Mel Tillis Quotes

I couldn't say my own name when I was 12.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

I was a good student, but a speech impediment was causing problems. One of my teachers decided that I couldn't pronounce certain words at all. She thought that if I wrote something, I would use words I could pronounce. I began writing little poems. I began to write short stories, too.

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.

Part of what was in the ether all around me growing up, until I was between 19 and 20, was a terrible, debilitating stutter. It was part of what made me very reclusive as a kid.

I have struggled all my life with my stuttering. Not to mention all my other speech impediments. I think I have every language disorder known to speech pathologists.

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.

People only stutter at the beginning of the word. They're not afraid when they get to the end of the word. There's just regret.

I had a lot of trouble speaking as a kid. I didn't really speak in coherent sentences until I was, like, 6 years old. There was a long time where everybody was very worried, because my sisters were so advanced for their age, and I would barely talk.

There's been very little writing about speech impediments, even though it's this huge psychological barrier.

I was a fat little kid with a speech impediment. I used to get beat up, not just picked on.

I did struggle with what I want to say socially, but it's important to reflect where I'm at mentally.

Not only am I a shy person, I take a little while to say what I mean, especially in a social situation, and usually those move too fast for me to say anything at all.

All my life I've felt quite misunderstood because of my personality.

I grew up with an absolutely horrible, debilitating stutter, and it was what caused me to retreat into myself and caused me to have very few friends and not want to socialize, and it made me absolutely terrified of giving reports in school. It was awful. It wasn't until I was 19 that I had intensive speech therapy. I had it for two years and it really helped, though I will say when I'm tired, the stutter comes out, even now.

There were periods during my childhood when I stammered so badly I couldn't talk at all.

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.

In 2012, I started writing songs - not for the world to hear, but for certain people I needed to talk to. My family, we were not big communicators. I had a hard time talking to people in general.

Everybody has a story... and a scream.

I'm very quiet. I can go a whole week without talking, so doing interviews is really awkward for me!

It was an interesting process trying to get Bob to talk about the film because he's such a shy person. He generally likes to talk when he really knows he has something to say.

I had a stutter 'till... I still do today. I just work on it a lot. I obsess, if you will, with it, but I stuttered throughout my childhood.

I had a bad stutter when I was really young. I couldn't get a sentence out. Like, 'D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ad.' And that turned into a mumble.

I will always have a stutter.

I'm part of a speech therapy course called the Maguire Programme. It isn't a cure; it's something you need to maintain and work on. I get days where I find things more difficult than others.