Quotes About Communication

and Boyer has to be on the Jack Nicholson end of the old routine in which he tries to order a slice of cheese that comes only with the apple pie. (Why did no one mention that Five Easy Pieces [1970], with its "hold the chicken salad, just give me the toast" routine, was recycling old-movie dialogue that had appeared in many films?)

Excellent films do exist on the subject, however, and one is a pure marriage movie in which Newman and Woodward make it work. Mr. and Mrs. Bridge exists to tell moviegoers that the marriage of their parents—especially if they were those tragic dogsbodies, Midwesterners—were fogbound. The film depicts a steady relationship that has no real communication between its couple

Another superb movie about a mature marriage grounded in a fundamental lack of communication is Dodsworth, based on the Sinclair Lewis novel.

For all her love of words, at times they're entirely insufficient.

she was a book lover who enjoyed reading aloud to her baby. She liked the idea that, even before he understood them, he might begin with the most beautiful words, that he'd build language from a foundation of literature and poetry.

Lydia's English is a help, but there are many different languages in el norte. There are codes Lydia hasn't yet learned to decipher, subtle differences between words that mean almost, but not quite the same thing: migrant, immigrant, illegal alien. She learns that there are flags that people use here, and those flags may be a warning or a welcome. She is learning.

From the Author's Note: In my conversations with Mexican people, I seldom heard the word American used to describe a citizen of this country – instead they use a word we don't even have in English estadounidense, United States-ian.

Luca even hears Abuela lightly scolding them all, not because she actually disapproves, Luca realizes, but because a casual reprimand is Abuela's way of participating, and that is the thing, really,

Luca likes to listen to the foreign sounds, the peaks and rolls of the words he doesn't understand. He likes the way voices sound the same in every language, the way, if you train your ear to listen just outside the words, to only the shifting inflections, you can attach your own meaning to the sounds.

married people were entitled to a certain measure of privacy, that they needn't tell each other everything.

It was one of the reasons she'd fallen in love with him; he didn't press her on personal matters, he was seldom jealous, and he had no interest in annexing or directing her friendships with other men.

makes a face that's like the opposite of rolling his eyes, where his features get really still, and he looks away from Lorenzo with his eyelids half-closed, and he just waits for the words to go away.

She learns that there are flags people use here, and those flags may be a warning or a welcome.

She doesn't ask if he's okay, because from now on that question will carry a weight of painful absurdity.

Por mais que ame as palavras, por vezes elas são completamente insuficientes.

He mispronounces the word hombres in the style of the US president who, attempting to call migrants bad men, inadvertently referred to them as bad hunger instead. It's a joke now, full of irony. Bad hunger. El comandante toes the line.

A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)

When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.

I am a painter with letters. I want to restore everything, mix everything up and say everything.

Patricia: Do you know William Faulkner? Michel: No. Who's he? Have you slept with him?

Quand je bois, cela rend les gens bavards.

Skye's always saying exactly the wrong thing to people-it wasn't just special for you.