Quotes About Communication

I'm not a screamer. I'm confrontational, but I don't think that translates into anger.

I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect with another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention. And especially if it's from the heart. When people are talking, there's no need to do anything but receive them. Just take them in. Listen to what they're saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it.

Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.

An animal that doesn't talk -- what a concept," Adriane remarked.

Male and female friends are always only just-the-tip away from being more.

What did I do, Win? You just left. You were supposed to come to my house. If it was too much, too soon, you should have told me. I'd never pressure you to do anything you didn't want to do. That's it, right? That has to be it.

I never understood why something as wet and with so much sucking and licking is called a blowjob. Men don't pause long enough to give a shit, is the only conclusion I've developed over the years.

There is no gesture more devastating than the back turning away.

Silence made space for other people's words, which was important for those who needed to be listened to.

I smashed his hand as hard as I could with the Wiffle bat. "Ow!" he screamed. Carson was rubbing his red palm, inspecting it for damage. "That hurt," he shrieked. "You really hurt me." "Right back at you," I said. "Good-bye Carson." He frowned, massaging his hand, the big baby. "I just wanted to end this nicely." "Yeah?" I cocked the bat up to hit him again. "Well, this time you don't get what you want.

But the thing that's wrong with Danny is more like, he wants friends but doesn't know how to navigate that, and he doesn't handle his own feelings particularly well, and so everybody finds him annoying.

It shows?" "That you don't want to owe anything? Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. But sometimes it's about the other person.

Stephen, why are you shivering?' 'I don't know, my darling.' 'Mary, why are you crying?' 'I don't know, Stephen.' p424

But her eyes would look cold, though her voice might be gentle, and her hand when it fondled would be tentative, unwilling. The hand would be making an effort to fondle, and Stephen would be conscious of that effort. Then looking up at the calm, lovely face, Stephen would be filled with a sudden contrition, with a sudden deep sense of her own shortcomings; she would long to blurt all this out to her mother, yet would stand there tongue-tied, saying nothing at all.

Writing, it was like a heavenly balm, it was like the flowing out of deep waters, it was like the lifting of a load from the spirit; it brought with it a sense of relief, of assuagement.

We've become much more casual and much more relaxed in social interactions, where there was a formality and maybe a kind of respect at that time that doesn't exist now.

A sense of mission lost in ink's jagged outcrops. I was trying to tell myself what I must have known before in a form I wouldn't recognize at first.

I know you by your willingness.

So much happiness is caged in language, ready to burst out anytime and fade

The feeling of emptiness is a pre-existing condition. Jargon forces intimacy.

She hadn't thought that much about sex after she and Samuel had settled into their marriage. There had been moments of passion, certainly in those early days—finally they could be together in that way—but she relegated her needs to a shelf just out of reach, as she thought she should, as women did.

And it wasn't as if she could talk about it with Samuel, couldn't even imagine talking about it. Eventually she saw sex as part of being a wife.

Well, call me as soon as you can and tell me what's going on. Do you need me to come down there?" Sure, like she needed to stick a couple dozen earring hooks in her eyeballs.

him? He deserves to be with the woman he loves. If you've never told him, don't you think he deserves