Quotes About Communication

The less of a life, the more mail you need

Always keep your mouth shut with a drunk. You can never win with piss tanks. The most you can hope for is to break even.

But that's what family members are for. We crave them and need them not because we have so many shared experiences to talk about but because they know precisely which subjects to avoid.

And yet in the end did we ever really give each other completely to the other? Do either of us even know how to really share ourselves? Imagine the house is on fire and I reach to save one thing - what is it? Do you know? Imagine that I am drowning and I reach within myself to save that one memory which is me - what is it? Do you know? What things would either of us reach for? Neither of us know. After all these years we just wouldn't know.

At meetings you have to explain what you've accomplished, so naturally you fluff up your work a bit, like pillows on a couch.

How strange that all you have to do sometimes to meet somebody is walk up to their house and ring a doorbell, and magically they appear as if from nowhere.

If you want to get close to somebody, you have to tell him or her something intimate about yourself. They'll tell you something intimate in return, and if you keep this going, maybe you'll end up in love.

People are leaky.

Speaking of the information superhighway, we have all given each other official permission to administer a beating to whoever uses that accursed term. We're so sick of it!

I am now [email protected]. @ could become the Mc or Mac of the next millennium.

And if you were such a good clairvoyant, why didn't you just write things straight out? What's with all the stupid rhyming quatrains? Thanks for nothing.

When I started researching this book, I thought that the Internet was a metaphor for life; now I think life is a metaphor for the Internet. I'm not trying to be cute. Just as it is impossible to point to a single spark within the human brain that proves life, so it is impossible to disprove that the Internet is a living thing. It is massive. It never sleeps. And more and more, it's talking about us behind our backs.

This guy here on the screen— Coupland turned up his laptop to show me the JPEG of the Chinese guy in Tiananmen Square. Know what he's doing now? He's working out this co-sponsor deal with Verizon Wireless and Pizza Hut.

We lost handwriting and got Comic Sans in return. That's a very bad deal.

Sometimes I wonder if it is too late to feel the same things that other people seem to be feeling. Sometimes I want to go up to people and say to them, What is it you are feeling that I am not? Please—that's all I want to know.

Unlike most fine writers, he wasn't in love with his own words.

Grasping Armstrong by the throat came ultimately from R. B. Rutledge, though shaking him was Black's idea, and shaking him like a "rag" was Herndon and Weik's.

As we hoped, our kids began to learn Italian. One day Isaac sat down to dinner, looked at the plate of pasta we'd prepared, made a face, and said, "Che schifo!" a vulgar expression meaning "Gross!" We were so proud.

Gideon," he said, "think for a minute about the qualities that a leader—even a co-leader—is required to have. He's a team player. He's good at inspiring others. He's able to hide his true feelings, put up a false front when necessary. He projects confidence at all times—even if he doesn't feel confident. He can't be a freelancer. And he's certainly not a loner. Now, tell me: do any of these qualities describe you?

We didn't use food as a reward. As some previous ASL researchers did. Jennie's reward was making herself understood. That is, she was rewarded like a human child would be rewarded. We wanted to replicate the way a human child acquires language. You don't cram food into an infant every time she says something, now, do you? Of course not.

Nobody knows what language is. It isn't just speech, that's for sure. But try to explain that to some of these reductionist structural linguists.

Beware the dog that does not bark, and the man who does not talk.

She learned her first two signs five weeks later, on—let's see here—June 4, 1967. They were hug and me. On June 6, she spontaneously signed Hug me Jennie to Mrs. Archibald, her surrogate mother.

She learned her first two signs five weeks later, on—let's see here—June 4, 1967. They were hug and me. On June 6, she spontaneously signed Hug me Jennie to Mrs. Archibald, her surrogate mother. Mrs. Archibald was under the impression that Jennie's first sign had been directed at her. I didn't correct that misapprehension. Why? I should suppose the reason's obvious.