logo

Quotes About Overheard

Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is 50 percent of the performance.
~ Shirley Booth
Prose—it might be speculated—is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider's delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.
~ Joyce Carol Oates
Prose-it might be speculated-is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard.
~ Joyce Carol Oates
The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded.
~ Vance Packard
Observation #3: They gossip. Can you believe it? I overheard Finn and Doug in the backyard talking about some girl named Dawn who blew off some guy named Simon for some other guy named Rick for like twenty minutes ! They sounded like those old mole-hair ladies at Sal's Milshakes.
~ Kate Brian
A style is the consequence of recurrent habits, restraints, or rules invented or inherited, written or overheard, intuitive or preconceived.
~ Paul Rand
For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
~ Rita Dove
Mma Makutsi had overheard this remark and had been so cross that her glasses misted over; that was always a bad sign, Mma Ramotswe knew.
~ Alexander McCall Smith
overheard her." "And
~ Lisa Jackson
What is this Chocho business?' Will muttered to himself. But his friends overheard the comment. 'It's a term of great respect,' they chorused, and he glared at them. 'Oh, shut up,' he said.
~ John Flanagan
You can throw a novel into focus with one overheard line.
~ Joan Didion
Marec was waiting in Shevraeth's tiny room. Shevraeth shut the door, and Marec dropped down onto the bed, snickering hoarsely in an effort to keep from being overheard by the boys. "You were terrifying." Shevraeth looked at him in surprise. "I was? I meant to be reasonable." "Sometimes reasonable is frightening," Marec said, still snickering.
~ Sherwood Smith
he was not supposed to hear that;
~ Erin Hunter
The characters in my stories all have quite loud lives in my head. It's a relief to get them on the page. Often they come from people I've noticed or overheard - but that is only a part of them. It's only by writing that I discover who these people really are.
~ Rachel Joyce
I doubled back to school and overheard Mrs. Andersen in the classroom talking to another teacher. "Can you believe it?" she was saying. "A foreigner winning our spelling bee!
~ Bich Minh Nguyen
Much of what happens in Love Always is really from overheard conversations in the Russian Tea Room. It's an improvisation of the way certain Hollywood agents think and talk to each other.
~ Ann Beattie
No one who has private thoughts going on in his own head is quite sure of their not being overheard. Any child knows that.
~ Joy Williams
I want in," the boy said. "In on what?" "You're the Hunter. You're hunting the slavers. I want in." "And how would you know that?" If someone had opened their mouth, he would be really put out. Jack gave a one-shouldered shrug. "We overhead you and Declan talking." "Declan's study is soundproof." "Not to reanimated mice," Jack said.
~ Ilona Andrews
Obviously any fiction is going to be a combination of what is invented, what is overheard, what is experienced, what is experienced by people close to you, what you are told, what you have read, all mixed together into this kind of soup which, like any good soup, at the end you cannot really distinguish the ingredients.
~ David Leavitt
I know exactly what he means. I had overheard Poirot talking to my parents. He was using words like psychosis and schizophrenic. Words that people feel they have to whisper, or not repeat at all. The Mental-Illness-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.
~ Neal Shusterman
I'm inspired by watching and listening to people. For example, my first novel, The Scale, came to life after I overheard two women discussing their struggle with their weight at the gym.
~ Mika
Urging a boss to punish a worker for an overheard remark is the kind of officiousness that people sometimes resent.
~ Thomas Frank
I'm a great believer in providing children with experiences that are not for them but can be overheard.
~ Philip Pullman
Jamie says we're the most dangerous species on the planet. Especially to each other. That's what happened on Earth and if we're not careful, it'll happen here. Jamie didn't figure that out for himself. He was telling me what he overheard Captain Skyler say about Councillor Layton, Marley's dad. Mom doesn't like the Councilor for a different reason. She thinks he's a bad parent.
~ David Gerrold