Inflection Quotes & Sayings

The inflection point at which we have arrived is one in which we are increasingly seizing the keys to all creation, as astonding as that might seem. — Joel Garreau

We are at an inflection point in history. — Joel Garreau

You know," he said, "this design begins to appeal to me after all. Sea slugs aren't the least bit arousing, but logarithms . . . I've always thought that word sounded splendidly naughty." He let it roll off his tongue with ribald inflection. "Logarithm." He gave an exaggerated shiver. "Ooh. Yes and thank you and may I have some more."

"Lots of mathematical terms sound that way. I think it's because they were all coined by men. 'Hypotenuse' is downright lewd."

" 'Quadrilateral' brings rather carnal images to mind."

She was silent for a long time. Then one of her dark eyebrows arched. "Not so many as 'rhombus.' "

Good Lord. That word was wicked. Her pronunciation of it did rather wicked things to him. He had to admire the way she didn't shrink from a challenge, but came back with a new and surprising retort. One day, she'd make some fortunate man a very creative lover. — Tessa Dare

A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a governmental policy. — Spiro T. Agnew

A dread of white people now came to live permanently in my feelings and imagination. As the war drew to a close, racial conflict flared over the entire South, and though I did not witness any of it, I could not have been more thoroughly affected by it if I had participated directly in every clash. The war itself had been unreal to me, but I had grown able to respond emotionally to every hint, whisper, word, inflection, news, gossip, and rumor regarding conflicts between the races. Nothing challenged the totality of my personality so much as this pressure of hate and threat that stemmed from the invisible whites. I would stand for hours on the doorsteps of neighbors' houses listening to their talk, learning how a white woman had slapped a black woman, how a white man had killed a black man. It filled me with awe, wonder, and fear, and I asked ceaseless questions. One evening I heard a tale that rendered — Richard Wright

In reading we must become creators. Once the child has learned to read alone, and can pick up a book without illustrations, he must become a creator, imagining the setting of the story, visualizing the characters, seeing facial expressions, hearing the inflection of voices. The author and the reader "know" each other; they meet on the bridge of words. — Madeleine L'Engle

If a piece requires some specific inflection, I'll record it. I take a lot of notes, and later categorize them, combining them alongside existing ideas, and eventually put a piece together. — George Carlin

Whatever success we have had in maintaining our culture has been instrumental in Intel's success in surviving strategic inflection points. — Andy Grove

Hear the language, this English, double-jointed as Bedivere's limbs. It only sounds awkward. In its ability to join one concept to another as with pegs, its dependent clauses, figures of speech and cadenced alliteration, a man can say one thing five ways and yet imply a sixth; can change meaning with an inflection, a pause or a deliberate misuse of a word, can mock, scorn and flay an opponent without uttering one overt insult. — Parke Godwin

Consequently, the only thing I learned in school was typing. In the old days, people like me who don't have college degrees had a hard time thriving in society. But today, the ability to learn on your own or from your peers has become really easy. I think this change is leading to a fundamental disruption in education. Independent and lifelong learning are really starting to peak - there is an inflection point coming around how people learn. — Joichi Ito

In the studio the director controls the actor's every move, every inflection, every expression. — Bela Lugosi

We're in an inflection point where it's cheaper to learn to read on a tablet computer than it is to learn to read on paper. And that being the case, it's only a matter of time before every 6-year-old kid has a tablet computer, and we know for a fact, 3- to 4-year-old kids are using tablets and iPads, and 75 and 80 year olds are using them. — Michael J. Saylor

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

True net-heads sometimes resort to punctuation cartoons to get around the absence of inflection. — Barton Gellman

I would spend hours absorbing every intonation, every inflection - how the singer would convey a sentiment and how it would sound coming out of their head. All of those things I very carefully watched and absorbed, and so I guess I was studying my whole life, although not in any sort of conventional way. — Kat Edmonson

It is enough for me to hear someone talk sincerely about ideals, about the future, about philosophy, to hear him say "we" with a certain inflection of assurance, to hear him invoke "others" and regard himself as their interpreter - for me to consider him my enemy. — Emil Cioran

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool. — Beck

With the right hunch, you could read the inflection of an author's soul on a single comma, in one sentence, and from that one sentence seize the whole book, his life work. — Andre Aciman

