Quotes About Communication

Connelly writes, "As long as there is paper, people will write, secretly, in small rooms, in the hidden chambers of their minds, just as people whisper the words they're forbidden to speak aloud." In

Halpern wants the reader to think about the difference between asking "How are you feeling?" and "Do you want me to ask how you're feeling?

I used to say that the greatest gift you could ever give anyone is a book. But I don't say that anymore because I no longer think it's true. I now say that a book is the second greatest gift. I've come to believe that the greatest gift you can give people is to take the time to talk with them about a book you've shared.

don't like being interrupted either—but I interrupt other people. I often forget that other people's stories aren't simply introductions to my own more engaging, more dramatic, more relevant, and better-told tales, but rather ends in themselves, tales I can learn from or repeat or dissect or savor.

For me, the phone remains miraculous in a way that electronic communication just isn't. A phone brings the voice of a friend. It's live. Email is a movie—once you get it, nothing you do will change it. A call is theater—surprising and unpredictable. What's more, your presence is essential.

When we ask one another "What are you reading?" sometimes we discover the ways that we are similar; sometimes the ways that we are different. Sometimes we discover things we never knew we shared; other times we open ourselves up to exploring new worlds and ideas. "What are you reading?" isn't a simple question when asked with genuine curiosity; it's really a way of asking, "Who are you now and who are you becoming?

The Etiquette of Illness

Freedom can still depend on ink, just as it always has.

A staccato script of letters and digits beamed from an alternate world. Then they ceased communicating altogether. and began to liase in dreams and nightmares.

Researchers into bird communication have revealed the astonishing fact that not only do ravens listen to the gossip of neighbouring flocks, but they pay especially close attention when it tells of a reversal in another bird's status.

Whenever people use a word so often that they abbreviate it, it is clearly central to their moral and emotional vocabulary.

is a 'story processor', writes the psychologist Professor Jonathan Haidt, 'not a logic processor'.

There's an entry point to any relationship.

We all rely on technology to communicate, to survive, to do our banking, to shop, to get informed, but none of us knows how to read and write the code.

Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.

The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.

How are you feeling? What problems are you facing? How can I help you solve those problems? That's the kind of conversation that helps married couples stay in love with each other. Or it leads people into affairs when it's done outside of marriage and with someone of the opposite sex. It's intimate conversation.

Affection is the environment of the marriage, while sex is an event. Affection is a way of life, a canopy that covers and protects a marriage. It's a direct and convincing expression of care that gives the event of sex a more appropriate context. Most women need affection before sex means much to them.

Why should we make love?" If the husband is honest, he will answer with something to the effect that making love relieves his sexual craving. But the answer of most wives is very different. She will say that sex helps her feel closer to her husband. For her, it is all about intimacy and emotional bonding.

Expressing anger is a form of public littering.

When you write, you can hide behind your words. When you talk, you are up front, like the clown in the midway booth; and passersby can bean you with a ball.

Ik schrijf, hoewel ik weet dat men alleen één woord schrijven kan door er tienduizend over te slaan. Maar deze tienduizend blijven zweven als modder in een glas vuil water. Kijkt men er boven in, dan verduisteren zij het neerslag dat op die bodem ligt. Ik zie wat ik geschreven heb alleen maar door de troebele mist van dat wat geen gestalte heeft aangenomen. Begrijpt men nu, waarom het door mijzelf beschreven papier zulk een verontreinigde indruk op mij maakt?

Words and pictures can work together to communicate more powerfully than either alone.

False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis.