High Pitched Voice Quotes

No. No!” he says. “I . . .” He looks wildly around the room. For inspiration? For divine intervention? I don’t know. “You can’t go. Ana, I love you!” “I love you, too, Christian, it’s just—” “No . . . no!” he says in desperation and puts both hands on his head. “Christian . . .” “No,” he breathes, his eyes wide with panic, and suddenly he drops to his knees in front of me, head bowed, long-fingered hands spread out on his thighs. He takes a deep breath and doesn’t move. What? “Christian, what are you doing?” He continues to stare down, not looking at me. “Christian! What are you doing?” My voice is high-pitched. He doesn’t move. “Christian, look at me!” I command in panic. His head sweeps up without hesitation, and he regards me passively with his cool gray gaze—he’s almost serene . . . expectant. Holy Fuck . . . Christian. The submissive.

I've been waiting a long time to run tests on someone like you, " he said to Daemon, voice high-pitched. Daemon arched a brow. "Another fanboy. I have them everywhere." I muttered, "Only you would see that as a good thing." He shot me a grin.

I g-g-guess...I'm dead?" she heard her own voice call out, strangely high-pitched and thin. For a long time, she heard nothing else. And then: "Hi, Dead. I'm Dan.

Now for God's sake, will you two start behaving like a princess and a Courier?" Halt told them. "If you don't, I'll have to think about sending Will home.' 'Me?' Will said, his voice breaking into a high-pitched squeak of indignation. 'What's it got to do with me?' 'It's all your fault!' Halt shouted irrationally.

Thorne’s voice pitched high in imitation of the queen. “The impostor of my beloved niece is vanquished … Let us put this messiness behind us while we go forward with the coronations … I am a psychotic, power-hungry nut basket and my breath smells really bad under this veil.

You have to tell him ‘go toodles, Bits, go toodles for momma,’” I said, pitching my voice high in imitation, “or else he won’t go.” Blane looked at me. “I’m not doing that,” he said flatly. “But then he’ll go on the bed,” I protested. “How about I just point my gun at him,” he deadpanned.

George!' [Horace] said, the relief evident in his voice. 'Are you all right?' 'No! I am not!' George replied with considerable spirit. 'I have a whacking great arrow stuck through my arm and it hurts like the very dickens! How could anybody be all right in those circumstances?'... 'You saved my life, George,' Horace said gently... George grimaced. 'Well, if I'd known it was going to hurt like this, I wouldn't have! I would have just let them shoot you! Why do you live this way?' he demanded in a high-pitched voice. 'How can you bear it? This sort of thing is very, very painful. I always suspected that warriors are crazy. Now I know.

Fern didn’t think she was good enough for you then, and you don’t think you’re good enough for her now. And both of you are wrong…and so stupid! Stuuupiiiid!” Bailey dragged the word out in disgust. “I’m ugly! I’m not worthy of love, waaa!” Bailey mimicked them in a whiny, high-pitched voice, and then shook his head as if he was thoroughly disappointed.

No, I’m surprised he didn’t say goodbye.” “Well, of course he didn’t say goodbye.” Heather put down her mug. “You would have convinced him to stay.” “That’s not true.” “Oh, please.” Heather rolled her eyes. “You would have been like Oh, Tristan, please don’t go. Stay with me so I can crush on you and giggle at everything you say.” Heather nodded. “That’s what it would have been like. In that high-pitched voice and everything.

So initiate us," Claire said, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes in challenge. "Make us priests and priestesses of Apollo." "Say that again," Jason said, turning to Claire. He was so stunned there was almost no expression on his face. "That's the plan you've been working on for the past two days? The one you told us not to worry about?" Matt asked in an increasingly high-pitched voice. "Yup.

Grace: Outside, deep in the woods, I heard a long keening wail, and then another, as the wolves began to howl. More voices pitched in, some low and mournful, others high and short, an eerie and beautiful chorus. I knew my wolf's howl; his rich tone sang out above others as if begging me to hear it. My heart ached inside me, torn between wanting them to stop and wishing they would go on for ever. I imagined myself there among them in the golden woods, watching them tilt their heads back and howl underneath a sky of endless stars. I blinked a tear away, feeling foolish and miserable, but I didn't go to sleep until every wolf had fallen silent.

Oh! Do you have a pocketknife?" He narrowed his eyes at me. "Pocketknife?" "Don't men your age always have pocketknives?" I asked in a high-pitched voice. "My age? I'm not a fucking grandfather," he snapped.

My problem is that I want to smoke the cigar and for someone else to light it. I want to blow out smoke. Like a volcano. Like a monster. I want to fume. I do not want to be the girl whose job it is to wail in a high-pitched voice at funerals.

Would you please just talk to me? Please?" Sally's voice was beginning to take on a high-pitched whine. "Oh, good grief. For the love of healthy ears everywhere, quit your belly aching," Jen snapped, the clothes in her hands growing more wrinkled by the second. "Sally, there is nothing to talk about, okay? It is what it is." Sally threw her hands up in the air as she exhaled loudly. "No, it is not what it is, whatever the hell that means. It's a whole freaking lot more complicated than 'it is what it is.

She [Anita] turns back to Raffe, her face melting into a radiant smile. She puts her hand on his arm as he’s about to take off his pants. And that’s all the excuse I need. I grab the sudsy shirt out of the gray water and throw it at her. It makes a plop noise when it lands on her face, wrapping around her hair. Her perfect hair clumps into a stringy mass, and her mascara smears as the cloth slides wetly down her blouse. She emits a high-pitched squeal that turns every head within earshot. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say in a sugary voice. “Did you not like that? I thought that’s what you wanted. I mean, why else would you be putting your paws on my man?

There are two basic types of panicking: standing still and no saying a world, and leaping all over the place babbling anything that come into your head. Mr. Poe was the leaping-and-babbling king. Klaus and Sunny had never seen the banker move so quickly or talk in such a high pitched voice. 'Goodness!' he cried. 'Golly! Good God! Blessed Allah! Zeus and Hera! Mary and Joseph! Nathaniel Hawthorne! Don't touch her! Grab her! Move closer! Run away! Don't move! Kill the snake! Leave it alone! Give it some food! Don't let it bite her!Lure the snake away! Here, snakey! Here, snakey snakey!

(If you read this story out loud, please use the following voices: ME: as a child, high-pitched, forgettable; as a woman, the same. THE BOY WHO WILL GROW INTO A MAN, AND BE MY SPOUSE: robust with serendipity. MY FATHER: kind, booming; like your father, or the man you wish was your father. MY SON: as a small child, gentle, sounding with the faintest of lisps; as a man, like my husband. ALL OTHER WOMEN: interchangeable with my own.)

Sam grabbed one of Jericho's Civil War soldier figurines and held it up to his mouth. "Oh, Jericho," he said in a high-pitched voice. "Take me in your arms, you big he-man, you!

Her voice is still pitched high, thanks to her youth, but it has a certain incipient darkness to it, a low richness that will mature in the coming years to the smoky tones of a priestess or a queen -- a woman of great natural power.

Rocky!' A crackle. My ears perk up. 'Rocky?!' 'Grace, question?' 'Yes!' I've never been so happy to hear a few musical notes! 'Yeah, buddy! It's me!' 'You are here, question?!' his voice is so high-pitched I can barely understand him. But I understand Eridian pretty well now. 'Yes! I'm here!' 'You are...' he squeaks. 'You...' he squeaks again. 'You are here!' 'Yes! Set up the airlock tunnel!' 'Warning! Taumoeba-82.5 is-' 'I know! I know. It can get through xeonite. That's why I'm here. I knew you'd be in trouble.' 'You save me!' 'Yes. I caught the Taumoeba in time. I still have fuel. Set up the tunnel. I'm taking you to Erid.' 'You save me and you save Erid!' he squeaks. 'Set up the damn tunnel!' 'Get back in you ship! Unless you want to look at tunnel from outside!' 'Oh, right!

Oh God,” I cry, trying to keep my voice down but failing miserably. “Can you see him, baby? Ask him for forgiveness.” “Why?” I pant, another high-pitched moan nearly swallowing the word. “Because you worship me now.

These attitudes, assumptions and prejudices are hard-wired into us: not into our brains (there is no neurological reason for us to hear low-pitched voices as more authoritative than high-pitched ones), but into our culture, our language and millennia of our history.

The death squad shot forward at close to forty G, and I imagined them yelling “Wheee!” in high-pitched minion voices.

Its best to turn to no one, to seek to please no one, as if there were only oneself in the world. The pleasure of others is a by-product after all, and if ever the whispering voices are allowed to crowd out the one voice, the result is this...a sort of high-pitched silliness, a terrible silliness.

You speak of eternal life. You speak of indulging the mind and body,” said Abe. “But what of the soul?” “And what use is a soul to a creature that shall never die?” Abe couldn’t help but smile. Here was a strange little man with a strange way of seeing things. Only the second living man he’d ever met who knew the truth of vampires. He drank to excess and spoke in an irritating, high-​pitched voice. It was hard not to like him. “I begin to suspect,” said Abe, “that you would like to be one of them.” Poe laughed at the suggestion. “Is not our existence long and miserable enough?” he asked, laughing. “Who in God’s name would seek to prolong it?

The silence was gone now, and the night was filled with voices—a chirp, a growl, a twitter—a burst of high-pitched laughter.

Whatever mischief you're up to, I'll be there for it. Besides, someone must ensure that you behave like a lady." I skittered to a stop. "Like a lady? Which is how exactly?" My voice was shrill. He had picked a poor moment to antagonize me. "Biddable." "Biddable? Biddable!" Somehow my pitch was even screechier than before. I kicked my bottom high and dipped my chest low-a perfect display of the Grecian bend. "It it's a camel you wish to have,sir,then you are on the wrong continent!

Stupid Chinese," muttered Bryce, "can't they make anything simple?" "Don't diss the Chinese just because they are smarter than you. It's unbecoming," Caedan said with a laugh. Bryce mimicked his brother in a high-pitched voice. "Don't be an ass, how about that?" he grumbled.

How strange, this habit of weeping. Do animals weep? Surely they feel sadness—but do they express it with tears? He doubts it. He has never heard of a weeping cat or dog, or of a weeping wild animal. It seems to be a uniquely human trait. He doesn’t see what purpose it serves. He weeps hard, even violently, and at the end of it, what? Desolate tiredness. A handkerchief soaked in tears and mucus. Red eyes for everyone to notice. And weeping is undignified. It lies beyond the tutorials of etiquette and remains a personal idiom, individual in its expression. The twist of face, quantity of tears, quality of sob, pitch of voice, volume of clamour, effect on the complexion, the play of hands, the posture taken: One discovers weeping—one’s weeping personality—only upon weeping. It is a strange discovery, not only to others but to oneself. Resolve

Cavendish is a book in himself. Born into a life of sumptuous privilege- his grandfathers were dukes, respectively, of Devonshire and Kent- he was the most gifted English scientist of his age, but also the strangest. He suffered, in the words of one of his few biographers, from shyness to a "degree bordering on disease." Any human contact was for him a source of the deepest discomfort. Once he opened his door to find an Austrian admirer, freshly arrived from Vienna, on the front step. Excitedly the Austrian began to babble out praise. For a few moments Cavendish received the compliments as if they were blows from a blunt object and then, unable to take any more, fled down the path and out the gate, leaving the front door wide open. It was some hours before he could be coaxed back to the property. Even his housekeeper communicated with him by letter. Although he did sometimes venture into society- he was particularly devoted to the weekly scientific soirees of the great naturalist Sir Joseph Banks- it was always made clear to the other guests that Cavendish was on no account to be approached or even looked at. Those who sought his views were advised to wander into his vicinity as if by accident and to "talk as it were into vacancy." If their remarks were scientifically worthy they might receive a mumbled reply, but more often than not they would hear a peeved squeak (his voice appears to have been high pitched) and turn to find an actual vacancy and the sight of Cavendish fleeing for a more peaceful corner.

Greyson is gone.” A high-pitched ringing started in my ears. “Dead?” I asked, not at all ashamed at the tiny bit of hope that leaked into my voice. “No. Escaped. He’ll be hunting you.” With that as the option, I liked dead better.

The way to whistle for a horse is to purse your lips together loosely, blow moderately hard and sing "Whee-oo! Whee-oo! Whee-oo!" in a high-pitched voice. Try it. You can do it.

Discussing it later, many of us felt we suffered a mental dislocation at that moment, which only grew worse through the course of the remaining deaths. The prevailing symptom of this state was an inability to recall any sound. Truck doors slammed silently; Lux's mouth screamed silently; and the street, the creaking tree limbs, the streetlight clicking different colors, the electric buzz of the pedestrian crossing box - all these usually clamorous voices hushes, or had begun shrieking at a pitch too high for us to hear, though they sent chills up our spines. Sound returned only once Lux had gone. Televisions erupted with canned laughter. Fathers splashed, soaking aching backs.

(Dominic after winning King & Queen contest at Prom along with Tess) “You like me, you really like me!” he said in a mock high-pitched voice, channeling his inner Sally Fields. “First of all, I have to thank my first grade teacher, what was her name? Mrs. Johnson? Nichols? Jameson? Prescott? Yeah, that was it. Man, I had such a crush on her. Even at five, I had awesome taste in women—just look at Tess. Isn’t she banging? Anyway, I need to thank Mrs. Pentecostal, because she told me I’d never win anything, and that hurt, man. But I guess I showed her. So take that, Mrs. Presley!

The Headmaster told Professor Flitwick that this was, indeed, a secret and delicate matter of which he had already been informed, and that he did not think pressing it at this time would help me or anyone. Professor Flitwick started to say something about the Headmaster's usual plotting going much too far, and I had to interrupt at that point and explain that it had been my own idea and not anything the Headmaster forced me into, so Professor Flitwick spun around and started lecturing me, and the Headmaster interrupted him and said that as the Boy-Who-Lived I was doomed to have weird and dangerous adventures so I was safer if I got into them on purpose instead of waiting for them to happen by accident, and that was when Professor Flitwick threw up his little hands and started shrieking in a high-pitched voice at both of us about how he didn't care what we were cooking up together, but this wasn't ever to happen again for as long as I was in Ravenclaw House or he would have me thrown out and I could go to Gryffindor which was where all this Dumbledoring belonged -

I shall never forget when Dudjom Rinpoche, in a moment of intimacy, leaned toward me and said in his soft, hoarse, slightly high-pitched voice: “You know, don’t you, that actually all these things around us go away, just go away . . .” With

Hey, what are you doing with your hand?”   Eli’s voice came out high pitched in surprise, as she clutched at Rafe’s shoulders. “It’s the best place for leverage if you’re going to make that ladder.” “My ass?  Really?” “What can I say, I’ve done the math, factored in the weight and height ratios and your ass is definitely where I will gain the most leverage in lifting you.

He was full of impersonations that evening, and he pitched his voice high and tremulous. It's what Col did when he didn't understand something—he made it ridiculous and brought it down to an acceptable level; crotch height, usually, so he could piss on it.

Falco wagged her journal in front of her. "This is yours, I presume." A slow smile spread across his face. "Let's find out exactly what you've been doing, shall we?" "Give it back!" Cass reached for the journal, but Falco easily dodged her. He opened the leather-bound book to a random page and cleared his throat. Clutching a hand to his chest, he pretended to read aloud in a high-pitched voice. "Oh, how I love the way his fingers explore my soft flesh. The way his eyes see into my very soul." This time, Cass managed to snatch the book out of his hands. "That is not what it says." "I guess that means you won't be keeping me warm tonight?

Something started thumping rhythmically against the door. Julianne hiccoughed and stared in horror, fearing whoever was in there would fling it open. A man grunted again and again. Georgette frowned. "Is he ill?" The door thumped harder. A woman started making repetitive high-pitched noises, sounding like a squealing pig. Julianne frowned. "What are they—hic—doing?" "We must leave," Anne whispered. The thumping turned into banging, and the man's grunting grew louder. "Feel my mighty sword." "He has a sword?" Georgette asked. The woman behind the door screamed. Georgette gasped. "He killed her." "I'm coming," the man said. "Not inside me," the woman said in a curt voice. "I don't want a brat." Julianne dropped the candle and clapped her hand over her mouth. She'd thought a bed was required. As she stared at the door, she tried to figure out how the amorous couple had managed, but she failed.

So, ah, who’s the lucky girl?” Sam asked, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. When Jericho ignored him, Sam grabbed one of Jericho’s Civil War soldier figurines and held it up to his mouth. “Oh, Jericho,” he said in a high-pitched voice. “Take me in your arms, you big he-man, you!” “Please put General Meade back in Gettysburg. You’re changing the course of the war. And it’s just a date.

A scream is a sound we make that is born of intense feeling. A scream of fear, of being startled, is often high-pitched. It may be short or prolonged. A scream may also accompany delight or amusement, though often that is more of a squeal. And a scream of sorrow or rage ... well, that is an entirely different thing. That comes from a darker place, from the depths of our souls, and when we scream in those times, because we are sad or angry, there is a terrible knowledge that accompanies it, that we are giving voice to our emotions, to what is simply too big for our hearts to contain. And as Li Wei cries out, I know Feng Ji is right. It is his heart I am hearing, a way of expressing what he feels over his father's loss that is both primal and beautiful, and it comes from his soul and reaches something within mine. It is the sound my own heart made when my parents died, only I didn't know it until now.

Aristotle tells us that the high-pitched voice of the female is one evidence of her evil disposition, for creatures who are brave or just (like lions, bulls, roosters and the human male) have large deep voices…. High vocal pitch goes together with talkativeness to characterize a person who is deviant from or deficient in the masculine ideal of self-control. Women, catamites, eunuchs and androgynes fall into this category. Their sounds are bad to hear and make men uncomfortable…. Putting a door on the female mouth has been an important project of patriarchal culture from antiquity to the present day. Its chief tactic is an ideological association of female sound with monstrosity, disorder and death…. Woman is that creature who puts the inside on the outside. By projections and leakages of all kinds—somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual—females expose or expend what should be kept in…. [As Plutarch comments,] “…she should as modestly guard against exposing her voice to outsiders as she would guard against stripping off her clothes. For in her voice as she is blabbering away can be read her emotions, her character and her physical condition.”… Every sound we make is a bit of autobiography. It has a totally private interior yet its trajectory is public. A piece of inside projected to the outside. The censorship of such projections is a task of patriarchal culture that (as we have seen) divides humanity into two species: those who can censor themselves and those who cannot…. It is an axiom of ancient Greek and Roman medical theory and anatomical discussion that a woman has two mouths. The orifice through which vocal activity takes place and the orifice through which sexual activity takes place are both denoted by the wordstoma in Greek (os in Latin) with the addition of adverbs ano and kato to differentiate upper mouth from lower mouth. Both the vocal and the genital mouth are connected to the body by the neck (auchen in Greek, cervix in Latin). Both mouths provide access to a hollow cavity which is guarded by lips that are best kept closed.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

Why do the strings make different sounds, Maestro?” “It is simple. They work like life.” “I don’t understand.” “The first string is E. It is high pitched and quick like a child. “The second string is B. It is pitched slightly lower, like the squeaky voice of a teenager. “The third string, G, is deeper, with the power of a young man. “The fourth string, D, is robust, a man at full strength. “The fifth string, A, is solid and loud but unable to reach high tones, like a man who can no longer do what he did.” “And the sixth string, Maestro?” “The sixth is the low E, the thickest, slowest, and grumpiest. You hear how deep? Dum-dum-dum. Like it is ready to die.” “Is that because it is closest to heaven?” “No, Francisco. It is because life will always drag you to the bottom.” Frankie

Sophia," he said softly. "Come here." She ignored the command and fled, her high-pitched voice floating behind her. "I'll return soon..." Despite his acute frustration, Ross could not prevent a rumble of moody laughter in his chest. "Go, then," he said, dropping his head back on the pillow. "You can't avoid me forever.

