Singsong Quotes & Sayings

One thing is certain: Yelling at someone who is already out of control can only lead to further dysregulation. Just as your dog cowers if you shout and wags his tail when you speak in a high singsong, we humans respond to harsh voices with fear, anger, or shutdown and to playful tones by opening up and relaxing. We simply cannot help but respond to these indicators of safety or danger. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

As they approached the next stall, the old woman tending to it looked up at Matthias with suspicious eyes. Nina nodded encouragingly at him.
Matthias smiled broadly and boomed in a singsong voice, "Hello, little friend!"
The woman went from wary to baffled. Nina decided to call it an improvement.
"And how are you today?" Matthias asked.
"Pardon?" the woman said.
"Nothing," Nina said in Ravkan. "He was saying how beautifully the Ravkan women age."
The woman gave a gap-toothed grin and ran her eyes up and down Matthias in an appraising fashion. "Always had a taste for Fjerdans. Ask him if he wants to play Princess and Barbarian," she said with a cackle. — Leigh Bardugo

Still - " Tigerishka temporized - "are things I will tell." Then, at court-stenographer speed, and a little singsong, as if it were very boring to her: "I come superior galactic culture. Read minds, throw thoughts, sail hyperspace, live forever if want, blow up suns - all that sort stuff. Look like animal - resume ancestral shapes. Make brains small but really huge - (psychophysiosubmicrominiaturization! We stay superior.) You not believe? So listen. Plants eat inorganic: they superior! Animals eat plants: they superior. Cats eat fresh meat: we most superior! Monkeys try eat everything: a mess!" Then without pause: "Wanderer sail hyperspace. Yes, star photos, I know. Need fuel - much matter for converters. Your moon good woodpile. Smash, pulverize, dredge. We fuel up, then go. No need you monkeys get hot and bothered. — Fritz Leiber

her home; it just happened to be where she lived. This was the House that Jack Built, she thought, hearing the singsong rhythm of the old children's story in her head. And this was the wife who lived in the house that Jack built. And there was the mistress that screwed the husband that ignored the wife who lived in the house that Jack built.... — Susan Wiggs

Knock, knock!" he called in a high, singsong voice.
For a moment, silence. Then a thud and a crash, as if something heavy had been hurled at the door. "Go away!" snarled the voice from within.
"Ah, no. That's not how the joke goes," called Rob. "I say 'knock, knock', and you're supposed to answer with 'who's there?'"
"Fuck off!"
Nope, that's still wrong." Robbie seemed unperturbed. I, however, was horrified at Ethan's language, though I knew it wasn't him. "Here," continued Rob in an amiable voice, "I'll go through the whole thing, so you'll know how to answer next time." He cleared his throat and pounded at the door again. "Knock, knock!" he bellowed. "Who's there? Puck! Puck who? Puck, who will turn you into a squealing pig and stuff you in the oven if you don't get out of our way!" And with that, he banged the door open. — Julie Kagawa

Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons. The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. I mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust. — O. Henry

Lilli . . . Lilli . . . Lilli."

Sweet Jesus, she was going to kill him. She'd just gotten to sleep. Now he was running a finger up and down her spine, saying her name in an extremely life-threatening singsong voice. — Susan Fanetti

Wait," said Ragnor, and he started to snigger. "Is this about your Nephilim boyfriend?"
"Our relationship is as yet undefined," said Magnus with dignity. Then he clutched the phone and hissed, "And how do you know private details about my personal life with Alexander?"
"Ooooh, Alexander," Ragnor said in a singsong voice. "I know all about it. Raphael called and told me."
"Raphael Santiago," said Magnus, thinking darkly of the current leader of the New York vampire clan, "has a black ungrateful heart, and one day he will be punished for this treachery. — Cassandra Clare

Gemma," I said, adding a singsong whine to my voice, "now I can't scare her. You can't go around telling people about me. — Darynda Jones

I put on a skirt and blouse for the meeting, feeling dwarfy, my grown up, big-girl clothes never quite fitting. I'm barely five foot -- four foot, ten inches in truth, but I round up. Sue me. I'm thirty-one, but people tend to talk to me in singsong, like they want to give me fingerpaints. — Gillian Flynn

[Gore] tended to drone on and on, in singsong, narcotizing cadences best endured by the heavily caffeinated. — Frank Bruni

