Tone Deaf Quotes & Sayings

I don't know what makes a writer's voice. It's dozens of things. There are people who write who don't have it. They're tone-deaf, even though they're very fluent. It's an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician. — Paula Fox

Trump is a little tone-deaf to the average American. He unveiled his slogan this week: 'Are you better off than you were four wives ago?' — Bill Maher

I think tonight's the night I will hang Howard W. Campbell Jr., for crimes against himself... They say that a hanging man hears gorgeous music. Too bad that I, like my father, unlike my musical mother, am tone-deaf. All the same I hope the tune that I'm about to hear is not Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I wanted to be a lead singer in a band. I can't sing. I'm almost tone deaf. I still play. Next life, rock'n'roll for sure. — Jorja Fox

I knew he would never play for Wales ... he's tone deaf. — Vernon Davis

Metaphorical tone deafness is when people are unable to discern what is of value in something. I think I'm tone deaf to poetry, for instance. Despite having studied it into a second year of university, most of it just leaves me cold. — Julian Baggini

Ultimately, I don't think you can teach a tone-deaf person how to sing. Some talents you're just born with, unfortunately. — Anna Camp

. . . Do you want to share a black cab?'
Black cabs were an extravagance that Neve couldn't afford, not this far away from payday, but that wasn't the reason why she declined. 'No, thank you. I'm perfectly all right with catching the tube.'
'OK, tube it is,' Max agreed, because he was quite obviously emotionally tone deaf and couldn't sense the huge 'kindly bugger off' vibes that Neve was sure she was emitting. — Sarra Manning

But I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. I can't do it, but I can applaud it in others. "Well," I said. "There are definitely — Gillian Flynn

I'm not even tone deaf, that's the arse-mothering, fuck-nosed, bugger-sucking wank of the thing. — Stephen Fry

It is only by demanding the impossible of the piano that you can obtain from it all that is possible. For the psychologist this means that imagination and desire are ahead of the possible reality. A deaf Beethoven created for the piano sounds never heard before and thus predetermined the development of the piano for several decades to come. The composer's creative spirit imposes on the piano rules to which it gradually conforms. That is the history of the instrument's development. I don't know of any case where the reverse occurred. — Heinrich Neuhaus

I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. — Gillian Flynn

That was how we spoke, my mother and I: in puns and games and rhymes. In, you might say, lyrics. This was our tragedy. We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny. We were tinpan alleycats, but the gift of music had been withheld. We could not sing along, though we always knew the words. Still, defiantly, we roared our tuneless roars, we fell off the high notes and were trampled by the low ones. And if bitter ices were the consequence, well, there were worse fates in the world than that. — Salman Rushdie

Only the tone-deaf doubt the power of music, though some feel it more strongly than others. — Terry Teachout

I have been like a mediocre concert pianist playing in front of a tone-deaf family, who applaud out of duty rather than for accomplishment. — Chris Murray

'I've been privileged to occasionally hear you sing in the shower and thought
what a voice. With a reasonable amount of training, it might actually be a voice I could listen to for more than a few minutes without getting a migraine.' — Barbara Elsborg

I was actually tone deaf until I had tumors in my ears - I had very small ear canals - removed. Once they fixed that, I was actually able to sing in a pleasant manner. — Lauren Worsham

Real data is messy ... It's all very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk- I mean, the noise! Impossible! — Tom Stoppard

I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, discussing the meaning of life, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence. And by a curious reversal, the people who focus most closely on these fundamental questions tend to be people I had known only superficially. Their small talk had masked hidden depths. Had I been blind and deaf, or does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person's true nature? Other — Jean-Dominique Bauby

I'm a tone-deaf siren, a wallflower at the mating dance. And I do wonder why men can't want me for me. I'm smart, I don't defer, and I didn't put making babies number one on my list of priorities. — Arthur C. Clarke

They sit in their soundproof rooms and issue tone-deaf edicts and call themselves controlling the world. And one day they ask you to die for them. — G.S. Jennsen

