Quotes About Conversation

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.

During relaxation we drop our guard. Particularly in conversation. Relaxed conversation leads to openness. And in openness we often reveal what should never be revealed.

In the age of the internet, with all of its problems, over time, the very fact that individuals can join the conversation creates the opportunity for the emergence of - for the re-emergence of a genuine conversation of democracy.

Twitter has allowed the conversation to broaden and become more inclusive. At times, the conversation is really tense but that's because we're talking about really important issues. It's not going to be easy but at least the conversations are happening.

Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls its outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it, because telling the truth has become harder and harder to achieve in an America drowning in Orwellian Newspeak.

I would say there is a conversation happening between your body and mind all the time. Even when you're sleeping, your body is communicating the information to your mind. And so to me it feels like, why not harness that? If it's happening all the time, why not control the content of the conversation?

I have got to look at the flip side of things, because, in a way, music is always a conversation, you know? It's a conversation between the musician and their tools and their technologies.

There are a lot of polls that show that actually Americans have a pretty high opinion of teachers, that Americans think teachers are just about as prestigious as doctors. And yet there's this political conversation - this reform conversation - that paints a very negative picture of the effectiveness of the teaching population. So there's definitely a tension between the way teaching is talked about and understood at the political level and how everyday average Americans think about teachers.

Wise cultivated, genial conversation is the last flower of civilization, and the best result which life has to offer us,--a cup for gods, which has no repentance. Conversation is our account of ourselves. All we have, all we can, all we know, is brought into play, and as the reproduction in finer form, of all our havings.

Conversation is our account of ourselves...Conversation is the vent of character as well as thoughts...It is the laboratory of the student.

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

This is a time for a national conversation. A conversation about the document that binds us as a nation and a people. That document, of course, is the Constitution.

What do you think deja vu is for?". Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.

Books are love letters (or apologies) passed between us, adding a layer of conversation beyond our spoken words.

If we ever meet in real life, we can have a conversation. But you should go and live your real life and I'll go and live mine.

I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken?

Did you ever see so many pee-wee hats, Carl?" "They're beanies." "They call them pee-wees in Brooklyn." "But I'm not in Brooklyn." "But you're still a Brooklynite." "I wouldn't want that to get around, Annie." "You don't mean that, Carl." "Ah, we might as well call them beanies, Annie." "Why?" "When in Rome do as the Romans do." "Do they call them beanies in Rome?" she asked artlessly. "This is the silliest conversation.

If I can enjoy a joke at the expense of another; if I can in any way slight another in conversation, or even in thought, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

TV has had a stronger impact on our society than any single invention since the automobile. It has put the dead hand on conversation.

When I say that I love you, I don't say it out of habit or to make conversation. I say it to remind you that you're the best thing that's ever happened to me.

The food was so good that with each passing course, our conversation devolved further into fragmented celebrations of its deliciousness: 'I want this dragon carrot risotto to become a person so I can take it to Las Vegas and marry it.

Don’t let yourself be. Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often it succeeds and how often it doesn’t. Write about it. Ask a patient or a colleague what they think about it. See if you can keep the conversation going.

I suppose the difference between baby people and me is that I do not consider smiling while farting 'holding up your end of a conversation.

While some of my closest friends were jocks, it seemed that they spoke a different language with each other. Joining in their conversation was fraught with risk.

The real meaning of travel, like that of a conversation by the fireside, is the discovery of oneself through contact with other people, and its condition is self-commitment in the dialogue.

To mark all that I say in conversation, merely to beget in others, a good opinion of myself, and examine it.

The television replaced the sound of conversation that was missing from my grandparents' lives.

You take a picture of yourself in some exceptional situation - skydiving or whatever. People always post those photos because it works - you're saying something about yourself that begs a conversation and that's what the users are there for.

Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation.

I’m a succubus.” He shook his head. “No, you aren’t.” “Yes, I am.” “You aren’t.” I was a bit surprised to be having this conversation. “I am too.” “No. Succubi are flame-eyed and bat-winged. Everyone knows that. They don’t wear jeans and sweaters.

A strong friendship doesn't need daily conversation or being together. As long as the relationship lives in the heart, true friends never part.

There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.

In recent years my understanding of God had evolved into increasingly remote abstractions. I'd come to think of God in terms like Divine Reality, the Absolute, or the One who holds us in being. I do believe that God is beyond any form and image, but it has grown clear to me that I need an image in order to relate. I need an image in order to carry on an intimate conversation with what is so vast, amorphous, mysterious, and holy that it becomes ungraspable. I mean, really, how to you become intimate with Divine Reality? Or the Absolute?

A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation. No man can learn to reason and appraise from a mere perusal of the writing of others. If he live not in the world, where he can observe the public at first hand and be directed toward solid reality by the force of conversation and spoken debate, then he must sharpen his discrimination and regulate his perceptive balance by an equivalent exchange of ideas in epistolary form.

It is universally allowed that, though nothing can be more interesting in itself than the conversation of two lovers, yet nothing can be more insipid in detail - just as the heavenly fragrance of the rose becomes vapid and sickly under all the attempts made to retain and embody its exquisite odor.

The act of collaboration must start with dialogue. You cannot build relationships without having an understanding of your potential partners, and you cannot achieve that understanding without a special form of communication that goes beyond ordinary conversation.

My interactions with Sorkin were agonisingly weird. He is by far the weirdest person I have ever met. I had dinner with him and a few hours before I got an e-mail from his assistant saying, 'Sean, this does not need to be a long conversation. Aaron is only going to use it to win your trust.'

It is my expectation that Teacher Education for Democracy and Social Justice will become a rich resource for continuing this multi-layered conversation-from democratic belief to democratic action-that is the hallmark of educational renewal.

It's not what you know about the computer that's important, but your ability to do things with it. By studying French in an academic setting, you get to know a lot about it, but typically, you can't express yourself well or have an interesting conversation with it.

After 'Roe v. Wade' - when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 - I thought the national conversation about abortion and birth control would be over. It was not.

I've noticed lately that it seems most intimate to not use any closing on your e-mail at all, because it seems to make it feel like you are engaged in an ongoing conversation - as if this one e-mail doesn't represent the beginning and end of the interaction but is just part of a perpetual loop of friendly back-and-forth.

The voice will guide you-will tell you what to do. In order to do that, you must be quite sensitive with the instrument and accept this daily conversation with your voice.

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 don't know your story or your dreams or the things that steal your sleep, but I know they matter. I hope you story is rich with characters, rich with friends and conversation. I hope you know some people who carry you, and I hope you have the honor of carrying them. I hope that there's beauty in your memories, and I hope it doesn't haunt you. And if it does, then I hope there is someone who will walk you through the night and remind you of the promise of the sunrise, that beauty keeps coming, that there are futures worth waiting and fighting for, and that you were made to dream.

Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent or praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-smoker to his pipe.

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

I have listened to much dull and heavy conversation in America, but rarely to any that I could strictly call silly (if I except the every where privileged class of very young ladies).