Jacqueline Bisset Quotes

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things.

It's technically extremely difficult to get down what you really mean, not what you think you mean, or what you think sounds good, but what's really there, what you really have to express, in words that somehow convey that meaning in an approximate way.

When I speak it is in order to be heard.

I would like to sound like James Mason. I reckon if I'd had a better voice I could have been prime minister. It is the most irritating voice in public life.

When you combine something to say with the skill to say it properly, then you've got a good writer.

You must be loud but you must also be understandable. There’s no point in being loud if you can’t be understood.

It’s not what you say; it’s what people hear.

Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.

Ordinary people can be very articulate and very eloquent.

Always, with speeches, I feel like it's an opportunity to say something.

I act as the tongue of you, ... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.

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

I don't think it's necessary to shout if you have a good story. But I also don't think you should shy away from being bold in the statement that you're making.

The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use.

The writing is all done, so it's all about verbalizing everything from point A to point B, and certainly there's a bit of politics involved, so it's a different thing.

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

Words let us say the things we want to say and also things we would be better off not having said. They let us know the things we need to know, and also things we wish we didn't.

Now, what we are not talking about, what you're really coming to, is what compromises one makes so that the listener understands somewhat of what you're doing, what you're trying to express.

I am not eloquent.

Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life.

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

How nice the human voice is when it isn't singing.

I need to be able to explain myself in context.

It's amazing, if you know what you want to say, how fast it is to write.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.