Swear to God, for someone so obsessed with music, she's borderline tone deaf. But trying to describe how I felt watching her dance around and sing would be like trying to build a skyscraper with my bare hands. It made me want to marry her. Made me want to buy her a magic airplane and fly her away to a place where nothing bad could ever happen. Made me want to pour rubber cement all over my chest and then lay down on top of her so that we'd be stuck together, and so it would hurt like hell if we ever tried to tear ourselves apart. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

I think you inherit most of your talent from your parents, although sometimes a fabulously talented singer grows out of the union of two tone-deaf people — Joely Fisher

Choose your words wisely with consideration for others & self because repetitive, meaningless words ... leave people tone deaf. — Sanjo Jendayi

Since I was a big reader, I might be able to accomplish something. I
had no gift. That didn't mean I must be a deprived person. Besides,
why had the Enlightenment poured its seductive light all across the
European continent right into the poor endangered households of
Ukrainian Jews? Probably, my mother thought, so that a child, any
child (even a tone-deaf one), could be given a chance despite genetic
deficiency to become, in my mother's embarrassed hopeful world, a
whole person. — Grace Paley

But I'm tone deaf - window-shattering tone deaf. I can't sing for the life of me. I can't sing or dance, so no remake of 'Grease' for me! — Dev Patel

See, some people politely encourage their tone-deaf friends to sing. Some people even convince them to go on live television and audition for national competitions. But me? I am not that friend. — Sarah Ockler

Part of the problem is voters know relatively little about Romney. And some of what they know about him complicates his task: Romney has a history of flip-flopping on issues, he's extraordinarily wealthy, and he can be tone-deaf about what moves voters. He just doesn't seem comfortable in his skin. — Ron Fournier

I'm literally tone-deaf with singing. It's unreal. — Tom Holland

Even if nobody's singing, just when you talk, you're singing. I'll meet somebody and say, "Oh, I'm tone-deaf." I say, "You're not tone-deaf, because if you were tone-deaf you would speak like that. But you're 'Oh, I'm tone-deaf.' You already sang a song to me." — Wynton Marsalis

As goofy as it sounds, I try to sing in the morning. It's hard both to sing and to maintain a grouchy mood, and it sets a happy tone for everyone - particularly in my case, because I'm tone deaf, and my audience finds my singing a source of great hilarity. — Gretchen Rubin

Being human and investigating the affairs of the gods is an extreme version of being tone-deaf and talking about music, or having never served in the army and talking about warfare: we resemble amateurs trying to use arguments from probability based on opinions and conjecture to unearth the ideas of experts. Given — Plutarch

I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost. — P.D. James

I'm going that way too. I live in Crouch End. Do you want to share a black cab?'
Black cabs were an extravagance that Neve couldn't afford, not this far away from payday, but that wasn't the reason why she declined. 'No,
thank you. I'm perfectly all right with catching the tube.'
'OK, tube it is,' Max agreed, because he was quite obviously emotionally tone deaf and couldn't sense the huge 'kindly bugger off' vibes that
Neve was sure she was emitting. 'You're still mad at me, aren't you?'
'You apologised, why would I still be mad at you?'
'One day we'll laugh about this. When little Tommy asks how we met, I'll say, "Well, son, I threw an ice cube at your mother, then slapped her
arse, and we've been inseparable ever since. — Sarra Manning

I already know the words. I just need to learn the beat. This tone-deaf white girl will try to make music out of recovery. — Rachel Cohn

Say what you want to say about the rest of his presidency, including his tone-deaf response to Katrina and a war waged in Iraq on false pretenses, Bush connected with Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 because he looked as frail and unforgiving as we felt. — Ron Fournier

Obama does not need to worry as much as past Democratic presidents about being labeled soft on national security - not after giving the order that led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. No, his biggest concern is being labeled tone deaf on joblessness and debt. — Ron Fournier

Good God! Think of listening to Wagner for a whole fortnight with a woman who takes about as much interest in music as a tone-deaf newt - that would be fun! — Marcel Proust

We've had a tone-deaf White House that does not want to be reasonable. President Obama won't meet with the Republicans. It's all his way. — Chris Smith