Quotes About Communication

Cursing's for the uncreative. They say "Frack! on Battlestar Galactica, and everyone still knows what it means.

A word of advice: if the sex is a pain in the ass, you're doing it wrong.

I thought it was endearing when we first got together. By the end I wanted to stab him in the hand every time he dismissed my cursing as an uncreative vocabulary. I think being able to use one little four letter word to convey a hundred different thoughts is pretty fucking creative.

In her experience, prefacing a statement with "To be honest" or "To tell you the truth" is a sure sign you're telling someone else what to believe—such as what was "good" for her, in this instance.

I stopped picking up after myself, put less effort into my appearance around the apartment, snapped at him on occasion. He seemed happy as ever, so I spent more time without him and was bossier when we were together. Before I knew it, it was like I was playing a game to see just how much Jack could take.

Did you know that in survey after survey conducted by women's magazines, those three words were the ones that men most wanted to hear in bed? Please. Don't. Stop.

Les mauvais médecins seraient donc ceux qu'on aime assez pour vouloir les intéresser à ses propres maux; et les bons médecins sont ceux au contraire qui vous demandent selon l'usage: "Comment allez-vous?" et qui n'écoutent pas la réponse.

Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves.

Il poeta trasmette: il comprendere è superfluo.

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm.

The pleasure of talking is the inextinguishable passion of a woman, coeval with the act of breathing.

The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.

The best things said come last. People will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart.

When people are laughing, they're generally not killing each other.

I came to the conclusion that, even in life, unless I'm responding with my whole self—unless, in fact, I'm willing to be changed by you—I'm probably not really listening. But if I do listen—openly, naïvely, and innocently—there's a chance, possibly the only chance, that a true dialogue and real communication will take place between us.

The trouble with a lecture is that it answers questions that haven't been asked.

Not being truly engaged with the people we're trying to communicate with, and then suffering the snags of misunderstanding, is the grit in the gears of daily life.

I hope they'll pay attention not so much to the mechanical things, like a sudden change of pace in a talk or a sudden change in volume of their voice. I hope they'll pay attention, instead, to the fundamental source of that pacing and volume, which is the connection with the other person. That connection makes us respond like a leaf in the breeze to whatever is happening in the faces of those in front of us.

In order to fight a war (probably the most extreme form of poor communication), unfamiliarity is the preferred state of mind.

The person who's communicating something is responsible for how well the other person follows him.