I have another secret,” he said, his voice still soft. “I’ve been keeping it for years and these past few weeks have made it hard to hold on to.” “What is it?” I whispered. There must’ve been a full minute of silence, crickets chirping, water flowing, cicadas high-pitched echoing, before he said, “I’m in love with you.

Yeah?’ Alfie yelled, his voice high-pitched and hysterical. ‘You hear that? That’s me! Alfie Walker. Yeah? And I’m cleverer than you dumb bitches! You stupid ugly farts. Yeah, knock on the door all you like – you ain’t coming in. And, if you do, I’ll split you with my knife. I’ll rip your rotten guts out. I’ll kick your brains up

They don't sleep here." My brow furrows. "How do you know?" "I just know," he says. "I can tell by looking at it." Before I can ask him any more, the curtain in the living room moves. The door yanks open, my mother appearing, eyes wide. She looks frantic. "Karissa," she shouts, her voice high-pitched, full of panic. "Oh God. Get away from him, sweetie." I blink a few times, caught off guard, as Naz slips his arms around me, pulling me flush against him. One arm encircles my waist as his other settles along my chest,

I’m cooooommming!!” a loud, high-pitch voice whined, scraping against the bones of my inner ears.

What I want, Uncle,” I said, my voice still registering the clear, high pitch of a boy who had not yet hit puberty, “is revenge.

 ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’ ” he said in a high-pitched voice. “I believe this government cannot endure,

I hate you.” “Hate you too, Kitty Cat. So very much.” The nickname made me forget my comeback. “What? No don’t call me that?” he said in a high-pitched, nasally voice. “I don’t sound like that.” “That’s the way all women sound to me.” “You’re such a pig.” “You mean faerie prince.” “More like woodland swine.” He chuckled. “It’s so easy to rile you up. So easy.

Why is my voice so high-pitched when I cry? I run at my leaky nose.... “When everyone was licking on me at school when I was little, it was Johnny who came with his buddies to check on me. Johnny bought me my Turtles. Johnny took me to the movies. Johnny gave me his clothes. Johnny let me play hockey outside with him. Johnny cut my hair. Johnny—“ Now I have the hiccups.

There were days she lived at such a high pitch of emotion she couldn’t remember any details. Whole sections of her life were blank. Only his face made an impact. Only his voice reached her ears.

judgement and a ridiculously high-pitched voice, along with Marilyn Monroe hair and skimpy clothing. Let’s face it: What horror-movie buff didn’t secretly want the sexiest girl to die a gruesome death?

So, deep in the hood, there was a girl named “Cinderkeisha”, and her mom had just married this man with two daughters named “Hoodfina” and “Ghettoesha”.  Cinderkeisha didn’t like her stepsister Hoodfina and Ghettoesha, because they were mean to her and always wanted her to clean up their shit, but Cinderkeisha said “hell nawl; I don’t do nothing for free.” I left out of the room when he said the last part in a high pitch girly voice, as he rolled his neck making

At the edge of the lake, they swung him like a bundle … “Heave-ho! Kill him!” they shouted in their harsh, high-pitched voices, some of which still sounded childlike. When Philippe fell into the water he was still alive. Out of a sense of self-preservation, or a final burst of courage, he managed to remain at the edge of the lake; he clutched the branch of a tree with both hands and tried hard to keep his head above water. His battered face was red, swollen and grotesque.

A year or so earlier I had been to the Sky River Rock Festival in rural Washington, where a dosen stone-broke freaks from Seattle Liberation Front had assembled a sound system that carried every small note of an acoustic guitar - even a cough or the sound of a boot drooping on the stage - to half-deaf acid victims huddled under bushes a half mile away. But the best technicians available to the National DAs' convention in Vegas apparently couldn't handle it. Their sound system looked like something Ulysses S. Grant might have triggered up to addres his troops during the Siege of Vicksburg. The voices from up front crackled with a fuzzy, high-pitched urgency, and the delay was just enough to keep the words disconcertingly out of phaze with the speaker's gestures. (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, p. 73)

I suppose she was pretty-at least everyone seemed to think so-but her mouth was small and ungenerous, and her eyes was hard. Her voice was high-pitched and always rather breathless, and she lisped slightly. The quality of her voice was childlike, innocent, and that was a deception worthy of the Serpent in Eden.

Why was it that when she heard Granny ramble on about witchcraft she longed for the cutting magic of wizardry, but whenever she heard Treatle speak in his high-pitched voice she would fight to the death for witchcraft? She’d be both, or none at all. And the more they intended to stop her, the more she wanted it.

The cousin has blond hair with black roots, overly plucked eyebrows, a heart-shaped face, and a high-pitched voice like Michael Jackson. She wears a low-cut top and a push-up bra, which creates a small, sad shelf for her name necklace to rest. Her name is Maria. In the middle of mozzarella sticks, they run out of conversation.

American voices, country voices, high-pitched and without mercy. He lies freezing, wondering if the bedsprings will give him away. For possibly the first time he is hearing America as it must sound to a non-American. Later he will recall that what surprised him most was the fanaticism, the reliance not just on flat force but on the rightness of what they planned to do…he’d been told long ago to expect this sort of thing from Nazis, and especially from Japs—we were the ones who always played fair—but this pair outside the door now are as demoralizing as a close-up of John Wayne (the angle emphasizing how slanted his eyes are, funny you never noticed before) screaming “BANZAI!

treat every warm call as though it’s the coldest one you ever made. When emotions run hot and heavy in negotiations, the high-pitched voice is a sure sign of need. The rushed delivery is another sure sign. While needy negotiators raise their voices, negotiators under control lower their voices. So lower your voice in times of inner turmoil. Slow down.

Lorelei It is no night to drown in: A full moon, river lapsing Black beneath bland mirror-sheen, The blue water-mists dropping Scrim after scrim like fishnets Though fishermen are sleeping, The massive castle turrets Doubling themselves in a glass All stillness. Yet these shapes float Up toward me, troubling the face Of quiet. From the nadir They rise, their limbs ponderous With richness, hair heavier Than sculptured marble. They sing Of a world more full and clear Than can be. Sisters, your song Bears a burden too weighty For the whorled ear's listening Here, in a well-steered country, Under a balanced ruler. Deranging by harmony Beyond the mundane order, Your voices lay siege. You lodge On the pitched reefs of nightmare, Promising sure harborage; By day, descant from borders Of hebetude, from the ledge Also of high windows. Worse Even than your maddening Song, your silence. At the source Of your ice-hearted calling- Drunkenness of the great depths. O river, I see drifting Deep in your flux of silver Those great goddesses of peace. Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

As a warm-up, Lambiase sets up A.J. with his cousin. The cousin has blond hair with black roots, overly plucked eyebrows, a heart-shaped face, and a high-pitched voice like Michael Jackson. She wears a low-cut top and a push-up bra, which creates a small, sad shelf for her name necklace to rest. Her name is Maria. In the middle of mozzarella sticks, they run out of conversation.

Did you see Octavia? MESSENGER Yes, revered Queen. CLEOPATRA Where? MESSENGER In Rome, Madam. I saw her face as she walked with her brother and Mark Antony. CLEOPATRA Is she as tall as I am? MESSENGER She is not, madam. CLEOPATRA Did you hear her speak? Is her voice pitched high or low? MESSENGER Madam, I heard her speak. She has a low-pitched voice. CLEOPATRA That’s not so good. He cannot like her long. MESSENGER Like her? Oh, Isis, that’s impossible. CLEOPATRA You’re right. Charmian, she’s both dull-spoken and dwarfishly little.—Did she carry herself with majesty? Compare her to any memory you might have of royalty. MESSENGER She creeps along. Moving or standing still, her bearing is about the same. She has a body, not a life. She’s more like a statue than a living, breathing human being. CLEOPATRA Is this true? MESSENGER If not, then I have no powers of observation. CHARMIAN There aren’t three people in all of Egypt who could do better. CLEOPATRA He’s very observant. I can tell. She doesn’t have anything going for her so far. This messenger is wise. CLEOPATRA (to MESSENGER ) How old do you think she is? MESSENGER She was a widow previously, madam CLEOPATRA A widow? Do you hear that, Charmian? MESSENGER And I think she’s at least thirty. CLEOPATRA Do you remember her face? Was it long or round? MESSENGER Round enough to be unattractive. CLEOPATRA Usually that means a person is foolish. What color is her hair? MESSENGER Brown, madam, and her forehead As low as she would wish it.

Orvil mainly listens to powwow music. There's something in the energy of that big booming drum, in the intensity of the singing, like an urgency that feels specifically Indian. He likes the power the sound of a chorus of voices makes too, those high-pitched wailed harmonies, how you can't tell how many singers there are, and how sometimes it sounds like ten singers, sometimes like a hundred.

It wouldn't have been surprising if the girl suddenly stamped her foot and began: "Comrades! Allow me to summarize the achievements which . . . ," and so forth, because we have exemplary children who can make two-hour speeches with forlorn diligence. But the Young Pioneer from Roaring Springs took the bull by the horns with her little hands and belted out, in a funny, high-pitched voice: "Long live the Five-Year Plan!

The children had become wriggly and giggly, almost as if they were drunk. They seemed unable to sit still. They were sliding of their chairs, constantly knocking cutlery onto the floor, and talking in high-pitched voices over the top of one another. Alice didn't know if this was normal behavior or not. It wasn't exactly relaxing. Nick had his jaw clenched, as if this dinner were a horrible medical procedure he had to endure.

High-pitched sounds are the hardest for me to hear. Sienna has a moderately high voice, so it’s difficult for me to grasp her meaning when she talks, even if there are no competing auditory distractions. I can hear her speaking, but I miss too many words. With so many people in one room talking at the same time, the background noise makes hearing her impossible. And since she’s turned toward Jelena, I can’t even read her lips.

I came to love the way Morrie lit up when I entered the room. He did this for many people, I know, but it was his special talent to make each visitor feel that the smile was unique. “Ahhhh, it’s my buddy,” he would say when he saw me, in that foggy, high-pitched voice. And it didn’t stop with the greeting. When Morrie was with you, he was really with you. He looked you straight in the eye, and he listened as if you were the only person in the world. How much better would people get along if their first encounter each day were like this—instead of a grumble from a waitress or a bus driver or a boss? “I believe in being fully present,” Morrie said. “That means you should be with the person you’re with. When I’m talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what’s coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another Koppel show, or about what medications I’m taking. “I am talking to you. I am thinking about you.” I remembered how he used to teach this idea in the Group Process class back at Brandeis. I had scoffed back then, thinking this was hardly a lesson plan for a university course. Learning to pay attention? How important could that be? I now know it is more important than almost everything they taught us in college.

This one guy Roland was so weird that during sex his voice altered—as if he were a fucking alien—and he started talking like a baby in a bizarre high-pitched voice. He’d start screaming shit like, “I just want to fuck my baby! I’m your baby! Will you be my baby? Baby? Baby?” For one thing, he couldn’t decide whether he was the baby or the daddy. Make up your mind, freak. I had to force myself out from under him and flee the apartment undressed, clutching my clothes.

I don't know what's happening to me," she says, blinking through a veil of tears as she looks everywhere but at me. "I don't think I can do this anymore." My heart plummets inside my chest, my lips still hovering over hers, my hands on her waist "do what anymore?" I don't want the answer, don't want to hear what follows my question, don't want to lose her. "Fight it." Tears are still flowing from her eyes, but I think she stop crying. She sucks and several breaths when she looks at me, her eyes are clear that I anticipated. She's scared shitless - that's clear - but it's like she stop fighting the fear, giving into it instead. Her lips apart and I'm a stop whatever she's about to say, silence her with my lips, but I don't, forcing myself to hear, needing to know what's got all worked up. "I think I'm in love with you," she says, her chest heaving with every ravenous breath she takes, yet her voice is astonishingly even and she manages to maintain my gaze. My voice however is the exact opposite of even, coming out all high-pitched like I'm a thirteen year old and going through puberty all over again. "What?" She sucks and a breath, then releases is slowly, the fear in her eyes subsiding, as if she just won it. "I think I'm in love with you..." She bites on your lips and shakes her head. "No...I don't think. I know." I gradually process her words and the full extent of what she's saying. I think I'd honestly believed that she might never say them, that this love thing was going to be a one-way street. Hearing her say it... I don't even know how to describe it. It's like my entire life of associated the word with hatred. Every time my mother said it, it felt like she was trying to take something from me and it made me hate her and myself-Love equaled hate for me. But hearing it from Violet's lips, seeing that look in her eyes, the one I've never seen from anyone, is so different. She's not taking something for me right now, she's giving me something. She's giving me everything.

From the mouthpiece came a humming, the likes of which K. had never heard on the telephone before. It was as though the humming of countless childlike voices — but it wasn't humming either, it was singing, the singing of the most distant, of the most utterly distant, voices — as though a single, high-pitched yet strong voice had emerged out of this humming in some quite impossible way and now drummed against one's ears as if demanding to penetrate more deeply into something other than one's wretched hearing.

On December 10, Detective Bill McGowen startled the Ransacker outside of the house; the suspect vaulted a fence and a chase ensued. When McGowen fired a warning shot the suspect gestured in surrender. “Oh my God, don’t hurt me,” he squeaked in an oddly mannered, high-pitched voice. “See? My hands are up!” The baby-faced man turned slightly, sneakily, and drew a gun from his coat pocket, promptly firing it at McGowen. McGowen fell backward and things suddenly went dark. The bullet had struck the officer’s flashlight.

I would walk round that beautiful, unspoilt little island, with its population of under a hundred and where there isn’t a single tarmac road, thinking about how he would truly sound. Perhaps the quietness of the island helped me do so. ‘Everybody thinks he’s French,’ I said to myself as I walked across the great stones that littered the beach at Rushy Bay, or stomped over the tussocky grass of Heathy Hill, with its famous dwarf pansies. ‘The only reason people think Poirot is French is because of his accent,’ I muttered. ‘But he’s Belgian, and I know that French-speaking Belgians don’t sound French, not a bit of it.’" "I also was well aware of Brian Eastman’s advice to me before I left for Bryher: ‘Don’t forget, he may have an accent, but the audience must be able to understand exactly what he’s saying.’ There was my problem in a nutshell." "To help me, I managed to get hold of a set of Belgian Walloon and French radio recordings from the BBC. Poirot came from Liège in Belgium and would have spoken Belgian French, the language of 30 per cent of the country’s population, rather than Walloon, which is very much closer to the ordinary French language. To these I added recordings of English-language stations broadcasting from Belgium, as well as English-language programmes from Paris. My principal concern was to give my Poirot a voice that would ring true, and which would also be the voice of the man I heard in my head when I read his stories. I listened for hours, and then gradually started mixing Walloon Belgian with French, while at the same time slowly relocating the sound of his voice in my body, moving it from my chest to my head, making it sound a little more high-pitched, and yes, a little more fastidious. After several weeks, I finally began to believe that I’d captured it: this was what Poirot would have sounded like if I’d met him in the flesh. This was how he would have spoken to me – with that characteristic little bow as we shook hands, and that little nod of the head to the left as he removed his perfectly brushed grey Homburg hat. The more I heard his voice in my head, and added to my own list of his personal characteristics, the more determined I became never to compromise in my portrayal of Poirot.

Imagine you live on a planet where the dominant species is far more intellectually sophisticated than human beings but often keeps humans as companion animals. They are called the Gorns. They communicate with each other via a complex combination of telepathy, eye movements & high-pitched squeaks, all completely unintelligible & unlearnable by humans, whose brains are prepared for verbal language acquisition only. Humans sometimes learn the meaning of individual sounds by repeated association with things of relevance to them. The Gorns & humans bond strongly but there are many Gorn rules that humans must try to assimilate with limited information & usually high stakes. You are one of the lucky humans who lives with the Gorns in their dwelling. Many other humans are chained to small cabanas in the yard or kept in outdoor pens of varying size. They are so socially starved they cannot control their emotions when a Gorn goes near them. The Gorns agree that they could never be House-Humans. The dwelling you share with your Gorn family is filled with water-filled porcelain bowls.Every time you try to urinate in one,nearby Gorn attack you. You learn to only use the toilet when there are no Gorns present. Sometimes they come home & stuff your head down the toilet for no apparent reason. You hate this & start sucking up to the Gorns when they come home to try & stave this off but they view this as evidence of your guilt. You are also punished for watching videos, reading books, talking to other human beings, eating pizza or cheesecake, & writing letters. These are all considered behavior problems by the Gorns. To avoid going crazy, once again you wait until they are not around to try doing anything you wish to do. While they are around, you sit quietly, staring straight ahead. Because they witness this good behavior you are so obviously capable of, they attribute to “spite” the video watching & other transgressions that occur when you are alone. Obviously you resent being left alone, they figure. You are walked several times a day and left crossword puzzle books to do. You have never used them because you hate crosswords; the Gorns think you’re ignoring them out of revenge. Worst of all, you like them. They are, after all, often nice to you. But when you smile at them, they punish you, likewise for shaking hands. If you apologize they punish you again. You have not seen another human since you were a small child. When you see one you are curious, excited & afraid. You really don’t know how to act. So, the Gorn you live with keeps you away from other humans. Your social skills never develop. Finally, you are brought to “training” school. A large part of the training consists of having your air briefly cut off by a metal chain around your neck. They are sure you understand every squeak & telepathic communication they make because sometimes you get it right. You are guessing & hate the training. You feel pretty stressed out a lot of the time. One day, you see a Gorn approaching with the training collar in hand. You have PMS, a sore neck & you just don’t feel up to the baffling coercion about to ensue. You tell them in your sternest voice to please leave you alone & go away. The Gorns are shocked by this unprovoked aggressive behavior. They thought you had a good temperament. They put you in one of their vehicles & take you for a drive. You watch the attractive planetary landscape going by & wonder where you are going. You are led into a building filled with the smell of human sweat & excrement. Humans are everywhere in small cages. Some are nervous, some depressed, most watch the goings on on from their prisons. Your Gorns, with whom you have lived your entire life, hand you over to strangers who drag you to a small room. You are terrified & yell for your Gorn family to help you. They turn & walk away.You are held down & given a lethal injection. It is, after all, the humane way to do it.

Since we’re already talking about this bullshit, why don’t I go on? When you want to be a woman, follow my advice. Speak in a thin, pretty voice. It has to be high-pitched. Try pushing it up into your nose. Cover your mouth when you laugh. Press down firmly and neatly when writing. Grow your hair to your shoulders. Curls are discouraged. Flap your wrists often. Show enthusiasm about grocery shopping and cooking. Beef up your cooking skills. Be unfailingly kind to others—especially men. Use your charm to get out of danger. Fall in love with a man. Eat very little. Even if you really want to finish it, leave some on your plate. Make sure you attain a slim figure and maintain it for your whole life. Play dumb, with no regard for your actual intelligence. Disparage your driving. Be chatty. Try your best to sincerely enjoy cleaning and doing laundry. Think of weakness as a virtue, and let your strength rot away. Wear makeup even in your dreams. Wear bright clothing. Conceal your sexual appetite, and take it to your grave. Become shyness incarnate. . . . There’s a fuckton more where that all comes from. I just couldn’t write it all down. To act the part of a woman, you’ve got to memorize a hefty script. Men should do the opposite. Just don’t act like a woman.

