Barbara Kingsolver Quotes

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

I think, for me, one of the things I've been blessed with is the ability to speak with clarity.

The ability to speak well is the shortcut to distinction.

Chauncy Burr ... talks well, possibly better than he thinks. But this is a common failing.

A scientist sounds like a scientist because the things that come out of their mouth don't stumble, that's all. If they [said], "And the, um, a microwave, uh," you know, then you don't sound right, but if you can just get it out without stumbling then you're going to sound fine.

We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power.

I don't have a problem expressing myself.

Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.

To make the bloody thing talk the way I do when I'm on a verbal roll, in my idioms and rhythms.

I'm not very articulate. I don't have that skill.

He (Don Drysdale) talks very well for a guy who's had two fingers in his mouth all his life.

It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels - a leaf feels, a storm feels - what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it's a cultivated speech.

I like to talk. Talking is kind of my thing. If talking had been a sport option at Wexford, I would have been captain. But sports always have to involve running, jumping, or swinging your arms around. You don’t get PE points for the smooth and rapid movement of the jaw.

Though I'm anything but clever, I could talk like that forever.

With each passing year, one has less to say, and knows better how to say it.

Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.

To many men well-fitting doors are not set on their tongues.

English is the perfect language for preachers because it allows you to talk until you think of what to say.

It is not sufficient to know what one ought to say, but one must also know how to say it.

The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far- reaching, while the former is altogether wanting.

Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.

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

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.

People resent articulacy, as if articulacy were a form of vice.