Quotes About Communication

Without language you can't feel that you have a legitimate, respected presence. You are without a voice, without power.

By now she has learned that her husband likes his food on the salty side, that his favorite thing about lamb curry is the potatoes, and that he likes to finish his dinner with a small final helping of rice and dal.

Maladies, poorly interpreted, can't be cured.

avevo bisogno di una lingua differente: una lingua che fosse un luogo di affetto e di riflessione. —ANTONIO TABUCCHI

If I want to understand what moves me, what confuses me, what pains me—everything that makes me react, in short—I have to put it into words.

It's not the type of thing Bengali wives do. Like a kiss or caress in a Hindi movie, a husband's name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over. And so, instead of saying Ashoke's name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as "Are you listening to me?

Something happened when the house was dark. They were able to talk to each other again. The

What she'd done for him, because he'd asked.

They tolerate my mistakes. They correct me, they encourage me, they provide the words I lack. They speak clearly, patiently. Just like parents with their children. The

I'm amazed at our impulse to express ourselves, explain ourselves, tell stories to one another.

The next time she visits her father she'll speak to him in English. Were her mother ever to stand before her, even if Bela could choose any language on earth in which to speak, she would have nothing to say. But no, that's not true. She remains in constant communication with her. Everything in Bela's life has been a reaction. I am who I am, she would say, I live as I do because of you.

The notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M.

Men require that you caress them with your expression

Une langue étrangère, c'est comme un muscle frêle, délicat. Si l'on ne s'en sert pas, il s'affaiblit.

Even though I now speak the language fairly well, the spoken language doesn't help me. A conversation involves a sort of collaboration and, often, an act of forgiveness. When I speak I can make mistakes, but I'm somehow able to make myself understood. On the page I am alone. The spoken language is a kind of antechamber with respect to the written, which has a stricter, more elusive logic.

I believe that reading in a foreign language is the most intimate way of reading.

Le parole sconosciute rappresentano un abisso vertiginoso, fecondo. Un abisso che contiene tutto ciò che mi sfugge, tutto il possibile.

Cammino sulla superficie, la parte accesibile. Ma so, da scrittrice, che una lingua esiste nelle ossa, nel midollo. Che la vera vita della lingua, la sostanza è lì.

A new language is almost a new life, grammar and syntax recast you, you slip into another logic and another sensibility.

Without saying a word to each other we know that, if we chose to, we could venture into something reckless, also pointless.

The only way to even begin to understand language is to love it so much that we allow it to confound us and to torment us to the extent that it threatens to swallow us whole.

And so, instead of saying Ashoke's name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as "Are you listening to me?

No parent ever called a child by his good name. Good names had no place within a family.

Like a kiss or caress in a Hindi movie, a husband's name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over. And so, instead of saying Ashoke's name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as "Are you listening to me?