Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotes

I’m not good at talking,” Naoko said. “Haven’t been for the longest while. I start to say something and the wrong words come out. Wrong or sometimes completely backward. I try to go back and correct it, but things get even more complicated and confused, so that I don’t even remember what I started to say in the first place. Like I was split into two or something, one half chasing the other. And there’s this big pillar in the middle and they go chasing each other around and around it. The other me always latches onto the right word and this me absolutely never catches up

I can never say what I want to say, it's been like this for a while now. I try to say something but all I get are wrong words - the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It's like I'm split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this can't catch her.

Speech happens to not be his language.

A sentence that clots in your mouth is unlikely to flow in your mind.

Suddenly, I don't know what to say. It happens often to me. I know what I want to say, I think about whether it is what I mean, but when the moment comes to speak, I can't say it. - Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie.

In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses.

Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.

I parle Francais like a Spanish cow.

Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

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

I couldn't speak well. I went to speech therapy for 10 years. And I was sort of frustrated in that sense.

Sometimes, when I'm trying to get my thoughts out, and I'm thinking too fast, I stutter.

Language just gradually came in, one or two stressed words a time. Before then, I would just scream. I couldn't talk. I couldn't get my words out. So the only way I could tell someone what I wanted was to scream. If I didn't want to wear a hat, the only way I knew to communicate was screaming and throwing it on the floor.

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'm not good with words, and I get mixed up.

I'm not very good with words, weirdly.

The biggest issue for me has been the language because I speak so much German now. I've had to focus on my English and find more words to describe what I want to say and also soften my tone. It was quite stiff from 20 years of speaking German, so when I started speaking more English, oh my god, my tongue was like: 'Argh'!

I didn't realise I had a speech impediment until I came back to England. I spent the whole of my life working abroad, and no-one mentioned it. I came back to England and suddenly realised I had a speech impediment.

Half the time I don't know what I'm trying to say.

Fumbling for a word is everybody's birthright.

Then I show up steady ready and proud and I find I've forgotten how to talk out loud. Isn't it just like you to bring me to my knees?

People say I talk slowly. I talk in a way sometimes called laconic. The phone rings, I answer, and people ask if they've woken me up. I lose my way in the middle of sentences, leaving people hanging for minutes. I have no control over it. I'll be talking, and will be interested in what I'm saying, but then someone-I'm convinced this what happens-someone-and I wish I knew who, because I would have words for this person-for a short time, borrows my head. Like a battery is borrowed from a calculator to power a remote control, someone, always, is borrowing my head.

These days I just can't seem to say what I mean [...]. I just can't. Every time I try to say something, it misses the point. Either that or I end up saying the opposite of what I mean. The more I try to get it right the more mixed up it gets. Sometimes I can't even remember what I was trying to say in the first place. It's like my body's split in two and one of me is chasing the other me around a big pillar. We're running circles around it. The other me has the right words, but I can never catch her.

I find it really difficult to even articulate things that I've done in the past. I express myself through the characters that I play, not through the articulation of them later.