Tom Hooper Quotes

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

Well, my brother says Hello. So, hooray for speech therapy.

Young adults living with a stutter is hard work. How do they handle job interviews? What do they do when the phone rings? How do they 'chat someone up'? All these things the average person takes for granted prove to be a stammerer's biggest challenge.

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.

But now I've been in the arena for 47 years and I stutter less today than I did in those days.

Breathing is fundamental to speech. A stammer is caused by erratic airflow, so if you have a smooth airflow, you have smooth speech.

The happiest stutterers, I learned, are those who are willing to stutter in front of others.

And then, when I started to school, I found out I couldn't talk.

There is absolutely, 100 percent, a light at the end of the tunnel for anyone who stutters.

It's true that stammerers can become more adept at sentence construction.

I'm part of a speech therapy programme called the McGuire Programme. It teaches you a new way to breathe, a new way to speak, a brand new way of tackling the mind-sets that come with having a speech impediment. Mainly, it teaches you how to slow things down, and that has really helped me.

I find that communication as an actor and person is an important part of who I am. And I'm really drawn into the psychology of those dynamics.

We do not learn first what to talk about and then what to say about it.

I'm never quite as excited as people think because with my voice, when I shout, I squeak.

I suffered from a quite severe speech impediment when I was young, and keeping a journal was part of the therapy.

But if you put a script up in front of me to read, or a cue card, I couldn't do it without stuttering.

I began to think that if you're a stutterer, it's about inhabiting silence, emptiness, and nothingness.

I'm not so vocal. I try to get loud, but my voice will just crack or something.

I have a very personal feeling about how special America is, and I know how precious freedom is. It is a sacred gift, sanctified by those who have lived it and those who have died defending it. My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some have called 'opinionated,' is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish.

There's nothing wrong with a lisp.

The pressure isn't on my brain, but on my mouth. I realized Sam Malone said very little, he spoke in little sentences. Which is much more comfortable for me for some reason.

My voice, I have to say, is kind of miraculous because I was born with a cleft palate.

Speech and having a stammer is obviously a big part of my life.

From my earliest days I have enjoyed an attractive impediment in my speech. I have never permitted the use of the word stammer. I can't say it myself.

In general, questions are fine; you can always seize upon the parts of them that interest you and concentrate on answering those. And one has to remember when answering questions that asking questions isn't easy either, and for someone who's quite shy to stand up in an audience to speak takes some courage.