Quotes About Communication

Perhaps the single most important ritual a family can observe is having dinner together.

If thirty years of being a psychologist has taught me anything, it is that it is much easier to talk about things than to change them.

I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me. If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong. "Patroclus," he said. He was always better with words than I.

There was more to say, but for once we did not say it. There would be other times for speaking, tonight and tomorrow and all the days after that. He let go of my hand.

When he speaks at last, his voice is weary, and defeated. He doesn't know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won't light.

I do not think anyone can say what is in someone else.

If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth. As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong. "Patroclus," he said. He was always better with words than I.

There was nothing clever to say, so I said something foolish.

There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to know what he had not said.

He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?

He paused now, considering. I loved this about him. No matter how many times I had asked, he answered me as if it were the first time.

I learned to sleep during the day so that I would not be tired when he returned; he always needed to talk then, to tell me down to the last detail about the faces and the wounds and the movements of men. And I wanted to be able to listen, to digest the bloody images, to paint them flat and unremarkable onto the vase of posterity. To release him from it and make him Achilles again.

Give me the honest asp, who strikes me if I trouble him and not before.

Will you bear my child?" he asked me. I laughed at him. "No, never and never.

It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on a table and see what you would put on it. But he surprised me by continuing.

I did nothing to prepare. If I was not ready now, when would I be? I did not even walk up to the peak. He could come here, upon my yellow sands, and face me where I stood. "Father", I said, into the air, "I would speak with you.

He doesn't know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won't light.

For sixteen years, I had been holding up the sky, and he had not noticed. I should have forced him to go with me to pick those plants that saved his life. I should have made him to stand over the stove while I spoke the words of power. He should understand all I had carried in silence, all that I had done for his safekeeping.

How is Paphos, my love?" "Fine," he said. Just that ugly, nothing word.

Each man or woman who passed, she knew their history and would tell it to me, for she said that you must understand people if you would rule them.

Do you always make beautiful things for those you are angry with?

I cannot account for the fact that she married me, but since it is to my benefit, I try not to bring it to her attention.

There is this, too." His hand was ceaseless now. "I know I have told you of this." I closed my eyes. "Tell me again," I said.

It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on a table to see what you would put on it.