm dreaming of you.
Now and forever my love belongs to you ...
Now and forever my love belongs to you ... ~ Bjorn Street

Dried-out marsh, now barren of all vegetation and covered with a layer of dust about an inch thick. It was very cold. Zaphod was clearly rather depressed about it. He stalked off by himself and was soon lost to sight behind a slight rise in the ground. The wind stung Arthur's eyes and ears, and the stale thin air clasped his throat. However, the thing that was stung most was his mind. "It's fantastic ... " he said, and his own voice rattled his ears. Sound carried badly in this thin atmosphere. ~ Douglas Adams

That voice. It couldn't be.
She turned.
The Marine.
Her brain tried to compute the man before her. The same uncompromising blue-gray eyes, but more distant. The same fit body, but more space filling. The same rugged features, but more bearded.

Bearded! ~ Kate Meader

Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. ~ Voltaire

Now you here and dealing not with him, who is dead, but with me, who is sitting here."
"But," he said in exasperation, "that's not the way it should be."
"I agree," Janie King said.
"You agree," he said, showing some surprise in his voice.
"Yes," said Janie with a smile. "No idiot should ever be in your position. But since an idiot is and I am dealing with him, it is bloody unfortunate for us both." She rose.
David Adams Richards River of the Brokenhearted ~ David Adams Richards

Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all
too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud
promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on
the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on the
quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the stillness the
voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the
stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea. ~ James Joyce

The way of architecture is the quiet voice that underlies it and has guided it from the beginning. ~ Arthur Erickson

Not all black women have silently acquiesced in sexism and misogyny within the African-American community. Indeed, many writers, activists, and other women have voiced their opposition and paid the price: they have been ostracized and branded as either man- haters or pawns of white feminists, two of the more predictable modes of disciplining and discrediting black feminists. ~ Kimberle Williams Crenshaw

I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it's like a dialogue. ~ Yusef Komunyakaa

Didn't you," he asked, "have me
exorcised?"
"Me?" My own voice rocketed up about ten octaves. "Me? Jesse, of course not. I would never do that. I mean, you know I would never do something like that. That kid Jack did it. Your girlfriend Maria made him do it. She was trying to get rid of you. She told Jack you were bothering me, and he didn't know any better, so he exorcised you, and then Felix Diego threw me off the porch roof, and Jesse, they found your body, I mean your bones, and I saw them and I threw up all over the side of the house, and Spike really misses you and I was just thinking, you know, if you wanted to come back, you could, because that's why I've got this rope, so we can find our way back. ~ Meg Cabot

They're playing my favorite song." He swept her into his arms and began to move with her around the floor.
The honky-tonk music was something low and bluesy.
Marilee looked up into his face. 'I don't recognize this song.What is it?"
He gave her that soulful smile. "I don't know.But from now on it's going to be my favorite."
She felt her heart stutter.
He closed both arms around her, drawing her close.
She knew that everyone in the saloon was watching. At the moment, she didn't care. She couldn't think about anything except the press of his body to hers.The feel of those strong, muscled arms around her.The warmth of his thighs molded to hers.The touch of his mouth against her temple,his warm breath feathering her hair.
"This is nice." His voice vibrated through her, sending a series of delicious tingles along her spine.
"Yeah." She looked up into his eyes and could feel herself drowning in them.
She was melting all over him, with the entire town watching. She could actually feel her heart beginning to drum in her temples.
She knew she ought to draw back, but she couldn't.She didn't want the song to end.Or this night.
Oh,hell.Just look at her. She was falling for a footloose rebel with a smooth line who'd probably left a trail of broken hearts from Toledo to Timbuktu. The kind of guy she'd made a career of staying as far away from as possible. And here she was. Falling hard. Willingly. Right in front of the entire town.And ~ R.C. Ryan

I think that photography has allowed me to have a voice. I used to stutter, and once I overcame that struggle, it felt good to tell people they were beautiful and special. ~ Jamel Shabazz

