Quotes About Communication

Sometimes I wish that I hadn't learned how to crochet," I say, and Alice laughs. Obviously she thinks I'm joking, which is maybe for the best.

Well I can tell you now that married life is not a plateau, not at all. There are ravines and great jagged peaks and hidden crevasses that send the both of you scrabbling into darkness. Then there are dull, parched stretches that you feel will never end, and much of the journey is in fraught silence, and sometimes you can't see the other person at all, sometimes they drift off very far away from you, quite out of sight, and the journey is hard. It is just very, very, very hard.

If she does have a failing, and it's obviously only a tiny one, it's that she doesn't seem particularly curious about other people, or me, anyway.

When will you stop trying to educate me, I wonder? Never I hope.

Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a while day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them?

I'm not expressing myself very well—' 'Dexter, I understand you perfectly, that's the problem—

Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions.

And maybe that's just what happens; you start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few good jokes.

I considered the concept of "oversharing", and what undersharing might be, and whether it was ever possible to settle on something in between.

There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same - you couldn't just soak it up and then squeeze it out again.

Well I can tell you now that married life is not a plateau, not at all. There are ravines and great jagged peaks and hidden crevasses that send the both of you scrabbling into darkness. Then there are dull, parched stretches that you feel will never end, and much of the journey is in fraught silence, and sometimes you can't see the other person at all, sometimes they drift off very far away from you, quite out of sight, and the journey is hard. It is just very, very, very hard.

Well I've fucked the olives. Not literally I might hasten to add!

Maybe that's just what happens; you start out wanting to change the world through language, and end up thinking it's enough to tell a few jokes.

Hablaron muy poco de sus sentimientos mutuos, pues las frases bonitas y las expresiones cálidas eran acaso innecesarias entre amigos tan íntimos.» Thomas Hardy, Lejos del mundanal ruido

We're not arguing, we're discussing

Both of our memories were deteriorating, and in recent years the effort required to recall a name or incident felt almost wearyingly physical, like clearing out an attic. Proper nouns were particularly elusive. Adverbs and adjectives would go next, until we were left with pronouns and imperative verbs. Eat! Walk! Sleep now!

The sweet habit of each other had begun to put lines around her mouth, lines that looked like quotation marks – as if everything she said had been said before.

He swatted at her with his book. "Shut up and read, will you?" He lay back down and closed his eyes. Emma glanced over to check that he was smiling, and smiled too.

Just kidding' was exactly what people wrote when they meant every word.

This is me.'" He handed her the precious scrap of paper. 'Call me or I'll call you, but one of us will call, yes? What I mean is it's not a competition. You don't lose if you phone first.

From David Niven's autobiography, Bring on the Empty Horses. Director Mike Curtiz to David Niven & Errol Flynn: "You lousy bums, you and your stinking language, you think I know fuck nothing, well let me tell you— I know FUCK ALL!

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.

There is no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers.

I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.