You could make any song sound creepy if you wanted. It's all about the inflection. — Willie Nelson

I hide myself to avoid others; but the lust for life reasserts itself, through the boredom or in the inflection of distress. It's an escape, a tuneless melody, a painless lament. Broken line of a poem missing its author, writing of a deconstructed life, scar of a wound still open, the pain of living without love or being loved tarnishes desire, dulls the look, weakens the heart. — Anne De Gandt

In conversation you can use timing, a look, an inflection. But on the page all you have is commas, dashes, the amount of syllables in a word. When I write, I read everything out loud to get the right rhythm. — Fran Lebowitz

As a kid growing up, I was so in sync as a fan that that served me well through the years. I can feel the game. And I try to match where the game is with my inflection, with my - the tonal quality, with getting excited. — Al Michaels

You don't need the right facts if you have the right inflection. — Stephen Colbert

She has enough men fawning over her," I said. "They come and go like ... " I strained to think of an analogy and failed. "I'd rather be her friend."
"You would rather be close to her heart," Wilem said without any particular inflection. "You would rather be joyfully held in the circle of her arms. But you fear she will reject you. You fear she would laugh and you would look the fool." Wilem shrugged easily. "You are hardly the first to feel this way. There is no shame in it."
That struck uncomfortably close to the mark, and for a long moment I couldn't think of anything to say in reply. "I hope," I admitted quietly. "But I don't want to assume. I've seen what happens to the men that assume too much and cling to her. — Patrick Rothfuss

By honing the sentences you used to describe the world, you changed the inflection of your mind, which changed your perceptions. — George Saunders

How can we appraise a proposal if the terms hurled at our ears can mean anything or nothing, and change their significance with the inflection of the voice? Welfare state, national socialism, radical, liberal, conservative, reactionary and a regiment of others ... these terms in today's usage, are generally compounds of confusion and prejudice. If our attitudes are muddled, our language is often to blame. A good tonic for clearer thinking is a dose of precise, legal definition. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

His accelerated path to yogihood hit a dead end when his kundalini exploded in a crowded department store. No one else was injured, but Swami caught an inflection which left him with a permanent East Indian accent. — Swami Beyondananda

When you are interviewing someone, don't just write down what he says. Ask yourself: Does this guy remind you of someone? What does the room feel like? Notice smells, voice inflection, neighborhoods you pass through. Be a cinematographer. — Gene Weingarten

A good talker is sensitive to expression, to tone and color and inflection in human speech. Because he himself is articulate, he can help others to articulate their half-formulated feelings. His mind fills in the gaps, and he becomes, in Socrates' words, a kind of midwife for ideas that are struggling to be born. — Sydney J. Harris

In a low voice, Blue asked meaningfully, "Seen enough?" "Of - oh, Orla?" "Yeah." The question annoyed him. It judged him, and in this case, he didn't feel he'd done anything to deserve it. He was not Blue's business, not in that way. "What care is it of yours," he asked, "what I think of Orla?" This felt dangerous, for some reason. He possibly shouldn't have asked it. In retrospect, it wasn't the question itself at fault. It was the way that he'd asked it. His thoughts had been far away, and he hadn't been minding how he looked on the outside, and now, too late, he heard the dip of his own words. How the inflection seemed to contain a dare. Come on, Gansey, he thought. Don't ruin things. Blue held his gaze, unflinching. Crisp, she replied, "None at all." And it was a lie. — Maggie Stiefvater

Back in 2005-2006 when Tudou and Youku were founded, we saw the inflection point with the opportunity to build the leading PC-based video website. — Victor Koo

-It is possible to vastly compress most learning. In a surprising number of cases, it is possible to do something in 1-10 months that is assumed to take 1-10 years.
-The more you compress things, the more physical limiters become a bottleneck. All learning is physically limited. The brain is dependent on finite quantities of neurotransmitters, memories require REM and non-REM (NREM) sleep for consolidation, etc. The learning graph is not unlike the stress-recovery-hyperadaptation curves of weight training.
-The more extreme your ambition, just as in sports, the more you need performance enhancement via unusual schedules, diet, drugs, etc.
-Most important: due to the bipolar nature of the learning process, you can forecast setbacks. If you don't, you increase the likelihood of losing morale and quitting before the inflection point. — Timothy Ferriss

