Top 15 Overheard Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Overheard Quotes from famous people such as Jill McCorkle, Owen Jones, Rachel Joyce, Natasha Trethewey, RJ Mitte, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

One day, when my son was eight, he came into the kitche

One day, when my son was eight, he came into the kitchen while I was cooking and said: ‘You put bad words in your books, don’t you?’ No doubt he had overheard my mother, who often tells people who ask about my work: ‘Well, you’ll never find her books in the Christian bookstore.’
Jill McCorkle
Grief is like wandering through a minefield, as my mother puts it: however carefully you tread, a sudden detonation can happen out of nowhere. A song played in a supermarket; an overheard phrase; someone in the distance who your mind cruelly suggests is your loved one for a fleeting moment.
Owen Jones
The characters in my stories all have quite loud lives in my head. It’s a relief to get them on the page. Often they come from people I’ve noticed or overheard – but that is only a part of them. It’s only by writing that I discover who these people really are.
Rachel Joyce
I overheard things in the Woolworths when I was a child, people saying, ‘Oh, poor, little thing,’ as if they had some understanding that I was being born biracial into a world that was still very difficult for interracial marriages and biracial children.
Natasha Trethewey
I was eight when I found out I was adopted. My step-brother told me. He’d overheard my mum and my stepdad at the time talking about it, and he threw it in my face. But I didn’t really care. It didn’t seem relevant, because I never once in my life felt unloved or like I was a burden.
RJ Mitte
I often think about how my sons will come to know about September 11th. Something overheard? A newspaper image? In school? I would prefer that they learn about it from my wife and me, in a deliberate and safe way. But it’s hard to imagine ever feeling ready to broach the subject without some impetus.
Jonathan Safran Foer
For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.
Rita Dove
You can throw a novel into focus with one overheard line.
Joan Didion
A style is the consequence of recurrent habits, restraints, or rules invented or inherited, written or overheard, intuitive or preconceived.
Paul Rand
When I was young, I overheard a Brit say Canada wasn’t a real country because it doesn’t have any poets. Even then, I kind of knew that was wrong, but I still thought, ‘Wow, here’s my chance to do something, to be of service to my country.’
David McFadden
I overheard people saying, ‘She thinks she’s so great because she’s Debbie Reynolds’ daughter!’ And I didn’t like it; it made me different from other people, and I wanted to be the same.
Carrie Fisher
I love to write down things I notice about people or things I’ve overheard people saying that are interesting. I love people-watching, and I love taking the time to notice the small things.
Lily Collins
Before I had a double mastectomy, I was already pretty flat-chested, and I made so many jokes over the years about how small my chest was that I started to think that maybe my boobs overheard me… and were just like, ‘You know what? We’re sick of this. Let’s kill her.’
Tig Notaro
There’s been some people I’ve overheard talking about ‘Mindhunter.’ I’ll lean in and say, ‘Hey, I haven’t seen it yet. Is it any good?’ And they’ll say, ‘Yeah, you should go check it out.’
Cameron Britton
Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is 50 percent of the performance.
Shirley Booth