Quotes About Communication

She didn't thank Ben, and she probably should have, but maybe he knows that she's grateful. Maybe he understands that saying thank you can be just as hard as saying good-bye.

if a person doesn't speak her mind she will carry her resentment until it burns her

He wished he could somehow let Claire know this was what love was. The ability to ask for something. The desire to give someone what they asked for.

Was this what love did? Make you so grateful for a word or two that you'd practically beg for such things to be said?

I didn't know if I could speak even if I tried.

She feels a little chill of expectation down her spine. There is someone, somewhere, who knows she's alive. "Somebody writes to me, Mom," Shelby tries to explain. "They think they know me. Maybe they read about me in the paper.

He must be an idiot to feel this way, but there's nothing he can do. He doesn't even know if he can manage to speak.

Sometime after the accident, her parents stopped talking to each other unless they needed to discuss a household chore or a doctor's appointment. It's true, tragedy can bring you closer or drive you apart.

You're not invisible if you talk.

I told you not to park there," some woman would say to her husband outside a movie theater or a flea market, and those words would move Gillian to tears. 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 acted as though I were a stranger when I appeared. "Did you want something?" she would ask. Yes, I felt like saying. A mother.

Don't you tell your father a thing," she'd warn me. "It would kill him. You'd do better if you kept your mouth shut.

words that have been said cannot be unspoken

You will be amazed to find how easy it is to lie, even to those you love best.

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.

When you fall in love like that, time doesn't matter. This was the secret he told Maria, the last words he ever said.

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.

Then I understood that when someone begins to tell you her story, you are entwined together.

Why should you not speak to me / And why should I not speak to you?

Sam said, Hey, you want to get high? Amy had taken his words to mean You are so beautiful I am undone by you.

Sally hears something dangerous in her daughter's voice, but of course thirteen is a dangerous age. It's the time when a girl can snap, when good can turn to bad for no apparent reason, and you can lose your own child if you're not careful.

He awoke before dawn to find the tree in full bloom, a bower of cream-colored stars on dark, leathery leaves. He heard it speak to him when he leaned his head against the gray trunk.

so your husband's home with the little ones?—it'll be good for him, let him see what it's like with kids all day, right? men never understand until you ask them to do it and then they say, Well, the kids only act like this with me, it has to be much easier when you're with them, isn't that the truth? They're really thinking, You can't possibly put up with this day after day, can you?

He could not make conversations with strangers, and yet conversations with strangers were perhaps the first thing required of him in his new life.