Quotes & Sayings About Intonation

If a man lives to any considerable age, it can not be denied that he laments his imprudences, but I notice he often laments his youth a deal more bitterly and with a more genuine intonation. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Saying you love something out loud with the wrong intonation in your face can damn you and destroy what you're working on. — Jack White

Major Rutledge of the Buffs, Eton and Sandhurst as to intonation, millimetrically tooth-brushed as to moustache, Savile Row as to the quite dazzling sartorial perfection of his khaki drill, was so magnificently out of place in the wild beauty of the rocky, tree-lined bluffs of that winding creek that his presence there seemed inevitable. — Alistair MacLean

What do you think, boy? is he just another lying bastard, or what?' 'Prrrt,' the cat said on a rising intonation, his eyes closed to slits. 'I thought you'd say that. I agree, I know how to pick them, — Val McDermid

Laughter is the mind's intonation. There are ways of laughing which have the sound of counterfeit coins. — Edmond De Goncourt

The most difficult problem in conducting is intonation. You must know what is wrong and how to correct it. — Pierre Boulez

You really need to work on intonation when you use sarcasm. That way people will know when you're being an asshole. — Samantha Young

There is no earthly reason why a solo string instrument or voice, having the possibility to play or sing pure intonation, should want, or try, to be tempered. — Lara St. John

I am of the international upper class, the Swedish petit bourgeoisie of Jewish extraction with poor language skills, a conveyor of a few expressions and faces, with some intonation that combines ancient human experience with timely coquetry. — Erland Josephson

Before we went to bed, Jake and Otto were called up to the living-room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favourite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word 'Selah.' 'He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah.' I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words. — Willa Cather

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body. — Stan Getz

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

I love Emmylou Harris's version of my song, 'Sweet Old World.' Her intonation is great. — Lucinda Williams

I think it's a great thing to hear the author reading. I've listened to CDs of Cheever and Updike reading their stories and Hemingway. To hear what their voices were like is amazing. Whether they're reading well or not, it's great to listen to the intonation and the beat of the guy who wrote the story. — T.C. Boyle

But in reality, with Mr. Ellison there is an essence of probity about him; unlike Dorian Grey, him and his hidden portrait are both wonderful. When he speaks there is a certain intonation he gets that reveals so much about him, that you can't help but to feel rapt, and so few get to hear his unspoken thought because they are fixated on the bling and the big show. — Avra Amar Filion

A lot of cats in New Orleans, very soulful, very soulful musicians and they assume that they're singers. And they just make that assumption. And so when there's a little intonation problem, people are very forgiving of them because they heard how soulful they play. — Wendell Pierce

Intonation is important, especially when it is cold. — Eugene Ormandy

A veteran, calm and assured, he pauses for a well-measured moment in the doorway of the office and then, boldly, clearly, with the subtly modulated British intonation which his public demands of him, speaks his opening line, 'Good morning!'
And the three secretaries - each of them a charming and accomplished actress in her own chosen style - recognise him instantly, without even a flicker of doubt, and reply 'Good morning' to him. (There is something religious here, like responses in church; a reaffirmation of faith in the basic American dogma, that it is, always, a Good Morning. Good, despite the Russians and their rockets, and all the ills and worries of the flesh. For of course we know, don't we, that the Russians and the worries are not real? They can be unsought and made to vanish. And therefore the morning can ve made to be good. Very well then, it is good. — Christopher Isherwood

There is also a particular frustration that I have with language. It's so clumsy. And the reason I'm feeling that is more because on your breathing and your intonation than the actual words. — Arca

Peter and the deer herd ranged over the forest together, and without words, Peter told the deer about his new life at the Palace, amongst people. The scents that lingered on him told a hundred stories. His expressions and movements too, echoed foreign influences. And in Peter's eyes, the story was told plainly. They sensed that he had grown not just physically, but in his being he was bigger, more mature.
The deer wanted the Wild Boy to return to the Enchanted Forest with them, but they were uncertain he would come. They called him by his forest name, and he replied, "Peter." The strangeness of this intonation puzzled them. — Christopher Daniel Mechling

She always called him Luca, in the Italian manner, and said it with that funny trans-European intonation, the accent oddly placed on the first syllable: 'Where's Loo-ka?', just like Audrey Hepburn saying, 'Take the pic-ture,' in Funny Face. — Adam Gopnik

I'm thinking about it," she mused, almost to herself. "The building burned. . . . There was a DNA match. I recall the report. There were some typos in it, remember?" Claire duBois was older than her adolescent intonation suggested, though not much. Short brunette hair, a heart-shaped and delicately pretty face, a figure that was probably very nice - and I was as curious about it as any man would be - but usually hidden by functional pantsuits, which I preferred her wearing over skirts — Jeffery Deaver

It is not sufficient to know the right answers. One must also know the questions that produced them. Indeed, one must also know what a question is, for not every sentence that ends with a rising intonation or begins with an interrogative is necessarily a question. There are sentences that look like questions but cannot generate any meaningful answers, and, as Francis Bacon said, if they linger in our minds, they become obstructions to clear thinking. — Neil Postman

