Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone.

The one who decides who goes ahead has the upper hand, regardless of who gets to go. This is why many women do not feel empowered by such privileges as having doors held open for them. The advantage of going first through the door is less salient to them than the disadvantage of being granted the right to walk through a door by someone who is framed, by his magnanimous gesture, as the arbiter of the right-of-way.

Critiquing relieves you of the responsibility of doing integrative thinking.

It can be the best of relationships and the worst of relationships - often at the same time. The bond between a mother and daughter is one of the strongest, but it's also among the most complicated.

Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball.

All conversation, in addition to whatever else it does, displays, and asks for recognition of, our competence.

The argument culture urges us to approach the world-and the people in it-in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: Conflict and opposition are as necessary as cooperation and agreement, but the scale is off balance, with conflict and opposition over-weighted.