Quotes About Conversation

I happen to disagree with the well-entrenched theory that the art of conversation is merely the art of being a good listener. Such advice invites people to be cynical with one another and full of fake; when a conversation becomes a monologue, poked along with tiny cattle-prod questions, it isn't a conversation any more.

All the research shows that the presence of that phone will do two things to the conversation. It will make the conversation go to trivial matters, and it will decrease the amount of empathy that the two people in the conversation feel toward each other. That phone is a signal that either of us can put our attention elsewhere.

There may be an art to conversation, and some are better at it than others, but conversation's virtue lies in randomness and possibility: people, without a plan, could speak a spontaneous, unexpected truth, because revelation rules. Telling words recur in this smart, generous conversation between Stephen Andrews and Gregg Bordowitz: patience, responsibility, feminism, ethics, cosmology, AIDS, gift, freedom, mortality.

At some point you do not need to talk to have a conversation. The conversation exists whether you have it or not. It continues silently in a parallel dimension of the marriage. They both pause to let it run its course toward another stalemate.

Our challenge is to not look away, but rather to transform the field; to create a new political conversation, our own conversation, out of which we can speak our truth in our own way.

The national conversation around white entitlement, around institutionalized racism, the Black Lives Matter movement, I think, came about in large part because of the widening and broadening of our understanding of inequality. That conversation was begun by Occupy.

People often recommend, "Why do you ask?" as a good conversation stopper. But that really doesn't end the conversation, it just leaves the other person sputtering for a response. I like, "You'll be the first to know.".

It concerns me when people frame the conversation about equal pay about the entertainment business. I don't want the wage gap issue to be viewed as this myopic problem, because it's not. It's in 98 percent of all businesses, and it's easy for people to dismiss this conversation when they think it's around white women entertainers. But this is about all women in America.

If the conversation people think is coming is the 'death panel' conversation, that's a total failure.

Start a conversation with someone with whom you have "nothing in common" and no possibility of scoring with, networking with, or even seeing again. In other words, a conversation just for the civilized hell of it.

I was never going to get any sleep. I was going to have Alice in Wonderland conversation after Alice in Wonderland conversation until I died of exhaustion. Here, in the restful, idyllic Victorian era.

I can wear a hat or take it off, but either way it`s a conversation piece.

I think those of us on a spiritual journey can help create a new conversation, a new America, and a new world.

CONVERSATION is the vehicle for change.

Word books traditionally focus on unusual and quirky items. They tend to ignore the words that provide the skeleton of the language, without which it would fall apart, such as 'and' and 'what,' or words that provide structure to our conversation, such as 'hello.

As a poet who has the tools for interpreting the poem differently, you can begin to deconstruct it. But the human being who's like, "I know about conversation, I know about language, I know about hard times," will approach the poem differently.

I have learned so much more about Islam in conversation with Jews and Christians and Hindus. I feel like that is part of the beauty of life on Earth - that we discover and develop what it means to be Muslim or Christian or Jewish not in isolation from others, but precisely in relationship with others.

Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystalize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the conciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.

The man in the street has unfortunately been sold the idea that the breakthrough cure for cancer is just around the corner... The very prospect of effective treatment seems so remote that it doesn't even enter into the speculative day-to-day conversation of people engaged in cancer research... New treatments have not produced any detectable decline in the total annual cancer mortality, even for children.

Bore : A fellow who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.

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

Part of the joy of dancing is conversation. Trouble is, some men can't talk and dance at the same time.

That man is guilty of impertinence who considers not the circumstances of time, or engrosses the conversation, or makes himself the subject of his discourse, or pays no regard to the company he is in.

Silence can be defined as conversation with an Englishman

When I'm writing, my neural pathways get blocked. I can't read. I can barely hold a conversation without forgetting words and names. I wish I could wear the same clothes and eat the same food each day.

Conversation didn't seem necessary when I put the accordion down and swung some young lady around the floor.

SOLIDAO, LONELINESS. What is it that we call loneliness. It can't simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it? ... it isn't only that others are there, that they fill up the space next to us. But even when they celebrate us or give advice in a friendly conversation, clever, sensitive advice: even then we can be lonely. So loneliness is not something simply connected with the presence of others or with what they do. Then what? What on earth?

The reason I don't want to say anything about it is it has a strange power to take over the conversation. Just like it's doing with us. I was asked to participate in a documentary about Richard Prince, and be the voice of someone who was appropriated, and I declined. The reason I did is I don't want it to be the subject of the discussion of my work.

[The imagination] . . . inspires an audacious mental habit. We are as elastic as the gas of gunpowder, and . . . a word dropped in conversation, sets free our fancy, and instantly our heads are bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the Pit.

When I play live, it's a conversation that we're all having with the song, and the audience... their response and relationship with the songs is as valid as my relationship with the songs.

Customer conversion is dependent on the right customer conversation.

On the subway today, a man came up to me to start a conversation. He made small talk, a lonely man talking about the weather and other things. I tried to be pleasant and accommodating, but my head began to hurt from his banality. I almost didn't notice it had happened, but I suddenly threw up all over him. He was not pleased, and I couldn't stop laughing.

President Trump basically has interfered with an investigation where he may be implicated. That's outrageous. And that's why we're having so much of a conversation about it today. Everybody is talking about it because this is highly unusual.

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships.

conversation is now pretty well a lost art.

In real life, I try to be honest but not overshare. There are people that turn every conversation into a therapy session and you want to start charging them.

Oxytocin is the hormone of love. We share it when we have a good conversation, we share it when we make love, and when we hug, and BIRTH is the biggest brightest time of rich oxytocin-sharing.

Normally Connor would walk away from a conversation like this. His life is about tangibles: things you can see, hear and touch. God, souls, and all that has always been like a secret in a black box he couldn't see into, so it was easier just to leave it alone. Only now, he's inside the black box.

The show [Shots Fired] is an autopsy of our criminal justice system, a space where the conversation surrounding the issues in our country is offering a seat at the table to all the voices to be heard, a murder mystery, and grassroots look at our own humanity as we move through the parts and pieces of the story.

Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure.

Its [Dreams from My Father] also a reflection about how we might start a better conversation in our democracy about how to solve problems, because it feels as if our political system - it just seems there is so much cynicism and negativity in our politics.

I've been in a serious conversation with one of my children, and a fan has come up. I've been in a public bathroom and had the hand come under the stall with a paper and pen. That sort of thing anybody can live without.

What a strange scene if the surge of conversation could suddenly ebb like the tide, and show us the real state of people's minds.

I think the best way to invite people into the conversation is to just create something beautiful out of love, and people naturally gravitate towards a new way of looking at fashion.

I think that the work that's left to be done - and I see the end in sight at this point - is to just let go and stop talking about it. It's definitely 'stop talking about the whole size thing.' I don't go to my girlfriend's house and say, 'Hey, I'm your big friend, let's talk about big things.' It's not a topic of conversation within my friend group - I'm ready for society, Hollywood, the press, magazines, everyone, to just catch up and say, 'These women are just like the women we've been using for so long. Let's just throw them into the mix and stop talking about it.'

Hosting is an art form. Like acting, singing, or comedy hosting is a craft. It's a delicate dance of timing, the ability to read the room, and the art of conversation.

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

If you start a conversation with the assumption that you are right or that you must win, obviously it is difficult to talk.