What is or is not the jargon is determined by whether the word is written in an intonation which places it transcendently in opposition to its own meaning; by whether the individual words are loaded at the expense of the sentence, its propositional force, and the thought content. — Theodor Adorno

Overuse at best is needless clutter; at worst, it creates the impression that the characters are overacting, emoting like silent film stars. Still, an adverb can be exactly what a sentence needs. They can add important intonation to dialogue, or subtly convey information. — Howard Mittelmark

On matters of intonation and technicalities I am more than a martinet - I am a martinetissimo. — Leopold Stokowski

How do we exorcise one of the Jinn?"
He shrugged. "You got Yellow Pages?"
"Seriously?"
Jai snorted. "Yes, Ari. There are Aissawa Exorcists in the Yellow Pages."
Huffing, Ari walked away from him. "You really need to work on intonation when you use sarcasm. That way people will know when you're being an asshole."
"And you need to work on your gullibility."
"Well, I was under the impression you have no sense of humour so forgive me for believing everything you say."
"Well that should be fun."
"See!" she threw over her shoulder. "No intonation. — Samantha Young

A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships. — Jorge Luis Borges

You speak into it and everything is recorded, voice, tone, intonation, everything. You turn a little wheel, and forth it comes, and can be repeated ten thousand times. Only fancy what this suggests. — Henry Irving

Just as a prayer may be merely a mechanical intonation as of a bird, so may a fast be a mere mechanical torture of the flesh. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is this that ruins churches, that you do not seek to hear sermons that touch the heart, but sermons that will delight your ears with their intonation and the structure of their phrases, just as if you were listening to singers and lute-players. And we preachers humor your fancies, instead of trying to crush them. We act like a father who gives a sick child a cake or an ice, or something else that is merely nice to eat
just because he asks for it; and takes no pains to give him what is good for him; and then when the doctors blame him says, 'I could not bear to hear my child cry.' ... That is what we do when we elaborate beautiful sentences, fine combinations and harmonies, to please and not to profit, to be admired and not to instruct, to delight and not to touch you, to go away with your applause in our ears, and not to better your conduct. — John Chrysostom

The rules of syntax and intonation and words matured over time into the system we have today because they were progressively refined by use and the forge of survival and reproduction - not because the brain got big and complicated for some other reason, and all of a sudden we discovered we could now manipulate symbols as well. — Christine Kenneally

The United States of America is more than just an ally,' Brandhaug began with an imperceptible smile. He said it with the same intonation that you use to explain to a non-Norwegian that Norway has a king and that the capital is Oslo. — Jo Nesbo

Certainly, the history of my life and the works of art which have especially enriched it is precisely that: the depiction or incantation of a handful of metaphors whose spendour rests upon their intonation. — Michael Ayrton

My teacher, Ben Johnston, was convinced that our tuning is responsible for much of our cultural psychology, the fact that we are so geared toward progress and action and violence and so little attuned to introspection, contentment, and acquiescence. Equal temperament could be described as the musical equivalent to eating a lot of red meat and processed sugars and watching violent action films. The music doesn't turn your attention inward, it makes you want to go out and work off your nervous energy on something. — Kyle Gann

Of course the most difficult thing on the violin is always intonation. The second one is rhythm. If you play in tune, in time with a good sound that's already high level. Those three are the main things. — Ruggiero Ricci

The obvious priority is to get your intonation together. Your sound and your pitch should be inspiring to people, not a distraction. — John Patitucci

She had gone to a dinner party in her honor the night before the opening, and everyone had asked, with precisely the same intonation, as though it was a piece of urban Gregorian chant, Where have you been? — Anna Quindlen

Two musicians could play the same notes and sound entirely different. Intonation was everything. — Liane Moriarty

I never write. Never! I do not even remember if I can write ... This is a true freestyle in general. I put a beat, I said some stuff, I retain ideas, I do it again, with a particular intonation, I test, and especially I record live. — Young Thug

Does the king know you're back?"
"Nope! I'm trying to think of a properly dramatic way to inform him. Perhaps a hundred chasmfiends marching in unison, singing an ode to my magnificence."
"That sounds ... hard."
"Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation."
"I have no idea what you just said."
"Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation. — Brandon Sanderson

She had a way of speaking that eschewed intonation. It was a leveler, making the ordinary seem extraordinary and vice versa. — Kate Morton

I just wanted to show people - maybe I'm wrong - that I can still really sing. I can sing better than I ever have before. My intonation is way better, my timing, my phrasing - there's a lot more expression; I feel it's a more lived-in, soulful voice. — Dan Hill

She wondered all the same how much they really had to say to one another, given that they had only this city in common and a similar way of talking, the same intonation, perhaps she'd just wanted to believe after that third whiskey on the roof garden at the Hilton that he would give her back something she'd lost, a missing taste, an intonation gone flat, that ghostly feeling of home, though she was no longer at home anywhere. — Ingeborg Bachmann

I don't sing operatically, and I sing very intimately, but I still do the scales, and I think in terms of intonation and making sure that I'm hitting the notes right on the head ... and having it appear quite effortless. — Tony Bennett