Quotes About Conversation

It was uncertain. She was in her early forties. Breast cancer. No one could identify exactly how everyone had come to know this fact. Was it a fact? Some people called it rumor. But in fact there was no such thing as rumor. There was fact, and there was what did not come up in conversation.

In fact there was no such thing as a rumor. There was fact, and there was what did not come up in conversation.

There is a certain type of conversation one hears only when one is drunk and it is like a dream, full of humor and threat and significance, deep significance.

The women congregated in the kitchen or, in warm weather, sat in rocking chairs on the shady porches. The few men present squatted and talked in the yard or sat on a porch on the opposite side of the house.

Le seguí la corriente, claro, como se les sigue la corriente a todos los borrachos del mundo cuando empiezan a contar sus historias de borrachos.

Habló sin mirarme, porque la gente no suele mirarse dentro de un carro. Como el fuego o una pantalla de cine, el panorámico de un carro atrae las miradas, las acapara, las domina. Por eso dentro de un carro es más fácil decirse ciertas cosas.

Y yo, que siempre he sentido una especie de callada simpatía por la gente que despotrica contra su propio país, me puse de inmediato a conversar con él.

La discusión de mis funciones corporales por parte de una completa extraña no me incomodó. Había en Maya Fritts una naturalidad que yo nunca había visto, y que desde luego era muy distinta del puritanismo de los bogotanos, capaces de pasarse

Les habían ofrecido tinticos y tecitos, esos diminutivos que los bogotanos usan para ser amables

No es posible amar sin conocer, y al conocimiento de las almas se llega a través de la conversación.

Lo que más indigna al charlatán es alguien silencioso y digno.

You can greet even the dullest acquaintance with pleasure, if you have forgotten their dreary story.

the quality of the conversation drives the nature of the impact. At the moment of contact, conversations have the power to transform our lives.

When we create conversational rituals that enable us to honor and respect others' views of the world—especially when these views are very different from our own—we create a space for better conversations and for new ideas to emerge.

Researchers have concluded two things. One is that we drop out of conversations every twelve to eighteen seconds to process what people are saying; two, we often remember what we think about what another person is saying because that is a stronger internal process and chemical signal. In other words, our internal listening and dialogue trumps the other person's speech.

Anytime our lives are disrupted by change, we turn to conversational rituals to "re-anchor" us to a safe place.

where people sit at a table can influence conversation: a person sitting at the head of a table brings into play a dynamic of authority (cold) over the others, while people gathered around a round table promotes a feeling of warmth.

third cups of coffee, sitting around the kitchen table,

She be a smart woman, ain't she? Yes, sir. I shouldn't have made such a fuss. I can get in some water. Just like that, he admitted he was wrong. What an amazing conversation. (hardback, large print, page 76)

Anyone who could remember the heyday of the cocktail party probably doesn't.

How do you do?" depending on the formality of the occasion, and whether you can count on the other person to understand that the answer to "How do you do?" is "How do you do?" even though that makes two questions in a row. (Etiquette opposes any declaration of being pleased to meet someone on the cynical grounds that it may not turn out to be a pleasure.) The

Yes, indeed. "Good morning" is an opener, and "Good day" is a closer.

The polite thing would be to say to the noisy person, "I beg your pardon, but I can't hear the music. I wonder if you would mind talking more softly?" By the time you have said all this, a third party will utter a loud shush, thereby accomplishing your purpose without sacrificing your manners.

Conversation, which is supposed to be a two-way street, is treated by many people as if it were a divided highway. They may acknowledge that traffic must go in both directions, but speed independently on their own way, expecting you to do the same on your side. If