Mark Twain Quotes

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.

I know I'm not a great writer. I'm an extremely gifted oral communicator, but when it comes to writing, I'm just a beginner.

Reading aloud sounds like a good idea, but honestly, it doesn't work very well. Good dialogue in a book doesn't actually bear much resemblance to real-life dialogue. For example, if you've ever seen a word-for-word transcript of people talking, it doesn't read off the page very well. The trick is to make it *seem* like it's being spoken, not to make it speakable.

I think that I speak a lot like I write.

You have to be able to communicate in life and probably schools underemphasize that. If you can't talk to people or write, you're giving up your potential.

Those who write as they speak, even though they speak well, write badly.

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

Learning how to get a point across is pretty useful in any situation.

Visuals are compelling, but sometimes the only way to get your point of view and purpose across is through words. Great copy can be embedded in any medium, any technology.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practised [sic] and cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.

As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.

Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.

The longer I live, the more I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Every American youth, if he desires for any purpose to get influence over his countrymen in an honorable way, will seek to become a good public speaker.

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.

There are three things in speech that ought to be considered before some things are spoken--the manner, the place and the time.

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

it makes a great difference to a speaker whether he has something to say, or has to say something.

We speak naturally but spend all our lives trying to write naturally.

Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape now let it fall - HUNGH

Maybe you've had the experience where somebody's asked you a question and you give an answer, then later in the day you think, "Oh, I wish I'd said that!" I tend to journal these things and put the answers in sermons.

Action hangs, as it were, dissolved in speech, in thoughts whereof speech is the shadow; and precipitates itself therefrom. The kind of speech in a man betokens the kind of action you will get from him.

When a tongue fails to send forth appropriate shafts, there might be a word to act as healer of these.