Quotes About Conversation

When I'm stopped in the street, people want to talk about 'The Two Ronnies' and the sketches we did.

Things pop out of people's mouths that you wouldn't expect them to say, so I've stopped trying to guess ahead of time who might be interesting to talk to.

I remember when I worked at the solicitor's - you'd go in, talk to your mates for a bit and then get down to work. With us the talking to your mates part never stops.

It slows down grocery shopping, because so many women at the store watch the show. I always end up talking to two or three people every time I go to Ralphs. It's fun.

Playing football and rugby is the Samoan sport. It's part of the conversation at church. It's part of the conversation in their barbershops, in the grocery stores. It's what everyone is aware of and familiar with. They take a lot of pride in the beating you can take in the course of that sport.

In 'Open City,' there is a passage that any reader of Joyce will immediately recognise as a very close, formal analogue of one the stories in 'Dubliners.' That is because a novel is also a literary conversation.

Films really can change a conversation and change someone's thinking and perception, especially with people of color at the center. It rarely happens. I think it's important for both the community but also the world to see people of color in all genres, especially love stories.

Talking up a storm about food is so easy for me, it's second nature.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we're planning what we'll say next, some exciting story of our own.

I'm not a natural storyteller at all. If anything, I'm a natural interviewer, a natural listener, but I'm not a natural storyteller.

I'm not a good storyteller - I much prefer to be with people who are chatty, to have the luxury of listening.

As British people, we don't often face what our role in history is. We're only just beginning to do that. Storytellers have an incredibly important role in confronting that and continuing the conversation.

It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers, and I grew up in a very funny, conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn't have much to do with reality.

Gossip is essentially storytelling: storytelling about people whom we know.

I have the version of me where I'm interviewing someone, where I definitely am the straight man, and I like to show a lot of respect to my guest and let them take the reins. I don't like to compete with my guests. I don't like to be funnier than my guests or get into a 'Who's wackier?' sort of thing.

I don't have a fondness for movies, which leaves me stranded when it comes to cocktail party chat, but I prefer language and books.

Why do guests always end up in the kitchen at parties? Is it a social phenomenon? Some strange gravitational pull? I don't know, but one thing is for sure: If your friends are going to congregate in your kitchen, you'd better make it as nice as possible.

I was having a conversation with my father and he was talking about this thing - strangeness and charm. It's actually the name of the two smallest particles that there are when you split the atom, so I wrote a song around it. I even managed to fit the word 'hydrogen' in there. Isn't that a nice thing for scientists to call them though?

I can not stay at the place when a stranger starts talking to me. I will try to cut the speech as quick as possible and move away. I had to break this inhibition before becoming an actor.

A colleague once nicknamed me - half mocking - the 'magical stranger' because I get people to tell me things.

Some of the most lasting contacts and friendships that I have developed began by just grabbing a drink or breaking bread with a stranger at an industry event.

No one's arguing that the Internet is evil. But talking about strangers is another conversation you have to have with your kids.

Sometimes I don't want to stand around a room full of strangers, chitchatting about nothing, so I'll come late to a party - and leave early. Though now that I'm saying this in a magazine, I'll probably never be invited to another one.

The main purpose of engaging in conversation can no longer be personal advancement or respectability. Instead, I'd like for us to use conversations to create equality, to open ourselves to strangers, and, most practically, to remake our working world.