Quotes About Communication

Words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder. Like falling in love or finding god, if it ha...ppens to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else - and language only takes you so far.

When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest. When you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation. Those three words were what everyone used; simple syllables couldn't contain something as rare as what I felt for Sean. I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was with him: that incredible combination of comfort, decadence, and wonder; the knowledge that, with just a single taste of him, I was addicted.

Doctors put a wall up between themselves and their patients; nurses broke it down.

In a lot of ways, having a teenager isn't all that different from having a newborn. You learn to read the reactions, because they're incapable of saying exactly what it is that's causing pain.

Words, for all they were flimsy and invisible, had great strength. They could be fortified as a castle wall and sharp as a foil. They could bite, slap, shock, wound. But unlike deeds, words couldn't really help you. No promise ever rescued a person; it was the carrying-through of it that brought about salvation.

Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer.

She understood how a world jammed with phones, email, and faxes could still leave you feeling utterly alone.

If you want to understand something, you first need to accept the fact of your own ignorance. And then, you need to talk to people who know more than you do, people who have not just thought about the facts, but lived them.

I grew up in a household where we didn't really talk about our feelings, and where the only reason you went to a doctor was because you'd accidentally cut off a limb with a chain saw.

Do you know how, when you are on the verge of a breakdown, the world pounds in your ears; a rush of blood, of consequence? Do you now how it feels when the truth cuts your tongue to ribbons, and still you have to speak it?

I imagine how cool it would be if all small talk wasn't lies.

Stories are all around us, caught in the throats of the strangers you walk past and scrawled on the pages of locked diaries. They're in love letters that were never sent and between the lines of every conversation ever spoken. Just because your story's not written down doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

An apology with a defense built in isn't much of an apology

Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late that we've wounded the people we are trying to protect.

It's the difference between dancing along the eggshell crust of acquaintance and diving into the messy center of a relationship. It's not always perfect; it's not always pleasant—but because it is rooted in respect, it is unshakable.

Until I understood why you didn't cry, even though it hurt: there are kinds of pain you couldn't speak out loud.

In my family, we seem to have a tortured history of not saying what we ought to and not meaning what we do.

There is nothing worse than silence, strung like heavy beads on too delicate a conversation.

anyone can understand anything. You just have to know how to present your information.

If words had flavors, hers would be bitter almonds and coffee grounds.

There are two reasons not to tell the truth--becuase lying will get you what you want, and because lying will keep someone from getting hurt.

It's not that he doesn't love you enough to tell you the truth, she said. It's that he loves you too much to risk it.

True confession: The reason we don't talk about race is because we do not speak a common language.

You keep distracting me," I tell her. "All I'm doing is sitting here talking to you!" "Exactly," I say, and I smile at her.j