(T)here was something in the timbre and inflection of his words that seemed to rummage through a clutter of ancestral fragments to remind me of the person I may have been born to be but had not become. If I didn't take his daily rants against America seriously, it was because it was never really America he was inveighing against, nor was his the voice of a bewildered Middle East trying to fend off a decaying and implacable West. What I heard instead was the raspy, wheezing, threatened voice of an older order of mankind, older ways of being human, raging, raging against the tide of something new that had the semblance and behavior of humanity but really wasn't. It was not a clash of civilizations or of values or of cultures; it was a question of which organ, which chamber of the heart, which one of its clear five senses would humanity cut off to join modernity. — Andre Aciman

I shook my head. "No sir. It's merely to satisfy my curiosity." "I have a great respect for curiosity," Lorren said with no particular inflection. — Patrick Rothfuss

I fire again and again, and none of the bullets come close.
"Statistically speaking," the Erudite boy next to me-his name is Will-says, grinning at me, "you should have hit the target at least once by now, even by accident." He is blond, with shaggy hair and a crease between his eyebrows.
"Is that so," I say without inflection.
"Yeah," he says. "I think you're actually defying nature."
I grit my teeth and turn toward the target, resolving to at least stand still. If I can't muster the first task they give us,how will I ever make it through stage one?
I squeeze the trigger,hard, and this time I'm ready for the recoil.It makes my hand jump back,but my feet stay planted.A bullet hole appears at the edge of the target,and I raise an eyebrow at Will.
"So you see,I'm right.The stats don't lie," he says.
I smile a little. — Veronica Roth

You said no, though," he says, slightly muffled. "When I asked you out. That one time."

"Wait, what?"

"That time at work? I asked you to the movies, and you said you would invite Vera?"

I pull back a bit. "That wasn't - you weren't asking me out. You said I could come, too, if I wanted. That's not asking someone out."

"It was to me," he says, sheepish, and I want to poke him, but I also kind of want to hug him forever.

"Next time you want to ask someone out, maybe be less subtle. Maybe try to use the word date or together. Maybe phrase it as an actual question, you know, get some upward inflection going at the end of the sentence?"

He just looks at me, a little bit like he wants to poke me, but maybe also hug me forever. Instead he just kisses me, and it's a long time before we break apart again. — Emma Mills

He used a minimum of words and no inflection whatsoever. It was a policeman's manner of speaking, direct and unadorned. — Davis Bunn

As Brother Francis readily admitted, his mastery of pre-Deluge English was far from masterful yet. The way nouns could sometimes modify other nouns in that tongue had always been one of his weak points. In Latin, as in most simple dialects of the region, a construction like servus puer meant about the same thing as puer servus, and even in English slave boy meant boy slave. But there the similarity ended. He had finally learned that house cat did not mean cat house, and that a dative of purpose or possession, as in mihi amicus, was somehow conveyed by dog food or sentry box even without inflection. But what of a triple appositive like fallout survival shelter? Brother Francis shook his head. The Warning on Inner Hatch mentioned food, water, and air; and yet surely these were not necessities for the fiends of Hell. At times, the novice found pre-Deluge English more perplexing than either Intermediate Angelology or Saint Leslie's theological calculus. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

If he spoke, there was no possible outcome but another disastrous exchange of words at cross-purposes. The chances of him finding both the right words and the right inflection were, in his experience with her thus far, vanishingly small. He would either growl at her, or tell her what was in his heart. — Carolyn Jewel

This is how willpower becomes a habit: by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives. — Charles Duhigg

The stupidest word Jason could have imagined. Utter nonsense. Supposedly it would unmake Maldor. He repeated the odd syllables in his mind, varying the inflection. If it failed, he could always try supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. — Brandon Mull

A woman questions the man who loves exactly as a judge questions a criminal. This being so, a flash of the eye, a mere word, an inflection of the voice or a moment's hesitation suffice to expose the fact, betrayal or crime he is attempting to conceal. — Honore De Balzac

Take the emotional temperature of those listening to you. Facial expressions, voice inflection and posture give clues to a person's mood and attitude. — John C. Maxwell

