Quotes About Conversation

One way to become much more interesting to a man on a date is to ask him intelligent conversations about himself. To a guy, interesting conversation does not include whether he wants kids... how much money he makes... or whether he sees himself getting married someday. It doesn't involve "feelings" or whether a celebrity is in rehab.

Charlotte Holmes. I thought I might see you here." The voice belonged to Lord Ingram, but slightly raspy, as if he were under the weather?or recovering from a night of hard drinking. She turned around slowly. "Hullo, Ash." A complicated pleasure, this man.

May I remind you that you are speaking to someone capable of smiting you with a thunderbolt?" "Is there any point to flirting with a girl who is not capable of that?

Leighton was used to letting women talk. Whether by temperament or by the requirement to be amiable, women talked, their speech the unguent that greased the gears of polite society.

Human relationships are rich and they're messy and they're demanding. And we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that can happen is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection. We short-change ourselves. And over time, we seem to forget this, or we seem to stop caring.

is not a problem looking for a quick fix. Life is a conversation and you need places to have it. The virtual provides us with more spaces for these conversations and these are enriching. But what makes the physical so precious is that it supports continuity in a different way; it doesn't come and go, and it binds people to it. You can't just log off or drop out.

If you're having a conversation with someone in speech, and it's not being tape-recorded, you can change your opinion, but on the Internet, it's not like that. On the Internet it's almost as if everything you say were being tape-recorded. You can't say, "I changed my mind.

I call it the Goldilocks effect: We can't get enough of each other if we can have each other at a digital distance—not too close, not too far, just right. But human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding. When we clean them up with technology, we move from conversation to the efficiency of mere connection. I fear we forget the difference.

The philosopher Heinrich von Kleist calls this "the gradual completion of thoughts while speaking." Von Kleist quotes the French proverb that "appetite comes from eating" and observes that it is equally the case that "ideas come from speaking." The best thoughts, in his view, can be almost unintelligible as they emerge; what matters most is risky, thrilling conversation as a crucible for discovery.

The real emergency may be parents and children not having conversations or sharing a silence between them that gives each the time to bring up a funny story or a troubling thought.

Texting is more direct. You don't have to use conversation filler.

What do we forget when we talk to machines? We forget what is special about being human. We forget what it means to have authentic conversation. Machines are programmed to have conversations "as if" they understood what the conversation is about. So when we talk to them, we, too, are reduced and confined to the "as if.

These days, students struggle with conversation. What makes sense is to engage them in it. The more you think about educational technology, with all its bells and whistles, the more you circle back to the simple power of conversation.

We miss out on necessary conversations when we divide our attention between the people we're with and the world on our phones. Or when we go to our phones instead of claiming a quiet moment for ourselves

In all of these cases, we use technology to "dial down" human contact, to titrate its nature and extent. People avoid face-to-face conversation but are comforted by being in touch with people—and sometimes with a lot of people—who are emotionally kept at bay. It's another instance of the Goldilocks effect. It's part of the move from conversation to mere connection.

We had talk enough, but no conversation. —SAMUEL JOHNSON, THE RAMBLER (1752)

people teaches children how to be in a relationship, beginning with the ability to have a conversation.

Solitude reinforces a secure sense of self, and with that, the capacity for empathy. Then, conversation with others provides rich material for self-reflection. Just as alone we prepare to talk together, together we learn how to engage in a more productive solitude.

Who says that we always have to be ready to communicate?

It used to be that we imagined our mobile phones were there so that we could talk to each other. Now we want our mobile phones to talk to us.

Talking on a landline with no interruptions used to be an everyday thing. Now it's exotic; the jewel in the crown.

craves control more than sociability. She will email a "Sorry" instead of delivering a face-to-face apology; at work, as in her personal life, when she faces a difficult conversation, she makes every effort to sidestep it with an email.

During cocktails, Octavio Paz walked up to me with a champagne glass in hand and said, "Vous avez les seins très beaux

Despite the seriousness of our moment, I write with optimism. Once aware, we can begin to rethink our practices. When we do, conversation is there to reclaim. For the failing connections of our digital world, it is the talking cure.