Italian as a language, she thinks, suits children with its singsong cadences and rising lingering inflections, its quick swinging gait and easy adaptability to argument, to passionate outbursts. — Glenn Haybittle

Every time he spoke, in fact, he had the appearance of thinly addressing an audience, raising and lowering his head as though from notes, and speaking in a penetrating singsong towards a point over his listeners' heads. You would have diagnosed a Physics B.Sc. with Socialist platform tendencies, and you would have been right. — John Dickson Carr

I am the shee-it," the adolescent said in a singsong voice. Then he swung around, smirking at the nearly five-thousand-year-old Egyptian vampire.
"Who's your daddy, M?"
Far from being offended, Mencheres went over and flawlessly executed a street-style handshake complete with finger slaps, fist bumps, and a high-low finale.
"You are the shit," he solemnly agreed — Jeaniene Frost

Little Red, Little Red, what's in the chip bag, Little Red?"
And in the same singsong voice I answered, "Nothing at all, Nothing at all, Nothing at all but your grandpa's head. — Neal Shusterman

Sorry, no. I'm Magog, and I'm a raven. Not a selkie. she said, in a singsong accent I recognized as Welsh from watching Torchwood. — Nicole Peeler

She set out for revenge, to run them through, to do what an elf, an elf must do."
The next verse was Merill's to improvise. "Climbed that roost, alighted right there. Made mush of his head for the onlooker bears."
"A two-pronger her prize, a meat most rare. Do-gooders will pay. Do-gooders will fear."
"Ballad of the loneliest ones," lamented Merill.
"The loneliest ones," said Almi. She accepted that title; they were the loneliest. The elf gloomed. — Darrell Drake

Jacinda nearly manifested at school today, Tamra tattles in that singsong voice of whiny kids everywhere. It reminds me of when I would take her dolls and give them haircuts. — Sophie Jordan

Okay but he has a case for you," she said again, her voice singsong.
"Don't care."
"It's right up your alley. There's been a rash of suicide notes."
"That's not right up my alley. That's, like, two blocks over from my alley. — Darynda Jones

Jina Matthews, who worked at the cubicle directly beside Carlin's, wasn't having a good way, either. She was on her phone, her expression tense. She and her boyfriend had been fighting a lot lately, and it looked as if Jina was at the end of her rope. She said a few choice words, then thumbed a button on her phone. Looking across the aisle at Carlin, she made a wry face.
"It was so much more satisfying when you could slam a phone down. Pushing a button just doesn't have the same gratification factor." Her phone, set to vibrate, buzzed around on the desk as another call came in. Jina picked it up, looked at the caller ID, and jabbed the button again. "Unless it's the off button." She leaned forward and spoke to the silent phone. "Call all you want, jackass. I can't hear you," she said in a singsong falsetto. — Linda Howard

I happen to be a fantastic kisser. Sadly, you will never get to find out."
"Never say never," he answers in a singsong voice.
"Thanks for that, Justin Bieber. But yeah, not going to happen, dude. — Elle Kennedy

Aaaand we have a winnerrrrr!" a man shouts into the mic in a singsong carnival voice as I lick the last of Patrick's ice cream from my fingers. "Pick out a prize for the beautiful girl."
"For you," Patrick says, kneeling in front of me with a moose in his outstretched hands.
I pull the stuffed animal to my chest. "Thank you. I shall love him always. I shall call him Holden Caulfield."
"From the book?"
"Yes, from the book. You were reading it when I saw you my first day here."
"You remember that?"
"It's one of my favorite books," I say.
"You were totally checking me out."
"Patrick! Not in front of Holden Caulfield!" I cover the moose's floppy ears with my hands, hoping neither he nor Patrick sees the red flooding my cheeks. — Sarah Ockler

You're dreaming," said Ilsa in her singsong way. She rested her chin on top of his shoulder, and squinted. "What is that in your eyes?"
"What?"
"That speck. Right there. Is it fear?"
He found her gaze in the mirror. "Maybe," he admitted. — Victoria Schwab

Knock, Knock!' [Puck] called in a high, singsong voice.
For a moment, silence. Then came a thud and a crash, as if something heavy had been hurled at the door. 'Go away!' snaled the voice from within.
'Ah, no. That's not how the joke goes,' called Puck.'I say 'knock, knock', and you're supposed to answer with 'who's there?'
'Fuck off!'
'Nope, that's still wrong — Julie Kagawa

