Deborah Tannen Quotes

We all want, above all, to be heard. We want to be understood—heard for what we think we are saying, for what we know we meant.

~ Deborah Tannen

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.

~ Deborah Tannen

The Pavlovian view of women voters - 'plug the words in, and they will respond' - sends a chill down my spine because it sounds like an adaptation of something I have written about communication between the sexes: When a woman tells a man about a problem, she doesn't want him to fix it; she just wants him to listen and let her know he understands.

~ Deborah Tannen

I was one of those daughters who saw my mother as my enemy when I was a teen.

~ Deborah Tannen

In a world of status, independence is key, because a primary means of establishing status is to tell others what to do, and taking orders is a marker of low status. Though all humans need both intimacy and independence, women tend to focus on the first and men on the second. It is as if their lifeblood ran in different directions.

~ Deborah Tannen

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

~ Deborah Tannen

Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women.

~ Deborah Tannen

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's.

~ Deborah Tannen

When did the word 'compromise' get compromised? When did the negative connotations of 'He was caught in a compromising position' or 'She compromised her ethics' replace the positive connotations of 'They reached a compromise'?

~ Deborah Tannen

The death of compromise has become a threat to our nation as we confront crucial issues such as the debt ceiling and that most basic of legislative responsibilities: a federal budget. At stake is the very meaning of what had once seemed unshakable: 'the full faith and credit' of the U.S. government.

~ Deborah Tannen

Much of my work over the years has developed the premise that women's styles of friendship and conversation aren't inherently better than men's, simply different.

~ Deborah Tannen

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship.

~ Deborah Tannen

When daughters react with annoyance or even anger at the smallest, seemingly innocent remarks, mothers get the feeling that talking to their daughters can be like walking on eggshells: they have to watch every word.

~ Deborah Tannen

Conversations with sisters can spark extremes of anger or extremes of love. Everything said between sisters carries meaning not only from what was just said but from all the conversations that came before - and 'before' can span a lifetime. The layers of meaning combine profound connection with equally profound competition.

~ Deborah Tannen