Quotes About Communication

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn

Families break up when they get hints you don't intend and miss hints that you do.

Good fences make good neighbors.

Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, grace metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, Why don't you say what you mean? We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work.

He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, Good fences make good neighbors.

He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, Good fences make good neighbors.

You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.

Revelation WE make ourselves a place apart Behind light words that tease and flout, But oh, the agitated heart Till someone find us really out. 'Tis pity if the case require (Or so we say) that in the end We speak the literal to inspire The understanding of a friend. But so with all, from babes that play At hide-and-seek to God afar, So all who hide too well away Must speak and tell us where they are

A Time to Talk When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don't stand still and look around On all the hills I haven't hoed, And shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, Blade-end up and five feet tall, And plod: I go up to the stone wall For a friendly visit.

All the fun's in how you say a thing.

My definition of literature would be just this: words that have become deeds.

The ear is the only writer and the only true reader.

My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines,I tell him.He only says,Good fences make good neighbors.

I could say Elves to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself.

A Time to Talk - 1874-1963 When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don't stand still and look around On all the hills I haven't hoed, And shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, Blade-end up and five feet tall, And plod: I go up to the stone wall For a friendly visit.

Far as we aim our signs to reach, Far as we often make them reach, Across the soul-from-soul abyss, There is an aeon-limit set Beyond which they are doomed to miss. Two souls may be too widely met. That sad-with-distance river beach With mortal longing may beseech; It cannot speak as far as this.

Good fences makes good neighbours

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. –

Machines and relatives get most of the yelling. But never trees. As for people, well, the Solomon islanders may have a point. Yelling at living thing does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.

Never, ever regret or apologize for believing that when one man or one woman decides to risk addressing the world with truth, the world may stop what it is doing and hear. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

Why isn't love easy? I don't know. And the raccoons don't say.

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts. . . .