I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent.

It was in looking up at him her aspect had caught its lustre - the light repeated in her eyes beamed first out of his.

Her voice was completely English. For some reason I had expected a foreign accent; but I could place this exactly. It was my own; product of boarding school, university, the accent of what a sociologist once called the Dominant Hundred Thousand.

She did not understand what all that meant, but it was evidently something very near his heart, and so she said, "How splendid!"

Throughout the afternoon, the woman's voice had been seldom heard. With her pale clean hands curved around the rolled papers on her lap, she sat on a folding chair beside the dusty filing cabinets. More frequently than she spoke, she uttered a succession of dry sounds, clearing her throat. Behind the desk, the red-haired man in shirt sleeves, with tie and collar loosened, was reading aloud in a voice that matched his imperturbable expression. He looked up from his letters only when the man sitting on the window sill interrupted him with an explosive comment. (first lines)

And how often do we meet the man who prefaces his remarks with: "I was reading a book last night..." in the too loud, overenunciated fashion of one who might be saying: "I keep a hippogryph in my basement." Reading confers status.

When Cornstalk arose, he was in no wise confused or daunted, but spoke in a distinct and audible voice, without stammering, or repetition, and with peculiar emphasis. His looks while addressing Dunmore were truly grand, yet graceful and attractive.

And had he not long read
Her heart's hush'd secret in the soft dark eye
Lighted at his approach, and on the cheek
Colouring all crimson at his lightest look?

"Would you show me how to make an omelette?"
She looked shocked, and said nothing.
Then from the sink the other woman's voice said, "Men don't cook."
The woman beside me hesitated a moment, and then said softly, "This man is different, Mary. He's a Reader."

After a while he stopped listening. His ears took in only the rise and fall of her voice, the elaborate, familiar, endless rhythm of it; but from long experience he was able to say "Oh yes" or "Of course," in all the right places.

"It is indeed a tricky name. It is often misspelt, because the eye tends to regard the "a" of the first syllable as a misprint and then tries to restore the symmetrical sequence by triplicating the "o"- filling up the row of circles, so to speak, as in a game of crosses and naughts. No-bow-cough. How ugly, how wrong. Every author whose name is fairly often mentioned in periodicals develops a bird-watcher's or caterpillar-picker's knack when scanning an article. But in my case I always get caught by the word "nobody" when capitalized at the beginning of a sentence. As to pronunciation, Frenchmen of course say Nabokoff, with the accent on the last syllable. Englishmen say Nabokov, accent on the first, and Italians say Nabokov, accent in the middle, as Russians also do. Na-bo-kov. A heavy open "o" as in "Knickerbocker". My New England ear is not offended by the long elegant middle "o" of Nabokov as delivered in American academies. The awful "Na-bah-kov" is a despicable gutterism. Well, you can make your choice now. Incidentallv, the first name is pronounced Vladeemer- rhyming with "redeemer"- not Vladimir rhyming with Faddimere (a place in England, I think)."

So whenever I give a lecture, somebody from the audience gets up and says, "Dr Kramer, ... how do you know how to pronounce these words?" And my answer then is as follows: If one of the dead Sumerians that Leonard Woolley dug up at Ur, if he was miraculously resurrected and came into the room and he heard me say, [speaks Sumerian], he would say: "That man Kramer, he’s doing very well; he’s pronouncing his words and I understand them. But my goodness does he have a Jewish accent."

"I remember a day in class when he leaned forward, in his characteristic pose - the pose of a man about to impart a secret and croaked, "If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! "This comical piece of advice struck me as sound at the time, and I still respect it. Why compound ignorance with inaudibility? Why run and hide?"

When she said his name, it sounded like honey tastes.