Quotes About Communication

Your president only speaks for Americans. American movies speak for your world. Who hasn't seen Wizard of Oz? Or Jaws? Or Star Wars? We've seen them, and we're not even from this planet.

How was it for you?" "Mostly okay?" "Well, good," Kiva said, and patted Fundapellonan's shoulder. "Because you're about to get fucked by me again, this time in front of the emperox.

You're very good with children," the woman said, noting Sorvalh's responses and tone. "I spend my days dealing with human diplomats," Sorvalh said. "Children and diplomats can be remarkably similar.

I can't believe you just quoted a Steve Miller tune to the leader of an alien race, Van Doren, standing next to me, muttered under his breath. Shut up, I muttered back. It worked.

I had a feeling that as long as I didn't admit to murdering adorable kittens in front of children, I was going to get the gig.

Tom grinned through his mask; I saw it through the eye crinkles

If you can't write a comment that isn't ultimately a segue into topics you feel are important, ask yourself why everything has to be about you.

When you serve a beer-cock an ear.

Literacy is vital to democracy. For if the governed can neither understand their leaders nor distinguish truth from lies, then a democracy descends into oligarchy, a government by and for the elite few.

Are you there, Felix? Are you there?

His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.

I think I love you, Cal. -Abra I'm not good. -Cal Because you're not good. -Abra

In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. KNOWING A MAN WELL NEVER LEADS TO HATE and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. TRY TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER!

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.

But you must give him some sign, some sign that you love him... or he'll never be a man. All his life he'll feel guilty and alone unless you release him.

Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.

Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn't return it you get mad at him. It makes you mean and petty. But twenty-five cent books are different.

As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.

She knew she could help him best by being silent and by being near.

Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.

We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.

When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.

Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.

A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.