Quotes About Communication

Infinite speakers do not give voice to another, but receive it from another. Infinite speakers do not therefore appeal to a world as audience, do not speak before a world, but present themselves as an audience by way of talking with others. Finite speech informs another about the world—for the sake of being heard. Infinite speech forms a world about the other—for the sake of listening.

This is as much as to say that nature does have a voice, and its voice is no different from our own. We can then presume to speak for the unspeakable.

At its root all language has the character of metaphor, because no matter what it intends to be about it remains language, and remains absolutely unlike whatever it is about. This means that we can never have the falcon, only the word "falcon." To say that we have the falcon, and not the "falcon," is to presume again that we know precisely what it is we have, that we can see it in its entirety, and that we can speak as nature itself.

The unspeakability of nature is the very possibility of language.

If the silence of nature is the possibility of language, language is the possibility of history.

When I forsake my genius and speak to you as though I were another, I also speak to you as someone you are not and somewhere you are not. I address you as audience, and do not expect you to respond as the genius you are.

The paradox of genius exposes us directly to the dynamic of open reciprocity, for if you are the genius of what you say to me, I am the genius of what I hear you say. What you say originally I can hear only originally. As you surrender the sound on your lips, I surrender the sound in my ear. Each of us has relinquished to the other what has been relinquished to the other.

We can be moved only by way of our veils. We are touched through our veils.

Since a culture is not anything persons do, but anything they do with each other, we may say that a culture comes into being whenever persons choose to be a people. It is as a people that they arrange their rules with each other, their moralities, their modes of communication.

NO ONE CAN PLAY a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relating to others.

Finite speakers come to speech with their voices already trained and rehearsed. They must know what they are doing with the language before they can speak it. Infinite speakers must wait to see what is done with their language by the listeners before they can know what they have said. Infinite speech does not expect the hearer to see what is already known to the speaker, but to share a vision the speaker could not have had without the response of the listener.

In many ways, communications networks are like road systems: their purpose is to move traffic quickly from one place to another with minimum congestion. They therefore present similar problems to their designers. Speed is important, of course, and so is safety, which means essentially the same in communications as it does on highways: what arrives at a destination should bear as close a resemblance as possible to whatever left the departure point.

I want to understand the world from your point of view. I want to know what you know in the way you know it. I want to understand the meaning of your experience, to walk in your shoes, to feel things as you feel them, to explain things as you explain them. Will you become my teacher and help me understand?

Can I come in? No! I'm in a towel! I'm blind!

Hello, Max," he said quietly, searching my face. "How do you feel?" Which was a ten on the "imbecilic question" scale of one to ten. Why, I feel fine, Jeb," I said brightly. "How about you?" Any nausea? Headache?" Yep. And it's standing here talking to me.

Can I come in? No! I'm in a towel! I'm blind!

They turned to Angel. "We will call you Little One," the leader said, obviously deciding to dispense with the whole confusing name thing. "Okay," said Angel agreeably. "I'll call you Guy in a White Lab Coat." He frowned. "That can be his Indian name," I suggested.

I can talk to fish!" Angel said happily, water dripping off her long, skinny body. "Ask one over for dinner," Fang said, joining us.

And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to prose.

It is better to explore an idea than to keep a polite silence.

Yeah, but at least a guy will punch you in the face, you know what I mean? They do it and then it's over. But with girls, we slice you up piece by piece. It's like death by a thousand cuts.

Red Cap gave my shoulder a squeeze . I felt like an orange. "If you're trying to get juice out of me," I said, "it's not going to work.

I ran my fingers through my hair. We'd been together for nearly twenty minutes, and I still didn't know what he was talking about. "Sit here," I told Bigs. "And don't chew on the furniture while I'm gone.

Bigs jabbed a finger into my chest. Ping. It felt like an aluminum baseball bat. "I paid you," he said. "Now I want my Velma back." "Easy on the chest, will you, Bigs? I store my heart in there.