Are we entirely ready, sir?" said Lieutenant Hornett, with the special inflection that means "We are not entirely ready, sir."
"We had better be. Glory awaits, gentlemen. In the words of General Tacticus, 'let us take history by the scrotum.' Of course, he was not a very honourable fighter. — Terry Pratchett

In my own life, I have noticed when I have been meeting directors, that the same sentence with the same inflection can be said by a man, like: "Get me this." But if the same thing is said by a woman, it's seen as harsh and unacceptable. That always fascinates me. — Meryl Streep

Tackling the issue of climate change presents us with an inflection point in human history - a climate justice revolution that separates development from fossil fuels, supports people in the most vulnerable situations to adapt, allows all people to take part, and, most importantly, realise their full potential. — Mary Robinson

In the 1960s, there was a forward way of speaking and inflection. — Oscar Isaac

She drew herself up and took in a breath, concentrating on her inflection so that she could indulge him in his game. Then she leaned forward and, in her best, most sincerely love-struck voice, breathed, "I love thee."
Sonny's face was just inches from hers. His storm-gray eyes flashed, and the dark silk of his hair drifted across his cheek as he leaned in his head. "Perfect."
So was the kiss.
Perfect.
"I love thee," Sonny murmured, all pretense gone. — Lesley Livingston

Corporations are great and appalling things. They take you and shape you in nearly nothing flat, twist and swivel you. And they do it without overt persuasion, they do it with smiles and nods, a collective inflection of the voice. You stand at the head of a corridor and by the time you walk to the far end you have adopted the comprehensive philosophy of the firm, the Weltanschauung. I use this grave and layered word because somewhere in its depths there is a whisper of mystical contemplation that seems totally appropriate to the subject of waste. — Don DeLillo

When you hear my records today hear a vanilla sounding artist with no black inflection, although I was trying to imitate what I heard. — Pat Boone

My default answer to everything is no. As soon as I hear the inflection of inquiry in your voice, the word no forms in my mind, sometimes accompanies by a reason, often not. Can I open the mail? No. Can I wear your necklace? No. When is dinner? No. What you probably wouldn't believe is how much I want to say yes. Yes, you can take two dozen books home from the library. Yes, you can eat the whole roll of SweeTarts. Yes, you can camp out on the deck. But the books will get lost, and SweeTarts will eventually make your tongue bleed, and if you sleep on the deck, the neighborhood racoons will nibble on you. I often wish I could come back to life as your uncle, so I could give you more. But, when you're the mom, your whole life is holding the rope against those wily secret agents who never, ever stop trying to get you to drop your end. — Kelly Corrigan

An important dimension of Tess of the d'Urbervilles is its debt to the oral tradition; to stories about wronged milkmaids, tales of superstition, and stories of love, betrayal and revenge, involving stock figures. This gives Tess of the d'Urbervilles an anti-realistic inflection. From the world of ballad and folktale Hardy draws such fateful coincidences as the failure of Angel to encounter Tess at the 'Club-walking' on which he intrudes with his brothers, the letter to Angel that she accidentally slips under the carpet, the loss of her shoes when she tries to visit his family, and the family portraits on the wall of their honeymoon dwelling, as well as several omens. This chimes effectively with a world in which the rural folk have a superstitious and fatalistic attitude to life. — Geoffrey Harvey

If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it. — George Orwell

Singing is all about certain inflection on certain lines. I used to listen to tapes of everybody from Michael Jackson and Prince to Earth, Wind and Fire. They would have different vocal inflections. If the line insinuated pain, they would cringe on some lines. — Trey Songz

I think the economic empowerment of women that has been growing over the past decade is at the 'inflection point' with this global recession. Women are, we believe, the solution for their families in their ability to go out and increase household income. — Andrea Jung

America is like a dog. I'm sorry, but it is. It cannot understand actual words. It understands inflection. It understands fear. But you can't actually explain issues to a dog. — Bill Maher

That's partly the success of my work-the ability to have a young black girl walk into the Brooklyn Museum and see paintings she recognizes not because of their art or historical influence but because of their inflection, in terms of colors, their specificity and presence. — Kehinde Wiley

