Quotes About Communication

Then my mother shocked me. She said, All those things that you want from your relationship, Liz? I have always wanted those things too. [She] showed me the handful of bullets she'd had to bite over the decades in order to stay happily married (and she was happily married...) to my father. You have to understand how little I was raised to expect that I desired in life, honey. Remember- I come from a different time and place... and you have to understand how much I love your father.

My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought.

Just say what you want to say . . . and say it with all your heart.

He endeared himself to me forever the first night we met, when I was getting frustrated with my inability to find the words I wanted in Italian, and he put his hand on my arm and said, Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.

I want to learn how to speak Italian. For years, I'd wished I could speak Italian--a language I find more beautiful than roses :)

There are always two figures in a marriage, two votes, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations.

Our relationship now thoroughly ruined, with even civility destroyed between us, all I wanted anymore was the door.

As Joan Didion said, "I don't know what I think until I write about it.

All the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy.

Thank you for the tribute of your honesty," he said—which I thought then, and still think, was one of the most elegant things I'd ever heard anyone say.

You know, it's a funny thing. The only Romance language Felipe doesn't happen to speak is Italian. But I go ahead and say it to him anyway, just as we're about to jump. I say: 'Attraversiamo.' Let's cross over.

If you really want to get to know someone, you have to divorce him.

Yet I can tell you that there was a lonely and untenanted corner of my heart that I'd never known was there—and Frank moved right into it. Holding him in my heart made me feel like I belonged to love itself. Although we never lived together or shared a bed, he was always a part of me. I saved stories for him all week, so I would have good things to tell him. I asked for his opinions, because I respected his ethics.

The Bat Phone to the Universe, some kind of Iva-only, open-round-the-clock special channel to the divine.

If you tell me slowly, I can understand quickly.

I told him. I was not accustomed, Angela, to having men listen to me. And as for your father, he was not accustomed to being with a woman who would walk five miles with him in the middle of the night, in the rain, in Queens, just to keep him company when he could not sleep.

Well... why is a hard question to answer in any language.

Like a dog, I have pack needs; like a cat, he prefers a quieter house. As long as he is married to me, his house will never be quiet.

Never learn to type, kiddo. And if you do learn to type, never tell anybody you can type, or they'll make you do it forever. Never learn shorthand either. It'll be the death of you. They'll put a steno pad in a woman's hand and it'll never come out.

There is only so long that a person can keep her enthusiasms locked away within her heart before she longs to share it with a fellow soul, and Alma had many decades of thoughts much overdue for sharing.

I wrote that book anyhow, because I needed to write it for my own intimate purposes - and also because I was curious to see if I could convey my emotional experiences adequately on paper.

I pause here for a moment to explain exactly what I mean when I say that word, just so people can decide right away how offended they need to get.

Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine.

How do you negotiate once you've offered everything?