Quotes About Communication

Drawing is to art as grammar is to language: you can speak without any knowledge of grammar, but do not expect to be understood, and certainly do not expect to become a poet.

I'm very glad that Matthew phoned," he said. "I've been out of touch, you know. It's like that out here. You get caught up in your own life and you forget about family back home.

Men talked about things that happened in the world, about events; women, by contrast, talked amongst themselves about being in the world. The difference was crucial.

it was only too easy to make somebody like Erik feel ill at ease. It was hard enough to be Erik, Ulf reflected, without having to fend off criticism from people like me. Ulf was a kind man, and even if Erik's talk about fish was trying, he would take care not to show it. He would listen patiently, and might even learn something—although that, he thought, was rather unlikely.

I'm sure that Pat likes you," said Big Lou. "And perhaps she would like you even more if she knew how you felt about her. Have you ever told her that?" "Of course not," said Matthew. Big Lou should have known better than to ask that question. This was Edinburgh, after all. One did not go about the place declaring oneself like some lovesick Californian.

An Englishman was reflecting on the different words that people use for fish. 'Isn't it strange,' he said, 'that the French say le poisson, the Spanish say el pescado, and the English call it fish—which is what it is.' 

Nobody challenged men openly, of course, but when women spoke now amongst themselves" (pg.33)

telephoned Jamie the next morning at the earliest decent hour; nine o'clock, in her view. Isabel observed an etiquette of the telephone: a call before eight in the morning was an emergency; between eight and nine it was an intrusion; thereafter calls could be made until ten in the evening, although anything after nine-thirty required an apology for the disturbance. After ten one was into emergency time again.

The real poison within families is not the poison that can be put in your food, but the poison that grows up in the heart when people are jealous of one another and cannot speak these feelings and drain out the poison that way.

It is better to tell people good things, Mma—if you can.

Hello, honey," he said. "You are a very nice fat lady. I like a soft mattress." She drew in her breath. "Then go home and lie down on your bed," she said. "Go back to your wife. I know her, by the way.

Now that you are going to be my wife, I must teach you what wives are for" (pg.53)

These days people seemed to suggest that you should talk about everything, even those things that people never talked about in the past, but did this make life any easier? She was not sure. In fact, she thought there were occasions on which talking about distressing things merely kept those things alive, whereas not talking about them, consigning them to the past, forgetting them, allowed one to think about things that were positive, things that made the world a bit better.

Look at the way people try to make points of contact with others when they meet. Look at the way you instinctively try to establish whether somebody you meet for the first time knows somebody you know.

Mma Makutsi sighed. "You don't understand, Charlie. The word chairman covers both men and women." She paused. "Mind you, Mma Potokwane, many people these days just use the word chair. Perhaps you'd like—" She was not allowed to finish. "Certainly not, Mma," said Mma Potokwane. "I am not a chair—I am a person.

As they left the shop, Mma Ramotswe made amends and told Mma Makutsi that she really thought the blue shoes very beautiful. There was no point in disapproving of a purchase once the deed had been done.

Metaphors were so bloody: people shot messengers, flogged dead horses, cut the throats of their competitors. Perhaps that was life; perhaps that was what it was really like.

A deaf man summoned a deaf man to be judged By a deaf Judge.

Listen, my little peasant

When people call up Rush Limbaugh and say, 'It's an honor to speak to you,' I want to shoot myself.

Words! They seemed his only experience, his only sophistications. And yet what were they? Merciless little creatures, crowding about and eager for command, each with its own physical character, an ancestry, an expectation of life and a hope of posterity.

There were words on our lips that in our loneliness alone wanted utterance, and the need by itself virtually created the feeling.

it is called 'camel case' or 'intercapping' -- of writing small letters next to large in the same word, as in such popular significations as iPod, eBay, iTunes, etc. which few would argue is a distinct sign of illiteracy.

Writing, he'd come to see, was the spiritual disease of which it considered itself to be the cure;