Quotes About Communication

I thought we didn't say 'shut up' in our house." "Fuck off, then,

It wasn't always necessary to tell your husband the whole story.

Every time I ask her to explain her job, I forget to listen. Her

Her focus had always been on how his actions affected her feelings, as if his role was to do things for her, to her, and all that mattered was her emotional response to him, as if a "man" were a product or a service, and she'd finally chosen the right brand to get the right response.

She always pretended to herself that she didn't let Lauren help because she was trying to be the perfect mother-in-law, but really, when you didn't let a woman help, it was a way of keeping her at a distance, of letting her know that she wasn't family, of saying I don't like you enough to let you into my kitchen. Lauren reappeared

It was somehow easier to just baldly admit it to her dad, who would just take what she said at face value, rather than her mother, who would listen too intently and empathetically and filter everything through her own emotions.

All conflict can be traced back to someone's feelings getting hurt

Madeleine thought, "thank you darling, because that always works, doesn't it, telling a woman to calm down

He would die for his daughter. But sometimes he wouldn't pick up the phone for her.

Sam always said she was overly sensitive to sounds because she was a musician, but she didn't think that was true; he was just astonishingly insensitive to them.

Joy preferred not to embarrass Steffi by offering her dog food as Steffi didn't appear to know she was a dog. She chatted at length with Joy each morning after breakfast, making strange, elongated whining sounds that Joy knew were her sadly unintelligible attempts at English. The one time they'd taken her to the local dog park, Steffi had been appalled and sat at their feet with an expression of frozen hauteur on her face, as if she were a society lady at McDonald's.

John-Paul?" TWO If this is a joke," said Tess, "it's not funny.

I don't think it works like that," said Joy. "It starts out small. You put up with little things in a relationship and then … the little things gradually get bigger.

This was just a glitch in an otherwise perfect relationship. Every relationship had its glitches. Its ups, its downs.

Change your own tyre, ya big fucken' pussy!' Then he'd closed the window, grinned sheepishly, and said, 'Don't tell your mother.

never understood what that plate represented: Disrespect. Disregard. Contempt.

If you're not asking every child in the class, you don't hand out the invitations on the playground," said Madeline. "Every mother knows that. It's a law of the land." "I could talk about this subject all day long," said Ed. "I really could. There is nothing else I want to talk about today other than Amabella's fifth-birthday party.

do. Madeline saw Nathan smile fiercely at the

Nope, she didn't. So we grow up and leave home, and I hear from my mum that Madeline has married some wanker," said Ed.

When she was a child her mother had once told her shyness was almost a form of selfishness. "You see, when you hang your head like that, darling, people think you don't like them!

Every relationship has its quixotic rules. You just had to follow them.

You put up with little things in a relationship and then … the little things gradually get bigger.

Her husband was a patient man, but she had noticed a glazed look on his face as she'd talked, admittedly for quite a long time,

I'm using you to help me not think about my husband,' she clarified. She wanted him to understand. 'Tess. Honey. Do you think I don't I don't know that?' Then he kissed her so deeply and so completely that she felt like she was falling, floating, spiraling down, down, down, like Alice in Wonderland.