Do people really talk like this?

“I remember the sound of silence so palpable, so merciless in its depths, that you could almost feel your heart stop in sympathy. Now we are prisoners of sonic effluence. I grieve for the past.”

- Cheryl Lindgren, as quoted in a recent NY Times article about Noise and Wind Turbines

Is there any way that Cheryl Lindgren actually talks like that? I don't know anyone who can speak that poetically off the cuff. Amazing.