Quotes About Communication

The meaning of words has become so blurred by past usage that 'abstract' is identified with 'vague' and 'unreal,' and 'inwardness' with a sort of traditional beatitude... The conception of the word 'plastic' has also been limited by individual interpretations.

Better to say something simply instead of giving people a bunch of vague metaphors to mull over.

I think what happens with a lot of writing and art is that specificity ends up being relatable while universality becomes vague.

People watch movies - and it's vague ideas, it's vague notions, but people pick up on these things, that they are supposed to think certain ways or that they're not supposed to think, basically, and they don't.

One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what's being said than is there. That's the great thing about Bob Dylan's songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended.

Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

I'm very nervous about taking jobs. I always make sure that, if I'm going to work with somebody, that they really understand what it is that I want to do. I'd rather not take the job than be vague about how I'm going to do something and run into trouble later on. It's a hard thing to negotiate.

When people talk, they lay lines on each other, do a lot of role playing, sidestep, shilly-shally and engage in all manner of vagueness and innuendo. We do this and expect others to do it, yet at the same time we profess to long for the plain truth, for people to say what they mean, simple as that. Such hypocrisy is a human universal.

All speech is vain and empty unless it be accompanied by action.

About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

His daughter returned from her boarding school, improved in fashionable airs and expert in manufacturing fashionable toys; but, in her conversation, he sought in vain for that refined and fertile mind which he had fondly expected.

Would a man ever be called vain for speaking his mind?

'Blue Valentine,' Derek Cianfrance's emotional gunslinger of a film, tears into the topic of moribund marriages with an honesty that's hard to come by in Hollywood these days.

I treat my wife very differently than I treat my chums and my pals. I wouldn't worry about calling them on Valentine's Day, opening the door for them, or making sure they were OK.

People love in different ways. You may have a man who brings you flowers every Monday but doesn't give two hooty-hoots about Valentine's Day. Just because he doesn't give you a valentine doesn't mean he doesn't love you!

I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.

You can get along very well in this world by simply coming up with a quantity of reasonably valid statements.

I think that cinema is medium of communication. It's as valid as novels or fine art.

Squabbling in public will eventually ruin football; there's no doubt it's hurting us already. Polls taken by Louis Harris - polls as valid as any political polls - indicate that very clearly.

I think I have something valid to say. My words are my bullets. I like to brag that somehow I got it right.

As soon as you write about climate change, the first attempt to discredit you is, 'Well, you wrote this on a computer,' or, 'You took a plane to this conference.' So your opinion isn't valid.

The hardest part, for me, is being in the band and knowing the way I want certain things to sound, but also having to listen to opinions, and very valid opinions, of my bandmates. So, sometimes, I'll have to have conversations with them as a producer and then conversations with them as a bandmate.

I think there's something very valid about having feelings that you can't articulate. I don't think you should shut those feelings out, but I also want to be able to communicate them.