Developing Your Voice Quotes & Sayings

Developing your voice takes ...
time and practice. — Darynda Jones

What a storyteller does is *see* more than most of us. We say he's making up his stories, but he - or better yet, *she* - watches more carefully, and then tells us what we would have seen ourselves if we'd just stopped to look.
-Leah said - to Nadine, although she was looking at Marjorie (pg 138) — Dean Hughes

I am still working on developing my voice. I am, I know, better as a coloratura singer than I was. It's a matter of strong breath control and yet making it sound as though it is the easiest thing in the world. — Anna Netrebko

The whole point in developing your own style is to find your own voice. — Dave Holland

I don't think comics necessarily think in literary terms. There is an element of developing your stage persona and your comedic voice, but I don't think comics see it like a character in a novel. — Ted Alexandro

Real guts are nothing more than developing your inner voice to the point where it is louder and stronger than the voice of your fear. — Georgette Mosbacher

For minority actors, developing our own projects has to be the eventual path. We have a lot of stories to tell and a really unique voice. But none of that is going to be heard as long as we're just the hired hands, acting. — Jimmy Smits

You have to be a little patient if you're an artist. People don't always get you the first time. — Kate Millett

It is a hopeless endeavor to make the form and content of earlier architectural epochs usable for our time; in this, even the strongest artistic talent must fail. We see repeatedly how the outstanding builders fail to achieve an effect because their work does not serve the will of the age. — Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

I'm developing more stuff in my voice, more Nick Swardson. It's me as myself in a sense and kind of in my voice, no accent no affectation. I'm growing into my own persona. — Nick Swardson

The heart and soul of the Christian life is learning to hear God's voice and then developing the courage to do what he asks us to do. — Bill Hybels

My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I spent nine hard, exasperating, concentrated months on the first chapter of Liars' Club alone, which was essentially time developing that voice - a watchmaker's minuscule efforts, noodling with syntax and diction. Were I to add on the time I spent trying to recount that book's events in poetry and a novel, I could argue that concocting that mode of speech actually occupied some thirteen years (seventeen, if you count the requisite years in therapy getting the nerve up). What was I doing during those nine months? Mostly I just shoved words around the page. I'd get up at four or five when my son was asleep, then work. I'd try telling something one way, then another. If a paragraph seemed half decent, I'd cut it out and tape it to the wall. — Mary Karr

I want the voice of developing countries to be stronger. — Li Keqiang

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. — Karl Marx

There comes a moment during which almost every girl or boy falls into melancholy; they are tormented by a vague inquietude which rests on everything and finds nothing to calm it. They seek solitude; they weep; the silence to be found in cloister attracts them: the image of peace that seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish. — Denis Diderot

Why can't a woman be more like a man? Men are so honest, so thoroughly square; Eternally noble, historically fair; Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat. Why can't a woman be like that? — Alan Jay Lerner

When you are developing your style, you avoid weaknesses. I am not good at describing things, so I stay away from it. And if anyone is going to describe anything at all, it's going to be from the point of view of the character, because then I can use his voice, and his attitude will be revealed in the way he describes what he sees. — Elmore Leonard

Let not him that feares feathers come among wild-foule. — George Herbert

I spend a lot of time in my bed. It's a good comfy one with a tartan bedspread. It's the only place I can read without straining my neck, and I take an afternoon nap, which is my reward for making enough money from my writing now not to have to work. I never get up in the morning before 11.30. — Martin Millar

They had been pathetically eager to have the wedding in the family church. Their reaction though, as far as she could estimate the reactions of people who were now so remote from her, was less elated glee than a quiet, rather smug satisfaction, as though their fears about the effects of her university education, never stated but aways apparent, had been calmed at last. They had probably been worried she would turn into a high-school teacher or a maiden aunt or a dope addict or a female executive, or that she would undergo some shocking physical transformation, like developing muscles and a deep voice or growing moss. — Margaret Atwood

When the Eternal bows the skies
To visit earthly things,
With scorn divine he turns his eyes
From towers of haughty kings.
He bids his awful chariot roll
Far downward from the skies,
To visit every humble soul,
With pleasure in his eyes. — Isaac Watts

I was an aspiring writer 15 years ago (I was a zygote. Honest). Since then, the business has changed so dramatically that I hesitate to give advice. But one thing remains constant: the importance of developing your own strong and unique voice. A fresh new voice can electrify readers! Also, I'd do a gut check at the outset of your journey, because this is a tough gig. If you decide to forge ahead, cultivate friendships with other authors who can empathize with the unique ups and downs of this occupation. I don't know what I would have done without my friends' support. — Kresley Cole

The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story. — Randy Pausch

Eventually, if it's on your mind, you stumble on it. You need a certain amount of luck and persistence. — Jules Feiffer

He'd been young when he'd been turned, maybe late twenties. He looked tough, sinewy and strong, with close cropped sable hair and a sinfully full mouth. Yes, beautiful. Stunning, in fact.
He stared at Luna with hunger in the depths of his ice blue eyes. Even looking worn and underfed, the vampire radiated a wild danger that sent a thrill through her entire body.

What the hell! Shocked and angry with her irritatingly female reaction, she glared at the offending vampire, not bothering to disguise her loathing. Who was this freaking leech, and what was he doing to her?

- Lunacy and the Vampire by Evie Jayne — Evie Jayne

You have a lot of companies developing stuff that's just derivative. If 'The Voice' is the No. 1 show on TV, they say, 'Let's do 100 different versions of 'The Voice.' The problem is, by the time you get to market, it's already saturated, and everybody hates the format. — Shane Smith

Writers have to be observant. Every nuance, every inflection in a voice, the quality of air, even - they all get mixed up in this soup of the story developing in our minds. — Susan Vreeland

This is not to say that the government should confiscate from the "haves" and bestow upon the "have-nots", beyond the requirements of a compassionate welfare program to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. Far from it. But it is to say that our duty is to foster a strong, vibrant wealth-producing economy which operates in such a way that new additions to wealth accrue to those who presently have little or no ownership stake in their country. — Ronald Reagan

Metacognitive disorders can be interpreted in terms of early, historical views in which the frontal cortex is considered responsible for abstract reasoning, planning, and problem solving (see Goldstein, 1936; Halstead, 1947). Such complex, high-level characterizations of metacognition do not lend themselves easily to contributions of specific cognitive (or brain) components that mediate performance on metacognitive tasks. As such — Anonymous

Big meetings and big talk are not enough in a world that is hungry for change. Big action - world leaders keeping their promises, and developing countries committing resources while listening ardently to the voice of the small farmer - is needed to bring big results and prosperity to the world's poor. — Sylvia Mathews Burwell

You can only play one hole at a time. — Tom Kite

Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production of knowledge more difficult rather than easier. Many ideas- probably most- will have to be discarded somewhere in the process of producing authenticated knowledge. Authentication is as important as the raw information itself, and the manner and speed of the authentication process can be crucial. — Thomas Sowell

When you listen and read one thinker, you become a clone ... two thinkers, you become confused ... ten thinkers, you'll begin developing your own voice ... two or three hundred thinkers, you become wise and develop your voice. — Timothy Keller

I think in this country we're committed to developing plays, and many plays I've seen have been rewritten too much. The scenes are tight, the play ends at the right time, you know exactly what the scene is about, but it seems flat; you can almost see that too many hands have been on the play. The individual voice is gone. — A.R. Gurney

There are some different things I'm writing and developing, but I don't know where they'll go. They're fun stuff that I would be in and are written in my voice, for me. — Abby Elliott