Speech Sounds
"Speech Sounds" is a science fiction short story by Octavia Butler. It was most recently published in a collection of short stories titled Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (Night Shade Books, 2008). It was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1983. It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1984.
Read more about Speech Sounds: Plot Summary, Afterword
Famous quotes containing the words speech and/or sounds:
“As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is never the thing but the version of the thing:
The fragrance of the woman not her self,
Her self in her manner not the solid block,
The day in its color not perpending time,
Time in its weather, our most sovereign lord,
The weather in words and words in sounds of sound.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)