Quotes About Communication

When we sat down on the couch again, you curled up against my side, like you used to when you were a toddler. What I wanted to say to you, but didn't, was this: Don't use me as your model. I'm the last person you should look up to.

Maybe honesty is overvalued. What's truly priceless is picking out from a stream of falsehoods the ones you most need to hear.

Talking out loud to fictional characters is just the tip of the iceberg.

But without a reader, a story is only half complete. It's like blueprints that never get built; like a swimming pool without water. The foundation's there, but it's useless. Without a reader, the words just sit on the page, waiting to come alive in someone's imagination.

Edward: Wait--you were trying to hit on me? Susan: Damn straight. Edward: The thing is, I'm not. Straight, I mean.

After all, the only way to communicate is to find someone who can comprehend; the only way to be forgiven is to find someone who is willing to forgive.

You don't make a friend, Jacob said with a scowl. It's not like they come with directions like you'd find on a box of macaroni and cheese.

Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?

Keeping a secret isn't always lying. Sometimes it's the only way to protect the person you love.

What if what you know isn't what people want to hear?

My mother walks forward. She's crying, but there's a smile on her face. For God's sake, is it any wonder I can't ever understand what you people are feeling?

She knows the truth can cause a sharp pain behind your eyes and that love sometimes feels like a fist around your throat.

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.

I leaned forward and kissed him. And again. As if I were passing him all those silent words I cound not say, the ones that explained my biggest secret: that I might not have OI but I knew how he (Adam) felt. That I was breaking apart, too, all the time.-Amelia

It's just like nurses in a hospital tend to know more than the doctors most of the time; if you really want to get the answers to a question about court, you should spend more time buttering up the clerks than the judges.

Maybe mothers - consciously or subconsciously - repelled their daughters in different ways.

But still, it looked completely natural, as if we had been kissing at the ends of sentences for ages, while the rest of the world was still hung up on punctuation.

There had been so many easy words between them that Daniel was guilty of nodding every now and then and tuning out the excess. He hadn't known, at the time, that he should have been hoarding these, like bits of sea glass hidden in the pocket of a winter coat to remind him that once it had been summer.

If you say the same words over and over, do they become so bleached that there's no color left in them?

Where is the line between keeping something private, and being dishonest?

How do you tell someone that you weren't the person he thought you were? And more importantly, how did you tell him that you'd meant the things you'd said, when everything else about you turned out to be a lie.

No, honestly, my mouth shouldn't be able to function unless my brain's engaged.

I'm sorry. I love you, but it's an enormous conflict of interest. Her head snaps up, You love me? What? MY face is suddenly on fire. I never said that. You did. I heard it. I said I'd love to. No, Sage says, a grin splitting her face. You didn't. Did I? I'm so tired I don't know what the hell is coming out of my mouth. Which probably means that I don't have the faculties to cover up what I really feel for Sage Singer, with an intensity that terrifies me.

Stupid English. English isn't stupid, I say. Well, my English teacher is. He makes a face. Mr. Franklin assigned an essay about our favorite subject, and I wanted to write about lunch, but he won't let me. Why not? He says lunch isn't a subject. I glance at him. It isn't. Well, Jacob says, it's not a predicate, either. Shouldn't he know that?