Quotes About Communication

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

I wanted to be curious and smart and unappeasable until I got a sentence to mean exactly what I ordered it to mean.

The two fountains spoke to each other in the pretty speech of falling water . . . .

I had read for the way words sounded, not for the ideas they espoused.

When we cuss each other out, call each other the vilest names on earth, and put each other down with thoughtless cruelty, it is the only way we know and the only language we have to express our ardent love for each other.

she was writing a letter in her beautiful penmanship, her sentences all like well-made bracelets.

Among the peoples of the world I am not universally admired for the bell-like clarity of my diction. Words slide out of my mouth like fat fish. Having lived my life in various parts of Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas and having been sired by a gruff-talking Marine from Chicago and a grits-and-gravy honey from Rome, Georgia, what has remained is an indefinable nonspeech, flavored subtly with a nonaccent, and decipherable to no one, black or white, on the American continent.

In the hour it took to finish that meal, I learned that silence could be the most eloquent form of lying.

single insincere phoneme, piss me off? Why can't I ignore her

the sadness in her voice touched a deep place within me.

through her

I was being cynical. I'm sorry. It's a family habit I've fallen prey to.

Our grandfather, in dreamless sleep beneath us, spoke to us from the singing hive of memory.

The language of grief is an impoverished one in the South. It is admired only if it's done in silence.

an untranslatable potpourri of grunts and monosyllables, punctuated only by Prophet's beautifully effusive smiles.

By not being able to tell me anything about themselves, they were telling me everything.

The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story'.

not being able to tell me anything about themselves, they were telling me everything.

I realized that words were sometimes nothing more than notes you wrote to your deepest self as you fought to articulate the splendor and the magic and the ineluctable sense of loss that you felt in the swift, disturbing hours.

No matter how much he talked, she never answered him, but he knew she was still there. He knew it was like the soldiers he had read about. They would have an arm or a leg blown off, and for days, even weeks after it happened, they could still feel the arm itching, the leg itching, the mother calling.

Effective leaders are able to manage the tensions of these two objectives and ensure that the team regularly addresses its processes. They understand that processes are the best vehicle through which the team both works together and thinks together, and the team cannot perform any better than its processes will allow it to.

In the world of teams and teamwork I often find the belief that to work and communicate effectively, team members must be close comrades. In fact, this is a common misperception. Although team members don't need to know one another very well personally to perform as a team, they do need to know one another's abilities and potential contributions.

They perform well, not because they like one another or even know one another, but because they know how to work together.

Effective team leaders work creatively with each team member to ensure they understand the following issues: Why this task is important to the organization. Why this team task is important to them personally. Why they (their role) are important to the team. Who the other team members are and why they are important to the mission of the team.