Quotes About Listening

What had we talked about and why hadn't I paid attention?

In a roomful of shouting people, the one who whispers becomes interesting.' (Peter Schimdt)

I began experimenting with visualizing the rising sun coming up in people's chests as I talked with them. It began to transform my listening.

Es detestable pensar en el público, lo único interesante es pensar en una persona que te escucha.

If you listen to what others say, you may not try at all. If you listen to your body, you may quit too soon. What your mind believes, your body believes. Your mind is the key.

Much of her life had been lived like a balancing act on a spearpoint fence, and on a particularly difficult night when she was twelve, she had decided that instinct was, in fact, the quiet voice of God. Prayers did receive replies, but you had to listen closely and believe in the answer. At twelve, she wrote in her diary: God doesn't shout; He whispers, and in the whisper is the way.

Hay una gran recompensa para el ojo que observa y el oído que escucha.

I did come out with two invaluable intimations. Talking to yourself can be useful. And writing means being overheard.

Philosophy is listening to warbling posh boys, it is being more bored than you have ever been in your life, more bored than you thought it possible to be.

The experience of listening to an hour's music you barely know in a dead language you do not understand is a strange falling and rising experience. For minutes at a time you are walking deep into it, you seem to understand. Then, without knowing how or when exactly, you discover you have wandered away, bored or tired from the effort, and now you are nowhere near the music.

He asked questions, he was interested and interesting, he rarely spoke of himself. He had a calm voice for the worst accidents and emergencies.

But I could see she wanted to talk, that her pat phrases were like lids dancing on top of bubbling cooking pots, and all I had to do was sit patiently and wait for her to boil over.

Talking to yourself can be useful. And writing means being overheard.

Time is compressing for the mother, she has a short distance left to go. She means to squeeze the past into a thing small enough to take with her. It's the daughter's job to listen. She's no good at it.

With me he [Lamin] would wait till I finished each sentence, and leave long gaps of silence before he replied, silences I came to think of as conversational graveyards, where anything awkward or unpleasant I might have presented to him was sent to be buried.

Mes suvokiame, koks godulys slepiasi širdyje, tik tada, kai išgirstame skambant sidabr? kišen?je

What is happening in Africa (& elsewhere) is because the men did not listen to the women & the women did not listen to the women either & because the people did not listen to each other & themselves & because nobody listened to the children & the poets. - Alice Walker

A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him." —Brendan Francis

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.

You heard me. You ain't blind.

Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus' listenin' tuh you, Janie. Ah ain't satisfied with mahself no mo'. Ah means tuh make Sam take me fishin' wid him after this.

He has only heard what I felt.

Mouths don't empty themselves unless ears are sympathetic and knowing.

Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.