Quotes About Communication

He thought of the grammar of Gaelic, in which you did not say you were in love withsomeone, but that you "had love toward" her, as if itwere a physical thing you could present and hold—a bundle of tulips, a golden ring, a parcel of tenderness.

In our world, Darija said, throwing aside the chapter she was marking up, there will be no semicolons.

Here's what girlfriends do for you: they provide the reality check. They are the ones who tell you when you have spinach between your teeth or when your ass looks fat in a pair of jeans or when you're being a bitch. They tell you, and there's no drama or agenda, like there would be if the message had come from your husband. They tell you the truth because you need to hear it, but it doesn't alter the bond between you.

You don't have to say I love you to say I love you.

You will ask me, after this, why, I didn't tell you this before. It is because I know how powerful a story can be. It can change the course of history. It can save a life. But it can also be a sinkhole, a quicksand in which you become stuck, unable to write yourself free.

I love feeling loved. I don't love knowing that I will always come in second place. I love the fact that at least sometimes when I am in my home, I'm not alone. I don't love the fact that it's not always. I love not having to answer to him. I don't love that he doesn't answer to me. I love the way I feel when I am with him. I don't love the way I feel when I'm not.

But no one ever said yes to make sex consensual. You took hints from body language, from the way two people came together. Why...didn't a shake of the head or a hand pushing hard against a chest speak just as loudly? Why did you have to actually say the word no for it to be rape?

Is it really lying if all you're doing is keeping your mouth shut, about something that's nobody's business anyway?

The weapons a writer has at her disposal are flawed. There are words that feel shapeless and overused. Love, for example.I could write the word love a thousand times and it would mean a thousand different things to different readers. What is the point of trying to put down on paper emotions that are too complex, too huge, too overwhelming to be confined by an alphabet? Love isn't the only word that fails. Hate does, too.

Whatever your father did was not this woman's fault. And if she made him happy, when I obviously didn't, then the last thing you should be doing is yelling at her.

See, I get a round, hollow spot in my belly knowing I could tell him what's coming, but also knowing it would come out sounding like a warning.

Never ask your child a open-ended question, such as Do you want to go to bed now? You won't want to hear the answer, believe me. Do you want me to carry you upstairs, or do you want to walk upstairs to go to bed? That way, you get the outcome you want and they feel empowered.

Don't think you have to discuss the illness. Sometimes, a sick person needs a break. And if you ask up front if he wants to talk about how he feels-- or doesn't-- you're giving him control at a time when he doesn't have a lot of choices.

you need to think about the difference between what is secret and what is private.

I honestly can't tell if [she's] being intentionally mean or is she's truly that stupid.

It was a hairline crack, one might never have noticed, except for the fact it grew wider and wider, until there was a canyon between them. A child's job, ostensibly, was to grow up. So why, when it happened, did a parent feel so disappointed?

There's no point in being able to know everything about wolves if you can't teach it to the people who need to learn.

These days it seemed like the words between them were there only to outline the silences.

My mother and Joe have a lovers' shorthand, an economy of gestures that comes when you are close enough to someone to speak their language. I wonder if my mother and father ever had that, or if my mother was always just trying to decipher him.

They sat in the companionable awkwardness caused by knowing extremely private things about each other that had never been directly confided.

How do you undo intimacy? How do you go back to being acquaintances, when the other person knows every inch and groove of you, every irrational fear, every trigger?

you even put into words the confession that you made a mistake, that you want to turn back time and try again? How do you say it without hurting the people who have been sitting across from you at the breakfast table for fifteen years, who know your Starbucks order and which side of the bed to leave you at a hotel?

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.

because in the past words have only driven them apart.