The Tender Place

Your temples , where the hair crowded in ,
Were the tender place. Once to check
I dropped a file across the electrodes
of a twelve-volt battery -- it exploded
Like a grenade. Somebody wired you up.
Somebody pushed the lever. They crashed
The thunderbolt into your skull.
In their bleached coats, with blenched faces,
They hovered again
To see how you were, in your straps.
Whether your teeth were still whole .
The hand on the calibrated lever
Again feeling nothing
Except feeling nothing pushed to feel
Some squirm of sensation . Terror
Was the cloud of you
Waiting for these lightnings. I saw
An oak limb sheared at a bang.
You your Daddy's leg . How many seizures
Did you suffer this god to grab you
By the roots of the hair? The reports
Escaped back into clouds. What went up
Vaporized? Where lightning rods wept copper
And the nerve· threw off its skin
Like a burning child
Scampering out of the bomb-flash. They dropped you
A rigid bent bit of wire
Across the Boston City grid. The lights
In the Senate House dipped
As your voice dived inwards
Right through the bolt-hole basement.
Came up, years later,
Over-exposed, like an X-ray --
Brain-map still dark-patched
With the scorched-earth scars
Of your retreat . And your words ,
Faces reversed from ~ Ted Hughes

Suppose he found that persistent unsparing voice at his elbow one day, claiming that Danton lacked probity; he had an answer, pat, not a logical one, but one sufficiently chilling to put logic in abeyance. To question Danton's patriotism was to cast in doubt the whole Revolution. A tree is known by its fruits, and Danton made August 10. First he made the republic of the Cordeliers, then he made the Republic of France. If Danton is not a patriot, then we have been criminally negligent in the nation's affairs. If Danton is not a patriot, we are not patriots either. If Danton is not a patriot, then the whole thing - from May '89 - must be done again. ~ Hilary Mantel

But the connection between us was in the air, growing stronger with each stroke of his brush and with every cadenza of my piano performance as we struggled to find our unique voices. He by bringing musical tonality to his painting; me by unlocking my inner sluices, letting the palette of emotions spill freely into the art of my music. ~ Ella Leya

At first I followed her deliberately soft voice, which had the timber of a zurna,* and listened to her speech, which resembled embroidery or a string of pearls, words and phrases completely different from those of the townspeople, somewhat withered yet ornate, with the aura of those old chambers and something enduring. ~ Mesa Selimovic

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Steve Jobs

Live whatever draws out the magic within. ~ A.D. Posey

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

Husband?" Averill's voice was growing shrill with worry as she asked, "Have you swooned?"
I'm a warrior, wife. Warriors do no' swoon," Kade growled, forcing away the faintness trying to lay claim to him.
Oh," she said, sounding doubtful. "It's just that your eyes were closed."
I was resting them," he snapped.
I see," she murmured, and for some reason that irritated the hell out of him. ~ Lynsay Sands

To preach biblically means much more than to preach the truth of the Bible accurately. It also means to present that truth the way the biblical writers and speakers presented it. ~ Zack Eswine

Rejection. Rejection. You can't handle rejection! ~ Buffy Andrews

Never Let The Roosters Wake You! ~ Latif Mercado

The term sci-fi, which most science fiction writers loathe, I will reserve for those motion pictures that claim to be science fiction but are actually based on comic strips. Or worse. ~ Ben Bova

To me, a book is a book. A novel is a novel, and you have hundreds of possibilities, options, and they may all be fine. Charles Dickens or Ingeborg Bachmann, Claude Simon or later writers. The one and only condition is that it has to be good: it has to have quality, substance, atmosphere. ~ Per Petterson

this voice is louder than any other though it does not speak ~ Nejoud Al-Yagout

It is hard to wait and press and pray, and hear no voice, but stay till God answers. ~ Edward McKendree Bounds

Jefferson, though the secret vote was still unknown at the time had at least a foreboding of how dangerous it might be to allow the people to share a public power without providing them at the same time with more public space than the ballot box and with more opportunity to make their voices heard in public than on election day. What he perceived to be the mortal danger to the republic was that the Constitution had given all power to the citizens, without giving them the opportunity of being citizens and of acting as citizens. ~ Hannah Arendt

Voice your choice or your choice will be voiced for you. ~ Charmain Reid

I don't mind him not talking so much, because you can hear his voice in your heart; the same way you can hear a song in your head even if there isn't a radio playing; the same way you can hear those blackbirds flying when they're not in the sky ~ Adam Rapp

Life can surprise you. You want something with every ounce of blood that flows in your veins, and then one day it's yours. Right there before you. Everything. You break out in a cold sweat with the undeniable realization that what you really want is home. Sometimes finding home is a long time coming. A long journey. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story. ~ Eric Brown

I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened. ~ George W. Bush