A dachshund came out of the bushes. Ruzena's father extended his pole toward him, but the dog alertly evaded it and ran over to the boy, who lifted him up and hugged him. Other old men rushed over to help Ruzena's father and tear the dachshund out of the boy's arms. The boy was crying, shouting, and grappling with them so that the old men had to twist his arms and put a hand over his mouth because his cries were attracting too much attention from the passersby, who were turning to look but not daring to intervene. [...] Jakub was leading the dog by the collar toward the hotel steps when one of the old men shouted: "Release that dog at once!" And the other old man: "In the name of the law!" Jakub pretended not to notice the old men and kept going, but behind him a pole slowly descended alongside his body and the wire loop wavered clumsily over the boxer's head. Jakub grabbed the end of the pole and brusquely pushed it aside. A third old man ran up and shouted: "Its an attack on law and order! I'm going to call the police!" And the high-pitched voice of another old man complained: "He ran on the grass! He ran in the playground, where it's prohibited! He pissed in the kids' sandbox! Do you like dogs more than children?" The boxer scampered around the room curiously, unaware that he had just escaped danger. Jakub stretched out on the daybed, wondering what to do with him. He liked the lively, good-natured dog. The insouciance with which, in a few minutes, he had made himself at home in a strange room and struck up a friendship with a strange man was nearly suspicious and seemed to verge on stupidity. After sniffing all corners of the room, he leaped up on the daybed and lay down beside Jakub. Jakub was startled, but he welcomed without reservation this sign of camaraderie. He put his hand on the dog's back and felt with delight the warmth of the animal's body. He had always liked dogs. They were familiar, affectionate, devoted, and at the same time entirely incomprehensible. We will never know what actually goes on in the heads and hearts of these confident, merry emissaries from incomprehensible nature.

Conceivably, though, the sea might have filtered into her body over the years in tiny fragments like the parts of a picture puzzle which, while she'd never identified the whole, had pieced themselves together as the sea in all its sparkling radiance. An internal sea. Untouched by anyone... Having drunk too much, the mother was beginning to drift off with the sound of the children's high-pitched voices in her ears. Fragments of the sea... Could she trace the matrix into which she'd fitted them all the way back to the flood of light she'd experienced at the moment of birth? The light was pain. She didn't actually remember that time, of course. She'd thought she was reminded of it when she heard the first cries of her own children: yes, she'd thought then, it was painful and dazzling, and I couldn't help crying. With every cry I was longing to accustom myself to the flood of light. But before my body had time to adjust, the light had ceased to exist as light. Perhaps what I was seeing was the brightness of the internal sea? My mother's sea. There were other memories. The tale of the Little Mermaid she'd come across in a foreign picture book. Though it would never have occurred to her to see herself in the person of the lovely little princess, she'd been haunted by the idea that perhaps she had been present herself, somewhere in the deeps where the princess lived. She sensed the sea's wan bluish gleam in the Little Mermaid's sobs.

My brothers woke me when the sun was beginning to set. “What’s the matter with you, Helen?” Castor cried, shaking me by the shoulder. “How can you sleep at a time like this?” “Are you all right?” Polydeuces put in. “You’re not ill, are you?” He touched my forehead to check for fever. I brushed his hand away gently. “I’m fine, ‘Ione’. You don’t need to fuss over me just because I’m smart enough to catch some sleep before the feast. I’ll still be awake when the two of you are snoring with your heads on the table.” “Ha! If not for us, you’d’ve slept right through the feast,” Castor countered. “I’ll build a temple in your honor to show my thanks,” I said, straight-faced. “Now if you really want to lend a hand, go find a servant to help me get ready. This is a special occasion and I want to look my best.” “Ooooooh, our little sister wants to look nice, does she?” Polydeuces crooned. “I wonder why?” I saw him wink at Castor and knew I was doomed to be teased to death. “Don’t you mean, ‘I wonder who?’” Castor replied. He tried to look sly and all-knowing, but his tendency to go cross-eyed ruined the effect. “Do you think it’s Meleager himself?” “He’s the hero of the day, but I think she’d rather have a brawnier man,” Polydeuces said. “I’ll bet I can guess who. I saw how you looked at him the first night we were here.” He flung his arms around his twin, pitched his voice high, and cried, “Oh, Theseus, you’re sooooooo strong! Make me queen of Athens too!” “Out!” I shouted, snatching up my nearly empty water jug. My brothers retreated at a run, laughing.

Boy, it sure was some strange Christmas, she told herself as she opened the living room door. And then she stopped dead. Because her present wasn’t under the huge lighted Christmas tree. It was sitting on the sofa, looking toward her furiously, with a glass of whiskey in one lean hand. “Merry Christmas,” Winthrop said curtly. Her mouth flew open. He had a bow stuck on the pocket of his gray vested suit, and he looked hung over and pale and a little disheveled. But he was so handsome that her heart skipped wildly, and she looked into his dark eyes with soft dreams in her own. “You’ve got a bow on your pocket,” she said in a voice that sounded too high-pitched to be her own. “Of course I’ve got a bow on my pocket. I’m your damned Christmas present. Didn’t you listen to your father?

It is true. I did fall asleep at the wheel. We nearly went right off a cliff down into a gorge. But there were extenuating circumstances.” Ian snickered. “Are you going to pull out the cry-baby card? He had a little bitty wound he forgot to tell us about, that’s how small it was. Ever since he fell asleep he’s been trying to make us believe that contributed.” “It wasn’t little. I have a scar. A knife fight.” Sam was righteous about it. “He barely nicked you,” Ian sneered. “A tiny little slice that looked like a paper cut.” Sam extended his arm to Azami so she could see the evidence of the two-inch line of white marring his darker skin. “I bled profusely. I was weak and we hadn’t slept in days.” “Profusely?” Ian echoed. “Ha! Two drops of blood is not profuse bleeding, Knight. We hadn’t slept in days, that much is true, but the rest . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head and rolling his eyes at Azami. Azami examined the barely there scar. The knife hadn’t inflicted much damage, and Sam knew she’d seen evidence of much worse wounds. “Had you been drinking?” she asked, her eyes wide with innocence. Those long lashes fanned her cheeks as she gaze at him until his heart tripped all over itself. Sam groaned. “Don’t listen to him. I wasn’t drinking, but once we were pretty much in the middle of a hurricane in the South Pacific on a rescue mission and Ian here decides he has to go into this bar . . .” “Oh, no.” Ian burst out laughing. “You’re not telling her that story.” “You did, man. He made us all go in there, with the dirtbag we’d rescued, by the way,” Sam told Azami. “We had to climb out the windows and get on the roof at one point when the place flooded. I swear ther was a crocodile as big as a house coming right at us. We were running for our lives, laughing and trying to keep that idiot Frenchman alive.” “You said to throw him to the crocs,” Ian reminded. “What was in the bar that you had to go in?” Azami asked, clearly puzzled. “Crocodiles,” Sam and Ian said simultaneously. They both burst out laughing. Azami shook her head. “You two could be crazy. Are you making these stories up?” “Ryland wishes we made them up,” Sam said. “Seriously, we’re sneaking past this bar right in the middle of an enemy-occupied village and there’s this sign on the bar that says swim with the crocs and if you survive, free drinks forever. The wind is howling and trees are bent almost double and we’re carrying the sack of shit . . . er . . . our prize because the dirtbag refuses to run even to save his own life—” “The man is seriously heavy,” Ian interrupted. “He was kidnapped and held for ransom for two years. I guess he decided to cook for his captors so they wouldn’t treat him bad. He tried to hide in the closet when we came for him. He didn’t want to go out in the rain.” “He was the biggest pain in the ass you could imagine,” Sam continued, laughing at the memory. “He squealed every time we slipped in the mud and went down.” “The river had flooded the village,” Sam added. “We were walking through a couple of feet of water. We’re all muddy and he’s wiggling and squeaking in a high-pitched voice and Ian spots this sign hanging on the bar.

Don’t worry, Lark.” Jayfeather recognized the voice of Brook’s kit Pine. “He’s blind! He won’t know we’re creeping up on him.” Oh, won’t he? Jayfeather tensed his muscles as he detected the pad of tiny paws on the stone floor of the cave, and heard a stifled mrrow of laughter. He waited as their scent grew stronger, and he sensed soft breath riffling the tips of his whiskers. “Looking for something?” As he spoke, Jayfeather leaped to his paws. Two high-pitched squeals bounced around the cave. He listened with satisfaction to the sound of paw steps skittering away. “Mother, that weird cat scared us!” “He’s going to eat us!” Jayfeather’s satisfaction faded and his pelt grew hot with embarrassment. They’re only small. They didn’t mean any harm. “Sorry!” he called out. “I wouldn’t hurt you, kits!

I was having a terrible nightmare,” the penis said then, its voice high-pitched, but quite male. The small hole on the round end moved a little bit as it talked—could it possibly be a mouth? Then the head swiveled a little, directing the small hole toward Vesper. “Ooh, a female. Hello there, cute stuff.” “Oh…hello.” Not attached to a man, it actually wasn’t so intimidating. She leaned closer. How could something like that actually articulate sounds? Could there be a tiny tongue, vocal cords in there? “Pick me up why don’t you? I can tell you want to.” Vesper drew back again. She did admit an urge to poke it with her finger, but it was a detached talking penis, and that in itself made it suspect. Then something occurred to her. “Are you under a spell?” “Not exactly,” it replied. “But you can kiss me if you want.

I’m here!” Squirrelflight’s voice was high-pitched with terror. “I’m going to push a branch through to you. You can run along it to escape before it catches fire.” “Right. We’ll be ready,” Lionblaze replied. Hollyleaf felt a jolt of gratitude for her brother’s courage. Without him, she was certain she would have panicked, trapped between the fire and the long drop into the camp. But they would stick together, the three of them, protected by the prophecy as they had always been. Hollyleaf could hear the sound of something heavy being dragged through the undergrowth beyond the flames. Her burst of confidence blew away like ash. “She’ll never manage it,” she muttered to Lionblaze. “What about her wound? She’s not strong enough.” “Squirrelflight will always do what she has to,” Lionblaze replied. Small tongues of flame were creeping through the grass now; rain

You weren’t supposed to choose me,” he said. Behind them, Ira approached, stunned and speechless for what must have been the first time in his life. He helped lift Samuel, whose cheeks had blanched as well. Camille prodded Oscar’s arms and stomach and face. It was truly him. The unbearable grief over losing him flipped inside out. Her joy ran so deep and strong she thought she might burst from it. “The night the Christina went down, you rowed to me,” she answered, her throat knotted as she thought of her father. She forced it down. “This time, I must have needed to row to you.” Oscar kissed her, his lips still cold but filled with life. She leaned into him and hung on as though he might disappear. Ira let out a playful high-pitched whistle. Samuel coughed. Oscar and Camille reluctantly pulled apart and blushed. “Holy gallnipper,” Ira said. Camille grinned, not minding in the least that he was using that annoying turn of phrase again. “I can’t believe that little rock…I mean you were dead, mate. Dead as this bloke right here.” Ira kicked McGreenery in the leg. Oscar nodded, rubbing his hand over the fading red mark, as if to feel for himself that the deadly wound was gone. “I was in the dory,” he whispered. Ira cocked his head. “Say again?” Camille lifted her ear from his chest, where she’d wanted to listen to the smooth rhythm of his heart. She looked up at him before hearing its strong beat. “The dory?” Oscar nodded again, eyebrows creased. “I heard your voice. At the cave,” he said to Camille. “This force kept pulling me backward, away from you, like I was being sucked into the ground.” So this was how it had felt for him to die. She remembered the way he’d looked right through her and how it had chilled her to the marrow. Her own brush with death had been different, and somehow better, if death could even be measured in levels of bad or good. The image of her father had drawn her to safety, making her forget her yearning for air. He had been there for her, but she hadn’t been able to do the same for him. All this time, all this trouble, and all she’d wanted was to bring him back, make him proud of the lengths to which she’d gone for him. In the end, she’d failed him miserably. “And then you were gone. Your voice faded, and I was in the dory, adrift in the Tasman, the dawn after the Christina went down,” Oscar continued. Samuel and Ira glanced at each other with marked expressions of doubt and confusion. “But I wasn’t alone.” He gently pulled Camille away from him and gripped her arms. “Your father was with me. He was sitting there, smiling. It all seemed so real. I could taste the salt air, and…and I remember touching the water, and it was cold. It wasn’t like in a dream, when you can’t do those things.” Camille sucked in a deep breath, trying to inflate her crushing lungs. Oscar had seen him, too. She’d give anything to see her father again, to hear his voice, to feel at home by just being in his presence. At least, that’s what she’d once believed. But Camille hadn’t been willing to give up Oscar. Did that mean she loved her father less? Never. She could never love her fatherless. So then why hadn’t her heart chosen him? "Did he say anything?" she asked, anxious to know yet afraid to hear. "It's all jumbled," Oscar said, again shaking his head and rubbing his chest. "I remember him saying a few things. Bits and pieces." Camille looked to Ira and Samuel. Their parted mouths and bugged eyes hung on Oscar's every word. Oscar squinted at the ground and seemed to be working hard to piece together what her father had said on the other side. "I'm still here to guide her?" he said, questioning his own memory. "It doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry." She shook her head, eyes tearing up again. It had been real. He really had come to her in the black water of the underground pool. "No, don't be sorry," she said, tears spilling. "It does make sense. It makes sense to me.

As young children, seen in the laboratory for the first time, their heartbeat rates are generally higher and under stress show less change. (Heart rate can’t change much if it is already high.) Also when under stress, their pupils dilate sooner, and their vocal cords are more tense, making their voice change to a higher pitch. (Many HSPs are relieved to know why their voice can become so strange sounding when they are aroused.) The body fluids (blood, urine, saliva) of sensitive children show indications of high levels of norepinephrine present in their brains, especially after the children are exposed to various forms of stress in the laboratory. Norepinephrine is associated with arousal; in fact, it is the brain’s version of adrenaline. Sensitive children’s body fluids also contain more cortisol, both when under stress and when at home. Cortisol is the hormone present when one is in a more or less constant state of arousal or wariness. Remember cortisol; it comes up again.

Expecto Patronum!” His voice sounded dim and distant…Another wisp of silver smoke, feebler than the last, drifted from the wand — he couldn’t do it anymore, he couldn’t work the spell — There was laughter inside his head, shrill, high-pitched laughter….He could smell the dementor’s putrid, death-cold breath, filling his own lungs, drowning him….The dementor’s icy fingers were closing on his throat — the high-pitched laughter was growing louder and louder, and a voice spoke inside his head — “Bow to death, Harry….It might even be painless….I would not know….I have never died….” He was never going to see Ron and Hermione again — And their faces burst clearly into his mind as he fought for breath — “EXPECTO PATRONUM!” An enormous silver stag erupted from the tip of Harry’s wand; its antlers caught the dementor in the place where the heart would have been; it was thrown backward, weightless as darkness, and as the stag charged, the dementor swooped away, batlike and defeated.

It isn’t the height that scares me—the height makes me feel alive with energy, every organ and vessel and muscle in my body singing at the same pitch. Then I realize what it is. It’s him. Something about him makes me feel like I am about to fall. Or turn to liquid. Or burst into flames. My hand almost misses the next rung. “Now tell me…,” he says through a bursting breath, “what do you think learning strategy has to do with…bravery?” The question reminds me that he is my instructor, and I am supposed to learn something from this. A cloud passes over the moon, and the light shifts across my hands. “It…it prepares you to act,” I say finally. “You learn strategy so you can use it.” I hear him breathing behind me, loud and fast. “Are you all right, Four?” “Are you human, Tris? Being up this high…” He gulps for air. “It doesn’t scare you at all?” I look over my shoulder at the ground. If I fall now, I will die. But I don’t think I will fall. A gust of air presses against my left side, throwing my body weight to the right. I gasp and cling to the rungs, my balance shifting. Four’s cold hand clamps around one of my hips, one of his fingers finding a strip of bare skin just under the hem of my T-shirt. He squeezes, steadying me and pushing me gently to the left, restoring my balance. Now I can’t breathe. I pause, staring at my hands, my mouth dry. I feel the ghost of where his hand was, his fingers long and narrow. “You okay?” he asks quietly. “Yes,” I say, my voice strained. I keep climbing, silently, until I reach the platform. Judging by the blunted ends of metal rods, it used to have railings, but it doesn’t anymore. I sit down and scoot to the end of it so Four has somewhere to sit. Without thinking, I put my legs over the side. Four, however, crouches and presses his back to the metal support, breathing heavily. “You’re afraid of heights,” I say. “How do you survive in the Dauntless compound?” “I ignore my fear,” he says. “When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn’t exist.” I stare at him for a second. I can’t help it. To me there’s a

A bout of nerves crept up my spine and I tilted my head at him, hoping I was imagining the heat spreading over my cheeks to spare myself the embarrassment of blushing merely because he was piercing me with those chocolate eyes that I had never noticed were so amazing. “What are you staring at?” “Can I take you to prom?” He asked me. Just like that, no hesitation or insecurity to be found in his tone or facial expression. His confidence caught me completely off guard and I gaped at him in a stunned silence for almost twenty full seconds. His expression never faltered, though. He just watched my mouth work to make some sort of intelligible sound, waiting for my answer as he oozes at least the illusion of complete calm. “Huh?” I blurted in an embarrassingly high-pitched squeak. I sounded like a chipmunk and his smirk made me turn a deep shade of red. “Um… Uh… Prom?” I managed, eloquent as ever. He laughed at me fondly, nodding his head. “Yeah, prom.” Shock was not a deep enough word to describe what I was feeling over this proposal. This was Jim, the kid who swore up and down he would rather gouge out his eyes with a grapefruit spoon than put on dress clothes and he was offering to take me to a place where flannel shirts and ratty jeans were unacceptable and dance me around a room in uncomfortable shoes all night long? This couldn’t be real life. But it was real life. I was sitting in the car with him with my mouth hanging open like a fish waiting for him to laugh and tell me he was kidding, that there was no way he was going to put on a tie for my benefit, and he was sitting right there, a slightly nervous look crossing his features over my dumbstruck expression. Breathe, Lizzie, I scolded myself. Answer him! Say yes! You could have knocked me over with a feather and I was very relieved to be sitting down in a car so I could prevent anything humiliating from happening. Having already proved I could not trust my voice to answer him I jerkily nodded my head as my mouth grew into a Cheshire cat sized smile. I turned my face away and hid behind my hair as if I could hide my excitement from the world. Jim was visibly euphoric and that only made me want to squeal even more. He was excited to take me out. How cool was that?

Hermione!” She stirred, then sat up quickly, pushing her hair out of her face. “What’s wrong? Harry? Are you all right?” “It’s okay, everything’s fine. More than fine. I’m great. There’s someone here.” “What do you mean? Who--?” She saw Ron, who stood there holding the sword and dripping onto the threadbare carpet. Harry backed into a shadowy corner, slipped off Ron’s rucksack, and attempted to blend in with the canvas. Hermione slid out of her bunk and moved like a sleepwalker toward Ron, her eyes upon his pale face. She stopped right in front of him, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide. Ron gave a weak, hopeful smile and half raised his arms. Hermione launched herself forward and started punching every inch of him that she could reach. “Ouch--ow--gerroff! What the--? Hermione--OW!” “You--complete--arse--Ronald--Weasley!” She punctuated every word with a blow: Ron backed away, shielding his head as Hermione advanced. “You--crawl--back--here--after--weeks--and--weeks--oh, where’s my wand?” She looked as though ready to wrestle it out of Harry’s hands and he reacted instinctively. “Protego!” The invisible shield erupted between Ron and Hermione: The force of it knocked her backward onto the floor. Spitting hair out of her mouth, she leapt up again. “Hermione!” said Harry. “Calm--” “I will not calm down!” she screamed. Never before had he seen her lose control like this; she looked quite demented. “Give me back my wand! Give it back to me!” “Hermione, will you please--” “Don’t you tell me what to do, Harry Potter!” she screeched. “Don’t you dare! Give it back now! And YOU!” She was pointing at Ron in dire accusation: It was like a malediction, and Harry could not blame Ron for retreating several steps. “I came running after you! I called you! I begged you to come back!” “I know,” Ron said, “Hermione, I’m sorry, I’m really--” “Oh, you’re sorry!” She laughed, a high-pitched, out-of-control sound; Ron looked at Harry for help, but Harry merely grimaced his helplessness. “You come back after weeks--weeks--and you think it’s all going to be all right if you just say sorry?” “Well, what else can I say?” Ron shouted, and Harry was glad that Ron was fighting back. “Oh, I don’t know!” yelled Hermione with awful sarcasm. “Rack your brains, Ron, that should only take a couple of seconds--” “Hermione,” interjected Harry, who considered this a low blow, “he just saved my--” “I don’t care!” she screamed. “I don’t care what he’s done! Weeks and weeks, we could have been dead for all he knew--” “I knew you weren’t dead!” bellowed Ron, drowning her voice for the first time, and approaching as close as he could with the Shield Charm between them. “Harry’s all over the Prophet, all over the radio, they’re looking for you everywhere, all these rumors and mental stories, I knew I’d hear straight off if you were dead, you don’t know what it’s been like--” “What it’s been like for you?” Her voice was now so shrill only bats would be able to hear it soon, but she had reached a level of indignation that rendered her temporarily speechless, and Ron seized his opportunity. “I wanted to come back the minute I’d Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn’t go anywhere!” “A gang of what?” asked Harry, as Hermione threw herself down into a chair with her arms and legs crossed so tightly it seemed unlikely that she would unravel them for several years.

