Quotes About Communication

I guess that's how well you know me. You think I like hearing this news." "I'm sorry. This is selfish. I just need to tell someone … outside my life. Get it out of my head, to keep from going nuts, but somewhere safe." She sees me as safe? This brings tears to my eyes. "I trust you, Clem. Are you pissed?

God, Lou. Don't you think I want you to have what you want?" "You're my sister. You're supposed to want those things for me." "You can't have it both ways, Lou. When things get bad, you can't call me—which I'm glad about, I am!—you can't do that and then imply I don't give a shit about you." "That's what I used to think.

Deny it to yourself, but never to me.

Everything has its way of speaking and telling things worth knowing. Even the little grass-blades have their way of saying things as plain as words when human lips let them fall...the choice bits of wisdom...were never written down in any books.

Deep inside, she knew who she was, and that person was smart and kind and often even funny, but somehow her personality always got lost somewhere between her heart and her mouth, and she found herself saying the wrong thing or, more often, nothing at all.

And if you say that's because you lot barged into her home like a herd of mentally deficient sheep, I'm disowning all three of you.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

If the writer were more like a reader, he'd be a reader, not a writer. It's as uncomplicated as that.

we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death

Did you leave me because of me? No, she said. I left you because of us.

And if you had no tongue, no celebrating language, you'd do this: cross your hands at the wrist with palms facing towards you; place your crossed wrists over your heart (the middle of your chest, anyway); then move your hands outwards a short distance, and open them towards the object of your love. It's just as eloquent as speech.

But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person

Did you know that there is no exact rhyme in the Russian language for the word 'pravda'? Ponder and weigh this insufficiency in your mind. Doesn't that just echo down the canyons of your soul?

If you turned your back on irony, it curdled into sarcasm. And what good was it then? Sarcasm was irony which had lost its soul.

How come I can't make her happy, how come she can't make me happy? Simple: the atomic reaction you expect isn't taking place, the beam with which you are bombarding the particles is on the wrong wavelength.

If you want to make people pay attention to what you're saying, you don't raise your voice but lower it: this is what really commands attention.

It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that … [it's] delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet.

Love means never having to say you're sorry (on the contrary, it frequently means doing just precisely that).

It may be all right, you may have talked about it and agreed it was all right, but that's not how sex works, is it? It's where the unsayable is king; it's where madness and surprise rule; it's where the cheques you write for ecstasy are drawn on the bank of despair.

Everything you wanted to say required a context. If you gave the full context, people thought you a rambling old fool. If you didn't give the context, people thought you a laconic old fool.

Mystification is simple. Clarity is the hardest thing of all. You trust the mystifier more if you know his deliberately choosing not to be lucid. You would trust Picasso all the way because he could draw like Ingres.

An element of propaganda, of sales and marketing, always intervened between the inner and the outer person.

We listen to what people say, we read what they write—that's our evidence, that's our corroboration. But if the face contradicts the speaker's words, we interrogate the face. A shifty look in the eye, a rising blush, the uncontrollable twitch of a face muscle—and then we know. We recognise the hypocrisy or the false claim, and the truth stands evident before us.

And this is where the Silent Ones cause further offense. They do not understand (how could they?) that they have a new function in your life. You need your friends not just as friends, but also as corroborators. The chief witness to what has been your life is now silenced, and retrospective doubt is inevitable.