Quotes About Communication

The novelist now usurps the chair of the educator, the pulpit of the preacher, the columns of the journalist. Yet his original purpose of entertaining may have been his highest purpose. (introduction to Gladiator, Book League Monthly, 1930)

If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

Prayer is a declaration of dependence upon God.

Words are catch-basins of experience, fingerprints and footprints of the past that the literary detective may scrutinize in order to sleuth out the history of human consciousness.

Words contain the "souls" or minds of people in the past; as such, they tell the story of consciousness.

A translator must, of course, be an interpreter of cultures.

What troubles me is the Internet and the electronic technology revolution. Shyness is fueled in part by so many people spending huge amounts of time alone, isolated on e-mail, in chat rooms, which reduces their face-to-face contact with other people.

The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.

La difusión de la imagen visual de ese enemigo en carteles y en portadas de revista, en la televisión , en cine y en Internet, hace que esa imagen se fije en los recovecos de nuestro cerebro primitivo, en el sistema límbico, donde residen las potentes emociones del miedo y el odio. El efecto Lucifer

Spin doctors in every era have known that perception is infinitely more potent than mere fact.

You ask a philosopher a question and after he or she has talked for a bit, you don't understand your question any more.

A man will always promise to do more than he can do to a woman he cannot understand.

When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again.

He may well speak French and Latin and half a dozen languages, but since he has nothing to say – what good are they?

Anyone can attract a man. The trick is to keep him.

And then, he asks me to take him. He says the words, without shame, without ordering me to either. I obey him, though I'm afraid. I know that it can hurt if the other person doesn't know how to do it, that the body can resist.

T. me laisse parler. À la fin, il dit : c'est comme ça, il n'y a rien à discuter (je crois même qu'il dit : négocier). Si tu préfères, on arrête. Si tu ne supportes plus. Là, maintenant, tout de suite. Je dis : non, on n'arrête pas. La terreur de le perdre l'a emporté sur toute autre considération. La dépendance.

Je dis : et ton père, tu crois qu'il est le genre à appeler ? Il me dévisage à nouveau longuement. Je suis à nouveau pétrifié par sa ressemblance. Il dit : ça, c'est vous qui savez. Je suis sûr que vous le connaissez beaucoup mieux que moi.

On sent que cela monte, que l'explosion de colère est proche. Il dit qu'il n'admet pas l'emploi du « on ». Quoi ? « On » va guérir ? Qui ? Elle ? Elle est malade ? C'est quoi ce besoin biscornu de s'approprier un mal qui n'est pas le sien, dont elle ne sait rien ou presque, dont elle ne mourra pas ?

Pour finir, il dit qu'il m'aime et je le crois. Il parle d'une voix épuisée, presque résignée, comme pour un baroud d'honneur. Je l'écoute. Je lui souris faiblement. Je ne lui réponds rien. Je sais qu'il va partir, alors que, lui, l'ignore encore.

I realize that this is what it means to be lovers: using the same words to speak of the same things though one has never heard the other use them; these random similarities, this remarkable intimacy.

What the old man senses is that the tone of Monsieur Bark's voice denotes sadness, a deep melancholy, a sort of wound the voice accentuates, which accompanies it beyond words and language, something that infuses it just as the sap infuses a tree without one seeing it.

Niektoré slová stavajú múry, ktoré iné slová nikdy nedokážu zbúraÃ…Â¥.

C'est très bizarre les noms. Parfois on ne connaît rien d'eux et on les dit sans cesse.