Stammer Quotes & Sayings

I do respect your j-j--" She stopped and shook her head impatiently at the sound of her own stammer. "My husband has the right to make the decision for himself."
Sebastian curled his fingers into the folds of her skirts. The stammer was a clear sign of her inner anxiety, but she would not yield. She would stand by him. He sighed unsteadily and relaxed, feeling as if his tarnished soul had been delivered into her keeping. — Lisa Kleypas

The teachers tried everything, even pleading, but Tomas was in the habit of addressing them only in Latin, a language he spoke with papal fluency and in which he did not stammer. Sooner or later they all resigned in despair, fearing he might be possessed: he might be spouting demonic instructions in Aramaic at them, for all they knew. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener! — Herman Melville

Ren ... Did you know that Winston Churchill, the greatest orator of all time and one of the greatest leaders in the world, had a speech impediment? All of us botch our words from time to time. And honestly I'd much rather stammer than put my foot in my mouth, and I've done more than my fair share of that. You have no reason to be embarrassed or ashamed for a biological misfire you can't help. It's not an indictment on your intelligence, but it is on the the humanity and decency of anyone cruel enough to mock you for it. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I have such bad memories, sitting in the back of a classroom, being told, you know, everybody is going to read a paragraph, and skipping ahead to my paragraph and being mortified and trying to read it enough times so that I wouldn't stutter and stammer, getting called on, even in high school. — Vince Flynn

In a few short months, I had gone from a friendly, optimistic, confident woman to a confused girl with a nervous stammer who second-guessed every thought that went through her head and rationalized every bad decision she made. — Holly Madison

I still have a stammer that I can control by not opening a sentence with a hard consonant, or by concentrating for a moment, breathing softly down. Growing up, the 'Our Father' was lovely, made for me, the 'Hail Mary' was gorgeous, and 'Glory Be to the Father' was an absolute nightmare. — Colm Toibin

You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To — Samuel Beckett

POWER: The ability to make our fellow humans squirm, sweat and stammer on command. Often regarded as an aphrodisiac; actually a potent laxative that, whenever ingested by people in high places, causes everyone below to run for cover. — Rick Bayan

And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think ... Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To hell with it anyway. — Samuel Beckett

I was just as black as I had been the day that I was born. Therefore, when I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to stammer, not to curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize, for example, a rent strike. When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto? — James Baldwin

Speech and having a stammer is obviously a big part of my life. — Gareth Gates

There was a young woman whose stammer
Was atrocious, and so was her grammar,
But they were not improved
When her husband was moved
To knock out her teeth with a hammer. — Edward Gorey

What happened to your stammer?"
"I suppose I must feel comfortable with you. I tend to stammer less with certain people."
"No one's ever told me that I'm a comfortable sort. I'm sure I don't like it. I'll have to do something diabolical soon to correct your impression. — Lisa Kleypas

I couldn't sleep," she confesses.
"Why not?" I ask.
She smiles at me. It's this sweet, innocent smile, and it makes my heart stammer.
"You didn't kiss me today," she says. "And I wanted you to. — Katie Kacvinsky

When God descends to us he, in a certain sense, abases himself and stammers with us, so He allows us to stammer with Him — John Calvin

The words slid fluidly off my tongue, with only an occasional stammer. I could only attribute it to the sweep and flow of water around us. — Sue Monk Kidd

What has influenced my life more than any other single thing has been my stammer. Had I not stammered I would probably ... have gone to Cambridge as my brothers did, perhaps have become a don and every now and then published a dreary book about French literature. — W. Somerset Maugham

I had called him out on being creepy, justifiably so, and it didn't faze him at all. He didn't stammer an apology or flush with shame and regret. He just kept looking at me evenly. Most likely, he was a damn sociopath, and for whatever reason, I found that endearing. — Amanda Hocking

I may be deprived of eloquence, but my mind can never be a dumb. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Choochiness is yet another British term that has no precise meaning, but, like pornography, you know it when you see it. The way I have things stacked up, choochiness is a particularly British amalgam of cuddlywuddliness, cutesypiedness, and butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouthedness that embraces everything from shops named The Ketch to Hugh Grant's stammer. It is a grating and often maddening behavioral pattern that makes others want to reach out and pinch the choochster's cheeks while secretly longing to stuff a hand grenade right down his throat. "Paul McCartney is choochy; John Lennon is not," says my brother-in-law, Max, who fled England for France in 1976, largely to escape from rampant choochiness. "Paul McCartney: choochy. John Lennon: not choochy. That's the difference." THERE — Joe Queenan

