talent to hoodwink the blind, and with a facility of speech well calculated to deceive the ignorant …
Abraham Lincoln is a man with
It's my privilege to be able to play somebody not myself. I'm an actor who creates characters based in voice, movement, emotional quality, speech.
I think it is important to begin with a statement in your speech that grabs the attention of the audience. I try to make my opening line 15 words or less.
The best way to study about speech writing is to read great speeches.
I was stupid enough to think that we ought to speak the truth about each person eulogised, and to make this the foundation, and from these truths to choose the most beautiful things and arrange them in the most elegant way; and I was quite proud to think how well I should speak, because I believed that I knew the truth.
The speechwriter’s very existence is an affront to the politician, because it intimates that the politician is too lazy or stupid to decide what it is he is going to say…. By giving the politician something to say the speechwriter suggests by implication that the politician has nothing to say. So a politician is generally a little resentful toward and ashamed of his speechwriter—not ashamed of the particular person holding the job, simply of the fact that the job exists.
Language is wine upon the lips.
