Quotes About Dialogue

Thus conversational signals can get crossed when well-intentioned speakers have different habits and expectations about using pacing and pausing, loudness, and pitch to show their intentions through talk—

Smashing heads does not open minds.

It's important to remember that others' ways of talking to you are partly a reaction to your style, just as your style with them is partly a reaction to their style—with you.

The belief that sitting down and talking will ensure mutual understanding and solve problems is based on the assumption that we can say what we mean, and that what we say will be understood as we mean it. This is unlikely to happen if conversational styles differ.

Communication is a system. Everything that is said is simultaneously an instigation and a reaction, a reaction and an instigation. Most of us tend to focus on the first part of that process while ignoring or downplaying the second. We see ourselves as reacting to what others say and do, without realizing that their actions or words are in part reactions to ours, and that our reactions to them won't be the end of the process but rather will trigger more reactions, in a continuous stream.

Men ask such stupid questions.

Small talk is the verbal equivalent of that first domino: It starts a chain reaction with all kinds of implications for your life.

Here are some other examples of digging deeper into a conversation: You ask, How have you been? and get the reply, Busy. Follow-up responses could include: How do you deal with being busy? What is going on that's got you so busy? Describe a busy day for you. Do you like being busy? Does there seem to be a cycle of busy-ness during your year? Do you remember a time in your life when you weren't as busy?

With creative usage of these three elements (questions, follow-up comments, follow-up questions), the possibilities and variations in conversation are virtually limitless.

Relationships are two layers of conversations. Adapting and also speaking your mind.

Much of that which passes for conversation these days is the lobbing of small bombs of dogma and little clots of banality at one another.

THE THIRD PRINCIPLE describes how your mind creates your reality—and how, by mastering your inner dialogue, you can literally transform reality to create abundance.

Everybody talks, but there is no conversation.

Pose your questions to people and you will get countless useless answers.

It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all

That's why people become racists, and sexists and terrorists. Because we don't talk, we don't listen, because we don't know, we live only in our own heads.

Our research suggests that successful race talk must allow for the free expression of nested and impacted feelings, acknowledge their legitimacy and importance in dialogues, and be deconstructed so their meanings are made clear (Sue, 2013; Sue et al., 2010; Sue, Torino, et al., 2009).

Becoming culturally competent in facilitating difficult dialogues on race presupposes that parents and teachers must first do the necessary work of confronting their own biases, prejudices, and assumptions about human behavior. Self-healing must come before other healing.

most people, including Whites, perceive racial relationships as binary: Black–White only (Pew Research Center, 2012). So, when matters of prejudice or discrimination are brought up for discussion, other groups of color, such as Asian Americans, Latina/o Americans, and Native Americans, often feel left out of the dialogue and rendered invisible (B. S. K. Kim, 2011; Takaki, 1998).

while the politeness protocol, the academic protocol, and the color-blind protocol serve as ground rules that prevent race talk by Whites, the commandments (a) "Thou shall not air dirty laundry in public" and (b) "Thou shall not speak ill of one another and destroy group unity" are equally powerful forces preventing people of color from honestly dialoguing about their thoughts and feelings toward one another.

Trainers have to be cognizant of the many defensive strategies used by participants to avoid race talk in order to anticipate and overcome them.

race talk between several individuals does not occur in isolation from other observers or students; although other participants may not have actively engaged in the dialogue, they are usually vicariously involved. By shutting down the communication between two individuals, it shuts down the entire group process.

For White Americans, successful racial dialogues allow them to grasp the significance of what it means to be White, and how Whiteness with its accompanying invisible norms and standards are entrenched into their everyday lives. This racial awakening and the development of a nonracist identity is intimately linked to racial identity development (Helms, 1990, 1995; Sue, 1995, 2013; Tatum, 1992, 1997).

I swear, talking to you is like talking to a really good-looking and mildly stupid brick wall.