Quotes About Communication

I prayed, but the words fell to the ground meaning nothing.

Está muy disgustado porque nunca le das un beso. La contradije: —Pues no pone cara de disgustado. —Es un grave error juzgar por la cara, en uno u otro sentido.

She had meant to tell him: 'I love you. You aren't making any mistake about that, are you?' But all she said was: 'Please will you draw the curtains?

Moins j'ouvrirai la bouche, moins je ferai figure odieuse et cynique.

Music begins where the possibilities of language end

Pleasure involves respect, and respect starts with words.

I don't like answering private questions. The answers are often ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways. Even when the other person is close to you.

Yet I understood the poetry of such mind games one day when, attempting to ask for my glasses (lunettes), I was asked what I wanted to do with the moon (lune).

France was at peace; one couldn't shoot the bearers of bad news.

I got to the end of the story before I'd realized what she'd done. Just as Jake had waited, interviewing the Mariners, Jillian had waited out my first answers so that I would give her a better one.

You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them.

I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over you.

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book.

Trust me, I'm telling you stories.

Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.

I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other. The probability of seperate worlds meeting is very small. The lure is immense. We send starships. We fall in love

You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear?

Long looking at paintings is equivalent to being dropped into a foreign city, where gradually, out of desire and despair, a few key words, then a little syntax make a clearing in the silence. Art... is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar... We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother-tongue.

He doubted her. You must never doubt the one you love. But they might not be telling the truth. Never mind that. You tell them the truth. What do you mean? You can't be another person's honesty, child, but you can be your own. So what should I say? When? When I love someone? You should say it.

Language is a finding-place not a hiding place.

I'm telling you stories. Trust me.

A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.

Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.