You from?" the driver asked with a complete lack of interest. "Liverpool." "Limey, huh? Well, you'll be all right. It's the goddamn New York Jews cause all the trouble." I found myself with a British inflection and by no means one of Liverpool. "Jews - what? How do they cause trouble?" "Why, hell, mister. We know how to take care of this. Everybody's happy and getting along fine. Why, I like niggers. And them goddamn New York Jews come in and stir the niggers up. They just stay in New York there wouldn't be no trouble. Ought to take them out. — John Steinbeck

I have good voice inflection, that's why I'm good on radio. But on TV, I look too big because I move my hands around a lot. — Jonathan Krohn

You can rely too much, my love, on the unspoken things. And the wry smile. I have that smile myself, and I've learned the silence too, over the years. Along with your expressions, like No notion and Of necessity. What happens, though, when it is all unsaid, is that you wake up one morning, no, it's more like late one afternoon, and it's not just unsaid, it's gone. That's all. Just gone. I remember this word, that look, that small inflection, after all this. I used to hold them, trust them, read them like a rune. Like a sign that there was a house, a billet, a civilization where we were. I look back and I think I was just there all alone. Collecting wisps and signs. — Renata Adler

When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they're talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of - or alongside - the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them. — Bobby McFerrin

Can't I?" he said. "Did you know that they fertilized crops with human ash? After the war, the tomatoes were the size of an infant's head." He gave the words the same inflection that his grandfather did, only in English. They had a new but not unfamiliar sound on his tongue. He knew how to say them. — Boris Fishman

Choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives. When the Scottish patients filled out their booklets, or Travis studied the LATTE method, they decided ahead of time how to react to a cue - a painful muscle or an angry customer. When the cue arrived, the routine occurred. — Charles Duhigg

There is no creation without tradition; the 'new' is an inflection on a preceding form; novelty is always a variation on the past. — Carlos Fuentes

Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice, at most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength they would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. — George Orwell

Saint-Just read for the next two hours his report on the plots of the Dantonist faction. He had imagined, when he wrote it, that he had the accused man before him; he had not amended it. If Danton were really before him, this reading would be punctuated by the roars of his supporters from the galleries, by his own self-justificatory roaring; but Saint-Just addressed the air, and there was a silence, which deepened and fed on itself. He read without passion, almost without inflection, his eyes on the papers that he held in his left hand. Occasionally he would raise his right arm, then let it fall limply by his side: this was his only gesture, a staid, mechanical one. Once, towards the end, he raised his young face to his audience and spoke directly to them: "After this," he promised, "there will be only patriots left. — Hilary Mantel

All I really need," he continued, "is for you to act as a deterrent."
"A deterrent?" she choked out.
"A human shield, if you will."
"What?"
"I cannot be left alone with that woman," he said, and he felt no remorse at the low desperation in his voice. "Please, if you have any care for your fellow man."
Her lips clamped together in a suspicious line. "I'm not certain what I get out of the equation."
"You mean besides the joy of my delightful company?"
"Yes," she said, with an impressive lack of inflection, "besides that. — Julia Quinn

To express oneself fluently involves more than simply speaking the language properly. It includes inflection, voice, posture, gestures, and clothing. All of these elements add up to an individual's personal expression. They are the elements of style. — Kate Betts

If existing management want to keep their jobs when the basics of the business are undergoing profound change, they must adopt an outsider's intellectual objectivity. They must do what they need to do to get through the strategic inflection point unfettered by any emotional attachment to the past. That's what Gordon and I had to do when we figuratively went out the door, stomped out our cigarettes and returned to do the job. — Andrew S. Grove

We all see blue, but some of us see blue as an inflection, a mood, of black or red, while others see blue as its own creature. — Leah Raeder

I don't write the way I speak. I'm afraid you would think I didn't know any better. I don't write the way I do for the pulpit, either, insofar as I can help it. That would be ridiculous, in the circumstances. I do try to write the way I think. But of course that all changes as soon as I put it into words. And the more it does seem to be my thinking, the more pulpitish it sounds, which I guess is inevitable. I will resist that inflection, nevertheless. — Marilynne Robinson

I've made my peace with Caleb, but I still can't be around him for long. His gestures, his inflection, his manner, they are hers. They make him into just a whisper of her, and that is not enough of her, but it is also far too much. — Veronica Roth

