speaking

See Also: CONVERSATION, SPEECH PATTERNS, TALKATIVENESS

1. [A statement] came out flat as a sheet of onion-skin paper —Cornell Woolrich
2. Can speak as flashy as water runs —R. Wright Campbell
3. Cut short his speech, like a pang of pain —Joseph Conrad
4. The few sentences she uttered were like eternal judgments —Larry McMurtry
5. Had a habit … of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber’s snake, could work its way through the ear down the artery, half-way to my heart —Grace Paley
6. He [Peter O’Toole] doesn’t just talk, he offers his words like presents, gift-wrapped —Robert Goldberg, Wall Street Journal, April 21, 1987
7. He was gathering toward speech, like a man about to rhumba, waiting to feel the beat —Leonard Michaels
8. His tongue [is] as a devouring fire —The Holy Bible/Isaiah
9. His rhetoric falls like a freight train over a bridge —David Brinkley about John L. Lewis
10. His talk was like a stream which runs with rapid changes from rock to roses —Winthrop Mackworth Praed

    To illustrate the simile, the poem in which it appears continues with “It slipped from politics to puns; it passed from Mahomet to Moses.”

11. If I open my mouth it’s like pebbles rattling together —Albert Camus
12. Phrases … looping out of her mouth like a backward spaghetti-eating process —Elizabeth Spencer
13. A remark thrown off like an idle dart —Sylvia Berkman
14. Said grimly … like a man announcing that X-rated movies had been shown at the deacons’ party —Stephen King
15. Said it flatly, like a tour guide reading from a Baedeker —Jonathan Valin
16. Sentences came … fluently enough, even though they did sound rather like quotations from a phrase book —Christopher Isherwood
17. Sharpened their tongues like a serpent —The Holy Bible/Psalms
18. [Words] slipped out of me in a spasm of candor, like a sneeze —Paul Reidinger
19. Some men are like bagpipes, they can’t speak till their belly’s filled —Seumas MacManus
20. Speaking without thinking is like shooting without aiming —English proverb
21. Speak pleasantly … like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines, one of which is on fire —Douglas Adams
22. Spoke to them mildly as mid-May weather —Stephen Vincent Benét
23. Talked like birds, with a gentle malice —Dame Edith Sitwell
24. Talked like her eyes looked, like her eyes watching us and her voice talking to us did not belong to her. Like she was living somewhere else, waiting somewhere else —William Faulkner
25. Talking is like playing on the harp; there is as much in laying the hands on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out the music —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
26. Talks like his tongue is in a cramp … like he has adenoids as big as footballs … and muscles to match —John Wainwright
27. Tough talk … like whistling in a haunted house —John Wainwright
28. Voice stopped, like words written off the edge of a page —Elizabeth Spencer