Quotes About Communication

I had schooled myself since the war-days never to speak of my enthusiasms; when other people did not share them, which was usual, I was hurt and my pleasure diminished; why was I always excited about things other people did not care about? But I could not hold in.

Need we go into details about what I said to Judy? I am no poet, and I suppose what I said was very much what everybody always says, and although I remember her as speaking golden words, I cannot recall precisely anything she said. If love is to be watched and listened to without embarrassment, it must be transmuted into art, and I don't know how to do that, and it is not what I have come to Zurich to learn.

It is woefully hard to find good, or even merely literate, writers, and they laugh at me when I say that sloppy, go-as-you-please writing carries less authority than decent prose. You must remember our public, they say. And indeed that is what I do, and I think the public is fully able to deal with the best they can produce. Patronizing the public, and assuming that it hangs, breathless, upon what it reads in the papers, is almost the worst of journalistic sins.

Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books.

Of course some of us had some geography in school and had studied maps, but a school map is a terribly uncommunicative thing.

There's the satisfaction of Eng-Lang-and-Lit; somebody else has said everything for you, and said it better.

No need to go into details about what I said to Judy? I am no poet, and I suppose what I said was very much what everybody always says, and although I remember her as speaking golden words, I cannot recall precisely anything she said. If love is to be watched and listened to without embarrassment, it must be transmuted into art, and I don't know how to do that, and it is not what I have come to Zürich to learn.

His reply had that clarity, objectivity and reasonableness which is possible only to advisers who have completely missed the point.

I am constantly astonished by the people, otherwise intelligent, who think that anything so complex and delicate as a marriage can be left to take care of itself. One sees them fussing about all sorts of lesser concerns, apparently unaware that side by side with them — often in the same bed — a human creature is perishing from lack of affection, of emotional malnutrition.

Never neglect the charms of narrative for the human heart.

I was a talking lover, which most women hate.

I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, but by putting the emphasis where I think it belongs.

Who ever talks about a lifelong, intimate friendship expressing itself in the broadest possible range of conversation? If people are really alive and alert it ought to go on and on, prolonging life because there is always something more to be said.

It is not hard to be popular with any group, whether composed of the most conventional Canadians or of Central European freaks, if one is prepared to talk to people about themselves.

I think a great many marriages would be saved if people would behave toward one another with the same courtesy that they would extend to someone whom they really didn't know as well as a marriage necessarily implies. … It's not very easy to do, but it is surely easier to do than to haggle and nag and fight and bitch and yelp at one another as you hear a lot of married people doing … They seem to feel that the familiarity of affection permits anything, including insult.

she had two phones.

Also," droned Helen, "Dr. Clinton Clark, Chief of Gynecology called, not his secretary, the doctor himself. And he sounded very angry. He wants you to call. And Mr. Drake wants a call too." The printout

Her conception of the role of the medical examiner was to speak for the dead to help the living.

George snapped irritably. "But the circumstances

need a phone," managed Philips.

You know what they say assuming does. It makes an ass out of you and me, but mostly just me.

What we say, my child, has an impact on those around us. Words can spread darkness and hate or shed light and love. Don't misuse them, Daphne.

Don't let's spoil the evening,' Ewing said quickly, before Tim had time to speak.

It was too important a matter, this talking to people, and listening to them, to do it lightly or often.