Quotes About Interaction

After a brief hesitation, the doctor accepted Strike's proffered hand, and as the two men shook, Robin wondered how aware men were of the power dynamics that played out between them, while women stood watching.

Even if Heather had barely known her, as seemed to be the case, her frank enjoyment of her fancy lunch and her persistent eyeing-up of Strike seemed both inappropriate and distasteful to Robin.

Being sworn at by random people was the price you paid for living in London,

blood was thumping in her ears: the sensation of not being heard was becoming increasingly common during these interactions)

Parky, isn't it?" Strike said to the frowning constable and her companion as he and Robin walked back past them.

Robin turned her iPad so that Strike could see it. He moved his chair in: Robin felt his knee bump hers.

Lately he, too, had had moods where the sound of other people's cheerfulness grated . . .

Both were ordering cocktails and looked delighted to be in each other's company. For a few seconds Robin suddenly wondered whether she'd ever again feel as they did.

He might have derived a much needed ego-boost from her unabashed pursuit of him, were it not for the fact that he found her combination of entitlement and neediness thoroughly unattractive.

Her antipathy towards Strike seemed to have evaporated. He was not surprised; he had met the phenomenon many times. People liked to talk; there were very few exceptions; the question was how you made them do it. Some, and Ursula was evidently one of them, were amenable to alcohol; others liked a spotlight; and then there were those who merely needed proximity to another conscious human being.

The corners of his mouth twitched, but as Robin didn't see him smiling, he felt no compulsion to explain.

Everyone in the group apart from Strike began to talk at once, but Waldegrave's voice carried over the others' and the women fell silent with the instinctive courtesy women often show to incapacitated males.

Put them through, please," said Strike.

she's happy to have a chat, but we haven't fixed up a time yet. And I called Janice," said Strike, "mainly because

Visible photons now, the ones that make up the light that people use to see by, they have a higher frequency and more energy. One of those can have quite a noticeable effect. The really affluent ones though, the big spenders, are the X-ray and gamma photons. Each one of those carries a lot of energy around with it and they can really make their presence felt on their surroundings if they choose to interact.

When I got there and picked up the receiver, there was no one on the other end. I clicked the cradle several times

This was the problem with drinks parties: getting stuck with a person you didn't want to talk to while someone you did was tantalisingly in view.

One line is a form in the sense that any gesture is a form. Two lines introduce the idea of form as the energy of relation.

You pass people on the street, some are for you, some are not.

Be warned, however, that when groups work mostly through e-mail or conference calls (rather than face-to-face), they tend to fight more and trust each other less.

it's sometimes wise to add rather than remove communication barriers—and physical distance is one of the most protective barriers.

In the 1970s, MIT professor Tom Allen showed that the closer people sat to one another, the more frequently they communicated—not just face-to-face communication, but via all media including telephone calls.

Some assholes take a similar kind of pleasure in your pain. When they do something that generates a strong reaction from you—be it obsequious ass-kissing, effusive apologizing, trembling with fear, giving in to tears or anger, or sending that long and carefully worded email you spent an hour crafting in response to their imaginary emergency—the pleasure centers in their twisted minds light up.

A supervisor instructed me, "If you talk softer and softer and softer, they're going to have to stop to listen or they're not going to hear anything you're saying. The louder you get, the louder they get. And if you start to tone it down, they start to tone it down.