Quotes About Interaction

This morning I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they have no knowledge of my existence. They come to life because I open them and turn their pages, and yet they don't know that I am their reader.

But who shall be the master? The writer or the reader?

When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.

You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.

The writer proposes, the readers dispose.

You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.

Glad to hear what? asked Jenny, emerging suddenly from her private interior world like a cuckoo from a clock. She received an explanation, smiled, nodded, cuckooed at last I see, and popped back, clapping shut the door behind her.

To know a person's character you must at least have talked with him, and unless you are gifted with remarkable intuitive insight you are not likely to know much about him unless you have seen him living and acting over a considerable period of time.

I'm sorry I tried to be unpleasant, he said at last.

Talking? But what about?" Walking and talking—that seemed a very odd way of spending an afternoon.

the world is really so small that everyone must of necessity meet everyone else

It's been going so well. We have a wonderful time in class, and I can feel the chemistry between you. - That's because it's chemistry class.

We are born to talk to other people, ... we are born to be sociable and to sit together with others in the shade of the acacia tree and talk about things that happened the day before. We were not born to sit in kitchens by ourselves, with nobody to chat to. Mma Ramotswe

Mma Ramotswe decided to go back into her office. There was a curious thing about male conversation that she had noticed - men often ended up poking fun at one another. Women did this only rarely, but men seemed to love insulting one another. It was very strange.

How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say something? For how many of us is that what conversation means - the setting up of our lines?

Those important brain circuits, the ones that enabled most of us to avoid saying the wrong thing, were simply not there in Martha's case; or fired in the wrong order; or were short-circuiting. In other words, Martha Drummond was an electrical problem. And understanding people as electrical problems undoubtedly helped one to tolerate them.

I like you when you're algebraic, said Ulf--and immediately regretted it. It was a flirtatious remark--describing somebody as algebraic was undoubtedly to cross a line. You would not normally describe an ordinary friend as algebraic, and then say that you liked her that way.

When meeting for lunch somebody one's uncomfortable with, it's important to have somewhere to look, don't you agree?

It was reasonable enough, of course, for people to wish to speak to a man, if that is what they wanted, but that did not mean that a man would be better.

Her tone was breezy. That, she thought, was the best way to talk to teenagers—about anything. You talked to them in that way, as if you were not expecting them to be listening to you—which, of course, they were not.

Many people only go to see other people when they want to ask for some favour.

He could not imagine being interested in that way in somebody like Mma Mateleke; how would one ever get to plant a kiss on such a person if she was always talking? It would be difficult to get one's lips into contact with a mouth that was always opening and shutting to form words; that would surely be very distracting for a man, he thought, and might even discourage him to the point of disinclination, if that was the right word.

matter to the test. Starting with a simple command—one that most dogs were capable of understanding and acting upon, sit—he stood in front of Martin, said sit in such a way that the position of his lips was exaggerated, and then pressed firmly on Martin's hindquarters, forcing them down. Martin looked up at his owner in mute incomprehension.

looked at Jock Dundas, who was