I’m walking you to your door,” he said, glancing at the lurking boy with palpable distaste. “For obvious reasons.” “It’s not that bad,” she protested. “They’re all mostly students.” “Well, that particular student”—he said with a nod toward the sinister-looking young man—“must be putting himself through college by dealing dope. And those two over there . . .” This time he nodded toward a giggling, swaying pair of young women in tight miniskirts and thigh-high boots. “Are probably hooking to pay their tuition.” Cleo peered at the girls in the gloomy light and gasped when she recognized them. They saw her at the same time and screeched in delight at the sight of her. “OMG! Cleo!” Coco screamed, and Cleo caught Dante involuntarily flinching at the sound of that high-pitched voice. “It’s so weird to find you waiting down here for us. It’s like you knew we were coming.” “She did know, remember?” Gigi reminded her in an only slightly less shrill voice. And Cleo hadn’t really known they were coming, since nothing definite had been arranged. “What the hell?” Dante muttered beneath his breath, and Cleo smiled at the consternation she could hear in his voice.

As I contemplated the silent world before me, I thought of the many romantic ideas attached to blindness. Ideas of unusual sensitivity and genius were evoked by the names of Milton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Borges, Ray Charles; to lose physical sight, it is thought, is to gain second sight. One door closes and another, greater one, opens. Homer’s blindness, many believe, is a kind of spiritual channel, a shortcut to the gifts of memory and of prophecy. When I was a child in Lagos, there was a blind, wandering bard, a man who was held in the greatest awe for his spiritual gifts. When he sang his songs, he left each person with the feeling that, in hearing him, they had somehow touched the numinous, or been touched by it. Once, in a crowded market at Ojuelegba, sometime in the early eighties, I saw him. It was from quite a distance, but I remember (or imagine that I remember) his large yellow eyes, calcified to a gray color at the pupils, his frightening mien, and the big, dirty mantle he wore. He sang in a plaintive and high-pitched voice, in deep, proverbial Yoruba that was impossible for me to follow. Afterward, I imagined that I had seen something like an aura around him, a spiritual apartness that moved all his hearers to reach into their purses and put something in the bowl his assistant boy carried.

I had been thinking earlier that if I had not enjoyed my first experience of La Berma it was because, as with my earlier encounters with Gilberte in the Champs-Élysées, I had approached it with too strong a desire. Between these two disappointments there was perhaps not only this resemblance, but another, deeper one. The impression made upon us by a person or a work of strong character (or its interpretation) is intrinsic to them. We have brought along with us the ideas of “beauty,” “breadth of style,” “pathos,” which we might just possibly think we recognize in the banality of a passable talent or face, but our critical mind is confronted in fact with the nagging presence of a form for which it possesses no intellectual equivalent, the unknown part of which it needs to extricate. It hears a high-pitched sound, an oddly questioning intonation. It asks: “Is that good? Is it admiration I am feeling? Is this what is meant by richness of color, nobility, power?” And what answers back is a high-pitched voice, an oddly questioning tone, the despotic impression, wholly material, caused by a person we do not know, in which no scope is left for “breadth of interpretation.” And for this reason, really fine works of art, if they are given genuine attention, are the ones that disappoint us most, because in the sum total of our ideas there is none that responds to an individual impression.

Yeah, about last night … it’s been brought to my attention that I may have been a little out of line with somethings I did and said so—” “Really? Such as …” I can’t believe he’s going to make me say it. He’s so frustrating. One minute he’s cleaning puke off the drunk girl, showing his kind side, and the next he’s trying to humiliate me. Granted, I do a pretty good job of setting myself up for it. “Such as drinking too much to begin with, then maybe giving the impression that I was … jealous of Claire, or Dr. Brown.” “You mean Dr. Skank?” Shit! “Yes—I mean—no, not Dr. Skank. I don’t remember calling her that, but if I did then I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” I may have meant it. “Don’t sweat it, Syd. I think you’re adorable when you get all jealous.” “I was not jealous!” I yell in a high-pitched voice. “Uh … your striptease was entitled ‘Where Lautner’s hands will never be again if he doesn’t keep them off Dr. Skank.’” Kill me now and never let another drop of alcohol pass my lips. “So how was golf?” Lautner laughs. “I take it we’re done talking about last night?” “It’s pointless because it’s your word against mine, unless Swarley goes all Bush Beans Duke on me.” “God, you’re something else. So what did you call about?” “Oh … just to …” “I’m just flipping ya shit. I know why you called.” He does? I’m not entirely sure I know why I called so how can he know? “You do?” “I left you in a hot mess this morning and you need to be serviced.” His voice drips of confidence or most likely arrogance. “What? No, that’s not … um …” “Sorry, babe. I didn’t realize just how tightly wound you would be by now. Damn, you can’t even form a coherent thought. Get naked, I’ll see you in ten.” “Lau—” He hung up on me!

Taking the catcher’s place, he sank to his haunches and gestured to Arthur. “Throw some easy ones to begin with,” he called, and Arthur nodded, seeming to lose his apprehensiveness. “Yes, milord!” Arthur wound up and released a relaxed, straight pitch. Squinting in determination, Lilian gripped the bat hard, stepped into the swing, and turned her hips to lend more impetus to the motion. To her disgust, she missed the ball completely. Turning around, she gave Westcliff a pointed glance. “Well, your advice certainly helped,” she muttered sarcastically. “Elbows,” came his succinct reminder, and he tossed the ball to Arthur. “Try again.” Heaving a sigh, Lillian raised the bat and faced the pitcher once more. Arthur drew his arm back, and lunged forward as he delivered another fast ball. Lillian brought the bat around with a grunt of effort, finding an unexpected ease in adjusting the swing to just the right angle, and she received a jolt of visceral delight as she felt the solid connection between the bat and the leather ball. With a loud crack the ball was catapulted high into the air, over Arthur’s head, beyond the reach of those in the back field. Shrieking in triumph, Lillian dropped the bat and ran headlong toward the first sanctuary post, rounding it and heading toward second. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Daisy hurtling across the field to scoop up the ball, and in nearly the same motion, throwing it to the nearest boy. Increasing her pace, her feet flying beneath her skirts, Lillian rounded third, while the ball was tossed to Arthur. Before her disbelieving eyes, she saw Westcliff standing at the last post, Castle Rock, with his hands held up in readiness to catch the ball. How could he? After showing her how to hit the ball, he was now going to tag her out? “Get out of my way!” Lillian shouted, running pellmell toward the post, determined to reach it before he caught the ball. “I’m not going to stop!” “Oh, I’ll stop you,” Westcliff assured her with a grin, standing right in front of the post. He called to the pitcher. “Throw it home, Arthur!” She would go through him, if necessary. Letting out a warlike cry, Lillian slammed full-length into him, causing him to stagger backward just as his fingers closed over the ball. Though he could have fought for balance, he chose not to, collapsing backward onto the soft earth with Lillian tumbling on top of him, burying him in a heap of skirts and wayward limbs. A cloud of fine beige dust enveloped them upon their descent. Lillian lifted herself on his chest and glared down at him. At first she thought that he had been winded, but it immediately became apparent that he was choking with laughter. “You cheated!” she accused, which only seemed to make him laugh harder. She struggled for breath, drawing in huge lungfuls of air. “You’re not supposed…to stand in front…of the post…you dirty cheater!” Gasping and snorting, Westcliff handed her the ball with the ginger reverence of someone yielding a priceless artifact to a museum curator. Lillian took the ball and hurled it aside. “I was not out,” she told him, jabbing her finger into his hard chest for emphasis. It felt as if she were poking a hearthstone. “I was safe, do you…hear me?” She heard Arthur’s amused voice as he approached them. “Actually, miss—” “Never argue with a lady, Arthur,” the earl interrupted, having managed to regain his powers of speech, and the boy grinned at him. “Yes, milord.” “Are there ladies here?” Daisy asked cheerfully, coming from the field. “I don’t see any.” Still smiling, the earl looked up at Lillian.

They emerged from the tropical vegetation, greeted by a general cheer. Stephen advanced, carrying his hurly: he was feeling particularly well and fit; he had his land-legs again, and no longer stumped along, but walked with an elastic step. Jack came to meet him, and said in a low voice, 'Just keep your end up, Stephen, until your eye is in; and watch out for the Admiral's twisters,' and then as they neared the Admiral, 'Sir, allow me to name my particular friend Dr. Maturin, surgeon of the Leopard. 'How d'ye do, Doctor?' said the Admiral. 'I must beg your pardon, sir, for my late appearance: I was called away on -- ' 'No ceremony, Doctor, I beg,' said the Admiral, smiling: the Leopard's hundred pounds were practically in his pocket, and this man of theirs did not look very dangerous. 'Shall we begin?' 'By all means,' said Stephen. 'You go down to the other end,' murmured Jack, a chill coming over him in spite of the torrid sun. 'Should you like to be given a middle, sir?' called the umpire, when Stephen had walked down the pitch. 'Thank you, sir,' said Stephen, hitching at his waistband and gazing round the field, 'I already have one.' A rapacious grin ran round the Cumberlands: they moved much closer in, crouching, their huge crab-like hands spread wide. The Admiral held the ball to his nose for a long moment, fixing his adversary, and then delivered a lob that hummed as it flew. Stephen watched its course, danced out to take it as it touched the ground, checked its bounce, dribbled the ball towards the astonished cover-point and running still he scooped it into the hollow of his hurly, raced on with twinkling steps to mid-off, there checked his run amidst the stark silent amazement, flicked the ball into his hand, tossed it high, and with a screech drove it straight at Jack's wicket, shattering the near stump and sending its upper half in a long, graceful trajectory that reached the ground just as the first of La Fleche's guns, saluting the flag, echoed across the field.

I’m telling you, you bastard, you’re going to pay for that rum. In gold or goods, I don’t care which.” “Captain Mallory.” Gray’s baritone was forbidding. “And I apply that title loosely, as you are no manner of captain in my estimation…I have no intention of compensating you for the loss of your cargo. I will, however, accept your thanks.” “My thanks? For what?” “For what?” Now O’Shea entered the mix. “For saving that heap of a ship and your worthless, rum-soaked arse, that’s what.” “I’ll thank you to go to hell,” the gravelly voice answered. Mallory, she presumed. “You can’t just board a man’s craft and pitch a hold full of spirits into the sea. Right knaves, you lot.” “Oh, now we’re the knaves, are we?” Gray asked. “I should have let that ship explode around your ears, you despicable sot. Knaves, indeed.” “Well, if you’re such virtuous, charitable gents, then how come I’m trussed like a pig?” Sophia craned her neck and pushed the hatch open a bit further. Across the deck, she saw a pair of split-toed boots tied together with rope. Gray answered, “We had to bind you last night because you were drunk out of your skull. And we’re keeping you bound now because you’re sober and still out of your skull.” The lashed boots shuffled across the deck, toward Gray. “Let me loose of these ropes, you blackguard, and I’ll pound you straight out of your skull into oblivion.” O’Shea responded with a stream of colorful profanity, which Captain Grayson cut short. “Captain Mallory,” he said, his own highly polished boots pacing slowly, deliberately to halt between Mallory’s and Gray’s. “I understand your concern over losing your cargo. But surely you or your investor can recoup the loss with an insurance claim. You could not have sailed without a policy against fire.” Gray gave an ironic laugh. “Joss, I’ll wager you anything, that rum wasn’t on any bill of lading or insurance policy. Can’t you see the man’s nothing but a smuggler? Probably wasn’t bound for any port at all. What was your destination, Mallory? A hidden cove off the coast of Cornwall, perhaps?” He clucked his tongue. “That ship was overloaded and undermanned, and it would have been a miracle if you’d made it as far as Portugal. As for the rum, take up your complaint with the Vice Admiralty court after you follow us to Tortola. I’d welcome it.

I NEVER HEAR THE EXPLOSION. WHAT I HEAR IS THE AFTERMATH OF AN EXPLOSION. THERE IS A RINGING IN MY EARS, AND THOSE HIGH-PITCHED POPPING AND TICKING SOUNDS THAT A HOT ENGINE MAKES AFTER YOU SHUT IT OFF; AND PIECES OF THE SKY ARE FALLING, AND BITS OF WHITE—MAYBE PAPER, MAYBE PLASTER—ARE FLOATING DOWN LIKE SNOW. THERE ARE SILVERY SPARKLES IN THE AIR, TOO—MAYBE IT’S SHATTERED GLASS. THERE’S SMOKE, AND THE STINK OF BURNING; THERE’S NO FLAME, BUT EVERYTHING IS SMOLDERING. “WE’RE ALL LYING ON THE FLOOR. I KNOW THE CHILDREN ARE ALL RIGHT BECAUSE—ONE BY ONE—THEY PICK THEMSELVES UP OFF THE FLOOR. IT MUST HAVE BEEN A LOUD EXPLOSION BECAUSE SOME OF THE CHILDREN ARE STILL HOLDING THEIR EARS; SOME OF THEIR EARS ARE BLEEDING. THE CHILDREN DON’T SPEAK ENGLISH, BUT THEIR VOICES ARE THE FIRST HUMAN SOUNDS TO FOLLOW THE EXPLOSION. THE YOUNGER ONES ARE CRYING; BUT THE OLDER ONES ARE DOING THEIR BEST TO BE COMFORTING—THEY’RE CHATTERING AWAY, THEY’RE REALLY BABBLING, BUT THIS IS REASSURING. “THE WAY THEY LOOK AT ME, I KNOW TWO THINGS. I KNOW THAT I SAVED THEM—I DON’T KNOW HOW. AND I KNOW THAT THEY’RE AFRAID FOR ME. BUT I DON’T SEE ME—I CAN’T TELL WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME. THE CHILDREN’S FACES TELL ME SOMETHING IS WRONG. “SUDDENLY, THE NUNS ARE THERE; PENGUINS ARE PEERING DOWN AT ME—ONE OF THEM BENDS OVER ME. I CAN’T HEAR WHAT I SAY TO HER, BUT SHE APPEARS TO UNDERSTAND ME—MAYBE SHE SPEAKS ENGLISH. IT’S NOT UNTIL SHE TAKES ME IN HER ARMS THAT I SEE ALL THE BLOOD—HER WIMPLE IS BLOOD-STAINED. WHILE I’M LOOKING AT THE NUN, HER WIMPLE CONTINUES TO BE SPLASHED WITH BLOOD—THE BLOOD SPATTERS HER FACE, TOO, BUT SHE’S NOT AFRAID. THE FACES OF THE CHILDREN—LOOKING DOWN AT ME—ARE FULL OF FEAR; BUT THE NUN WHO HOLDS ME IN HER ARMS IS VERY PEACEFUL. “OF COURSE, IT’S MY BLOOD—SHE’S COVERED WITH MY BLOOD—BUT SHE’S VERY CALM. WHEN I SEE SHE’S ABOUT TO MAKE THE SIGN OF THE CROSS OVER ME, I REACH OUT TO TRY TO STOP HER. BUT I CAN’T STOP HER—IT’S AS IF I DON’T HAVE ANY ARMS. THE NUN JUST SMILES AT ME. AFTER SHE’S MADE THE SIGN OF THE CROSS OVER ME, I LEAVE ALL OF THEM—I JUST LEAVE. THEY ARE STILL EXACTLY WHERE THEY WERE, LOOKING DOWN AT ME; BUT I’M NOT REALLY THERE. I’M LOOKING DOWN AT ME, TOO. I LOOK LIKE I DID WHEN I WAS THE BABY JESUS—YOU REMEMBER THOSE STUPID SWADDLING CLOTHES? THAT’S HOW I LOOK WHEN I LEAVE ME. “BUT NOW ALL THE PEOPLE ARE GROWING SMALLER—NOT JUST ME, BUT THE NUNS AND THE CHILDREN, TOO.

Poizat says opera lovers cry because they dimly sense that singing is an attempt to escape from words. Language is like a prison house, he thinks, and the singing voice is like a dove trapped inside: the voice wants to float free, without having to mean anything. In every great aria, Poizat observes, there is a moment when the voice—especially a woman’s voice, especially a soprano— begins to do amazing things, warbling and trilling, flying up to impossibly high pitches, falling through cascades of arpeggios and grace notes. The words that are sung are under incredible tension: a single syllable can be pulled and stretched so that it seems to go on forever.

But they’re out there.’ Her voice was high pitched, strained. Frank shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. But if they are.

No one is ever going to take Team Temple seriously with this kind of shit happening left and right.” I altered my voice into a high, frightened pitch. “Oh, no! Here comes the New Horsemen! Hope rides on his unicorn. And wait! He rides alongside the Horseman of Justice on his squirrel of death!

There is nothing wicked about having a dreadful singing voice, any more than there is something wicked about having dreadful posture, dreadful cousins, or a dreadful pair of pants. Many noble and pleasant people have any number of these things, and there are even one or two kind individuals who have them all. But if you have something dreadful, and you force it upon someone else, then you have done something quite wicked indeed. If you force your wicked posture on someone, for instance, by leaning so far back that they are forced to carry you down the street, then you have wickedly ruined their afternoon walk, and if you force your dreadful cousins on someone, by dropping them off to play at their house so you can escape from their dreadful presences and spend some time alone, then you have wickedly ruined their entire day, and only a very wicked person indeed would force a dreadful pair of pants on the legs and lower torso of somebody else. But to force your dreadful singing voice on somebody, or even a crowd of people, is one of the world’s most wicked crimes, and at that moment Carmelita Spats opened her mouth and afflicted the crew of the Carmelita with her wickedness. Carmelita’s singing voice was loud, like a siren, and high-pitched, like a squeaky door, and extremely off-pitch, as if all of the notes in the musical scale were pushing up against one another, all trying to sound at the same time. Her singing voice was mushy, as if someone had filled her mouth with mashed potatoes before she sang, and filled with vibrato, which is the Italian term for a voice that wavers as it sings, as if someone were shaking Carmelita very vigorously as she began her song. Even the most dreadful of voices can be tolerated if it is performing a good song, but I’m sad to say that Carmelita Spats had written the song herself and that it was just as dreadful as her singing voice.

You can call me whatever you want to. Just make sure you like the name you pick.” I leaned in a little closer, lowering my voice. “I have a feeling you’ll be saying it a lot. Maybe in different decibels, too. Might want to try screaming it loud and high-pitched, just to make sure it feels right.” Maven’s cheeks reddened again, just a light pink flowing over those warm brown cheeks peppered with freckles. I smirked at the sight of that blush, but it wasn’t there long before Maven clamped her mouth shut and shook her head. “You aren’t going to make this easy, are you?” she asked. I leaned even closer. “Be honest. You would hate it if I did.” She didn’t answer, but didn’t have to.

