Quotes About Communication

The dictionary contains no metaphors.

If anybody tried to threaten me I would simply look him in the eye and ask him in a firm but friendly voice, "Why?" The bully would have no choice but to engage me verbally, and this made violence next to impossible. I learned that it is very difficult to fight someone with whom you are already talking.

Nobody disappears completely anymore. The only thing that's disappeared is privacy, which is never coming back. And which is probably a good thing. Why should anything be private? No hiding, no guilt, no shame. Just a completely transparent world.

In India nearly everybody spoke metaphorically except the English who spoke bluntly and could make their most transparent lies look honest as a consequence; whereas any truth contained in these metaphorical rigmaroles was so deviously presented that it looked devious itself.

Some people never say the words 'I love you', for like a child they're longing to be told.

Some people never say the words 'I love you'. It's not their style to be so bold. Some people never say those words: 'I love you' But, like a child, they're longing to be told

According to Laing, the apparently incomprehensible and self-contradictory language of the schizophrenic is often a gnomic expression of the twisted truth that the patient is unable to express.

It seemed that his anger was partly theatrical, that he was amping up his shouts to intimidate me.

The saddest task for the ironist is having to tell the listener that it's a joke, because of course it is never a joke.

When she was done, I talked to her a little—and I was the only one.

Don't write," he said, seeing me scribbling into my notebook, taking me for a journalist. "Periodista?" Diego asked. "Pensionado," I said. Retiree.

He was eager to talk, glad to have a listener, and he didn't need prompting questions.

If he doesn't talk to me, and he doesn't walk around with me, and he doesn't travel in the same compartment,' I said, 'I don't understand why he wants to come with me.' 'To make sure you are comfortable. Hospitality. You are our guest ...

I'm a writer, I said. I like long stories.

Why is it . . . that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?

I speak my language fluently, but my children aren't interested," she said

the echo chamber that most expat communities become

I made myself very popular with the group by showing them how to shut it [a loudspeaker] off. I wrapped a rubber band around the metal stump and this rubber offered enough of a grip to shut the thing off.

When I considered that it was still illegal for a foreigner to talk at random with any Chinese citizen-the old rule was seldom enforced, but it was a well-known rule nonetheless-I was grateful for this frankness. The healthiest sign in China was this straight talk.

found myself confiding that I had been bored in church and in school and listening to speeches (escuchando discursos).

All this confession and evasion, in the relentless interrogation of language learning, sometimes led to awkwardness.

Teasing, especially the public sort, as well as the joshing in a joking relationship, always contains an element of hostility.

I taught from a book called Modern American English. 'You're lucky to have me. I'm a modern American and I speak English, I said.

Fascinated to know more, I joined them at breakfast