Quotes About Conversation

Sports (and the often barely withheld violence around them) have become one of the few modern ways to connect with strangers. They give an amazing number of geeks things to talk about. In the old days we settled for, "Hello, how are you?"

He looked at her for a long moment, as if remembering unfinished conversations, and then went back to place some damp, slow-burning turf on the fire.

No one ever asked what was my relationship with Bart Giamatti. We used to talk about baseball a lot as a player and a commissioner, just talk about the game, what could we do to help the game, where's the game going, he was pretty good.

1. VERBAL NURTURANCE: Eager participation in multidimensional conversation. Generous amounts of praise and positive feedback. Willingness to entertain all questions. Teaching, reading stories, providing resources for ongoing verbal development

If the child is not frequently and enthusiastically engaged in conversation, how will he build the confidence to risk sharing his inner world with anyone else?

The endless chatter of this journey had wearied me.

Individual transformation is the more popular conversation, and the choice not to focus on it [in this book] is because we have already learned that the transformation of large numbers of individuals does not result in the transformation of communities. If we continue to invest in individuals as the primary target of change, we will spend our primary energy on this and never fully invest in communities. In this way, individual transformation comes at the cost of community.

I'm not a sociopath or a freak (although I don't suppose people who are sociopaths or freaks self-identify as such); I just don't enjoy being with people. People, at least in my experience, rarely say anything interesting to each other. They always talk about their lives and they don't have very interesting lives. So I get impatient. For some reason I think you should only say something if it's interesting or absolutely has to be said.

It's perfectly possible to enjoy a good, civilized, person-to-person conversation with a picture on a museum wall. Talk to it, listen carefully, and it will more than likely talk back to you.

I met a man at a party. He said "I'm writing a novel" I said "Oh really? Neither am I.

Three hundred years ago, during the Age of Enlightenment, the coffee house became the center of innovation.

The Bible isn't a book that reflects one point of view. It is a collection of books that records a conversation—even a debate—over time.

If, in full conversation with the biblical and extrabiblical evidence, we can adjust our expectations about how the Bible should behave, we can begin to move beyond the impasse of the liberal/conservative debates of the last several generations.

We do not honor the Lord nor do we uphold the gospel by playing make-believe. Neither are those who engage the kinds of issues discussed in this book necessarily on the slippery slope to unbelief. Our God is much bigger than we sometimes give him credit for. It is we who sometimes wish to keep him small by controlling what can or cannot come into the conversation.

Aunt Terannia stuck her head up through the hole. "Only me," she said briskly. Then blinked. "What is that on your arm?" "E-beam pulsor," Essie said matter-of-factly. "Far Away's favored Saturday-night special.

For my part, I never talk to the child about time. We talk about other things -- though not about anything much -- and never about tomorrow. For me that is impossible. Tomorrow we could all be wiped out. You think back upon all the promises you did not manage to keep. Talk about time and you will always end up making promises. Then it is better to say nothing at all, no matter what.

Their haste pulls them out of the conversation, or they try internally to improve the situation, or they're preparing what their next speech will be when you shut up and it's their turn to take the stage.

Very few people know how to listen. Their haste pulls them out of the conversation, or they try internally to improve the situation, or they're preparing what their entrance will be when you shut up and it's their turn to step on stage.

Author describes one monarch's impressive table but conveys a contemporary's observation, "the weightiest thing at dinner was the conversation".

Wait a minute, I'm thinking, was this another one of those conversations where what is meant and what is being said are not the same thing?

God, the names. You could almost walk into the words themselves." Now Jack put down his cup. He'd never heard anyone say that and it was true. For a moment he lost the blithe tempo of their conversation that had shielded him from his own shyness.

If they swapped jokes, she asked them what the Zero said to the Eight: "Nice belt!

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.

Sure you're not going to miss it, Roy?' 'I'll miss the camaraderie, but not the politics. Too much of that, these days. Know what I'm looking forward to most of all?' 'No – what?' 'It's being able to go into a pub and say what I really think, without having to worry that one of my bosses gets to hear about it,