I came to love the way Morrie lit up when I entered the room. He did this for many people, I know, but it was his special talent to make each visitor feel that the smile was unique. "Ahhhh, it's my buddy," he would say when he saw me, in that foggy, high-pitched voice. And it didn't stop with the greeting. When Morrie was with you, he was really with you. He looked you straight in the eye, and he listened as if you were the only person in the world.

When you want to be a woman, follow my advice. Speak in a thin, pretty voice. It has to be high-pitched. Try pushing it up into your nose. Cover your mouth when you laugh. Press down firmly and neatly when writing. Grow your hair to your shoulders. Curls are discouraged. Flap your wrists often. Show enthusiasm about grocery shopping and cooking. Beef up your cooking skills. Be unfailingly kind to others—especially men. Use your charm to get out of danger. Fall in love with a man. Eat very little. Even if you really want to finish it, leave some on your plate. Make sure you attain a slim figure and maintain it for your whole life. Play dumb, with no regard for your actual intelligence. Disparage your driving. Be chatty. Try your best to sincerely enjoy cleaning and doing laundry. Think of weakness as a virtue, and let your strength rot away. Wear makeup even in your dreams. Wear bright clothing. Conceal your sexual appetite, and take it to your grave. Become shyness incarnate. . . . There’s a fuckton more where that all comes from. I just couldn’t write it all down. To act the part of a woman, you’ve got to memorize a hefty script.

Cats do seem to prefer us to talk to them in a high-pitched voice. Perhaps gruff male voices remind them of the rumbling growl of an angry tomcat. Cats' paws are exceptionally sensitive, which explains why many cats don't like having their feet handled. Cats become extravagantly demonstrative only when they are angry or afraid. Purring seems to convey a general request: Please settle down next to me. The cat instinctively uses the purr to try to change the situation to its advantage. Each cat simply learns that purring under certain circumstances makes its life run more smoothly. The most satisfying exchanges between cat and owner are often those that the cat chooses to initiate, rather than those in which the owner approaches the cat, which may regard such uninvited advances with suspicion. Most cats are extraordinarily sensitive to human body language.

So, are you going to tell her?” Mark asked. He was, and still is, a persistent person. Good question, I thought as I stared blankly into space. Am I going to march up to Martina Elizabeth and tell her that I love her? I pondered the question carefully as though it was part of some unscheduled final exam. Instead of answers, however, all I could come up with was a series of dilemmas. I noticed that Mark was still staring at me with a quizzical look on his face. “What?” I yelped. “You haven’t answered my question, man,” I looked down, inhaled deeply, looked up and exhaled very slowly. “I, uh, don’t know.” I turned my gaze to my lunch tray, the other tables, and the clock on the wall. Anything to avoid my best friend’s inquisitive gaze. “I’ll take that as a resounding ‘no,’” Mark said. “I didn’t say that.” “No,” Mark said, “but it’s what you meant to say.” “I – I can’t tell her. Not now.” “Why the fuck not?” Mark asked, his voice rising in pitch and volume. A group of student journalists from The Serpent’s Tale – Alan Goode, Francisco Vargas, Juan Calderon and Roger Lawrence – looked at us with bemused expressions from one of the neighboring tables. Mark noticed, cleared his throat and lowered his voice to a half-whisper. “Why don’t you tell her, you dumbass?” “I can’t,” I repeated, shaking my head emphatically. “What are you so afraid of?” Another good question. “Nothing…everything,” I replied. “What, pray tell, do you mean?” Mark asked. “Are you more afraid that she doesn’t like you, or that she does?

She also had a chirpy, high-pitched voice that made her sound like an adorable cartoon character, even when she was threatening you with grievous bodily harm.

We’re flying,” he yells, looking back at me, eyes bright, a smile taking up the whole of his face. I’m flying with him. Head tilted up, snowflakes pelting my nose and lips as he whizzes past me—past the streetlight and into the darkness, his high-pitched voice filtering back to me, “Come on, Sean!

I’m posted behind a high-backed wing chair, with my wrists crossed over the top of it and my hands dangling like loose claws, staring a little tensely at the door. Then there’s the waiter’s characteristically deferential knock. But I say “Who is it?” anyway, before I go over to open it. He’s an elderly man. He’s been up here twice before, and by now I know the way he sounds. “Room service,” comes through in that high-pitched voice his old age has given him.

I did not always understand her prayers; I believe they were made of an older language than that of ordinary speech. There was something inherently sad in the sound, some slight hesitation upon the syllables of sorrow. She began in a high and descending pitch, exhausting her breath to silence; then again and again—and always the same intensity of effort, of something that is, and is not, like urgency in the human voice. Transported so in the dim and dancing light among the shadows of her room, she seemed beyond the reach of time, as if age could not lay hold of her.

With the kind of laugh that India had never expected to hear from him again, Yash reached for the bundle of skin folds. "And who do we have here?" Every bit of deliberate enunciation was gone from his voice. Instead his pitch jumped to that strange voice people reserved for babies. "Hey, there, beautiful baby!" And, damn it, the sun chose that moment to shoot a bright ray through a tree at his face. "This is Chutney," Ashna said in a matching high pitch, presenting Yash with the pug as though she were a particularly delicious ice-cream sundae. Chutney paused in her mouth-breathing to start lapping at Yash's face. India and China gasped. India reached out to take her away, but Yash was smiling into Chutney's face. Not his politician smile, not even his you've-amused-me, peasant smile. This smile yanked her back through the years, eyes disappearing into slits, too much teeth and gums. An explosion of unadulterated joy. Tremors rippled low in her belly, high in her heart.

Say the number with an exclamation point, not a question mark, and shut up. What I mean by exclamation point is when you are asked what you want, say, “I’d like $50,000!” Don’t say, “Umm . . . I’d like $50,000???” ending with your voice becoming high-pitched so it sounds like you’re asking a question. If you’re asking the question and not telling, it sounds like you’re not sure you’re worth the money, so why should they be sure? Say your number with confidence and then say nothing else. Sit there and wait for their response. It is not your time to say more because it will look like you’re overexplaining. Before the number comes up, you’ve already talked about the value you bring, so now is the time for you to kick the ball into their court and wait for them to pick it up.

She reported that another hawk message had come in. Azania gave a very un-princess-like caper and a fist pump. “The reign of King Tyloric has ended!” YEEEERRRSSSS!! he thundered. Three windows up in the castle’s turrets shattered at the reverberation. Glass tinkled down. “Dragon, any chance we could think before we bellow?” Gnarr-t a chance. “I understand perfectly. Anyways, it is the best news since Ignis and Taramis decided to smile upon Solixambria.” He displayed at least fifty fangs in a grin so huge, the stretch caused his jaw joint to pop loudly. “Who’s the replacement, may I ask?” “Lord Harikic, who happens to be married to Queen Shariza’s younger sister, Immiriza.” “What is it with Humans and rhyming names?” “What is it with Dragons and silly Clan names, like Crusher, Grinder or Obliterator?” “That’s what they do.” “So practical,” she teased, inflicting a hug upon him. “Is it bad of me to feel vindicated? Before you ask, this man is a very different prospect. He –” “Knows what a bathtub is?” Consumed by a fit of helpless giggles, she gasped, “Dragon, I love you!” “Oh dear. Does Azerim know he’s lost your affections?” “Not like that, you ridiculous reptile.” Placing his right fist over his heart, he moaned in a high-pitched, knightly voice, “Oh, say it not, Azania, my verimost muse, for I have loved thee most fulsomely since the very first day I clapped paw upon thy peerless person! Woe, thou breakest at least one of mine five hearts. How shall this scorned creature ever become whole again?” This was too much for the Princess. She guffawed so hard that tears sprang into her eyes. She folded up in his paw, apparently unable to stand. He eyed the girl wriggling in his paw in a perfectly undignified state of hysterics. Ah, so this would be ‘rolling with laughter’ in Human parlance. The problem was that it was catching. What was it about yawns and laughter that was more infectious than the worst disease imaginable? Very soon, his roars of mirth shook the castle. Another two windows gave up the unequal battle and dropped their leaded glass into the courtyard with a loud crash. Inzashu, the Prince and at least twenty servants rushed out to see what the commotion was all about. “Celebrating Tyloric’s downfall,” Azania managed to explain between hiccoughs. Thundersong said, “This would be the same Tyloric who clapped Princess Azania in irons in his dungeon for a month, hoping she’d break and agree to marry Prince Floric.” “Floric the Flatulent? Gods, no!” several servants blurted out. One man ducked aside and deposited his breakfast in a nearby flowerbed. “Sorry …” “I understand perfectly,” Azania said.

A high-pitched voice, loud and terrified, echoes in my mind. “We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die, there’s no escape, they’ll catch you. WE’RE GONNA DIE!” Oh, hell, no. It’s happening again. This is the entire reason my doctor told me to avoid stress. I’m not avoiding stress, and now the voices are back.

Instantly I surrendered myself to the grimness of death. The change it had been able to effect in Mrs. Taylor showed that its strength could not be resisted. Her high-pitched voice, which parted the air in the Store, was forever stilled, and the plump brown face had been deflated and patted flat like a cow's ordurous dropping.

After Julius Caesar, Marlon became, in the words of his friend Billy Redfield, “the only American actor to be seriously thought of as Hamlet,” the great hope of American theater enthusiasts to finally measure up against the English. “We who saw him in his first, shocking days,” said Redfield, “believed in him not only as an actor, but also as an artistic, spiritual and specifically American leader. We flung him at the English as though we owned him and we all but shouted, ‘He does without your damned elocution lessons, your fruity voices, your artificial changings of pitch and stress, your bleeding love of words, words, words, and your high-toned, fustian, bombace technique. He throws away your books and burns your academies. He does it from within. And he is better than all of you!

[During the honeymoon at a Catskill resort] A quiz was held during the afternoon, and guests were invited to volunteer. I raised my hand, of course, and became one of the contestants.... I was third in line, and when I rose to field my question in the first round, spontaneous laughter broke out from the audience. They had laughed at no one else. The trouble was that I looked anxious, and when I look anxious I look even more stupid than usual. The reason I was anxious was that I wanted to shine and feared I would not. I knew that I was neither handsome, self-assured, athletic, wealthy, nor sophisticated. The only thing I had going for me was that I was clever and I wanted to show off to Gertruded. And I was afraid of failing and spelling "weigh" "WIEGH." I ignored the laughter as best I could, and tried to concentrate. The master of ceremonies, trying not to grin and failing, said, "Use the word 'pitch' in sentences in such a way to demonstrate five different meanings of the word." (Heaven only knows where he got his questions.) More laughter, as I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. I then said, "John pitched the pitch-covered ball as intensely as though he was fighting a pitched battled, while Mary singing in a high-pitched voice, pitched a tent." The laughter stopped as though someone had pulled a plug out of the socket. The master of ceremonies had me repeat it, counted the pitches, considered them, and pronounced me correct. Naturally by the time the quiz was over, I had won.... I noticed, though, that winning the quiz did not make me popular at the resort. Many people resented having wasted their laughter. The thought apparently was that I had no right to look stupid without being stupid; that, by doing so, I had cheated.

Facial expression: try to adopt a firm, friendly expression. Avoid a tense, aggressive look, or one that suggests that you are nervous. • Posture: keep your head up (but not so high that you look haughty!) – lowering it will make you look submissive. • Distance: not too close, but close enough to be heard and to make good eye contact. • Gestures: make these relaxed and not intimidating – no finger wagging, for example. But also make sure that you are not making nervous gestures like wringing your hands. • Eye contact: don’t stare at the other person, but don’t be afraid of looking them in the eye. A comfortable pattern is to shift your focus between the other person’s eyes and mouth during a conversation. • Voice: keep the tone, volume and pace of your voice such that it communicates thoughtfulness and calm. Try not to let the pitch or the volume of your voice go up, which it can easily do if we feel stressed. • Vocabulary: use constructive and non-critical words and phrases – your aim is to get the other person on board, not into conflict. Acknowledge the other side of the argument, empathize and never attack.

In her memoir, Expecting Adam, Martha Beck writes, “If you’ll cast your mind back to high school biology, you may remember that a species is defined, in part, by the number of chromosomes in every individual. Adam’s extra chromosome makes him as dissimilar from me as a mule is from a donkey. Adam doesn’t just do less than a ‘normal’ child his age might; he does different things. He has different priorities, different tastes, different insights.” Beck writes of the transformations her son has wrought in her own life. “The immediacy and joy with which he lives his life make rapacious achievement, Harvard-style, look a lot like quiet desperation. Adam has slowed me down to the point where I notice what is in front of me, its mystery and beauty, instead of thrashing my way through a maze of difficult requirements toward labels and achievements that contain no joy in themselves.” Children with Down syndrome tend to retain what the experts call babyfaceness. These children have “a small, concave nose with a sunken bridge, smaller features, larger forehead and shorter chin, and fuller cheeks and rounder chin, resulting in a rounder face.” A recent study found that both the register in which parents speak to their DS child and the variances in pitch resembled the voice patterns parents use to speak to infants and young children.

There’s nothing like writing at midday on a Saturday while wearing slippers. It’s a state very close to happiness. I’d be completely happy if I were also drinking a coffee and smoking a cigarette. We always need to be a few steps away from happiness. The transience of the state, the euphoria that can’t last. Happiness is high-pitched. Like a woman talking in a high-pitched voice and everyone turning to look.

Nervous laughter. We need you in San Diego, kid. The meeting with Under Armour went . . . fine? Notice my high-pitched voice when I say fine.

Mommy, for the first time, I’m crying because I’m happy.” That voice, soft and high-pitched though it was, didn’t sound like an untutored child contemplating a novel concept. It sounded like an ancient soul, groping along in an unfamiliar body, beginning to remember itself. And though Katie has already traveled a great distance along her own spiritual path, I still see in her this brave, inquisitive, perpetually awakening soul. I think that’s what she is, at the very center. I think that’s what we all are.

Sure enough, many studies find that, just as straight men prefer women with an hourglass figure, straight women prefer men with a V-shaped torso, an athletic physique, and a voice like a low-pitched rumble. Men possessing these attributes tend to lose their virginity earlier, attract more sexual partners, and have more affairs than other men. Conversely, men with a pear-shaped body and a high-pitched, Mickey Mouse voice tend to attract less sexual interest and accumulate less sexual experience.

I forgot how...Eric, he is,” Blake said, staring at the open door. Blaine chuckled as he heard Eric raising hell in the hallway. “That’s Eric.” “You sure about this?” Blake asked, raising a brow. Blaine closed his eyes, settling in as he heard Eric’s voice reach that special high pitch he reached when indignant. “As long as he is.

Oh, God,” I cry, trying to keep my voice down but failing miserably. “Can you see him, baby? Ask him forgiveness.” “Why?” I pant, another high-pitched moan nearly swallowing the word. “Because you worship me now.

When they were standing in Corrine’s driveway and Mary Rose spat out that word—bastard—her voice was flat as the land Corrine is looking at now, and her heart fell to her feet. She has heard this tone of voice a few times in her life, usually but not always from a man or group of men. And although Mary Rose is angry and afraid, and there’s a little girl driving around with a man they don’t know, it occurs to Corrine why Mary Rose’s tone of voice sounds so familiar. It is not the ginned-up, high-pitched rage you hear when a crowd burns a book or throws a rock through a window or plants a kerosene-soaked cross in somebody’s yard and sets it ablaze. The flatness of Mary Rose’s speech, the hollow affect, the cold and steady tone of voice—all are fear and rage transformed into wrath. Hers is the voice of someone whose mind is made up. All that’s left to do is wait for the little spark that will justify what is about to happen next.

The very concept that dragons can recall their previous lives is so hard for humans to grasp. I should so dearly love to listen to whatever you wished to tell me, and to make a complete record of all you recall. Such conversations alone would make a journey worthwhile! Oh, please, say that you will!” A taut quiet followed her words. “Alise,” Sedric said warningly, “I think you should come away from the railing.” But she clung there, even though she, too, could feel the wave of uneasiness that swept through the ship. The smoothness went out of the sailing; the deck under her feet shifted subtly. Surely it was her imagination that the wind flowed more chill than it had? Paragon spoke into the roaring silence. “I choose not to remember,” he said. Alise felt as if his words broke a spell. Sound and life came suddenly back to the world. It included the sudden thud of feet on the deck behind her. A woman’s voice said, without preamble, “I fear you’re upsetting my ship. I’ll have to ask you to leave the foredeck.” “She’s not upsetting me, Althea,” Paragon interjected as Alise turned to see the captain’s wife advancing on her. Alise had met her when they embarked and had spoken with her several times, but still did not feel at ease with her. She was a small woman who wore her hair in a long black pigtail down her back. She dressed in sailor’s garb; it was well tailored and of quality fabric, but for all that, she was a woman in trousers and a jacket. Less feminine garb Alise could not imagine, and yet the very inappropriateness of it seemed to emphasize her female form. Her eyes were very dark, and right now they sparked with either anger or fear. Alise retreated a step and put her hand on Sedric’s arm. For his part, he turned his body so that he stood almost between them and said, “I’m sure the lady meant no harm. The ship asked us to come up and speak with him.” “That I did,” Paragon confirmed. He twisted to look over his shoulder at all of them. “No harm done, Althea, I assure you. We were speaking of dragons, and quite naturally, she asked me what I recalled of being one. I told her that I chose to recall nothing at all.” “Oh, Ship,” the woman said, and Alise felt as if she had disappeared. Althea Trell did not even glance at her as she moved forward to take Alise’s place at the bow. She leaned on the railing and stared far ahead up the river as if sharing the ship’s thoughts. “Par’gon!” A child’s voice piped up suddenly behind them. Alise turned to watch a small boy of three or four clambering onto the raised foredeck. He was bare armed and bare legged and baked dark by the sun. He scampered forward, dropped to his hands and knees, and thrust his head out under the ship’s railing. Alise gasped, expecting him to pitch overboard at any moment. Instead he demanded the ship’s attention with a strident, “Par’gon? You awright?” His babyish voice was full of concern. The ship swung his head around to stare at the child. His mouth puckered oddly and then suddenly he smiled, an expression that transformed his face. “I’m fine.” “Catch me!” the boy commanded, and before his mother could even turn to him, he launched himself into the figurehead’s waiting hands. “Fly me!” the imp commanded the ship. “Fly me like a dragon!” And without a word, the ship obeyed him. He cupped the child in his two immense hands and lifted him high and forward. The boy leaned fearlessly against the ship’s laced fingers and spread his small arms wide as if they were wings. The figurehead gently wove his hands through the air, swaying the youngster from left to right. A squeal of glee drifted back to them. Abruptly the charge of tension in the air vanished. Alise wondered if Paragon even recalled they were there. “Let’s leave them shall we?” Althea suggested quietly. “Is it safe for the child?” Sedric objected in horror. “It’s the safest place the boy can possibly be,” Althea replied with certainty. “And for the ship, it’s the best place, too.

Out came the high-pitched voice of a poet, auctioning the dull things he had found in the back of his brain.

In America, my father began working as a clerk for a government agency. He rented an apartment in a place called Queens, New York. A year after he left us, he sent airplane tickets. The Delhi of the seventies is hard to imagine: the quietness, the streets empty of traffic, children playing cricket in the middle of the street and rarely having to move out of the way to let cars by, the vegetable vendors who came pushing their carts down the streets in the late afternoon, crying out their wares in tight, high-pitched voices. There weren't VCRs back then, let alone cable channels. A movie would play for twenty-five or fifty weeks in huge auditorium theaters, and then once the movie was gone, it was gone forever. I remembered feeling grief when the enormous billboards for Sholay at the end of our street were taken down. It was like somebody had died. It is also hard to remember how frugal we were. We saved the cotton that comes inside pill bottles. Our mothers used it to make wicks. This frugality meant that we were sensitive to the physical reality of the world in a way most people no longer are. When my mother bought a box of matches, she had my brother sit at a table and use a razor to split the matches in half. When we had to light several things, we would use the match to set a twist of paper on fire and then walk around the apartment lighting the stove, the incense stick, the mosquito coil. This close engagement with things meant that we were conscious that the wood of a match is soft, that a bit of spit on paper split on paper slows down how it burns. By the time our airplane tickets arrived, not every family hired a band to play outside their house on the day of the departure to a foreign country. Still, many families did.

