Quotes About Communication

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

entreaties.

Belay that!" cries the first mate. "No fucking profanity. Speak when you're fucking spoken to, Crispe.

SOMETIMES SIRI SEEMED so ignorant it made me sick.

He had always distrusted people who asked to speak freely or who vowed to speak candidly or who used the expression "frankly.

For years I have carried on silent conversations with Siri, framing questions to myself for future discussion with her, and it suddenly strikes me with cold clarity that we will never again sit together and talk. An emptiness begins to grow inside me. Should

I immediately called Abe Bronstein to share the good news. Abe, who was as well known for never rising before ten-thirty in the morning as he was for his sense of good prose, congratulated me and gently pointed out that I had called at 5:45 A.M.

Mahnmut hield niet van Frans - het voelde als een te dikke olie tussen zijn tandwielen - Maar het zat wel in zijn database, dus kon hij het vertalen.

I'd already come to realize that the monologue was his favorite form of conversation.

had been Mirandized. And a perfectly good adjective had been made into a verb.

Sato said softly, "Bottom-san, please to understand, if you call me 'motherfucker' again, I shall be forced to kill you.

Mark Twain once opined in his homey way: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." He was droll but incomplete. During those long months of beginning my Cantos on Heaven's Gate, I discovered that the difference between finding the right word as opposed to accepting the almost right word was the difference between being struck by lightning and merely watching a lightning display.

He hated it when she had too much to drink and tried to hide it, acting the perfect lady—but Harlen could always tell by the precise diction, the slow movements, and the way she got all sloppy and tried to hug him.

They're just words. And words alone don't really mean anything. It's what you feel and what you believe when you say them that matter.

Precision about language can be really, really annoying. It can make you miss the point of what the other person is saying altogether.

I touched follow on my phone's screen. I saw it—a vision—two half sisters who had never known of one another's existence, sending the most modern version of a smoke signal, each from her own coast. I see you. I see you, too.

Apparently, using two spaces after a period has become anachronistic. But tell that to my right thumb. —

Our shared vocabulary—our own language—will die with us. We are the treasure itself: fathoms deep, in the world we have made and made again.

Adjectives have become verbs: I favorited it. Verbs have become nouns. How many likes do you have? Time is moving at such an accelerated rate that completing sentences now seems baroque.

She doesn't know how to talk about herself. She is very, very good at telling other people's stories. She is known, as a producer, to be an unusually good reader of scripts when it comes to character and motivation. She has an excellent sense of structure. But her cheeks redden and she stumbles when she tries to share in meetings. It's as if the whole of her life rushes in, and she doesn't know where to begin.

It's like I've had a stroke. Do you think I've had a stroke? I don't think you've had a stroke. But how do you know? How can you be sure I haven't had a stroke? What are the symptoms of a stroke? I don't know. Look them up. Look them up on line. OK. Hold on...OK. Here it is. Do you have trouble speaking? I have trouble speaking intelligently.

Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they'll find a way to screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a good team, and they'll find a way to make it better. The goal needs to be to get the team right, get them moving in the right direction, and get them to see where they are making mistakes and where they are succeeding.

As Dave Cooper says, I screwed that up are the most important words any leader can say.

We are all paid to solve problems. Make sure to pick fun people to solve problems with.