Quotes About Communication

His spelling was several degrees beyond arbitrary, and his punctuation brought reason to sigh with unhappiness.

just because people can hear each other across the divide does not mean they can necessarily understand each other

I finally said, "Tutti, where did you learn to speak such good English?" "From a book!" she proclaimed. "I think you are a very clever girl," I informed her. "Thank you!" she said, and did a spontaneous little happy dance. "You are a very clever girl, too!

Then I give her a grim shake of my head and say aloud, 'This blows ass.' She nods sympathetically. She doesn't understand, but of course, in her way she understands completely.

I realized as a songwriter that all I really do is make jewelry for the inside of other people's minds.

It's not difficult to compliment people in order to try to win their affections. What is difficult is to do it in the right way.

When I don't know what I'm doing, I look like I don't know what I'm doing. When I'm excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently, I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought.

But let me explain my culture of origin to you, Angela, in case you have never been around White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. You need to understand that we have only one central rule of engagement, and here it is: This matter must never be spoken of again. We WASPS can apply this rule to anything -- from a moment of awkwardness at the dinner table to a relative's suicide. Asking no further questions is the song of my people.

why is a hard question to answer in any language

I am touched that you are trying to comprehend me. A friend could not be more loving.

He and I had been talking about jazz (which is to say that he had been talking about jazz, and I had been listening to him talk about jazz, because that is how you talk to a man about jazz)

Maybe you remember...what a powerful impact the word fuck used to have in our society--back before everybody and thier children started saying it 10 times a day before breakfast

This is what flirtation is in its purest form—a conversation held without words. Flirtation is a series of silent questions that one person asks another person with their eyes.

I don't know what I think until I write about it (Joan Didion).

Each sentence was a crowded village of capital letters and small letters, living side by side in tight misery, crawling up on one another as though trying to escape the page. His spelling was several degrees beyond arbitrary, and his punctuation brought reason to sigh with unhappiness.

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

From her mother, Janie learned to play charades and murder in the dark, to run three-legged races, to spot hermit thrushes, towhees (Mrs. P. said the towhee's call was Drink your tea!; Bea said it was Brush your teeth!), and tell prairie warblers from the maryland yellowthroat and the great horned from the barred owl by their calls.

I love him too and believe he loves me, but does he like me, which is not the same as love?

Making a living is nothing, the great difficulty is making a point, making a difference - with words.

Tell people the hammered truth, and it will ring like steel against an anvil.

Finally he turned his head toward her face and brushed a kiss over her cheek. "I love you and I believe with all my heart that you love me as well. Why can't you say it, Hero?

Please remember that just because love isn't expressed doesn't mean it isn't felt.

And if he presses, tell him it's a female matter. That stops any question.

But…" Both men looked over inquiringly when Maximus spoke. "But I never asked you to help me with Noakes." Makepeace nodded, his expression grave. "You didn't have to." "You never had to," St. John concurred.