How long did they stay there in that room, on the narrow bed? She had a scar on her shoulder, in the shape of a star, that Louis couldn't help but run his lips over. A souvenir of a fall from a horse. It got dark. They could hear the clattering of hooves, a whinny, and the high-pitched voice of the marquis giving orders at more and more distant intervals, like a motif on a flute, clear and desolate, returning again and again.

She looked over to answer it and froze as she saw the name Jayne and the picture of an incredibly beautiful female blowing a kiss. What the hell was that? Before she could recover from the shock, it rolled to the speaker voice mail he used whenever he was home. “Hey, sexy baby. It’s Jaynie calling about your girl problems. As always, I’m more than happy to take care of your needs, and will be there as soon as I can. Just hold tight and stay precious, my beautiful sweet cheeks. Don’t want to see no frownie baby when I get there. I promise, I’m going to put a giant smile on that gorgeous face of yours. Love you, sexy T! See you soon.” Her jaw slack, Felicia wasn’t sure what pissed her off the most. The woman’s looks. Her words. Or that exaggerated high-pitched sopping, sweet, sultry voice. Maybe it was all three that came together to light a fury in her so foul, she could taste the Talyn-blood she intended to let. Oh, forget the Ring. The Splatterdome was here. Tonight. This condo. And she was going to get her pound of Iron Hammer flesh. *

I ventured into the dimly lit darkness towards the blaring disco music and crowded dance floor. The enclosure reeked of poppers (alkyl nitrites), a recreational drug often used by gay men to heighten their sexual arousal. The club was hopping with the latest disco hits from the popular disco queen of 70s, Donna Summer. Half-naked and almost naked men were crowding the dance floor, grinding their perspiring bodies against each other in a sensual and sexual trancelike state. Men in various stages of foreplay were gyrating their muscular and sinewy bodies against each other in preparation for impulsive back-room romps. After taking to the dance floor for a couple of songs, I embarked on an exploration journey towards the back of the house. It was difficult to make out the abundance of naked bodies loathering in the dark in various stages of copulation. When I ventured into a large room with a sling in the middle, I heard a familiar, high-pitched groaning voice. It was a voice I had heard several years ago in class at the Bahriji School. It was a soprano voice that I could never get out of my head. Surrounding the voice was a queue of mesomorphically built men, waiting their turn to satisfy their sexual desires on an equally muscular hunk lying on the suspended, swinging sling. The man’s legs were spread above his torso. They were strapped to either sides of the hanging chains and so were his wrists, tied securely above his head. Although the ‘bottom’ was blindfolded with a black kerchief, I instantly recognized him as none other than the famous supermodel, Rick Samuels.

Towards the end of October 1946, I had the good fortune to be present at a confrontation in Cambridge which marked a water-shed in the history of modern philosophy. The Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club had invited Karl Popper to speak. […] After Popper's declaration that he did not believe in puzzle-solving and his affirmation that there were genuine philosophical problems, Wittgenstein started to challenge him to name a 'philosophical' problem. I cannot now recall the precise sequence of events, but after Popper tried to name one or two philosophical problems and Wittgenstein kept countering by saying that he did not know what he would 'mean' by his statements, the drama occurred. Popper was sitting on one side of the fireplace, and Wittgenstein on the other. Both were facing the audience. In the middle, in a big armchair, there was Bertrand Russell. Suddenly Wittgenstein, who had been playing and fidgeting with the poker in the fire, took the red-hot poker out of the fire and gesticulated with it angrily in front of Popper's face. Thereupon, Russell – who had so far not spoken a word – took the pipe out of his mouth and said very firmly in his high-pitched, somewhat scratchy voice: 'Wittgenstein, put down that poker at once!' Wittgenstein complied and soon after got up and walked out, slamming the door. Looking back now after nearly forty years, one can see the real significance of that incident. It prefigured the clash of philosophical opinions which has developed ever since the gradual decline of Positivism has turned into a rout.

taken and I might not be here now. We might still be living in the orphanage, or maybe I would have taken a job and started earning enough to become his official guardian, and for us to move into our own home. Tim might have begun an apprenticeship. Why has this man come to see me? He had entered armed with a crossbow and a shoulder bag. I eyed the bow's loaded tip. Perhaps I had been right about the wardens not wanting to wait until the main labs opened. Perhaps he was going to finish me off sooner: now. I had no idea why a man of such high status would do it personally though, and he didn't move any closer. He strode to a chair near the clock and sat down, his weapon resting casually on his knee. Then he let out a subdued cough, clearing his throat. "I have some news for you, Ms. Bates," he said, his voice nasally and off-puttingly high-pitched. “Ms. Bradbury passed away in the hospital about an hour ago.” My heart stilled. “I also have a proposal for you,” he went on. “A proposal that I suspect you will not refuse." He paused for a moment, scrutinizing me. "A situation has led Her Majesty and the Court to find use for a person with… your type of background. We have been watching the detention facilities, waiting for the right young woman to whom we may offer this opportunity." “Opportunity?" I managed. "You took defense lessons with Ms. Dale up until the age of fourteen, did you not?" he asked, as though I hadn't spoken. I nodded. "The opportunity involves embarking on a mission which, if successfully completed, would suspend your sentence. It would allow you another chance to redeem yourself and reintegrate into society. Your previous crimes would be erased from your record. Forgotten about.

glanced at Pogue. From his pocket he withdrew earplugs. I was familiar with them. They block out the high decibels and pitch of gunfire but allow human voices through. He handed a pair to me. I shoved them in. I took a deep breath and let fly the piece of glass, which landed with a tink in the far corner of the room. The

Sir!" he called out. "The Great Chaffalo! My name's Touch, and I brought a bundle of straw. I'd be much obliged if you'd turn it into a horse." Nearby, the tall weeds rasped a little in the breeze. But that was all. He picked up the straw and hurried past broken windows to the rear of the house. "You there, Mr. Chaffalo? It's me, Touch, and I'm in a dreadful hurry. My great-uncle aims to cart me off to the orphan house, but that don't take my fancy. I ain't asking for a fine, high-stepping horse, sir. Just any four legs'll do, as long as one ain't lame. I'd be proper grateful, Mr. Great Chaffalo." Undiscouraged, Touch moved his bundle of straw back to the front of the house to try again. And he noticed the rocking chair was pitching as if someone had just got up. Touch's hair went stiff as needles. But he was determined not to be scared off. He caught his breath. "If you were dozing, I don't mean to rile you up, sir. Maybe you heard of my great-uncle. Judge Wigglesforth? Crosscut saws don't come any meaner. I know I don't amount to much, for a boy, but I'm not shifty-eyed, the way he says. I hope you can see that, Great Chaffalo." Suddenly, Touch thought he could feel a pair of eyes watching him. The eyes in the poster! he thought. His hopes took a leap. "I aim to ride through the woods until I'm long out of reach, sir. He won't know where to look. I'll thank you everlastingly if you'll oblige me with a horse." A snarl burst out of the tall weeds. It wasn't a horse. It was a scruffy wild dog, its teeth looking like rusty nails. And it was coming straight for Touch. Touch began to shinny up a porch column, but he knew that hound was going to get its rusty teeth into his leg. Then he heard a snap of fingers and a voice in the air. "Hey! Hey!" The bundle of straw changed into a horse.

She was pointing at Ron in dire accusation: It was like a malediction, and Harry could not blame Ron for retreating several steps. “I came running after you! I called you! I begged you to come back!” “I know,” Ron said, “Hermione, I’m sorry, I’m really—” “Oh, you’re sorry!” She laughed, a high-pitched, out-of-control sound; Ron looked at Harry for help, but Harry merely grimaced his helplessness. “You come back after weeks—weeks—and you think it’s all going to be all right if you just say sorry?” “Well, what else can I say?” Ron shouted, and Harry was glad that Ron was fighting back. “Oh, I don’t know!” yelled Hermione with awful sarcasm. “Rack your brains, Ron, that should only take a couple of seconds—” “Hermione,” interjected Harry, who considered this a low blow, “he just saved my—” “I don’t care!” she screamed. “I don’t care what he’s done! Weeks and weeks, we could have been dead for all he knew—” “I knew you weren’t dead!” bellowed Ron, drowning her voice for the first time, and approaching as close as he could with the Shield Charm between them. “Harry’s all over the Prophet, all over the radio, they’re looking for you everywhere, all these rumors and mental stories, I knew I’d hear straight off if you were dead, you don’t know what it’s been like—” “What it’s been like for you?” Her voice was so shrill only bats would be able to hear it soon, but she had reached a level of indignation that rendered her temporarily speechless, and Ron seized his opportunity. “I wanted to come back the minute I’d Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn’t go anywhere!” “A gang of what?” asked Harry, as Hermione threw herself down into a chair with her arms and legs crossed so tightly it seemed unlikely that she would unravel them for several years.

Quietly as possible, I unzip my backpack at the foot of my bed and feel around for my journal and the tiny book light. Keeping on my stomach and facing the end of my bed, I clip the light onto the cover of the journal and turn to my next assignment. In my periphery I see Darren’s feet move. I quickly press the button on my book light, straining to listen as he wrestles with his sheets, presumably to get comfy. “What are you doing?” he whispers, so close his breath causes a stray hair to tickle my cheek. I startle, leaning away and curling the wisps behind my ear. “Are you writing in your diary?” Even through the whisper I can tell he’s laughing. “No.” I feel in the dark for my backpack and cram the journal inside. “Please. Just admit you were drawing hearts around someone’s name.” “I didn’t even do that in junior high,” I say, my high-pitched whisper threatening to break into full voice. “Like I believe that.” He whisper-laughs again.

Are you writing in your diary?” Even through the whisper I can tell he’s laughing. “No.” I feel in the dark for my backpack and cram the journal inside. “Please. Just admit you were drawing hearts around someone’s name.” “I didn’t even do that in junior high,” I say, my high-pitched whisper threatening to break into full voice. “Like I believe that.” He whisper-laughs again. A mattress spring creaks and I can hear movement near the head of his bed. A second later I can just make out Darren’s outline as he folds a pillow in half and lies on his side, facing me. I grab my own pillow and mirror him. Nina’s snoring deepens and Tate rolls over. I hold my head perfectly still and sense Darren do the same. It feels like we’re about to get caught breaking some kind of rule, lying on our beds the wrong direction. We’re quiet for so long, I’m sure Darren’s fallen back to sleep. I let my eyes close and start counting my toes again. “I keep a journal too.” His whisper seems much closer than I expected. In the soft light from above, I can see the glisten of his eyes looking right at me. I swallow and my throat makes an embarrassingly loud gurgling noise. “Is it full of hearts?” I manage to ask. The corner of his mouth pulls up. “That’s pretty much all I put in there. Hearts and flowers and more hearts.” My bed shakes from the chuckle I’m containing. “Hey, as long as it’s not poetry.” “What’s wrong with poetry?” “Nothing.” I bite my lip, worried I offended him. “You write poems?” “Sure. I’ve won awards for it.” “Oh. Wow. That’s…cool,” I manage, reluctant to admit that poetry’s one of those things I don’t understand. At all. And people who do “get” it enough to write their own make me nervous with their intellectual prowess. “Kiddiiiiing,” he draws out in a gravelly breath. “Make up your mind,” I tease, secretly hoping he really is kidding. “Do you or don’t you?” Eyes completely adjusted now, I can see him raise his hand and cross his fingers. “Don’t. Scout’s honor.” “Funny,” I say, snatching his hand and yanking it down. “Did you already forget how to promise?” I worm my pinkie around his and squeeze. He squeezes back and lowers our joined hands to the bed. My heartbeat is strong in my ears. Do I pull away first? Do I wait for him to? What if he doesn’t? What if we fall asleep like this?

How did it go?” “How did what go?” “Reaping,” I whispered. He shrugged. “Same as usual. ‘But I can’t be dead,’” he said in a falsetto voice. “‘You most definitely are dead, but you’re lucky because I’m taking you to Fólkvangr, where you’ll live in the lap of luxury for thousands of years until the big battle at the end of the world,’” he added in his normal voice. “‘Can I say goodbye to my parents?’” he added again in a high-pitch. “‘Uh, they can’t see you, stupid. You’re dead,’” he finished, reverting into his regular voice again. He shook his head. “Idiots.

To the west, the sinking sun was a red orb, streaking the evening sky with wisps of dark gray and pink. Loretta no longer sat erect on the horse to keep her breasts from touching the Comanche’s naked back. She slumped against him, her lolling head pillowed by the muscular cleavage of his spine. Pain shot up her cramped legs from the bonds of coarse wool braid. The rawhide around her wrists had cinched tight, cutting into her skin. Her tongue was a parched lump. One more mile, and she felt sure she would die. She imagined herself sinking into blackness, escaping. It would be cool and dark in heaven. The water there would flow sparkling and icy. There would be no Comanche with cruel, midnight blue eyes. Hunter’s voice rumbled inside him, vibrating against her cheek. Loretta felt the stallion slowing down. Angry words in a language she couldn’t understand ricocheted around her, high, low, growling, shrill. She fluttered her lashes, too miserable to care why the men argued, just thankful for the reprieve. She felt Hunter shift his weight backward, felt his hard hands fumbling with the tight band of leather that bound her wrists. The next second her arms were freed and fell like dead weights to her sides. Hunter’s strong back disappeared. She slumped forward on the horse, not caring about anything as long as she could rest. Something cold touched her left ankle. In some distant part of her mind, she realized that someone was cutting the wool braid that bound her feet. She kept her eyes closed, her cheek pressed against the horse’s sweaty neck, her arms hanging. A moment later her right ankle was freed as well. And then came a new kind of pain. Not fire, but thousands of needles pricking her legs, the agony shooting to her hips. She gasped and bolted upright. When she did, she pitched sideways. The world turned upside down. Arms caught her. The sky spun above her. Someone yelled. Torture. She was being carried, but the arms that cradled her were made of white-hot fire, singeing her wherever they touched. She didn’t think there could be any pain more excruciating. Then cruel hands lowered her to a soft mat of grass, but the blades of the grass turned to sharp spikes, piercing her flesh. Loretta closed her eyes and gave herself up to the pain. Someone held her and rocked her--someone strong with a deep voice that whispered like silk through her mind. The words were sometimes strange, but the few she understood made the meaning of the others absolutely clear. She was safe where she was, sure enough safe--forever.

The more I backed away, the less I wanted to stop watching. Nunzio getting railed was uncharted territory, and a little voice in my head kept whispering, I wonder how that feels…. Judging by the high-pitched, frantic noises elicited from Nunzio’s mouth, I was going to assume it felt damn good. Michael

Two-One Alpha, ready for you. Move it. We’re in kind of a hurry to find a quieter place!” Two wounded men were hauled to the helicopter first by four of their buddies, with the rest strafing the hill to keep the Taliban heads down. The fright and panic in the eyes and faces of the soldiers were clearly visible. Their screams rose above the thundering noise of the engines as they pushed the wounded in and then took up position outside the chopper to provide covering fire for the remaining men to get in. “All in. Let’s get out of here!” Leo shouted. “Grab tight. It’s going to be a rough ride boys!” John pulled the chopper into a steep climb while banking away from the hill. With no fire coming from the doorgun to keep them down, the full force and frustration of the enemy was now directed at the chopper and its occupants. They saw their prey escaping out of their hands right in front of their eyes. A burning pain shot through John’s back and legs as the body of the helicopter shuddered under the power of the two Rolls-Royce Gem turboshaft engines at full throttle. Smoke started to billow from the starboard engine. I have to get over that hill three miles away. Why am I dizzy? I have to get these boys out of trouble. I have to level the chopper and save power. I must get over that hill. I must get out of the reach of the bullets. “Doug! Doug! Can you hear me? What’s wrong man?” Leo screamed in a high-pitched, panicked voice. “Oh my God, you’ve been hit! Are you ok? Shit man, put the chopper down now. You’ll crash and kill us all!” “That hill … I have to get over it … out of range … I must get us there ...” Doug stuttered. “What was that? I can’t hear you. For God’s sake put the chopper down!” Leo shouted at the top of his voice. “Going down, going down … radio for help!” John whispered, a few seconds before everything went dark. The nightmare and the math Doug paid little heed to his passengers as he banked away from the canyon rim. Max was back there to help them. Doug had plenty on his mind, between the flashback to his crash in Afghanistan and wondering when whoever had shot two of his passengers would show up and try to shoot the chopper down here and now, over the Grand Canyon. Not to mention nursing the aging machine to do his bidding. Within minutes after takeoff from the canyon site, lying in the back of the chopper, JR and Roy were oblivious to their surroundings due to the morphine injection administered to them by Max Ellis – an ex-Marine medic and the third member of the Rossler boys’ rescue expedition. Others on the chopper had more on their minds. Raj was in his own world, eyes closed, wondering about his wife Sushma, their child, and the future. He and Sushma were not the outdoors adventure and camping types – living in a cave with other people was going to take some getting used to for them. They both grew up and had lived in the city all their lives. How was this going to work out

Suddenly a frenzied high-pitched shriek behind us. Henry Klein, a stocky survivor from Dniepa, had burst into wild, piercing sobs. Turning away from us, he began to howl Kaddish, his voice shrill. His children stood by, stunned. He was doubled over now, hands on

Dee’s slurred voice interrupts my thoughts with a high pitched screech. “YO bitch, drink up! I got you one of those pull down p**sy things, no…it was the p**sy panty pull-down? Fuck.” She spits the word out with so much frustration she almost falls off her stool. She looks over at me and I can see her trying to decide if she is more confused over the correct drink name or how she got to the club to begin with. “That’s not right, Dee! Greg! Greg, tell her the right p**sy! You know p**sy, right Greg?” I laugh up at him, tilting my head to the side, wondering why his frown is wobbling. “You two are driving me f**king crazy. Just because I know my p**sy doesn’t mean I know this shit. I eat it and when drinking it down, I damn sure don’t do that out of a f**king glass. For shits sake, get some motherf**king water next time. Fuck me, the right p**sy.” He shakes his head at us both. “If you touch one more drink with a f**king p**sy in the title, we are gone, got me?” Well. He thinks he runs this show, does he?

A high-pitched voice may sound less authoritative, more youthful, and less experienced, whereas, a lower pitched voice may be perceived as being more authoritative, confident, and credible. It is unfortunate that listeners will make assumptions based on these differences before even knowing the depth and value of your message. Play with your ranges and find a comfortably low pitch. Practice it to see if it makes a difference in conveying more authority and brilliance.

Neen James (NeenJames.com) is an eloquent and successful international speaker who stands at four-feet-eleven with a rich Australian dialect and a high-pitched voice. For years, fellow speakers with good intentions told her she needed to take voice lessons to lower her pitch to give her more depth for a compelling stage presence. With complete confidence and loyalty to her uniqueness, she ignored the naysayers and her amazing signature voice has become a powerful brand.

What do you want?” I asked. No one answered. The van pulled to a quick stop around the corner. The big Asian guy slid in, and the van started up again. He bent down, gazing at me with what looked like mild curiosity. “Why were you at the park?” he asked me. His voice threw me. I had expected something growling or menacing, but his tone was gentle, high-pitched, and creepily childlike.

He had heard the voice of London that lives and breathes beneath the rumble of traffic, a voice like the continual high-pitched shriek you hear when you put your head beneath the waves of the sea. It is the sound of millions and millions of creatures living and struggling and dying and being born. It commands those who hear it to eat or be eaten..

