Quotes About Communication

Our stories are the tellers of us.

What's he like?" "Thoughtful. Interesting. Compassionate." "These are English words for ugly.

Peace is a time when people can tell each other their real names

They spoke of small things at first, since it was best, when reattaching threads, to begin with the easiest knots.

your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house.

Perhaps life just turned a person who tried harder into a person who felt they must write it on someone else's report.

I did not want to tell her what happened, but I had to now. I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.

This was always my trouble when I was learning to speak your language. Every word can defend itself. Just when you go to grab it, it can split into two separate meanings so the understanding closes on empty air. I admire you people. You are like sorcerers and you have made your language as safe as your money.

In the history of the world there was not one example of a man ever having written a satisfactory letter to a woman who mattered to him.

lips, excused from their color, had formed words relieved of their sound.

To survive, you must look good or talk even better

It was how mothers carried on, after all, with a glint in the eye that implied a sure clairvoyance and also that it was your turn to talk. This was the velvet rope mothers offered: enough silence to make a noose with. Mary

Do you know what peace is, Charlie?... Peace is a time when people can tell each other their real names.

This is the real reason why no one tells us Africans anything. It is not because anyone wants to keep my continent in ignorance. It is because nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles. Or maybe you would like to, but you can't. Your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works.

I want to be a journalist again. I want to make a difference in the world.

I don't know. We've never done anything, have we? We've no talent but conversation.

television that

See, Mr. Nak'll be talking about how anger comes creeping up, hoping you're not paying attention so it can trick you into something really embarrassing or degrading, and before you know it he's got you thinking about your life, or worse, talking about it. He keeps asking what seem like harmless questions, and it almost seems safe to answer them. Next thing you know you're ready to say something you thought you'd never tell anybody.

Talking with Elaine like that, with no judgment from her or anything, seemed to bring my feelings more to the surface so I could look at them. I love times like that; you don't get many of them. (Walker, in STOTAN!)

Hey, cowboy, what's happening?

You put yourself out there in the truest way you can and hope others do the same. You'll connect or you won't, but you did what you could.

I walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs, and it maybe travels two blocks. A whale unleashes his cry, and it travels hundreds or even thousands of miles. Every whale in the ocean will at one time or another run into that song. And I figure whales probably don't edit. If they think it, they say it...Whale talk is the truth, and in a very short period of time, if you're a whale, you know exactly what it is to be you.

So you didn't tell me it was a messed-up idea to keep this all a secret because. . ." "Because experience is the only teacher," Hey-Soos says. "Even if I could have told you, it would have been a lecture. Why do you think kids don't listen to their parents, or people don't leave churches and do what the preacher tells them? There's only one thing that's universal." "What's that?" "The truth.

And I think if you're going to be with somebody, you owe it to them to show yourself.