Voices That Stayed: Five Speeches That Still Speak to Me
On the beauty of speeches as life’s hidden accessories
Some people collect watches. Some linger over the right fountain pen. Some find beauty in the precise weight of a notebook, or the way a well-cut jacket sits on the shoulders. These small things are not frivolous - they are accessories that complete the larger picture of a person.
For me, one of those accessories has always been speeches. The details in how someone chooses words, how they pause, where their voice cracks or steadies. Speeches, especially the short ones under the bright lights of the Oscars, are like cufflinks: not necessary to survival, but necessary to meaning. They hold together the fabric of the moment.
And so, when I am sad, I often turn to them. Like others rewind music or revisit a favorite book, I rewatch acceptance speeches. They remind me that a life can be compressed into two minutes, that gratitude can be poetry, that love can be announced publicly without shame.
Here are the ones that never leave me.
Eddie Redmayne, 87th Oscars (2015)
He holds the statue as though it might escape him. His voice is cracked, jittery with disbelief. And then he grounds it: by naming the people who built him. His wife. Their soon-to-arrive child. The speech is not just about him - it is about them.
“…I will promise you I will look after him – I will polish him; I will answer his beck and call; I will wait on him hand and foot…”
Awards often look solitary. But here, Redmayne breaks that illusion: the win belongs not only to the actor but to the unseen partner at home.
Ke Huy Quan, 95th Oscars (2023)
The story is already a miracle: refugee camp, boat, almost forgotten actor - now, a man standing on the brightest stage. But he does not lose himself in the glow. He calls home. He calls his mother.
“…Mom, I just won an Oscar! … I owe everything to the love of my life, my wife Echo, who month after month, year after year, for twenty years told me that one day, one day, my time will come…”
This is not a speech, it is a condensed autobiography. Pain, exile, love, faith. Proof that a dream is never small if someone keeps it alive for you.
Jamie Foxx, 77th Oscars (2005)
I can’t count how many times I’ve watched this. Every time: tears. He does something rare - he lets grief and gratitude walk hand in hand.
“…This is probably going to be the toughest part… My grandmother’s name was Estelle Marie Talley… She was my first acting teacher… And she still talks to me now; only now she talks to me in my dreams. And I can’t wait to go to sleep tonight because we got a lot to talk about…”
This is more than an Oscar speech. It is a conversation with the dead, carried into the living world. A lesson on dignity: act as if you belong, because you already do. His grandmother’s presence becomes the invisible standing ovation.
Roberto Benigni, “Life is Beautiful” (1999)
If you want to know how to accept an award - watch this. He doesn’t just thank people. He lives joy in the moment. He climbs over chairs, he dissolves embarrassment, he makes cinema of gratitude.
“L’amore che muove il sole e le altre stelle - Love will move the sun and the other stars.”
Benigni reminds us that love, if we trust it, makes even ceremony divine.
Rowan Atkinson - Silence Speaks
And then, the opposite: silence. Rowan Atkinson turns absence of words into speech itself. Proof that action, gesture, restraint can sometimes carry more weight than any thank-you list.
Sometimes you don’t need to speak. Sometimes you only need to show.
Why These Voices Stay
What links them all? Not craft, not cleverness, not perfectly rehearsed lines. But the rawness of love. The reminder that our highest moments are never only ours - they are built by mothers, wives, grandmothers, partners, even the memory of someone long gone.
And maybe that’s why I rewatch them when I’m sad: because they remind me of what’s bigger than me. The people who keep our dreams alive. The voices that stay.
This is the first essay in Voices That Stayed, where I shared the words, gestures, and moments — from mentors, poets, authors, or artists — that continue to shape the way I think. Small details that, like accessories, complete the larger picture of life. Subscribe to stay tuned.