Now I will walk, as if I had an end in view, across the room, to the balcony under the awning. I see the sky, softly feathered with its sudden effulgence of moon. I also see the railings of the square, and two people without faces, leaning like statues against the sky. There is then a world immune from change. When I have passed through this drawing room flickering with tongues that cut me like knives, making me stammer, making me lie, I find faces rid of features, robed in beauty. — Virginia Woolf

The poetry of the new year is problematically punctual. An impeccable guest who arrives on time when you are running frantically behind schedule. Catching you precisely at that awkward stage of housecleaning when the contents of closet and cupboard are strewn across the room and there is no sensible place left to sit down. No, you haven't had a chance to change the guest room towels, your clothes or your habits. It is at this stage that you begin to stammer out apologies and resolutions. The visitor fixes you with a gaze that breaks like dawn over your clutter and chagrin. 'What a beautiful life,' murmurs your guest, pressing an oddly shaped package into your hands. Gladness rises in the heart like a cloud of hummingbirds. Always the same, unpredictable, utterly original gift. You consider the paradox of that as you hold it between your palms. Like freshly kneaded dough: this brand new day. — Pavithra K. Mehta

A stammering man is never a worthless one. Physiology can tell you why. It is an excess of delicacy, excess of sensibility to the presence of his fellow creature, that makes him stammer. — Thomas Carlyle

Something I always tell students is, when you're writing something, you want to write the first draft and you want it to come out easily in the beginning. If you're afraid to say what you really have to say, you stammer. You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write. — Sandra Cisneros

I'd been hoping to get close enough to Grey to gain access to his room, but I hadn't expected it to come so easily. All those convoluted plans and all I really had to do was stammer and blush. — Carrie Ryan

It's a bright shadow," Clem said with fierce intensity, and Rowley's throat closed. For the words, and their meaning, and for Clem's open look, without the nervous apprehension and the hint of a stammer. For the trust that allowed him in moments like this to drop his ever-present guard. Hell — K.J. Charles

Breathing is fundamental to speech. A stammer is caused by erratic airflow, so if you have a smooth airflow, you have smooth speech. — Gareth Gates

A great writer is always like a foreigner in the language which he expresses himself, even if this is his native tongue. At the limit, he draws his strength from a mute and unknown minority that belongs only to him. He is a foreigner in his own language: he does not mix another language with his own language, he carves out a nonpreexistent foreign language within his own language. He makes the language itself scream, stutter, stammer, or murmur. — Gilles Deleuze

You want to hear something really sad?' I whisper. 'You're my best friend.'
'You're right. That is really sad.' Oliver grins.
'That's not what I meant.'
'Are we still playing True Confessions?' he asks.
'Is that what we're doing?'
He reaches toward me and rubs a strand of my hair between his fingers. 'I think you're beautiful,' Oliver says. 'Inside and out.'
He leans forward from the tiniest bit and breathes in, closing his eyes, before he lets the hair fall back against my cheek. I feel it inside me, as if I've been shocked.
I don't pull away.
I don't want to pull away.
'I ... I don't know what to say,' I stammer.
Oliver's eyes light up. 'Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walk into mine,' he quotes. He moves slowly, so that I know what's coming, and kisses me. — Jodi Picoult

Don't compliment me in the middle of an argument. It won't make me stammer or blush, and it just makes you look desperate. — Suzanne Enoch

For 'tis sweet to stammer one letter
Of the Eternal's language; - on earth it is called Forgiveness! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

But despite its shared nature, language is also dangerous, a potentially isolating enterprise. Not all players are equal. In fact, Wittgenstein was by no means always a successful participant himself, frequently experiencing extreme difficulty in communication and expression. In an essay on fear and public language, the critic Rei Terada describes a scene repeated throughout Wittgenstein's life, in which he would begin to stammer while attempting to address a group of colleagues. Eventually, his stuttering would give way to a tense silence, during which he would struggle mutely with his thoughts, gesticulating all the while with his hands, as if he was still speaking audibly. — Olivia Laing

Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak. — Margaret Weis

You know how these things are supposed to work, right? The good-looking popular guy suddenly shows interest in the mousy girl from the country. Everyone hates her for it, but she starts to gain confidence in herself. Then the guy betrays her and regrets it. It's awful, but afterward she 'finds herself,' realizes she doesn't need him, and maybe there's some other stuff that happens" - he waggles his fingers in the air - "and finally she turns into the most beautiful girl ever because she likes herself. But it won't work at all if you don't stammer and blush and pretend you don't like me." She's — N.K. Jemisin

Everybody prays whether [you think] of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else s pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. — Frederick Buechner

I mean, I'm 6-foot-11, I've got red hair, freckles, I'm a goofy, nerdy-looking guy, I've got a speech impediment-I stutter and stammer all the time-and I'm a Deadhead. — Bill Walton

