Octavia Spencer Quotes

When I go onstage, I don't know what I'm going to say. I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth. It's one of those questions where any and everything is possible. I literally could be talking about somebody I was hanging out with two seconds ago or something from the news. Literally, there's really no rhyme or reason for it. I want to be free flowing like that.

I cannot write a speech. The pen is an extinguisher upon my mind and a torture to my nerves. I am the most habitual extemporaneous speaker that I have ever known.

With reference to political speeches in political campaigns or with reference to discussions in the Senate, I do no more than make a skeleton outline of the line of argument I wish to pursue. I do not undertake to reduce the speech to manuscript form. Many of my speeches which have been most satisfactory to me I have prepared in a few hours. I think it is quite accurate to say that the manuscript is practically unknown in my speaking. Furthermore, I should say that even the skeleton outline referred to above is generally forgotten after I begin my speech. I try to get the subject and the outline of the subject and the objective thoroughly in my mind, and all the preparations are with a view of doing this rather than with the idea of having something before me to follow.

The curse of speech writing is being part of a team.

I consider myself a pretty good extemporaneous speaker. Even though I don't like speaking in front of people, I don't think I'm bad at it.

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.

Never write down your speeches beforehand; if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater.

Lamon, that speech won't scour. It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed.

Sport is not about being wrapped up in cotton wool. Sport as about adapting to the unexpected and being able to modify plans at the last minute. Sport, like all life, is about taking risks.

As a profession, freelance writing is notoriously insecure. That's the first argument in its favor. For many reasons, a few of them rational, the thought of knowing exactly what next year's accomplishments, routine, income, and vacation will be - or even what time I have to get up tomorrow morning - has always depressed me.

[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.

When love congeals It soon reveals The faint aroma of performing seals, The double-crossing of a pair of heels. I wish I were in love again!

We fell in love quickly. We got married very quickly. It didn't work out the way we wanted it to. There's nothing more to it.

I got on the high school speech team and everyday I would get up in front of the class and just start talking.

It would only lead to disappointment, even heartbreak, and her heart was too precious for me to let that happen.

Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan--that is the rule.

One sometimes weeps over one's illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.

By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons.

Can I convince the person about whom I'm crazy to be crazy about me? The short answer is no. The long answer is no.

He remained heartbroken, which meant one of two things: either his love was pure and true and earthshakingly significant; or he was addicted to feeling forlorn, he liked being heartbroken.

You kind of half-prepare a speech in your head, and then you get up there and then you end up saying nothing that was in your head before you went up there. It's a very weird thing. I never do award speeches too well.

Churchill wrote his own speeches. When a leader does that, he becomes emotionally invested with his utterances...If Churchill had had a speech write in 1940, Britain would be speaking German today.

Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer

I don't think there's an improvised word in the movie. I hope not because I admire writing. Improvising is kind of gambling. It's just that you're standing up.

Pick a man, any man. Every guy I fall for becomes Jesus Christ within the first twenty-four hours of our relationship. I know that this happens, I see it happening, I even feel myself, sometimes, standing at some temporal crossroads, some distinct moment at which I can walk away and keep it from happening, but I never do. I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn for the loss of something I never even had.