Fluent Quotes

• Pick a destination, go there, be open-minded and talk to the locals. Eat the things they eat and go where they go. You don't need to be fluent, just as long as you've got a smile on your face- people will be jumping over themselves to show you the stuff they're proud of.

  Jamie Oliver

  Jumping, Long, People

  88 Copy quote

• A Georgia peach, a real Georgia peach, a backyard great-grandmother's orchard peach, is as thickly furred as a sweater, and so fluent and sweet that once you bite through the flannel, it brings tears to your eyes.

  Melissa Fay Greene

  Sweet, Real, Food

  Melissa Fay Greene (2015). “Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction”, p.22, Da Capo Press

  46 Copy quote

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• Events are only the shells of ideas; and often it is the fluent thought of ages that is crystallized in a moment by the stroke of a pen or the point of a bayonet.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Life, Ideas, Age

  10 Copy quote

• Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

  Clark Gable

  Movie, Badass, Wind

  "Fictional character: Rhett Butler". "Gone with the Wind", 1939.

  161 Copy quote

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• Chess is like a language, the top players are very fluent at it. Talent can be developed scientifically but you have to find first what you are good at.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Player, Chess, Firsts

  8 Copy quote

• The fluent reader sounds good, is easy to listen to, and reads with enough expression to help the listener understand and enjoy the material.

  Charles Clark

  Reading, Expression, Sound

  44 Copy quote

• Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this.

  John Cage

  Art, Helping

  John Cage (1970). “John Cage”

  7 Copy quote

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• After a lifetime of nods, frowns and stoic smiles, they were both fluent in emotional shorthand.

  Jamie Ford

  Emotional, Lifetime, Stoic

  Jamie Ford (2011). “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet”, p.80, Allison & Busby

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• TooDamn-Funky: It's a start, ok. Been thinking bout the boyz. 'member last year my bro did that immersion thing in Venezuela? Kciker5525: Where he learned to speak Spanish??? TooDamn-Funky: Yeah! u go for 2 weeks talk nothing but Spanish u come back fluent. Kicker5535: ...???? TooDamn-Funky: Well this is like a guy immersion program! Kicker5525: So...what. I'm going 2 b fluent in GUY? TooDamn-Funky: Exactly! u will c what they talk about alone. U will c how they r with each other. U will c how they THINK!! AND WHEN IT'S DONE YOU'LL BE ABLE TO WRITE A GUY GUIDE BOOK!! Kicker5525: U r deranged.

  Kate Brian

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  3 Copy quote

• She was fluent in four languages and yet her fists against the rusted hood were the fullest articulation of her defeat.

  Anthony Marra

  Four, Fists, Language

  3 Copy quote

• I am fluent in Spanish and I understand French, Italian and Portuguese.

  Zoe Saldana

  Italian, Portuguese

  4 Copy quote

• I really want to do a film in another language. My dad's from Germany, so it'd be really cool to do a film in German. I'm not quite fluent, but I can get there. And my accent's pretty good. I wouldn't feel too out of my element.

  Kirsten Dunst

  Dad, Germany, Elements

  3 Copy quote

• I learned my French through school. I was lucky in that the tutor on 'The Wonder Years' set spoke fluent French.

  Danica McKellar

  School, Years, Lucky

  51 Copy quote

• Over 90 percent of parents in Puerto Rico want their children to be totally fluent in English.

  Luis Fortuno

  Children, Parent, Want

  "As GOP Races On, Puerto Rico Could Be Battleground". www.npr.org. February 28, 2012.

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• He gave a small nod, and I smiled back, and that was it. He understood that I'd understood that he'd understood. It took us one sentence, two looks, and a nod - with another woman it would have been at least five minutes of out-loud talking. Lucky for me I spoke fluent guy.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Talking, Two, Guy

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2012). “Kiss the Dead: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.41, Penguin

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• You may be right in believing that if you study hard, one day you might become fluent in English. But you will still look Chinese, and when people meet you, they’ll see a Chinese girl no matter how well you speak English. You’ll always be expected to know Chinese, and if you don’t, I’m afraid they will not respect you as much.

  Adeline Yen Mah

  Girl, Believe, Speak English

  Adeline Yen Mah (2009). “Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter”, p.151, Laurel Leaf

  13 Copy quote

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• Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation.

  Paul Theroux

  Long, Sign Language, Way

  4 Copy quote

• I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands. In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn. Baby, drink milk. Baby, play ball. And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.

  Amy Hempel

  Mother, Baby, Grief

  Amy Hempel, Rick Moody (2007). “The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel”, p.40, Simon and Schuster

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• You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading.

  Dorothy Parker

  Jobs, Book, Reading

  Dorothy Parker (1970). “A month of Saturdays: thirty-one famous pieces by "Constant Reader"”

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• Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man seven different ways with her bare hands, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl.

  Ally Carter

  Girl, Boys, Men

  Ally Carter (2007). “I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You”, Hyperion

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• …always felt the pain of her friends so keenly that she could not speak easy, fluent words of comforting. Besides, she remembered how well-meant speeches had hurt her in her own sorrow and was afraid.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Hurt, Pain, Comforting

  Lucy Maud Montgomery (2016). “Anne's House of Dreams”, p.147, Gideon House Books

  3 Copy quote

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• Cynicism is our shared common language, the Esperanto that actually caught on, and though I'm not fluent in it - I like too many things, and I'm not envious of enough people - I know enough to get by.

  Nick Hornby

  People, Esperanto, Common

  8 Copy quote

• I don't speak fluent bumpkin.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Speak

  3 Copy quote

• One of the things that was really influential early on was Ezra Pound's Cantos, one poem he worked on for 50 years. It's epic. I had a great deal of difficulty understanding it. One of the problems was you'd be reading along in English and he would move to a Chinese ideogram or French-he actually used seven different languages in a given poem. And for somebody who's not fluent in different languages it has the impact of rupturing your way of understanding something.

  Richard Misrach

  Photography, Moving, Reading

  3 Copy quote