Sound

Strange that some of the most glorious sounds in the world should have come from a man – Beethoven – who in the end could hear no sound (except, perhaps, the awful cacophony of tinnitus).

In the order of emotional content, I find sound more intense than either sight or touch. It seems to be where man has devoted so much creative effort to inspire others.

Explorers for hundreds of years hoped they would discover the Northwest Passage – an all-water route leading from Europe to the Far East through the northern part of the Americas. Think how awkward that would be – an ocean channel more than 3,000 miles long, snaking across the U.S. and/or Canada, making North Dakota and Saskatchewan into ports. Just so a bunch of spice merchants would have it easy!

They thought they'd found the Northwest Passage when they sailed into Puget Sound.

This is the opposite of ill and at the same time the opposite of silence. Maybe it is also the opposite of something else, but I do not know.

You can't escape the sound of music anywhere these days. People can't seem to get on without their background noise.

Anybody remember silence?

The sound of the loon might well be the most curious – if not the most thrilling – birdcall in nature.

Vaguely yodel-like, it is a comforting call...but it is also slightly frightening, slightly otherworldly.

The loon is the state bird of Minnesota. Its call is infinitely more interesting than the din of the other loons that Minnesota keeps in its legislature.

Some years ago, I was invited to a party in Cologne by two American girls. Most of the guests were Americans, so we talked English all the time.
I was introduced to a boy called Steve, and I said to him, »You sound rather British, Steve.« His reply was, »That's because I am rather British.«

There is no such thing for us as silence. The body is a medium for propagating the waves generated by the functioning of the neural and circulatory systems. There is music already woven in the bones.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. (Douglas Adams)