Toneless Quotes & Sayings

Where will you sleep?" he inquired, sitting down heavily on the bed. "No where," the Alien replied, its toneless voice dividing the word into two equally significant wholes. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I keep coming back to it, over and over - adultery and cheating. It's the most interesting problem in the theater. How else do you get Oedipus? That's the first cheating in the theater. — Mike Nichols

I realized the place was awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension. — Don DeLillo

Think what you like. There are people who die by remaining alive and others who gain life by dying. — Eiji Yoshikawa

Everyone in New York City thinks they are famous without being famous. — Ethan H. Minsker

A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to committ outrages ... — Hermann Hesse

OSWALD: [Repeats, in a dull, toneless voice.] The sun. The sun. — Henrik Ibsen

Why shouldn't we kill you?" he asked the black-garbed male who came forward to meet him.
"We have no quarrel with you." The man's eyes were flat, his voice toneless. "We ask permission to enter your territory to hunt a Psy fugitive."
"Permission denied." Lucas folded his arms. "I don't make a habit of allowing enemies into my territory."
"This fugitive may be dangerous to you and your people."
Lucas smiled and it was nothing friendly. "Then the fugitive will die."
"We would prefer to capture this one alive."
"Didn't your mother ever tell you - you don't always get what you want? — Nalini Singh

That's what happens when you're thirty-seven years old: you do the things you always did but the result is somehow different. — Michael Lewis

words you might utter. You must feel the same or you wouldn't have broken this news to me in a letter. Now it's clear why you have not dropped by the apartment for the last month. I should be upset with you for shutting us out. — Brenda Whiteside

I watched him depart, steeled myself and then walked over to Kanin, who hadn't moved from his place in the corner.
"That was interesting." he mused in a toneless voice as I joined him along the wall. "I assume that last display was solely for my benefit? — Julie Kagawa

When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep. — Flann O'Brien

I dive down into the depth of the ocean of forms, hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.
No more sailing from harbour to harbour with this my weather-beaten boat. The days are long passed when my sport was to be tossed on waves.
And now I am eager to die into the deathless.
Into the audience hall by the fathomless abyss where swells up the music of toneless strings I shall take this harp of my life.
I shall tune it to the notes of forever, and when it has sobbed out its last utterance, lay down my silent harp at the feet of the silent. — Rabindranath Tagore

Well, you keep your place then, nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny." Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego - nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, "Yes, ma'am," and his voice was toneless. — John Steinbeck

One of the things I've learnt is not to depend on there being a woman in your life to make it work. I love my work, I love my children, I've got wonderful friends, you know, I have a nice life. — Salman Rushdie

Words. I think sometimes when we find love we pretend it away, or ignore it, or tell ourselves we're imagining it. Because it's the most painful kind of hope there is. It can be ripped away so easily. By indifference. By death. — Rae Carson

But to remain historically accurate, I would have had to leave out an important question that I felt needed to be addressed, which is, 'What if Jesus had known kung fu? — Christopher Moore

I made lasagna for dinner," Tamsyn called out. "That work for you?"
He continued to look at her, as if he'd drink her up with his eyes. "Anything is fine."
"Maybe I shouldn't waste my lasagna on you, then." Tamsyn grabbed a container from the cooling unit. "How about some cardboard instead?"
Brenna found herself amused in spite of the blood that continued to scent the air and the taut expectation that stretched between her and Judd. Lips twitching, she waited for his response.
"Cardboard has no nutritional value." Utterly toneless. "Lasagna would be a better choice. — Nalini Singh

In physiology, as in all other sciences, no discovery is useless, no curiosity misplaced or too ambitious, and we may be certain that every advance achieved in the quest of pure knowledge will sooner or later play its part in the service of man. — Ernest Starling

When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols ... — Hermann Hesse

You don't need to be able to string a sentence together in a way that is elegant or even vaguely meaningful to produce a bestseller - as Dan Brown has demonstrated time and again. — Anthony Horowitz

And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me ... everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent. — Knut Hamsun

To have a "light-bulb moment", the power has to be on. — Jennifer L. Feuerstein

Oh, don't you worry about that, Yossarian comforted him with a toneless snicker as the engines of the jeeps and ambulance fractured the drowsy silence and the vehicles in the rear began driving away backward. — Joseph Heller

Major-General Sir Wilfred Bosher came to distribute the prizes at that school', proceeded Gussie in a dull, toneless voice.'He dropped a book. He stooped to pick it up. And, as he stooped, his trousers split up the back'.
'How we roared! — P.G. Wodehouse

Because Islam doesn't, he said, his voice toneless, — Hilary Mantel

I miss your smile. I mean, it's really annoying to hear your sarcastic toneless laugh, but I miss that crooked smile on your face when you do that."
"That's the nicest thing anyone ever said to me this past few months."
"I'm touched."
"Thank God for me."
"Yeah, I didn't tell you where I was touched. — Rea Lidde

Hana's voice is completely toneless. I can't tell if she's being sarcastic. But she is lucky, whether she knows it or not.
And there it is: Even though we're standing in the same patch of sun-drenched pavement, we might as well be a hundred thousand miles apart.
You came from different starts and you'll come to different ends : That's an old saying, something Carol used to repeat a lot. I never really understood how true it was until now. — Lauren Oliver