Syllables Quotes - Page 5

• His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn't even know that guys could turn me on-not, like, in real life

  John Green

  Real, Guy, Kind

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.19, Penguin

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• A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.

  Don DeLillo

  Fall, Persons

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Cosmopolis”, p.13, Pan Macmillan

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• Sitting over words
  Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
  Not far
  Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
  The echo of everything that has ever
  Been spoken
  Still spinning its one syllable
  Between the earth and silence.

  W. S. Merwin

  Dark, Night, Echoes

  "Utterance". Poem by W. S. Merwin, gladdestthing.com.

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• The key to all knowledge comes in words of just one syllable, apparently.... There's only the last page left to write on. I'll fill it with words of just one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

  Dodie Smith

  Writing, Keys, Pages

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• I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Moving, Reading

  "The Poetics of Reverie". Book by Gaston Bachelard, 1960.

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• I like 'pencil-necked weasel'. It has 'pencil' in it. Pencils are good things. You can draw or write things with pencils. I think it's what you call someone when you're worried that using a long word like 'intellectual' may have too many syllables. It's not something that people who have serious, important things to say call other people.

  Neil Gaiman

  Writing, Thinking, Long

  "Neil Gaiman hits back at US politician's theft accusation" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. May 5, 2011.

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• I discover poetry when I was in elementary school and I was so fascinated by it. Because I realised if you get the right amount of syllables and the right amount of words, in the right rhyme scheme and you put it all together. You make words just bounce of a page.

  Taylor Swift

  School, Together, Pages

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• In the Old Language, she hissed, “If any harm shall befall him, I will come after you, and find you where you sleep. I do not care where you lay your head or who with, my vengeance shall rain upon you until you drown.” That last word was drawn out, until its syllable was lost in more growling. Dead silence. Until Doc Jane said dryly, “Annnnd this is why they say the female of the species is more dangerous than the male.

  J.R. Ward

  Rain, Sleep, Silence

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• She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her tongue until they dissolved into fluency.

  Anthony Marra

  Tongue, Fluency, Mint

  Anthony Marra (2013). “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”, p.350, Random House

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• Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Past, Wake Up, Vowels

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• Stories heard but not recalled. Letters too. Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells. Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad inreparable way.

  Mark Z. Danielewski

  Flying, Stories, Shells

  Mark Z. Danielewski (2000). “Mark Z. Danielewski's House of leaves”

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• When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Past, Silence, Firsts

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Map: Collected and Last Poems”, p.328, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

  Carl Sandburg

  Life, Animal, Air

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• ..I love your name. I don't want to cheat myself out of a single syllable.

  Rainbow Rowell

  Names, Want, Cheat

  Rainbow Rowell (2016). “The Rainbow Rowell Collection: Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, Landline, and Carry On”, p.99, St. Martin's Griffin

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• All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song.

  John Ruskin

  Song, Firsts, Lips

  John Ruskin (1872). “The Queen of the Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm”, p.56

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• The middles cleave to euphemisms not just because they're an aid in avoiding facts. They like them also because they assist their social yearnings towards pomposity. This is possible because most euphemisms permit the speaker to multiply syllables, and the middle class confuses sheer numerousness with weight and value.

  Paul Fussell

  Class, Facts, Weight

  Paul Fussell (1992). “Class: A Guide Through the American Status System”, p.160, Simon and Schuster

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• Among the Diaries beginning with the second quarter of our century, there is frequent mention of a lady then becoming famous for her beauty and her wit: "an unusual combination," in the deliberate syllables of one of the writers, who is, however, not disposed to personal irony when speaking of her.

  George Meredith

  Book, Becoming, Diaries

  George Meredith (1897). “Diana of the Crossways: A Novel”, p.51, Wayne State University Press

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• Poetry is a kinetic arrangement of static syllables.

  Carl Sandburg

  Static, Poetry Is, Arrangements

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.319, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Some syllables are swords.

  Henry Vaughan

  Henry Vaughan, Henry Francis Lyte (1871). “The Poetical Works of Herbert and Vaughan: With a Memoir”, p.112

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• My son's full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off. It has the same sound and number of syllables as Zowie. And Joe stuck for most of his childhood. Now he has reverted to his real name, Duncan. Haywood was my father's name.

  David Bowie

  Father, Real, Son

  Source: us.hellomagazine.com

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• Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends.

  James Vila Blake

  Powerful, Mistake, Mean

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• We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities have been decayed and demolished?

  Francis Bacon

  Wisdom, Loss, Hands

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Advancement of Learning”, p.61, Modern Library

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• I played Thersites and I remember we were also doing some places out of town before starting our run at The Old Vic in London and we were at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford and I walked on stage and I've got an opening speech that begins: "Agamemnon, how if he had boils?" And I went on and said: "Agamemnon..." And a woman in the front row just went 'tut'. I thought: "I've only done four syllables, give us a chance!" I got one word out and the audience were already tutting. It was worse than any heckle I ever had doing comedy. So, I'll stick to gnomes.

  Matt Lucas

  Running, Giving, Theatre

  Source: www.indielondon.co.uk

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• Imagine Eminem writing a play with complex raps and syllables, and melodies flowing in and out. That's what it was like for me listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda, it was incredible. So it just goes to show that if you put your teaching style in a certain form, that will attract the attention of the people you are trying to teach.

  Ryan Montgomery

  Rap, Teaching, Writing

  Source: www.hiphopcanada.com

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• Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.

  Carl Sandburg

  Echoes, Silence, Cadence

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.317, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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