But here we call it Spring, when a young man's fancy turns,
fitfully, lightly, to idling in the sun,
to touching in the dark. And the old man's?
To worms in their garden box; stepping aside
a moment in a poem that will remember,
fitfully, who made it and the discord
and stammer, and change of heart and catch of breath
it sprang from. A bending down
lightly to touch the earth. — David Malouf

When liberal celebs stammer out a litany of shopworn bleats about the administration's attempt to turn America into a theocratic prison state, people can't help but notice that these buskers and mummers seem unmoved by the horrors of actual prison states. (Saddam commissioned a copy of the Quran written in his own blood - but John Ashcroft is the real religious nut, don't you know.) — James Lileks

He turned and quickly removed his pants. My eyes grew huge, since he wore nothing underneath. I started to stammer, trying to avert my gaze,his sex all but riveting my eyes as I stared, blatantly helpless."We will not make love. You're in this bed as a friend. Why make things difficult?" I was hot all over; his body was perfect, strong, welcoming and oh-so-alive. — Alisha Basso

I knew all about Edward VIII's abdication, George VI becoming the king and having a stammer, but nothing about how he got rid of it. — Geoffrey Rush

Most often when I stammer
That's my brain
Correcting my grammer. — Joyce Rachelle

In the next room a freckly girl Julia's age sat in a wheelchair. One of her legs wasn't there. She'd probably love to have my stammer if she could have her leg back, and I wondered if being happy's about other people's misery. — David Mitchell

When you see a stranger, your mouth start dancing like convulsion. — Michael Bassey Johnson

From my earliest days I have enjoyed an attractive impediment in my speech. I have never permitted the use of the word stammer. I can't say it myself. — Patrick Campbell

When we preach Christ crucified, we have no reason to stammer, or stutter, or hesitate, or apologize; there is nothing in the gospel of which we have any cause to be ashamed. — Charles Spurgeon

Amy looked up at him. Their faces were very close. She remembered when those dark expressive eyes would make her quiver inside, when being this close would make her blush and stammer. Not anymore, though. — Jude Watson

Let your virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if you must speak of it, then do not be ashamed to stammer about it. Then speak and stammer: "This is my good, I love this, thus I like it entirely, thus alone do I want the good. I — Friedrich Nietzsche

No one knows for sure if you can inherit a stammer, and so I worry that my baby might. It's why I want to work on my speech before he arrives. I don't want him to hear me stammer. — Gareth Gates

But, being that I have always been rather awkward and shy around girls, especially those I liked, whenever I tried talking to them, it's hardly any wonder that I never got very far. I would simply start to stammer and stutter even before I could properly say hello. In fact, it's of my opinion that, to them, I must have come across seeming a bit retarded. — Andrew James Pritchard

Fear the soldier who stammers, for he is very fast at pulling the triger. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech. We are enamored and enchanted by God's power. We stutter and stammer about God's holiness. We tremble before God's majesty ...
and yet, we grow squeamish and skittish before God's love. — Brennan Manning

I had a stammer through adolescence. Any fun I'd had performing in school plays disappeared and only came back at 18, when the stammer started to go. Then I thought: 'Well, perhaps I can show off now.' — Charles Dance

[ ... ]if you talk any more flummery to me, Frederica, I shall give you one of my - er - icy set-downs!(Alverstoke) — Georgette Heyer

This stammer got me a home in Beverly Hills, and I'm not about to screw with it now. — Bob Newhart

Before all this happened, I always used to see my stammer as being a negative, all my life, but then when I went on 'Pop Idol,' and the first time I saw it on television, it was really, really bad, but also it made me stand out; it made people remember me. So for the first time in my life, it worked to my advantage. — Gareth Gates

Whoever is in charge of such things had been sparing with his blessings on the moment Benno was born. He had neither looks nor wit nor skill. He was not large or strong, he could not sing; in fact, he had a stammer, which on most occasions left him self-consciously mute. One gift only had been given, a gift as simple as it is rare: the gift of pure goodness. He knew, unerringly, what was right, what was kind, what would make people happy, and he did it without fail. His goodness took no effort; there was no internal scale to be balanced. He hoped for no reward and feared no hell. He was not clever- in his final year of school before the teachers despaired of him, he was asked how he would equitably divide a half-pound loaf of bread among himself and two friends. He said he would go without and his two friends would each have a quarter pound, and neither threats of failure not the switch could persuade him to change his answer. — Laura L. Sullivan

