Quotes About Communication

Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen.

Fuck you," Sally says. She tosses the words off, easy as butter in her mouth, but in fact she doesn't think she's ever cursed out loud in her own house before. "Fuck you twice," Gillian says. "You need it more.

The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and leaves you without a single word of comfort.

How wonderful to say whatever you wanted without having to go over it in your mind, again and again, to make certain it wouldn't set him off.

She said she wanted a man like that, someone who understood sorrow, not someone who caused it.

The sisters were glad to be together. They had the easy sort of relationship where they didn't have to speak to be understood.

When people related by blood were so careful with each other, when they were so very polite, there was soon nothing left to say. Only niceties that meant so little they might as well have been spoken to a complete stranger. Pass the butter, open the door, see you after school, there's rain again, it's sunny, it's cold. Has the dog eaten? Has the window been shut? Where are you going? Why is it I don't know you at all? Such statements did not add up to anything like a family...

Such things as smiles can be weapons as well.

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

Men and women rarely speak to each other, though they often talk.

Everyone should know exactly what everyone else is thinking and then people wouldn't hurt each other so much.

I knew that men told you the truth for one of two reasons: when they wished to be rid of what they couldn't bear to carry, or when they wished to include you in what they knew so their stories wouldn't be lost.

For a man tells you who he is the instant you meet him, all you have to do is listen.

That just goes to show that you never can tell about a person by guessing, Frances informs her niece. That's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.

There is no fiercer enemy than a word. A word that can be written down in pages and punctuated by quotation marks and commas and spelled out in contracts and poems and sighs, in old whispers and song lyrics, in promises and vows.

Franny whispered to Haylin all that she ever was and had been. She told him that she had always known what the future would be, and he said that if what she said was true, then she should have known a very long time ago that this was meant to be.

One thing I've learned is that strange things do happen. They happen all the time. Today, for instance, my best friend Jill's cat spoke. We were making brownies in the kitchen when we heard it say, 'Let me out.

Whoever gives his true self away does do with words

Her gift with wild birds allowed her to bring them to her merely by lifting her hand. From a distance, when she ran so fast she was nearly flying, it seemed as if she spoke their language, and was meant for their world more than her own.

a place where people heard what she said but not what she meant. She wanted to be known, but no one knew her.

What did we know about those closest to us, really? No one ever dared to speak plainly about desire; no one said the word out loud.

The author P. L. Travers once said, 'A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

Why can't people say what they mean at the time?

But children can tell when love has been lost, they know when silence means peace and when it's a sign of despair.