David Sedaris Quotes

I love to read aloud.

I was encouraged to read aloud in class and vocalize.

I prefer that for my own satisfaction over radio, there's no audience. TV, there's no audience. I need the response of the audience, even if it's a silent response.

I feel so much feedback in a very profound way from the 10,000 people who are listening to me, watching me. I just get this deep sense of what works and what doesn't work.

It might be an idea for all literary critics to read the books they analyse aloud - it certainly helps to fix them in the mind, while providing a readymade seminar with your audience.

I feed off the audience a lot, their energy.

Reading aloud to other people is wonderful - if you have people who will suffer it.

I like my voice, but I can't deliver as much as I wish I could.

What's important to me is that I put messages out, whether it's a TED talk, whether it's a book.

Since his arrival, the new secretary of state has not held a single press conference. On his first big trip to Europe last month for the G20 summit, Rex Tillerson said less than 50 words in total in response to press questions.

Say what you have to say and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending - sit down.

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.

The legal profession, politics and acting are very closely tied: the whole point is to have an idea and get it across to a listener, whether it is one person or five thousand in a hall.

When you recite you're giving a performance, in the way that an actor or a singer performs, and some poets are not interested in doing that, maybe because they're writing for a readership as opposed to an audience, or because they see poetry as a very private art.

I always feel the audience is my best teacher.

If you intend to create something that people will observe and listen to, you've got to listen to them first.

I'm liking the idea more and more of just standing up with a microphone and talking.

A mediocre speech supported by all the power of delivery will be more impressive than the best speech unaccompanied by such power.

When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of Oratory, he answered, "Action," and which was the second, he replied, "action," and which was the third, he still answered "Action.

I am the first to admit that I am no great orator or no person that got where I have gotten by any William Jennings Bryan technique.

One of the first lessons a president has to learn is that every word he says weighs a ton.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

Some plague the people with too long sermons; for the faculty of listening is a tender thing, and soon becomes weary and satiated.

Act first! The ideas will follow, and if not - well, it's progress