Quotes About Communication

Talk into here. Talk into my bullet hole. Tell me I'm fine.

It's plain to you that at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it.

The first time I didn't say anything, because she shot me in the mouth.

I knew that, but he didn't, and therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person's life on this earth. I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real.

Now we had a stupid silence, the kind that always descends on people who are half in the bag.

I don't remember what I said to them. I remember loneliness crushing first my lungs. Then my heart. Then my balls.

I didn't want to get to know her very well, and didn't want to be bridging any silences with our eyes.

Everything they did was a secret, especially from each other.

showed the hospital staff the photos

You know the drill—your child cruises over to the coffee table and throws the remote control at the dog. But before he does it, he turns his head and looks over at you with a devilish grin on his face. That's because you've already told him, ten times, this is not okay.

If Morrow worked with herself she'd try and sit a few desks away.

I often said the wrong thing–wake up, shut up, grow up. These are the wrong things to say when people are sad about some minor cruelty or sentimental incident.

it is 1958 and men don't really have words for feelings

The real meaning of stories depends on where they're told, when and to whom.

It's primal, the need to tell. It's not about the listener but the storyteller. In some cultures, not telling your story is regarded as a sign of mental illness.

To say that I enjoyed writing... is like saying I enjoy having fingers and toes. It's difficult to imagine life without them.

At the heart of the impulse to tell stories is a mystery so profound.

Believe it or not, Marshal, I believe in talk therapy, basic interpersonal skills. I have this radical idea that if you treat a patient with respect and listen to what he's trying to tell you, you just might reach him. (87)

But I often think we talk way too much in this society, that we consider verbalization a panacea that it very often is not, and that we turn a blind eye to the sort of morbid self-absorption that becomes a predictable by-product of it.

He wanted to go on for hours. He wanted someone to listen to him and to understand that speech wasn't just about communicating ideas or opinions. Sometimes, it was about trying to convey whole human lives. And while you knew even before you opened your mouth that you'd fail, somehow the trying was what mattered. The trying was all you had.

He held up a hand to stop her. "Then one day, about six months ago, it hit me—love doesn't trump all for you, safety does. And I knew sooner or later you'd dump me before I'd dump you because—and this is the important part, Rach—I would never dump you." He gave her a beautiful, broken smile. "And that's been my purpose all along." After

Everyone wants to tell you something -anything, everything - about themselves and they just go on and on and on. But when it comes time to show you who they are? Their shit is weak, Nadia. Their shit is lacking. And they just cover it up by talking more, by explaining away what can't be explained away. And then they go on talking more shit about someone else.

It's a lot easier to ask a woman's forgiveness than her permission.

Cawley probably wasn't used to questions that continued after he'd shown displeasure with them, so they gave him a minute to catch his breath.