Quotes About Listening

They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.

At the start of every conversation ask yourself what can I give, not what can I take.

For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.

Lenin could listen so intently that he exhausted the speaker.

My teeth became sour as I listened to his story. It was then that I understood why he was quiet all the time.

I am always quiet so that I know what to say when I must speak.

Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty.

From listening comes wisdom, and from speaking repentance.

Silence was never written down.

A child's pleasure in listening to stories lies partly in waiting for things he expects to be repeated: situations, phrases, formulas. Just as in poems and songs the rhymes help to create the rhythm, so in prose narrative there are events that rhyme.

Chi comanda al racconto non è la voce: è l'orecchio

Ascoltare qualcuno che legge ad alta voce è molto diverso che leggere in silenzio. Quando leggi, puoi fermarti o sorvolare sulle frasi: il tempo sei tu che lo decidi. Quando è un altro che legge è difficile far coincidere la tua attenzione col tempo della sua lettura: la voce va o troppo svelta o troppo piano.

Listening to someone read aloud is very different from reading in silence. When you read, you can stop or skip sentences: you are the one who sets the pace. When someone else is reading, it is difficult to make your attention coincide with the tempo of his reading: the voice goes either too fast or too slow.

Eu falo, falo - diz Marco -, mas quem me ouve retém somente as palavras que deseja. [...] Quem comanda a narração não é a voz: é o ouvido. (p. 129)

A mesének nem a hang parancsol, hanem a fül.

Chi comanda alla racconto non è la voce: è l'orecchio.

At all these reflections of mine, Mr. Okeda remained silent, as he does always when I talk too much and am unable finally to extricate myself from my tangled reasoning.

For this woman," Arkadian Porphyrich continues, seeing how intently you are drinking in his words, "reading means stripping herself of every forgone conclusion, to be ready to catch a voice that comes from an unknown source, from somewhere beyond the book, beyond the author, beyond the conventions of writing: from the unsaid, from what the world has not yet said of itself and does not yet have the words to say.

Lo que dirige el relato no es la voz: es el oído.

How can a dialogue be established between the two of you if each thinks he hears, not the words of the other, but his own words, repeated by the echo?

Every musical phrase has a purpose. It's like talking. If you talk with a particular purpose, people listen to you, but if you just recite, it's not as meaningful.

He pours the drinks for the lost dreamers, eternally swabbing the bar while listening to their stories, ever listening, and, yes, in the end has his own tale. It is my chance to give the performance of a lifetime. After all, I know the character by heart.

It is true what they say: without an audience, a storyteller is just some guy talking to himself.

She looked right at me and said nothing. I assumed it was because she was hanging from my every word, so I continued.