I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant. — Bob Newhart

I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. — Jeanette Winterson

What's up?" Christian asked. "Need some hairstyling tips?"
"Tips you stole from me? No thanks. But I hear you've got a really good bacon meatloaf recipe."
It was worth it then and there to see his complete and total surprise.
"Since when do you cook?" he finally managed to stammer.
"Oh, you know. I'm a Renaissance man. I do it all. Send it if you've got it, and I'll give it a try. I'll let you know if I make any improvements."
His smirk returned. "Are you trying to impress a girl?"
"With cooking?" I pointed at my face. "This is all it takes, Ozera. — Richelle Mead

Men think they already know me. But as they get closer and closer, they become that 14-year-old again. A lot of men do stammer and blush a little bit. — Cindy Morgan

Thank You! Thanks very much. NMH couldn't make it,but we're Ashland Avenue, and we're here to rock!" No, I think. You're Ashland Avenue and you're here to suck.
We thought Neutral Milk Hotel was playing?" and I look down and say, "Me
I stammer for a second, and then say "too. I'm here for them too."
The girl leans into my ear to shout above the atonal arrythmic affront to decency that is Ashland Avenue. "Ashland Avenue is no Neutral Milk Hotel. — John Green

I've stammered all my life, and it's fair to say that my stammer has shaped my life. It's made me make some decisions that I'm sure I wouldn't have if I didn't suffer with this affliction. — Gareth Gates

The one thing I cannot stand is when I do interviews, when I interview people, and I listen to the tapes and I hear myself talking and sort of stumble and stammer, or I hear the horrible sound of my own voice, or God forbid I see myself on video, there is that complete revulsion with seeing how I occur in the world. — Chuck Palahniuk

Rake," came the succinct reply. "Oh, all right," Lillian grumbled. "I suppose he is a rake. But that may not be an impediment to his courtship of Lady Natalie. Some women like rakes. Look at Evie." Evie continued to snip doggedly through the brocade ribbon, while a smile curved her lips. "I don't l-like all rakes," she said, her gaze on her work. "Just one." Evie, the gentlest and most soft-spoken of them all, had been the one least likely to capture the heart of the notorious Lord St. Vincent, who had been the definitive rake. Although Evie, with her round blue eyes and blazing red hair, possessed a rare and unconventional beauty, she was unbearably shy. And there was the stammer. But Evie also had a reserve of quiet strength and a gallant spirit that seemed to have seduced her husband utterly. "And that former rake obviously adores you beyond reason," Annabelle said. — Lisa Kleypas

All are shaped by things beyond their control, traits inherited, traits learned. For Linus, the piece of his leg bone that had refused to lengthen defined him. As he grew, lameness begot shyness, shyness begot stammer, and thus Linus grew into an unlikeable little boy who discovered that attention came his way only when he behaved badly. — Kate Morton

And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. — Samuel Beckett

The stammer was a way of telling the world that he was not like others, a way of expressing his singularity. — Ted Morgan

Living with a stammer is difficult. It's a daily uphill struggle with emotional baggage weighing you down. You can't be the person you want to be. — Gareth Gates

I think three or four years ago, people would have said my biggest weakness was that sometimes I was awkward on television, with my stammer, but I think they'd say that much less now. — Ed Balls

Strange," he murmurs.
"What's strange?"
"It's just . . ." He pushes his hair back. "You're not like the jinni in the stories and songs. That jinni was a monster. You seem . . . different."
Then he turns and begins trudging up the next dune, wrapping his cloak around him to keep the wind from tearing at it.
I stand still a moment longer, watching him. "Zahra."
He pauses and looks over his shoulder. "What?"
"My name," I stammer. "I mean . . . one of them. You can call me Zahra."
He turns around fully, his grin as wide and as bright as the moon. "I'm Aladdin. — Jessica Khoury

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer. — Peter Ustinov

Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You're a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You're twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you'd have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth — Isaac Babel

I had this terrible stammer, so I couldn't really speak properly until I was 16 or 17. — Carly Simon

Holy Scripture is so exalted that there is no one in the world ... wise enough to understand it so fully that his intellect is not overcome by it. Nevertheless, man can stammer something about it. — Angela Of Foligno

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them. — Christopher Morley

Black was the without eye
Black the within tongue
Black was the heart
Black the liver, black the lungs
Unable to suck in light
Black the blood in its loud tunnel
Black the bowels packed in furnace
Black too the muscles
Striving to pull out into the light
Black the nerves, black the brain
With its tombed visions
Black also the soul, the huge stammer
Of the cry that, swelling, could not
Pronounce its sun. — Ted Hughes

His gaze was fixed so intently on me that, though I had been determined to look him in the eye as his equal, I found myself having to stare down at the corner of the table in order to stammer out a word. — Karen Maitland