Which way did they go, Peeves?" Filch was saying. "Quick, tell me."
"Say 'please.'"
"Don't mess with me, Peeves, now where did they go?"
"Shan't say nothing if you don't say please," said Peeves in his annoying singsong voice.
"All right- PLEASE."
"NOTHING! Ha haaa! Told you I wouldn't say nothing if you didn't say please! Ha ha! Haaaaaa!" And they heard the sound of Peeves whooshing away and Filch cursing in rage. — J.K. Rowling

Everyone loves a good singsong, so we all do a bit of karaoke or something. — Sharleen Spiteri

Isn't it obvious, Dad? Rafe's in love, Rachel said in a singsong voice. — Melody Anne

He's stubborn," Tux warned in a singsong tone.
"Stay out of this," Mark spat.
"And touchy," Tux added. — Brandon Mull

See my finger wet, see my finger dry, see my finger cut my throat if I tell a lie," said the girl, in a singsong tone, and with accompanying dramatic gestures of fearful histrionic fervour. — Carolyn Wells

Grigorii spared a single glance in his brother's direction. If looks were daggers, that one would've
sliced straight through the volhv's heart. "Here it comes. 'My oldest son . . .'"
"Is a doctor," Evdokia finished in a singsong voice. "And my daughter is an attorney."
Vasiliy raised his chin. "Jealousy is bad for you. Poisons the heart."
"Aha!" Evdokia slapped the table. "How about your youngest, the musician? How is he doing?"
"Yes, what is Vyacheslav doing lately?" Grigorii asked. "Didn't I see him with a black eye yesterday?
Did he whistle a tree onto himself?"
Oh boy.
Curran opened his mouth. Next to him Jim shook his head. His expression looked suspiciously like
fear.
"He is young," Vasiliy said.
"He is spoiled rotten," Evdokia barked. "He spends all his time trying to kill my cat. One child is a
doctor, the other is an attorney, the third is a serial killer in training. — Ilona Andrews

Claire wants to say: Well, I'd say fuck too, if I were me. I'd say it backward and forward and around the block, fuck this and fuck that and fuck it all once, twice, three times. But all she does is smile at Marcia and give her what she hopes is a nod that understands that it's absolutely no problem to say fuck, on Park Avenue, on a Wednesday, at a coffee morning, in fact it's probably the best thing to say, given the circumstances, maybe they should all say it in unison, make a singsong out of it. — Colum McCann

I'm going to wake Peeta," I say.
"No, wait," says Finnick. "Let's do it together. Put our faces right in front of his."
Well, there's so little opportunity for fun left in my life, I agree. We position ourselves on either side of Peeta, lean over until our faces are inches frim his nose, and give him a shake. "Peeta. Peeta, wake up," I say in a soft, singsong voice.
His eyelids flutter open and then he jumps like we've stabbed him. "Aa!"
Finnick and I fall back in the sand, laughing our heads off. Every time we try to stop, we look at Peeta's attempt to maintain a disdainful expression and it sets us off again. — Suzanne Collins

Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean. — Northrop Frye

Telling herself stories about herself in a singsong voice, creating her own mythology. — Abraham Verghese

I'm pretty sure that wasn't there before," Nick grumbled.
Kelly laughed harder. "I'm pretty sure it was."
"Shut up."
"You're high."
"Oh, look at the pothead calling the kettle names," Nick said in a singsong voice as he settled onto the wide chaise beside Kelly. — Abigail Roux

Here it comes," she said with an expression of pure bliss. "Drug rush ... any moment now ... the surge of warmth ... bye-bye, Mr. Pain ... "
"Vee-"
"Knock, knock."
"This is really important-"
"Knock, knock."
"It's about Elliot-"
"Knock, knoooock," she said in a singsong voice.
I sighed. "Who's there?"
"Boo."
"Boo who?"
"Boo-hoo, somebody's crying, and it's not me!" She broke into hysterical laughter. — Becca Fitzpatrick

He does a crazy zigzag maneuver before he straightens the car.
"A little forewarning would be nice," says Dee-Dum in a singsong voice.
"A little smoother driving would be nicer," I say mimicking his tone. — Susan Ee

Her voice made me drunk, deep and sun-warmed, a hint of a foreign accent, Swedish singsong a generation removed. — Janet Fitch

[She was singing] a senseless singsong, so that several park keepers looked at her with suspicion and were only brought to a favorable opinion of her sanity by noticing the pearl necklace she wore. — Virginia Woolf