Timothy Noah Quotes

Accent [emphasis] is the soul of speech; it gives it feeling and truth.

I love the musicality of English. French sounds flat. In English, you can play with pitch.

In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

The voice is a second face.

I haven't even had to learn, but it's just this natural thing to be able to express any emotion I have through the tone of my voice.

If you listen to people talk, when people actually talk, they talk in melodies. If they get angry, their voice rises, and it's more of a staccato thing. When they ask for something, they're real sweet. It's all music.

Eloquence resides as much in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in the expression of the face, as in the choice of words.

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

French sounds flat. In English, you can play with pitch.

Our spouse will usually interpret our message based on our tone of voice, not the words we use.

...words are some of the most powerful and important things I know....Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It's the bright red warning flag of danger--and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace.

Saying you love something out loud with the wrong intonation in your face can damn you and destroy what you're working on.

To be good in playback, you need to modulate your voice and sing with an accent that can provide some freshness.

Sometimes you don't have to say anything. Silence speaks it all.

I move my face so much, because I'm very much expressive.

She was not good on the phone. She needed the face, the pattern of eyes, nose, trembling mouth... People talking were meant to look at a face, the disastrous cupcake of it, the hide-and-seek of the heart dashing across. With a phone, you said words, but you never watched them go in. You saw them off at the airport but never knew whether there was anyone there to greet them when they got off the plane.

Intonation is important, especially when it is cold.

In conversation you can use timing, a look, an inflection. But on the page all you have is commas, dashes, the amount of syllables in a word. When I write, I read everything out loud to get the right rhythm.

One look that works is better than twenty lines of dialogue.

Whatever I write in email, it doesn't mean anything. It is just words I write.

My writing just kind of exists out there in the air-it's all sort of intended as spoken, or sung, word. So, to commit them to the page...that way was kind of intimidating to me, yet intriguing, to try to reflect the rhythms and connotations and emotions that you can deliver, speaking-wise, on a page.

I'm not the greatest communicator. I kind of internalize a lot. See, I just said I need to be quiet, but that's not the kind of communication I mean. I mean expressing myself or even standing up for myself. I can sometimes be very passive.

Most of us do not use speech to express thought. We use it to express feelings.

There are tones of voices that mean more than words.

I don't really believe anything I say. Because the nature of my work concerns the spaces between the words, rather than the words themselves.