Quotes About Small talk

He was a lonely man, but he had long since reconciled himself to loneliness. Marriage required concessions which he was not prepared to make. He would have had to sacrifice time to small talk and to take an interest in things that bored him stiff. Marriage

Chitchat debases a language.

I actually shivered at the insincerity that gripped me as I spoke these words: their falseness was shameful. I was sure my coolness would return. I'd just been caught with my guard down. But at the moment I was in shambles. Walking along the deck (adopting my old casual swagger), I jollied up the troops with small talk, put on a frozen grin, and kept murmuring to myself with rhythmic fatuity: You love the marine Corps, it's a terrific war, you love the Marine Corps, it's a terrific war...

Death was the hot bath you promised yourself while you endured small talk and uncomfortable shoes. You could stop pretending to have a good time when you were dead.

It's hard to do a variety show. It's hard to do all that small talk and make it sound real.

Maybe, said his brain and his upbringing, if you make enough tea and small talk, time reverses and all bad things are undone.

Peter was willing the water to boil so he could make tea and then all this would go away. Maybe, said his brain and his upbringing, if you make enough tea and small talk, time reverses and all bad things are undone. But he'd lived too long with Clara to be able to hide in denial.

I don't "take a lot of mess." I have no tolerance for people who are not thinking deeply about things. I have no tolerance for the kind of small talk that people need to fill silence, and I have no tolerance for people not being a part of the world and being in it and trying to change it.

What sort of Englishman is forever too busy for tea? The nose-to-the-grindstone sort, to begin with. The sort who gets ahead without connections, who makes something of himself without benefit of small talk or social lubrication or the seeking of personal kindnesses.

As a general rule, I hate parties. Actually, hate isn't a strong enough word. I detest them. I suck at small talk, and I'm not a "people person".

He could say nothing. He had no right to be there, he had already been profoundly changed, he was no good at small talk, she was half naked, it was dawn and he loved her.

I'm driving so it's your job to make small talk." "Oh." "Not that small." He waved at the security guard as we left the club. "Make medium talk.

They stood now in the low, dimly lit hall, hung about with sporting prints and stuffed birds, his aunt and Simon Matchett making small talk smaller.

Though the Finns' taciturnity may work among themselves, problems arise when they travel or have to work with foreigners. The men, in particular, can be simply too frank, too direct, sometimes to the point of rudeness. They find it especially challenging to engage in the social lubricant of small talk, something even Norwegians can manage if they put their minds to it.

I'm the one who looks at the infant, smiles nervously, and as my contribution to small talk, robotically announces to the parent, "Your child looks healthy and well cared for.

I had learned bit by bit the art of meeting people with a straight face—no, that's not true: I have never been able to meet anyone without an accompaniment of painful smiles, the buffoonery of defeat. What I had acquired was the technique of stammering somehow, almost in a daze, the necessary small talk.

The American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar, I met a man, and within five minutes he explained that he had just been released from prison. Another drinker told me that his wife had passed away, and he had recently suffered a heart attack, and now he hoped that he would die within the year. I learned that there's no reliable small talk in America; at any moment a conversation can become personal.