Quotes About Communication

All those layers of silence upon silence.

More than anything I was relieved that in my unfamiliar babbling-and-wanting-to-talk state I'd stopped myself from blurting the thing I'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying out loud to him in the street - which was, of course, I love you.

That woman can sell water to a drowning man.

All my life, people have taken my shyness for sullenness, snobbery, bad temper of one sort or another.

It was interesting to see the change that came over Boris when he was speaking another language—a sort of livening, or alertness, a sense of a different and more efficient person occupying his body.

I wanted her to know just how much I loved her while also letting her know that she bore not one particle of blame for not loving me back. But I wouldn't say that. It was rosepetals I wanted to throw, not a poison dart.

You don't feel a great deal of emotions for other people, do you? I was taken aback. What are you talking about? I said. Of course I do. Do you? He raised an eyebrow. I don't think so. It doesn't matter, he said, after a long, tense pause. I don't, either.

He was a marvelous talker, a magical talker, and I wish I were able to give a better idea what he said, but it is impossible for a mediocre intellect to render the speech of a superior one

Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.

But I didn't. And, in truth, it was maybe better that I didn't- I say that now, though it was something I regretted bitterly for a while. More than anything I was relieved that in my unfamiliar babbling-and-wanting-to-talk state I'd stopped myself from blurting the thing on the edge of my tongue, the thing I'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying it out loud to him in the street- which was, of course, I love you.

When she went back to the telephone Hely's breath, on the other end, was ragged and secretive.

Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves our of despair.

distracted themselves with all kinds of gadgets and devices, flooding themselves incessantly with information and texts and communication and entertainment from every direction to try to make themselves forget it: where we were, what we were.

Henry. Please. I was on the verge of tears. What's the matter with you? Have you lost your mind? Don't you understand what's going on? He stood up, dusted his hands on his trousers.

Books are written by the alone for the alone.

At home, my mother had known how to suffocate my dad's anger by growing silent, a low, unwavering flame of contempt that sucked all the oxygen out of the room and made everything he said and did seem ridiculous.

It seemed the best thing was just to come right out and say it. 'You know,' I said, 'I'm really not attracted to you. I mean, not that -' 'Isn't that interesting,' he said coolly. 'I'm really not attracted to you, either.' 'But -' 'You were there.

picking up the phone to say hello, somehow I never had. "Are you okay?

The most satisfying of languages, Latin.

We were heading into the clumsy territory of my mother's funeral, stretched-out silences, wrong smiles, the place where words didn't work.

I often thought how peculiar my life must look to someone reading those letters, far away.

In very great poetry the music often comes through even when one doesn't know the language. I loved Dante passionately before I knew a word of Italian.

One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation.

I forgave him, a hundred times over, and never on the basis of anything more than this: a look, a gesture, a certain tilt of his head.