Quotes About Communication

Words are important, no matter what the language—they are perhaps one of the most powerful things we have. Words can preserve life or invoke death and should be handled with the same care as any deadly weapon.

there was this Indian woman hitchhiking back to the Rez in the middle of the night and this white woman picks her up. The Indian woman says, 'Hey, thanks for picking me up. What are you doing out on the road this late?' The white woman points to a bottle in a brown paper bag sitting on the seat between them and says, 'I got this bottle of wine for my husband.' The Indian woman nodded, 'Good trade.

Static. "Over and out of my mind." "Roger that.

It was my father who taught me to talk to animals.He said they understand a hell of a lot more than we think they do. I remember him speaking to the horses he shod in a low and reassuring voice, explaining what he was doing to them; he said it was one of the things we owed them for their absolute, unreserved, unswerving loyalty. He said the outside of a horse is always good for the inside of a man.

You can now say the word shit on television." "Even broadcast television?" "There is no more broadcast television, Boss." I thought about the TV set back at my cabin that I hadn't turned on in a long while. "I wondered why mine had stopped working.

Sit down, you're puttin' a crick in my neck.

I wanted to talk to her about Virgil's prophecy.

In my limited experience with politicians, I have learned that you do not have to be right all the time, but that it is absolutely essential to never appear wrong.

Henry spoke to Dog. "Hinananjin." Dog went over and sat beside him. It had already been established that the furry brute was conversant in Cheyenne, Shoshone, Arapaho, Crow, and Lakota; English was the language he chose to sometimes ignore.

President Bush spent last night calling world leaders to support the war with Iraq and it is sad when the most powerful man on earth is yelling, 'I know you're there, pick up, pick up.

one client who went out of their way to regularly thank the team when they said 'no'—as this client had suffered the effects of wishful thinking all too often.

During World War II, while the Americans used Navajo Indians speaking their native language for radio communications, the Japanese used speakers of the Kagoshima dialect to keep communications secret. To me, it sounded like

Her laugh. The way she smoked before she gave up. Smoke trickling up her nostrils. Spokes of smoke when she spoke.

A person usually talks more freely to one person than to two persons," April said. "I read that somewhere.

what April called a whimsper, half whisper, half whimper),

Bolt actions speak louder than words.

Words. Words had the power of exactly, precisely nothing. Hand grenades blow shit up. They meant something when they landed next to you. Words meant someone was talking, nothing more.

Granted, God is sovereign and can speak as he pleases—through a proof text, a poem, or Balaam's donkey. But we do not regularly seek out donkeys to tell us how to live.

See, most people you meet, they'll talk to you through fifty layers of gauze and tinting. Sometimes you know they're lying even before they've started speaking. And it seems the older they get, the more brazen and desperate folks become, and they lie about things that don't even matter... I don't know. Maybe they just get so used to it they don't even notice. Maybe it's like a creeping curse and the more you do it, the easier it gets. What's amazing is that they think they're fooling anybody.

See, most people you meet, they'll talk to you through fifty layers of gauze and tinting. Sometimes you know they're lying even before they've started speaking. And it seems the older they get, the more brazen and desperate folks become, and they lie about things that don't even matter.

I think most of the time when I'm yelling at my husband, I'm just yelling at myself.

It's better to shut up and appear stupid than open your mouth and remove all doubt.

A tree doesn't know it's a tree. It doesn't know how pretty its flowers are, or how beautiful they smell, or how soft and sweet its fruit is. It can't feel how warm I am with my arms around it. It can't hear me when I tell it these things. It doesn't know anything. I'm glad you're not a tree.

because of cultural differences—different, deeply held beliefs and instincts about what is natural, normal, right, and good—cross-cultural interactions are subject to all manner of confusion, misunderstanding, and misinterpretation. In a word, they are often unsuccessful.