Why was it that when she heard Granny ramble on about witchcraft she longed for the cutting magic of wizardry, but whenever she heard Treatle speak in his high-pitched voice she would fight to the death for witchcraft? She’d be both, or none at all. And the more they intended to stop her, the more she wanted it. She’d be a witch and a wizard too. And she would show them.

Mom rubbed the back of my neck and we kept walking, away from the kids and the colors and the high-pitched, happy voices. Seeing them made me feel like I was a million miles from anything good. I just got really lonely. I'm not sure why. All those kids smiling and laughing and my mom so fucking clueless and me feeling kinda shitty and high at the same time. All of a sudden, I couldn't figure out what the point was. I couldn't remember what mattered.

for such nuance, and he knew that being dissociated from schizophrenia merely by degree could be fatal for his credibility. There was nothing he could do, though, so he rose again from the couch, muted the TV, and elected to do the only productive thing he could think of. With a new-found determination, Dan fetched the folder from under his bed and lifted out the unreadable German letter. All of the talk about wartime activity led Dan to think that this letter might be from the 1940s. It would almost explain the stupid writing, he thought. With that in mind he ran each of the letter’s pages through his scanner and looked at the images on his computer, zoomed to a size that helped him identify some of the calligraphic touches as particular letters. The first complete word Dan found — aided initially by the umlaut — was, ominously, Führer. He then successfully identified a few more words from the first page, becoming quite good at spotting instances of “ein” and “eine”. Further progress was hard to come by, though, and Dan soon couldn’t help but feel like he was running through treacle; getting nowhere despite applying himself totally. Dan looked at the time in the top corner of his computer’s screen and did a double take when he saw that more than 90 minutes had passed since he turned it on. He saved his annotated progress and decided to call it a night. The computer chimed as it powered off, which struck Dan as odd, but he shrugged it off. As he walked to turn off the TV — now replaying Billy Kendrick’s tenacious interview from immediately after Richard’s press conference — Dan heard the chime again. Doorbell, he realised. Dan stayed still. In the unlikely event that Mr Byrd had come to check on him this late, he would say so. He usually called through the door. No voice came. After a long gap that left Dan thinking that the caller had gone, he heard three rushed knocks on the window. “Dan McCarthy,” the visitor shouted at the glass. The high-pitched voice sounded vaguely familiar but was heavily muffled by the window. Beginning to realise that the visitor wasn’t going away any time soon, Dan walked towards the door. When he got there he heard footsteps on the other side, and then someone lowering themselves to the ground. “Dan McCarthy!” a chirpy voice called through the gap at the bottom of his door. He recognised it now. After a few seconds, Dan opened the door and saw a smartly dressed young woman crouched to the ground with her head on his doormat. She jumped to her feet, smiling warmly. “Dan McCarthy,” she said, holding out her hand. “Emma Ford. From the phone, remember?

From a couch across the room, Cedric listens intently. That last thing about the danger of accepting limits strikes a nerve in him. He looks down, his mind racing. While his blackness is the identity carrying the highest voltage in this room, or almost any room in America, the sheet in his hand is still blank. "It's not that complicated," Cedric says suddenly, his voice high pitched with frustration. All eyes turn to him. "Your identity, I think, should be something that you are proud of. I wouldn't be proud to say that I had only one leg and I could just barely walk, you know, on one leg. That may be true, but I wouldn't let it define who I was." ..."I said I think your identity should come from something you take pride in. It shouldn't be something that just sets you apart from other people, it should be one of those things that, you know, people generally understand is a good thing, something we all share, rather than what separates us. I mean, the things that make up identity are deeper things than skin color or whatever. Things, I don't know, like character or our faith or how we treat other people.

Don, we're huge fans," I said. "Don, we're huge fans," he shot back in a high-pitched voice meant to mock me. What a jerk, I thought, but I didn't care, because he was Don Berman, and that's what Don Berman did.

Adamson scoffed. It generally takes two wars to develop a new weapon, he said; besides, it was “morale,” not research, that led to victory. Shifting in his chair, the formal and ever-polite Wigner could not contain his impatience. “Perhaps,” he told Adamson in a high-pitched but steady voice, enunciating every syllable, “it would be better if we did away with the War Department and spread the military funds among the civilian population. That would raise a lot of morale.”49

He dumped me again!’ She narrows her eyes on Tom accusingly. I drop my bag by my desk and watch as Victoria fires all sorts of accusations at a very guilty looking Tom. ‘Don’t ask me to come out with you ever again,’ she spits, pointing her pen at him. ‘Friday, you cleared off with the scientist, and last night you didn’t even have the decency to go home with the same man!’ ‘Tom!’ I gasp sarcastically. ‘I thought the scientist was your soul mate?’ ‘He still might be,’ Tom defends himself in a high pitched voice. ‘I’m just sampling what’s on offer before I decide on what to invest in.

He held up a small piece of paper she recognized with a pang as being from the pink stationary set her grandfather had bought her for her tenth birthday. “‘I want to marry a man who will wear pink shirts because it’s my favorite color,’” he read aloud, and then he looked up at her. “Really? That’s your criteria?” “It seemed important when I was ten.” “Bouquet—pink gladioli tied with white ribbon,” he read from a torn piece of school notebook paper. “What the hell is gladioli? Sounds like pasta.” “Glads are my favorite flower.” She grabbed her clothes and went into the bathroom, closing the door none too softly behind her. When she emerged, he was still in bed and still rummaging through her childish dreams for her future. She watched him frown at a hand-drawn picture of a wedding cake decorated with pink flowers before he set it aside and picked out another piece of pink stationary. “‘If the man who wants to marry me doesn’t get down on one knee to propose,’” he read in a high-pitched, mock-feminine voice, “‘I’ll tell him no.’” “My younger self had very high standards,” she snapped. “Obviously that’s changed.” He just laughed at her. “Were you going to put all this into spreadsheet form? Maybe give the poor schmuck a checklist?” “Are you going to get up and go to work today or are you going to stay in bed and mock a little girl’s dreams?” “I can probably do both.

Milton did his best to keep up, which is to say, he lagged behind, baying like a mortally wounded basset hound. The Fausters were to singing as Napoleon was to Extreme Frisbee. Milton’s Pang gullet only made things worse, drawing out each tortured “note” until it whimpered for release. Mr. Presley pulled the emergency brake on their duet. “We’ve all got talent, son,” he consoled. “Some folks just got to dig deeper than others to find it. Now, let’s give someone else a chance. You”—he waved his diamond-ringed fingers lazily toward Virgil—“step on up and show us what you’ve got.” Virgil rose nervously, his metal chair sighing with relief, and trudged up to the stage as Milton shambled off. Ever the good friend, Virgil tried to high-five Milton after his disastrous debut, but due to Milton’s Pang-suited delayed reaction, he just ended up slapping him in the head. “Sorry,” Virgil mumbled to his friend as he stood before the chalkboard. “Just follow my lead, son, and relax,” Mr. Presley slurred supportively. Mr. Presley began to mournfully croon. “Au signal du plaisir, Dans la chambre du drille, Tu peux bien entrer fille, Mais non fille en sortir …” Virgil pulled in a great breath and began to sing. “Bonne nuit, hélas! Ma petite, bonne nuit. Près du moment fatal.” In a word, Virgil’s voice was stunning. In another word, he was a virtuoso. In four more words, Milton was very surprised. Virgil’s thrilling spectacle of pitch and tone was like a vocal fireworks display, and his breath control left the rest of the class breathless. “Fais grande résistance, S’il ne t’offre d’avance Un anneau conjugale.” Riding

Mrs. Roosevelt talked about the difficulties of formulating the Bill of Rights for the United Nations, where she was head of that committee. When she addressed the International Student Conference, we were all full of expectation. Her voice was shrill, high-pitched and not too pleasant at first. Within a few minutes, you were enthralled by her warmth, her humanity, her genuine concern for the people of this world. We had a most enjoyable evening, with food and drink and a chance to meet her as well as all the professors from Bard College.

Lass, I know that ye have been searching for the ring so that ye can go home. While, we were away, Arran found it.” “He did?” Shocked, I tried to normalize my expression as he continued.  “Aye,” he paused to retrieve it and held it out to me, eventually setting it in between us when I didn’t reach out for it.  “I almost threw it in the ocean.” “You what?” The pitch of my voice was oddly high and screechy, making me sound angry rather than shocked.  “Aye, lass. I’m verra sorry, but I dinna want to give ye the ring. I know that I canna keep it from ye, but I’d like to ask ye something before I let ye have it.” “Of course.” My heart restarted as hope began to crawl through the fear rooted in my stomach.  “Doona go, lass.” He squeezed my hands tightly in between his own, and I was sure my heart was going to burst with happiness. “I’ve fallen in love with ye, Bri, and I doona wish to be parted from ye. If ye doona love me, I shall give ye the ring, but I could no let ye leave without telling ye.” My voice cracked as I spoke to him, and a tear broke free from my left eye. “No.” He didn’t give me a chance to finish. “I’m so verra sorry for keeping the ring from ye, lass. I just wasna ready to let ye go.” I pried my hands loose and reached up to grab hold of his face. “No, listen. Let me finish.” He stopped talking, pursing his lips awkwardly like a fish, and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Its no so funny, lass. Ye’re breaking my heart. I only ask that ye do it swiftly.” “Hush. It is funny. Your face looks ridiculous. I meant, ‘no,’ I’m not mad at you. I had something to tell you tonight as well.” “Aye?” “I was going to tell you that I wanted to stop looking for the ring. I can’t leave here. This is my home now and I’ve fallen in love with everyone. Mary, Kip, Arran, Griffin, even you.” I winked at him before continuing, “Before, I only thought I had to go back because of my mother and Blaire. She deserved the chance to return to her home, but she doesn’t want it. “How do ye know, lass?” “It’s the spell book. We can write messages to one another that cross over through time. My mother knows I’m safe here, and as long as she knows that, she’ll be okay with my decision. And Blaire, she said she wants to stay. That means I’m free, Eoin. I’m free to stay with you. If you’ll have me?” “Have ye, lass? Did ye no just hear what I said to ye? I’ll have ye and ye alone.

Stop complainin.” Jess climbed up to the cab and leaned down to pull me up beside him. “I’m not complaining.” His fingers clung to my wrists as the soles on my gray, canvas shoes slipped up the worn steps. “It’s hot. I’m sweatin’. I don’t want to go campin’,” his voiced pitched high to mock me.

If all of my sensible clothes hadn’t gone missing, or if Mrs. O’Connor hadn’t conveniently shredded my last skirt and blouse in that wringer—something I’m still not convinced was an accident—it wouldn’t be so difficult getting dressed,” Millie grumbled as she suddenly stuck a hand on his leg when the buggy ran over a rut in the road. Immediately snatching her hand back, she blew out a breath. “I do beg your pardon, Everett.” “Think nothing of it,” he managed to respond in a voice that sounded a little high-pitched. “There,

Rylan!" Melanie squeals, high-pitched enough to break glass. "I'm, like, so sorry I haven't talked to you all night. Being a hostess is hard work." She dramatically wipes imaginary sweat off her forehead. "Anyway, I finally have some free time. So why don't we go dance, hmm?" Gripping my waist a little too tightly for my taste, she tries to pull me back to the house. I stand strong., jerking Melanie back when I don't move. "No thanks, Melanie." My free arm tightens around Ivy's waist. "I already am dancing with someone." Melanie's sight flickers to Ivy, and for a moment contempt skews her big grin. But it's gone in an instant as Melanie stretches her fake smile to the point she's showing gums and asks, through gritted teeth, "Hi. What's your name?" Ivy can tell there's something off with the girl in front of her, but she still gives her a polite greeting. "Hello. My name is Ivy. How do you do?" Melanie completely ignores the question and turns back to me. "You never told me you invited someone else, Rylan." Melanie's smile goes harsh. "I'm sorry, but unless I give the okay, no one outside of school is invited." She glares at Ivy. "I'll have to ask you to leave." Ivy tilts her head, befuddled at the sudden hostility. "You want me to go?" Melanie rolls her eyes. "Uh, yeah. I just said that." Ivy stares down at her feet, ashamed and no doubt guilty for the wrong reason. She nods. "Okay." She begins to leave but I grab her wrist and pull her back against me. I glare at Melanie. "What if I don't want her to go?" I growl. "Yeah, Melanie!" To my relief, I see Aidan and Nadia wiggle through the crowd. Neither of them look very happy; Nadia's downright fuming. Despite the whole "my liking Ivy" case, she's still there for me. "Don't go telling people they can't be here," Nadia growls, her eyes flashing dangerously. "Who died and made you think you can boss everyone around?" "Last time I checked, this is my party, and therefore I choose who I invite or not," declares Melanie with an obvious edge in her voice. "That's no excuse! The only reason you want her gone is so you can make Rylan your new boy toy, which he doesn't want!" "Oh, like you know him so well?" "I'm his best friend, bitch!" " Excuse me!?" "ENOUGH!" With one word, I bring the argument to an end and all attention back on me. "Nadia's right," I state, glowering at Melanie. "Nadia's always been right. You know one of the reasons I came, other than to show Ivy a good time? It was to tell you to leave me alone, okay? I. Don't. Like. You. So leave me alone!" It was like I announced I farted. Everyone starts whispering with disbelief. No one has ever turned down the advances of Melanie Sweet—until now. It's turning into a night of first for them. Melanie obviously isn't used to this, as her face reddens like a tomato, her beautifully manicured hands clench into fists, and her usually angelic face morphs into a full-blown snarl. How sweet.

He followed another voice. “This isn’t real, man. Maybe we’re having some kind of mass hallucination.” “Well, you stay and check it out then,” someone called back. “I’m getting the hell out of here.” The wolf loped closer, scenting the human. The man was slowing down, certain none of this could be reality. The wolf leapt, covering a considerable distance in a single spring and catching the human by the seat of his pants. He got a mouthful of denim, and the man gave a high-pitched scream. Without looking back, he bolted to join his friends, his boots loud on the street as he escaped. Aidan laughed out loud this time, the sound echoing eerily, carried on the thick bed of fog. He couldn’t remember the last time he had had so much fun.

Estes Park was set in a valley surrounded by the Rocky Mountain National Park.... When I visited a few years ago, there were actually elk grazing on the golf course." "Are you serious?" "Hey, every year in October they have an Elk Festival. That's why I came here. I wanted to see it 'cause it was on my bucket list." "An Elk Festival?" Amelia laughed. "You have the most awesome things on your bucket list. Mine seem boring compared to yours." Amelia raised her brow curiously. "What was the festival like?" "It was awesome. They had an elk bugling contest, elk seminars, Native American music, dancing and storytelling. They even had bus tours that took you to see the elk grazing in the fields. It was great. I loved it." "Wait a minute," said Amelia as she tilted her head to one side. "What's an elk bugling contest?" Rick grinned. "It's the call of the elk. Anyone can compete. Whoever sounds the most like an elk wins. You can use a horn or just your own voice. When I was there, the man who won used his voice. It was really something." Amelia's eyes widened with curiosity. "How did he do it? What does it sounds like?" Rick chuckled. "Well... the call starts out with deep rich tones. Then it quickly rises to a high-pitched squealing sound and immediately drops down to a bunch of grunts.

She stopped in Eckerds to flirt with a guy she knew there and get some free Blow Pops. She leaned over the counter and pursed her lips and moved up and down on her toes while he dug out all the watermelons, her favorite. There was a scale with a mirror next to the pharmacy counter, and she stared at herself sideways. With her low-slung jeans and junk store green army coat, Murphy looked high-fidelity, full-color, and healthy. The counter boy’s voice pitched high when he asked her, nervous and awed, if she wanted anything else. Murphy smiled and stuck a Blow Pop in her mouth as she turned and sauntered out the door.

He measured time in the increments between her visits. When he’d been reassembled, bathed, stitched, or simply had a bandage changed, she’d been there. Touching him. Crooning reassurances and praising his progress. Promising recovery. She sang to him sometimes, her voice high and sweet and … unencumbered by talent or pitch of any kind. Christ, she really was terrible. But every time she finished, he promised the devil his soul for one more song.

larynx (pp. 352–354), and (2) smaller intrinsic muscles that control tension in the glottal vocal folds or that open and close the glottis. These smaller muscles insert on the thyroid, arytenoid, and corniculate cartilages. The opening or closing of the glottis involves rotational movements of the arytenoid cartilages. When you swallow, both sets of muscles work together to prevent food or drink from entering the glottis. Food is crushed and chewed into a pasty mass, known as a bolus, before being swallowed. Muscles of the neck and pharynx then elevate the larynx, bending the epiglottis over the glottis, so that the bolus can glide across the epiglottis rather than falling into the larynx. While this movement is under way, the glottis is closed. Foods or liquids that touch the vestibular folds or glottis trigger the coughing reflex. In a cough, the glottis is kept closed while the chest and abdominal muscles contract, compressing the lungs. When the glottis is opened suddenly, a blast of air from the trachea ejects material that blocks the entrance to the glottis. Sound Production How do you produce sounds? Air passing through your open glottis vibrates its vocal folds and produces sound waves. The pitch of the sound depends on the diameter, length, and tension in your vocal folds. The diameter and length are directly related to the size of your larynx. You control the tension by contracting voluntary muscles that reposition the arytenoid cartilages relative to the thyroid cartilage. When the distance increases, your vocal folds tense and the pitch rises. When the distance decreases, your vocal folds relax and the pitch falls. Children have slender, short vocal folds, so their voices tend to be high pitched. At puberty, the larynx of males enlarges much more than that of females. The vocal cords of an adult male are thicker and longer, so they produce lower tones than those of an adult female. Sound production at the larynx is called phonation (fo.-NA .-shun; phone, voice). Phonation is one part of speech production. Clear speech also requires articulation, the modification of those sounds by voluntary movements of other structures, such as the tongue, teeth, and lips to form words. In a stringed instrument, such as a guitar, the quality of the sound produced does not depend solely on the nature of the vibrating string. Rather, the entire instrument becomes involved as the walls vibrate and the composite sound echoes within the hollow body. Similar amplification and resonance take place within your pharynx, oral cavity, nasal cavity, and paranasal sinuses. The combination gives you the particular and distinctive sound of your voice. That sound changes when you have a sinus infection and your nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses are filled with mucus rather than air.

with her high-pitched, nauseating screech,” Maude snapped. “Lindsey’s voice at least is harmonious. Bradfield’s incomprehensible grunts are completely off-key

(Female) Within seconds of inhaling, the room filled with an amber-gold veil which seemed to coat everything. My entire body and mind were filled with visual, vibrational sound, which appeared like millions of tiny, flashing points of light. An intense swirling feeling came over my body and mind, and I felt a rapid and complete loss of control as I swirled downward into a very deep, bottomless whirlpool. I experienced a very sensual, unitive state with my partner (also voyaging). I experienced our essences blending like the mixing of water colors while still feeling each of us as individuals – he later confirmed something similar at the same point. As I swirled and lost control, a deep pain within me expressed itself as a high-pitched moaning that came screeching out of the very depths of me. I witnessed and felt this happening without capacity, or desire, to stop it from happening. With this sound I twisted and twirled downward, not knowing if my body was actually doing this or if it was a very strong inward sensation. The next thing I knew, I was in a vast, dark space like a night sky, yet there was a slight whirling around me. I was no longer whirling, but the space around me was. My mind was fragmented into a million pieces which seemed to be floating around me in this space. I didn’t know where I was or who I was. When I noticed this I felt lost and afraid. While there were no sign posts indicating a direction, I spontaneously made a kind of mental intention to go towards something and as a result began to move in a direction in this inner space. I then heard a deep, loving, feminine voice slowly say “That’s right. You can do it.” It was a voice from within this space, the voice of the guide. Upon hearing it, I was deeply, utterly relieved – her voice so soothing and warm, reassuring and firm. She felt ancient and familiar to me. I felt I knew what to do now, yet was overwhelmed with the task – I felt I was in an insane state of mind. While it felt like the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do, I knew I had to move within this space in a certain direction. There were no visual clues, only an internal sense that once I had moved that I was going in the right direction. I was going Home. I heard a noise in the room and recalled where I was, that I was travelling with the Jaguar. I brought conscious attention to my breathing and gradually re-collected myself. I sat up and as I looked around the room at everyone I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when she awoke from her long dream – I recognized everyone as ancient friends. I asked the women to form a cocoon around me and when they did I burst into tears and sobbed very deeply, accompanied by a very deep feeling of relief and return. I felt ancient connection and experienced a grounding and inner contact with my spiritual nature. During the days following my journey, I alternated between anxiety and elation and experienced an amazingly broad range of levels of consciousness throughout my daily activities. I could easily perceive multiple levels of existence and experienced an increase in empathic and psychic ability. I also experienced a tremendous amount of sexual energy and greatly heightened orgasmic responses in my entire body. At quiet moments I felt very deeply relaxed and centered.

