“Six silent people in a room got me to thinking about the voice we hear in our heads when we read, the universal narrator's voice you may well be hearing right now. Whose voice *is* it you're hearing? It's not your own, is it? I didn't think so. It never is. So I posed the question out loud...”"...When you read a book, whose voice is it you hear inside your head?" "It's certainly not my own", said Harj, and the others chimed in with the same claim."Then whose it?”

“We can hear the silent voice of the spiritual universe within our own hearts.”

“THE VOICE YOU HEAR WHEN YOU READ SILENTLY is not silent, it is a speaking-out-loud voice in your head; it is *spoken*,a voice is *saying* itas you read. It's the writer's words,of course, in a literary sensehis or her "voice" but the soundof that voice is the sound of *your* voice.Not the sound your friends knowor the sound of a tape played backbut your voicecaught in the dark cathedralof your skull, your voice heardby an internal ear informed by internal abstractsand what you know by feeling,having felt. It is your voicesaying, for example, the word "barn"that the writer wrotebut the "barn" you sayis a barn you know or knew. The voicein your head, speaking as you read,never says anything neutrally- some peoplehated the barn they knew,some people love the barn they knowso you hear the word loadedand a sensory constellationis lit: horse-gnawed stalls,hayloft, black heat tape wrappinga water pipe, a slipperyspilled *chirr* of oats from a split sack,the bony, filthy haunches of cows...And "barn" is only a noun- no verbor subject has entered into the sentence yet!The voice you hear when you read to yourselfis the clearest voice: you speak itspeaking to you. ~~-Thomas Lux”

“Did somebody whisper something? I look left then right. Uh oh. I think I'm hearing voices now. Not, I AM hearing voices I THINK I'm hearing voices. Okay not voices, just a voice. Is thinking you heard it better or worse than knowning you heard it? Does the distinction matter?”

“I don't mind him not talking so much, because you can hear his voice in your heart; the same way you can hear a song in your head even if there isn't a radio playing; the same way you can hear those blackbirds flying when they're not in the sky”

“With respect," said Red, and his voice had gone so quiet people hushed each other to hear him, "my tale is yet unfinished; you should hear me out. And it is her answer I have come to hear, not yours.”