Then I felt that every inflection of my voice, every word in my mouth, was a lie, a play whose sole purpose was to cover emptiness and boredom. There was only one way I could avoid a state of despair and a breakdown. To be silent. And to reach behind the silence for clarity or at least try to collect the resources that might still be available to me. — Ingmar Bergman

Unfortunately, spiritual development often attracts the emotionally unstable who can become even more damaged when building upon shaky structures. The emotional body is the framework through which the other three bodies spring, so if it's broken the others will eventually collapse - often with fatalistic results. Worth its weight in gold, emotional stability can occur naturally, but is usually cultivated through painstaking inflection, awareness, and release. Through release then forgiveness, the auric field amplifies its inherent magnetic function, enabling intent to manifest, therefore producing a more forward momentum in life. — Angel Cusick

When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me. — Billy Crystal

You had a certain way of saying my name. It was the inflection maybe, something you put into those three syllables. And now you are gone and my name is just my name again, not the story of my life. — Abigail Thomas

They are embossed on every song that was a hit that summer, in every novel I read during and after his stay, on anything from the smell of rosemary on hot days to the frantic rattle of the cicadas in the afternoon - smells and sounds I'd grown up with and known every year of my life until then but that had suddenly turned on me and acquired an inflection forever colored by the events of that summer. — Andre Aciman

A strategic inflection point is a time in the life of business when its fundamentals are about to change. that change can mean an opportunity to rise to new heights. But it may just as likely signal the beginning of the end — Andrew S. Grove

First, when a strategic inflection point sweeps through the industry, the more successful a participant was in the old industry structure, the more threatened it is by change and the more reluctant it is to adapt to it. Second, whereas the cost to enter a given industry in the face of well-entrenched participants can be very high, when the structure breaks, the cost to enter may become trivially small, giving rise to Compaqs, Dells and Novells, each of which emerged from practically nothing to become major corporations. What's common among these companies is that they all instinctively followed the rules for success in a horizontal industry. — Andrew S. Grove

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

In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words. — David Byrne

Now, motivational patterns are going to be similar among all espionage agents. That is to say: there will be certain types of motivation that are similar despite differing schools or opposed aims. You will study first how to separate this element for your analysis - in the beginning, through interrogation patterns that betray the inner orientation of the interrogators; secondly, by close observation of language-thought orientation of those under analysis. You will find it fairly simple to determine the root languages of your subjects, of course, both through voice inflection and speech pattern. — Frank Herbert

She believed that displays of emotion signaled a certain failure between people. The only person who could upset her, make her cry or laugh in the open, was my father. He could always unsettle her face with a stern admonition or an old joke or pun in Korean. Otherwise, I thought she possessed the most exquisite control over the muscles of her face. She seemed to have the subtle power of inflection over them, the way a tongue can move air. — Chang-rae Lee

Blood fountained in an arterial spray that wet her face, turned the cherry blossoms black, but she was already shoving the blade into his heart and twisting it into so much pulp ... 'Will she be able to make him rise from this?' she asked Raphael, her voice without inflection, without mercy. Slater didn't deserve her emotions, didn't deserve anything but the cold hand of a long-delayed justice. — Nalini Singh

Depending on the inflection, ah bon can express shock, disbelief, indifference, irritation, or joy - a remarkable achievment for two short words. — Peter Mayle

People joke about me that I talk in voiceovers. I have that sort of inflection. But I do talk in voiceovers. I have done it my whole life. — Matt Nix

Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. — Ingmar Bergman

Habit: by choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives. When — Charles Duhigg

You really want to go out to dinner?" Gabriel shot Rase a skeptical look out of the corner of his eye.
"As opposed to what?"
"Getting on your knees and begging me to beat you." There was no inflection in Gabriel's voice, no heat, and no emotion at all. He wasn't even looking at Rase.
... "I don't want one more than the other," he answered, fully aware that he was being challenged. "They're not interchangeable. I want them both."
Rase took a breath to calm the pounding in his chest and continued, even though Gabriel wouldn't look at him. "I want to go out to dinner with you, anywhere you want, on a date. And then I want to go back to your place or my place and I want you to beat me until I bleed. — Anah Crow

quickly. Afterward, things are not so easy. The twenties are that critical period of adulthood. These are the years when it will be easiest to start the lives we want. And no matter what we do, the twenties are an inflection point - the great reorganization - a — Meg Jay