Um… you want to hack into the registry again?” Dex tried. Ro snorted. “Wow, you guys are super bad at this. How about I save us all some time and speak for my boy? Okay, so Councillor Sparkle-Eyebrows—” “Who?” Dex interrupted. Ro shrugged. “No idea. Can’t remember his name. You guys have way too many leaders to keep them all straight. All I know is the dude had these huge hairy things above his eyes and a jewel from his crown rested right between them, so I’m calling him Councillor Sparkle-Eyebrows. Anyway, he said my boy’s new elf-y ability is linked to the tone of his voice, and he seemed pretty sure about it. So, assuming he’s right, we need you to use your techy skills to build a gadget that’ll give Hunkyhair better control over that, kinda like you did for Blondie to help with her power-boost-touch thing. And personally, I vote for something that makes his voice extra high-pitched and squeaky—although it could also be fun to make him sound super creepy. Ooo, is there a way to have it switch back and forth?” She smirked at Keefe, daring him to contradict her. But he honestly wouldn’t care if Dex made him sound like a screeching siren, if it made talking safe again. “Welllll,” Dex said, dragging out the word. “I bet I can figure out how to make something like that. But… would it really help? There’s a difference between voice and tone, you know?

The task is not to conduct the castration in a direct climactic confrontation, but to undermine those in power with patient ideologico-critical work, so that although they are still in power, one all of a sudden notices that the powers-that-be are afflicted with unnaturally high-pitched voices.

There was a mailman I loved as a little girl. He would stop at the communal mailbox On the street In the center of the apartment complex And begin sorting mail away Into 150 different little boxes We lived in 1202 I would rush from my house To greet the mailman And he would talk to me as he worked Filing away bills and cards and coupons He would ask me questions Quiz me And give me a piece of Bazooka gum For every question I got right I would spin around and crush my sneakers rocking up and down on my toes I would curl one piece of hair Around my finger while I thought of the answers I would slide my tongue between my teeth and the windows where they were missing And between every mailbox The mailman would look at me and smile He’d pat me on the cheek And tell me That I was as smart as he was. As smart as any man. And I believed him. Because why wouldn’t I? I was 8. I knew that George Bush would win the election. I knew the Pythagorean theorem. I read 300 books from the public library And I could draw every animal by memory. I liked him ’cause he gave me chewing gum And talked to me in his low voice Calm and soft Not the shrill, high-pitched voice They would use on my baby brother. One day the mailman didn’t show up for work I ran out and stopped in my tracks There was a different man there I asked if my friend was sick The imposter ignored me The new mailman showed up a few days in a row The kids in the neighborhood said The old one had a heart attack in a bowl of spaghetti And died with noodles up his nose I cried One Wednesday I ran out to the new mailman And asked if he had any gum He told me to stay away Because he didn’t want to get in trouble like Charlie I didn’t know my friend’s name was Charlie And I didn’t know how I could have gotten him in trouble So I asked my mom How you could give someone a heart attack And she rubbed her head and stretched her feet across the couch and said, “It feels like you’re gonna give me one right now.” I didn’t want my mom to die too. So I hid in my room And I cried Because I was 8 And a murderer.

Zen is Buddhism made simple again. The robes worn by Zen priests are plain black affairs (unlike the colorful getups favored by the Tibetans and their other Buddhist cousins), and even after receiving Transmission, the Zen master's daily dress is a dull brown robe. You can sit anywhere; Dogen Zenji said that the heart is the real zendo. This informs temple architecture. Plainness here is neither false humility nor a facade. It is true to the bone. Skeletal beams and rafters are seamlessly joined; they are not nailed or screwed into place; they are made to fit together. Inside a zendo, there is mostly open space, dimly lit, with a small central altar and a tan, a two-foot-high wooden platform built around the perimeter, where meditators sit on plain black cushions, facing the wall. There are few ceremonial objects—the teacher's staff, a stick of incense burning in a bowl—and it is rare to run into more than one or two bronze or wooden Buddhas. Zen rituals are spare, too. Music is reduced to an isolated ding or bong of a bell, the flat report of a mallet tapped against a slab of wood, and a thrumming bang from a giant bass drum. Even the chanting is monochromatic; students pitch their voices toward the deep, dark end of the register and grumble in unison.

Absorption of parental care into adult human relationships is evident from the widespread use of infantile names (such as "baby") for mates and lovers, and the special high-pitched voice that we reserve for both young children and intimate partners. In this context, Eibl-Eibesfeldt mentions the kiss, which probably derives from mouth-to-mouth feeding of masticated food. Kissing without any transfer of food is an almost universal human expression of love and affection, which, according to the ethologist, resembles kiss feeding "with one partner playing the accepting part by opening the mouth in a babyish fashion and the other partner performing tongue movements as if to pass food." Significantly, chimpanzees both kiss feed their young and kiss between adults. A close relative of the chimpanzee, the bonobo, even tongue-kisses.

Staaahp being so fucking dramahhhtic," Crown mimicked, in a high-pitched voice. “This isn’t the time, you dumb, hilarious bitch!

Behind me was a cacophony of children's voices, raised in high-pitched squeals and screams of excitement, the occasional cry of a toddler who must've fallen down, the yell of a parent telling a kid to stop putting mulch in your mouth or let go of your brother. "I don't know if I want kids, either.

high-pitched, dolphin sonar voice.

The sound of water is deep, its form is serpent-like, its color green, and it is best heard in the roaring of the sea. The sound of fire is high pitched, its form is curled, and its color is red. It is heard in the falling of the thunderbolt and in a volcanic eruption. The sound of air is wavering, its form zigzag, and its color blue. Its voice is heard in storms, when the wind blows, and in the whisper of the morning breeze.

My parents had no time for me. Whenever they would come upon me in one of the rooms, they always looked startles, as if they'd completely forgotten I lived in the same house with them. If my mother came upon me by myself, a look of absolute panic would come into her eyes. She would ask, "Where's Nanny?" in this strained, high-pitched, near-hysterical voice. And when Nanny would return from wherever she was, mother would breathe an enormous sigh of relief. "Oh! There she is!" Clearly, for a moment, she had been terrified she was going to have to figure out how to mother me on her own.

My mother looked glamorous in comparison to the others. Many of them hid their lumpy bodies with baggy clothing. A couple of the Asian moms who didn’t speak English very well hunched over shyly, as if they didn’t want to be seen. But my mother sat with her back yardstick-straight and commanded the room, looking radiant even in her high-waisted jeans and T-shirt. Her shoulders and arms were muscled from the hours of tennis she played every morning, and a perfectly round perm hovered around her head like a halo. Her voice was strange—high-pitched, warbly, and tinted with a strong Malaysian-British accent. I could hear it splintering across the cabin.

I hook an arm around his neck and start to administer an epic noogie. Bastien starts laughing and screaming “my hair, my hair” in a high-pitched overly feminine voice. I’m laughing so hard I can’t hang on when he grabs my knee and swings me around to his front. Satisfaction with my new position sweeps through me, and my rational side clutches its pearls at the scandalous thought. Bastien plants a raspberry on my neck, which makes me squeal and wiggle to get away from him.

Walking into a Japanese restaurant for the first time, I was nearly knocked off my feet when everyone from the chefs to the waiting staff erupted with an ‘Irashaimase! Welcome!’ It was a real chorus of tones, from the booming deep voice of the head chef to the high-pitched screech of a passing waitress delicately balancing two hinoki wooden plates.

Theo Archer,” she starts in a high-pitched voice. “You irresponsible scoundrel. You wastrel.” She starts to laugh between words, so I finish, “You mewling, fly-bitten miscreant.

This notion of the artist as better than other people is irritating, I admit. I remember how annoyed I was with myself, as a young man, when I first came across it, I think in connection with pronouncements by and about Goethe, Proust, and Ezra Pound. I felt, I think rightly that the people I know -my parents and friends- were as high-minded and decent as any poet. The poet's business, it seemed to me, is to celebrate or at least understand those people, not arrogantly raise himself above them, pompously proclaim himself the Romantic "great man" who imposes on the rest of poor miserable humanity the duty of groping through darkness, hunting out his footsteps. I would not now take that opinion back, but I might temper it a little. A thousand times since then I've been in conversations where no one seemed to care about the truth, where people argued merely to win, refused to listen or try to understand, threw in irrelevancies -some anecdote without conceivable bearing, some mere ego-flower. A thousand times I have heard some person -some casual acquaintance about whom I had no strong feeling- cruelly vilified, and have found that to rise in defense of mere fairness is to become, suddenly, the enemy. I have witnessed repeatedly, university battles in which no one on any side would stoop to plain truth. I have seen repeatedly, how positions which at first glance seem stirringly noble and idealistic, for example, the battle led by Cesar Chavez in California -can in an instant turn cunning and dishonest, seizing whatever means seem necessary, imagining the hoped-for end can remained untainted. I need not speak of the Republican and Democratic parties, mockers of the ordinary citizen's ideal, of America's support of tyranny and corruption, or of the astonishing greed and moral indifference of both public officials and some members of public, whether the payoff be bribery and preferment or those welfare checks drawn by the affluent in Florida on vacation. And sitting in rooms with other artists -sculptors, painters, composers, writers, people whose work I believe to be serious and authentic- I have noticed how frequently, if not infallibly, they react to all these varieties of falsity with stammering, fist-banging rage. In the redness of their faces, the pitch of their voices (not all, of course, shout; some speak quietly, a few make bitter jokes), these artists are not different from the typical Milwaukee banker speaking angrily of the Jews, or the racial fanatic speaking angrily of niggers or honkies; but what these artists care about -what they rave or mourn or bitterly joke about- is the forms of truth: justice, fairness, accuracy.

just shook my head in defeat, my face becoming even a deeper shade of red in anticipation. “‘When is Arthur Leywin going to start attending this school?’” Director Cynthia said, pitching her voice high like a younger Tess.

Mastering the Art of Breathing: The Secret Behind Powerful Performance Breathing is something we do every moment of our lives, yet most of us never think about how we breathe—or how we should breathe. For singers, actors, athletes, and even public speakers, breathing technique is one of the most essential skills to master. It’s not just about taking air in and out; it’s about using your breath to support your voice, improve stamina, control emotions, and enhance overall performance. Why Breathing Technique Matters Proper breathing allows you to control your voice better, project sound without strain, and maintain energy throughout long performances. It also helps reduce anxiety and tension, especially during high-pressure situations. In singing, breathing affects everything—from tone quality to pitch control. A well-supported breath can make your voice sound fuller, more stable, and more expressive. Without good breath control, even the most talented singers can fall short in performance. The Foundation: Diaphragmatic Breathing Also known as belly breathing or deep breathing, diaphragmatic breathing is the foundation of all professional vocal techniques. Instead of shallow breaths that only expand the chest, this method engages the diaphragm—an essential muscle located just below the lungs. Here’s how to practice it: Lie down or sit up straight with your shoulders relaxed. Place one hand on your chest and one on your stomach. Inhale slowly through your nose. Focus on expanding your belly, not your chest. Exhale gently through your mouth, keeping your chest still. Repeat for several minutes a day to train your body to breathe efficiently. When done correctly, the breath feels deeper and more satisfying, and you’ll notice increased breath capacity over time. Breath Control and Support Once you’ve mastered basic diaphragmatic breathing, it’s time to work on breath control—the ability to manage your air supply while speaking or singing. This doesn’t mean holding your breath; it means learning how to release air gradually and steadily. Try this simple exercise: Take a deep breath using the diaphragm. Blow out a steady stream of air while making a soft “sss” sound. Aim to keep the sound consistent and even, without sudden drops. This helps train your muscles to regulate airflow, which is crucial for long phrases or powerful notes in singing. Tips to Improve Your Breathing Technique Practice daily. Like any muscle, your diaphragm improves with regular use. Warm up before performances. Gentle breathing exercises prepare your body and calm your nerves. Stay hydrated. Dry vocal cords can affect breath efficiency and vocal tone. Watch your posture. An upright, relaxed posture allows your lungs to expand fully. Avoid shallow breaths. Focus on breathing into your lower lungs, not your chest. Conclusion Breathing may be natural, but breathing well is a skill—one that can transform your voice, boost your confidence, and elevate your performance. Whether you're an aspiring singer, a stage performer, or someone who wants to speak more clearly and confidently, investing time in mastering your breath is one of the most powerful things you can do.

He had an excessive fear of poisoning, taking extreme precautions with his food, and his bed had to be made up in a specific way. He could not work steadily, but only in explosive outbursts of energy or not at all. Even the smallest decision demanded the greatest effort and he had to work himself up to it. When thwarted, he would have a hysterical tantrum, scolding others in a high-pitched voice, foaming at the mouth and stamping uncontrollably in fury. On several occasions, when he was to make an important speech, he stood in silence before his audience, then walked out, and one international broadcast was inexplicably taken off air. And he threatened to commit suicide if the Nazi Party was destroyed or his plans for the German Reich failed.

It was common for Hollywood actors to be physically remodelled. Even so, Willson’s regime sometimes involved permanent damage. Deciding that Hudson’s natural speaking voice was too high-pitched for his macho image, the agent hired a vocal coach to make the requisite change. Waiting until Hudson had a cold, the coach made him scream for hours until his vocal cords were permanently altered to produce a deeper – and hopefully more seductive – register.

Reaching the brow of a stunted hill, Amelia paused in bewilderment at the sight of a towering contraption made of metal. It appeared to be a chute propped up on legs, tilted at a steep angle. Her attention was caught by a minor commotion farther afield … two men emerging from behind a small wooden shelter … they were shouting and waving their arms at her. Amelia instantly realized she had stumbled into danger, even before she saw the smoldering trail of sparks move, snakelike, along the ground toward the metal chute. A fuse? Although she didn’t know much about explosive devices, she was aware that once a fuse had been lit, nothing could be done to stop it. Dropping to the sun-warmed grass, Amelia covered her head with her arms, having every expectation of being blown to bits. A few heartbeats passed, and she let out a startled cry as she felt a large, heavy body fall on hers … no, not fall, pounce. He covered her completely, his knees digging into the ground on either side of her as he made a shelter of his body. At the same moment, a deafening explosion pierced the air, and there was a violent whoosh over their heads, and a shock went through the ground beneath them. Too stunned to move, Amelia tried to gather her wits. Her ears were filled with a high-pitched buzz. Her companion remained motionless over her, breathing heavily in her hair. The air was sharp with smoke, but even so, Amelia was aware of a pleasant masculine scent, skin-salt and soap and an intimate spice she couldn’t quite identify. The noise in her ears faded. Raising up on her elbows, feeling the solid wall of his chest against her back, she saw shirtsleeves rolled up over forearms cabled with muscle … and there was something else … Her eyes widened at the sight of a small, stylized design inked on his arm. A tattoo of a black winged horse with eyes the color of brimstone. It was an Irish design, of a nightmare horse called a pooka: a malevolent mythical creature that spoke in a human voice and carried people away at midnight. Her heart stopped as she saw the heavy rounded band of a thumb ring. Wriggling beneath him, Amelia tried to turn over. The strong hand curved around her shoulder, helping her. His voice was low and familiar. “Are you hurt? I’m sorry. You were in the way of—” He stopped as Amelia rolled to her back. The front of her hair had come loose, pulled free of a strategically anchored pin. The lock fanned over her face, obscuring her vision. Before she could reach up to push it away, he did it for her, and the brush of his fingertips sent ripples of liquid fire along intimate pathways of her body. “You,” he said softly. Cam Rohan.

as might have been expected, in the dinner-jacket he had worn on the previous evening. His explanation was characteristic. ‘Most extraordinary,’ he said, in his slightly high-pitched voice.

“She cries.” Ashley’s high-pitched voice cut through the silence as if she were dispensing juicy country-club gossip. “All the time. She really misses Aires.” Both my father and I turned our heads to look at the blond bimbo. I willed her to continue while my father, I’m sure, willed her to shut up. God listened to me for once. Ashley went on, “We all miss him. It’s so sad that the baby will never know him.” And once again, welcome to the Ashley show, sponsored by Ashley and my father’s money.

That’s the problem, two of us with issues, insecurities and baggage.’ He put on a high-pitched whiny voice. ‘Does my hair look OK, did I wear the right shoes, does my breath smell, does my bum look big?’ ‘Not all girls have those issues.’ ‘I wasn’t talking about her, I was talking about me

Small non-combat pet (Coffee Elemental). Brown liquid flowed up Joe’s arm like a snake, resolving into a small creature that smiled at him with huge, brown eyes. It spoke in a tiny, high-pitched voice, “Drink me?

Gregori merged his mind with Mikhail’s easily. Over the centuries of battles, wars, and vampire hunts, they had exchanged blood many times to preserve one another’s life. Mikhail was in pain, his blood loss great. The shooting had been a deliberate attempt to weaken his immense power. Slovensky taunted Mikhail with graphic details of torture. Mikhail’s black eyes smoldered an eerie red, a burning flame he turned on Slovensky as the man approached him. The power in those chilling eyes stopped Slovensky for a moment. “You’ll learn to hate me, vampire,” James Slovensky snarled. “And you’ll learn to fear me. You’ll learn who really holds the power.” A slight, mocking smile touched Mikhail’s mouth. “I do not hate you, mortal. And I could never fear you. You are but a pawn in a game of power. And you have been sacrificed.” Mikhail’s voice was very low, a musical thread of sound that Slovensky found himself wanting to hear again. Hypnotic. Slovensky shook his head to clear it. He knelt beside his victim, smiling his pleasure at the other’s pain. “Andre will give us the rest of you bloodsuckers.” “And why would he do that?” Mikhail closed his eyes, his face lined and strained, but the hint of a smile remained. “You turned him, forced him into such an unholy life, the same way you turned the woman. He is going to try to save her.” Slovensky leaned closer and drew his knife. “I think I should dig that slug out of you. We wouldn’t want you getting an infection now, would we?” His giggle was high-pitched with anticipation. Mikhail didn’t flinch away from the blade. His black eyes snapped open, blazing with power. Slovensky fell backward, scrambling away on all fours to crouch against the far wall. Fumbling in his coat, he jerked out the gun and held it pointed at Mikhail. The ground rolled almost gently, seemed to swell so that the concrete floor bulged, then cracked. Slovensky grabbed for the wall behind him to steady himself and lost the gun in the process. Above his head a rock fell from the wall, bounced dangerously close, and rolled to a halt beside him. A second rock, and a third, fell, so that Slovensky had to cover his head as the rocks rained down in a roaring shower.

Renaissance chairs into a circle for group discussions? She was led to a library that matched the proportions of the rest of the place. Two-story bookshelves, a desk the size of South Dakota, and a fireplace big enough to house a family of four. A man with wavy gray hair and yoga pants with a white cotton peasant shirt, barefoot, turned and greeted her. “Ah, the private eye!” he said, his voice rich and hearty, but high-pitched. “Yes, and you are?” Mary said.