“It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound.”

— John Irving , book A Widow for One Year

Source: A Widow for One Year

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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John Irving 97

American novelist and screenwriter 1942

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

“You can wet the rim of a glass and run your finger around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter. I want to be with someone.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“A musician is like an ear for humanity, just as a painter is like an eye for humanity. The sounds somehow exist in a different sphere, the musician listens, and brings them out for the world. There's the mystery: that someone can hear something that is essentially soundless and make it into sound.”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On his spiritual view of music.
New York Times interview (1972)

“I didn't mean to make it sound like we don't want children. We don't, but I didn't mean to make it sound like that.”

John Mulaney (1982) American actor and comedian

The Comeback Kid (2015)

“If I could substitute another drug to be consumed in the country as much as alcohol is, it would be helium from children's birthday party balloons. Try not laughing when someone sounds like a chipmunk!”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"John Vanderslice interviews St. Vincent (on the road)" in Brooklyn Vegan (24 April 2007) http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2007/04/john_vanderslic_5.html
Context: The drug issue is hard to separate from a class issue, an education issue, a wonky foreign policy issue, and a race issue. What I do know is, be it caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, or adrenaline, let's face it: people like to get high. From Starbucks to Budweiser to your own brain, everybody's a pusher these days. If I could substitute another drug to be consumed in the country as much as alcohol is, it would be helium from children's birthday party balloons. Try not laughing when someone sounds like a chipmunk!