Quotes & Sayings About Overhearing

Discussions of the effects of serial publication of Victorian novels on their authors and readers1 usually draw attention to the author's peculiar opportunities for cliff-hanging suspense, as, for instance, when Thackeray has Becky Sharp counter old Sir Pitt's marriage proposal at the end of Vanity Fair's fourth number with the revelation
that she is already married, and the reader must wait a month before the husband's identity is revealed. Or it may be pointed out how the author can modify his story in response to his readers' complaints or recommendations, as when Trollope records in his
Autobiography how he wrote Mrs Proudie out of the Barchester Chronicles after overhearing two clergymen in the Athenaeum complaining of his habit of reintroducing the same characters in his fiction. — Ian Gregor

Tom, I wonder' - upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light and said, 'Louisa, never wonder! — Anonymous

To the jumpers overhearing the conversation it was obvious - Troop had come down with another case of dragon fever. The Don Quixote of smokejumping was once again engaged in mortal combat with this, his latest windmill. — Murry A. Taylor

We have probably all seen teachers who would pick a student up by the scruff of the neck for saying 'Shit,' but who would walk by without a word when overhearing that same student taunting a classmate, calling him a 'fag.' It is often easier not to intervene - even when there is a clear-cut victim. It's out in the hall. It isn't our business. It isn't our problem.

But our inactions, like our actions, define who we are and what are true values are. — Richard H. Eyster

A suburban pastor maintained services appropriate for his respected, professional parish. His father, an excitable traveling evangelist, visited and challenged the congregation to confront pride and sing out loudly with the windows open. The next day, the pastor's banker mentioned overhearing, and he was sheepish. The buttoned-up banker said, though, that the neighborhood had been WAITING TO HEAR the church live out the joy they claimed. — David Wilkerson

All my hard work in overhearing it was it was about as rewarding to me as a man who lugs a chest up the hill only to learn that its full of rocks. — Arthur Golden

Poetry is the art of overhearing ourselves say things from which it is impossible to retreat. — David Whyte

See, I always forget this about you," he says, and even now, long after we first lost our privacy, I can't help wondering who's overhearing him. "Every decade, you like to pin me to the ground, pull open my mouth, and take a sh** right into it. — Curtis Sittenfeld

She also apparently had a bona fide dungeon in her house. At least that's what Inez told me when we arrived. Maude, overhearing as she passed by, rolled her eyes. It's not a dungeon, Inez. It's a wine cellar. — Richelle Mead

Don't worry," I say, putting a PG Tips tea bag in her mug. "It's been happening for years. It's not getting worse. Besides, I'm not hearing voice, I'm overhearing them. I just don't know what they are saying. — Abigail Thomas

I don't remember having one conversation with my dad in the three days I was home, but looking back at my journal, I see I wrote about him. I scrawled about how I heard him telling my mom that I needed to go back. I was unhappy; he thought the hiking was better for me.
I wonder why he told these things to my mother, nothing to me.

I wonder if overhearing his approval encouraged me to finally fly back to the trail. Maybe. Maybe my father's faith in my walk - in me - made me feel strong enough to leave. His actual words, as I wrote them in my notebook, were, "She's an adult now, she can do what she wants. It doesn't mean she's not selfish." He almost understood. — Aspen Matis

The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back for the poet once this frontier has been reached; a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid. The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths from which it is impossible to retreat. Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good; all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time; to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines. — David Whyte

The recollection of almost overpowered Miss Tox. The subject of it had a peculiar interest for her directly. She asked him to shake hands, and congratulated his mother on his frank, ingenuous face. Rob, overhearing her, called up a look, to justify the eulogium, but it was hardly the right look. — Charles Dickens

I don't want to suggest that I was listening to or even overhearing the conversation the two of you were having. I am not the sort of man to eavesdrop. I would say, however, your words did seem almost to float on the air from your table across to my own, which in any case is a short distance, and, having arrived, they were, I would say, impossible not to hear, just as one would have no choice whether to hear a car backfire, or a bird sing. Very difficult not to hear, if one can hear, if one has ears; it's involuntary, you see. We hear things whether we want to or not, and in this way the words you were speaking to one another entered my ears — Daniel Wallace

I don't live with earplugs. I don't like the spotlight - but I like overhearing conversations. — Louise Gluck

Poetry is often the art of overhearing yourself say things you didn't know you knew. It is a learned skill to force yourself to articulate your life, your present world or your possibilities for the future. — David Whyte

Some former POWs became almost feral with rage. For many men, seeing an Asian person or overhearing a snippet of Japanese left them shaking, weeping, enraged, or lost in flashbacks. One former POW, normally gentle and quiet, spat at every Asian person he saw. At Letterman General Hospital just after the war, four former POWs tried to attack a staffer who was of Japanese ancestry, not knowing that he was an American veteran. Troubled former POWs found nowhere to turn. — Laura Hillenbrand

I don't like seeing you hit."
"Well, to be quite honest, I don't like being hit unless it's by you." As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized what I had said. "That sounded all sorts of wrong."
"Insanely so, actually."
"To be clear," I said to any overhearing ears, "I hit him back
"
"Hard."
"It's a very give-and-take, non-abuse type hitting situation ... "
The sides of Liam's mouth folded up like an accordion. "You should probably stop now."
"I'm trying. My mouth keeps moving of its own accord. — Tammy Blackwell

Overhearing our conversation, Patrick steps closer, stroking the flogger up and down my arm. It feels so soft with the potential for pain clearly hidden. "I promise I won't hurt you. Well, unless you want me to. — Lainie Suzanne

You felt like a beast, but you weren't simply one. Once you accepted the pregnancy was yours to bear, you did become vigilant. They were to grow. You were to tend them. But you were mystified by other women's joyfulness at your condition. You remembered overhearing, as a girl, their talk of how a young woman would hear a coo one day that would turn her soft and make her want a baby. Such a thing had never happened to you. — Ronlyn Domingue

I was bartending when I recorded 'Same Love,' and when it was on the radio, too. I remember overhearing people talking about the song while I was making them drinks. — Mary Lambert

Writing a first draft is like groping one's way into a dark room, or overhearing a faint conversation, or telling a joke whose punchline you've forgotten. As someone said, one writes mainly to rewrite, for rewriting and revising are how one's mind comes to inhabit the material fully. — Ted Solotaroff

A poem is a private story, after all, no matter how apparently public. The reader is always overhearing a confession. — Jorie Graham

With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later, when [she] would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by [his] name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion
like the phantom pain of an amputee. — Khaled Hosseini

Twitter is like overhearing people's conversations, which is exactly what dictionary editors have been wishing we could do for years. — Erin McKean

We were standing near the Lollipop Forest when we realized that Santa is an anagram of Satan ... Overhearing the customers we would substitute the Satan for the world Santa. — David Sedaris

Though now even less than ever given to wonder he cannot but sometimes wonder if it is indeed to and of him the voice is speaking. May not there be another with him in the dark to and of whom the voice is speaking? Is he not perhaps overhearing a communication not intended for him? If he is alone on his back in the dark why does the voice not say so? Why does it never say for example, you saw the light on such and such a day and now you are alone on your back in the dark? Why? Perhaps for no other reason than to kindle in his mind this faint uncertainty and embarrassment. — Samuel Beckett

I couldn't help overhearing," he went on. "Grrr," said Emerson. (I assure you, there is really no other way of reproducing this sound.) "Honestly. — Elizabeth Peters