Conversation Quotes

You stuttered like a kaleidoscope, because you knew too many words.

~ Stephin Merritt

People can go on telling themselves things like “Think before you speak!” or “You don’t believe that yourself” or “Forget it!” But they can also say, “Oh, what lovely flowers!” or “Are you a phone freak or something?” or “Suit yourself,” or “This record makes me feel so happy!’ Wonderful! Words are delightful little gifts we exchange like the Easter eggs we paint and hide for others to find and enjoy. I’d forgotten that, but you reminded me of it.

~ Thomas Brussig

Our words were a shaky ladder; all I could do was climb, uncertain if I was about to surmount a glorious peak or fall and smash myself on the rocks below.

~ Deva Fagan

I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone.

~ J.d. Salinger

It was our first date and I asked what his favorite movie is. He asked if I’d judge him, but instead of judging him I just loved him.

~ Dominic Riccitello

Every friend was once a stranger and if you know this, you have to understand that conversations are the beginning of connection

~ Israelmore Ayivor

And in the silence what followed, I reckon our eyes had some long conversation our mouths could’ve never talked through. Some long, looking talk about things gone and long since said. About cries out in the night and some long ago tangling of limbs. And about them betrayals done time and time again—by both of us—what led to me pointing the Green Man’s rifle at the man what once loved me under the Green Man’s stars.

~ J.d. Jordan

Everything else seemed trivial, like talking about your favourite film while your airplane is falling out of the sky.

~ Valeria Kogan

They say that animals are incapable of feelings and reasoning. This is false. No living thing on earth is void of either. They also say that man is the most intelligent — and the most superior — species on earth. This is also false. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. It has been shown that both rats and monkeys learn from making errors, yet we have not. Our history proves this. All creatures on earth have the capacity to love and grieve the same way we do. No life on the planet is more deserving than another. Those who think so, are the true savages.

~ Suzy Kassem

If I don't see the reason of someone being my friend, chances are, we are just floating and I need a ship to set sail.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

In a useful conversation... there is a double coincidence of wants. You have to be interested in what I have to say; I have to be interested in what you have to say. This is an important reason why people with conventional interests seem more socially intelligent. Even if they don't check whether their audience cares, it probably does.

~ Bryan Caplan

Be a good listener. With rapt attention, let every communication or conversation you have with your mentor, friends or even strangers be well understood.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Imagine going to work every day to do only and exactly what you love!! All the work gets done because of the abundant diversity of your team. Different skills, interests and talents are woven together into a whole that is much greater than the sum of the parts!

~ Denise Moreland

And then it hit me—I don’t have to participate in these toxic conversations. But if I choose to, I can set a different example. I can bring love to the moment,regardless of the response. I can choose to be kind, no matter what.My power lives in my love.

~ Scott Stabile

I want a future abortion conversation known for its openness, respect and empathy, so instead of generating more heat, anger and conflict, I practice pro-voice.

~ Aspen Baker

Enjoy the vacation without going, enjoy the conversation without talking.

~ Debasish Mridha M.d.

Be my bedtime story and the thoughts that won't let me fall asleep. Be the conversation that I always have in my head at 3 AM and that beautiful voice that never lets me sleep.

~ Akshay Vasu

Sometimes thinking is like talking to another person, but that person is also you.

~ Terry Pratchett

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.

~ Peter Hessler

What happiness to sit in intimate conversation with someone of like mind, warmed by candid discussion of the amusing and fleeting ways of this world ... but such a friend is hard to find, and instead you sit there doing your best to fit in with whatever the other is saying, feeling deeply alone.

~ Kenkō Hōshi (Yoshida Kenkō)

We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these others—our parents, for instance—and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live.

~ Charles Taylor

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.

~ Edward Carey

The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose upon you by the cunning devices of an artful impostor, nor by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a superficial and imprudent pretender. He is not ostentatious even of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public notice and reputation.

~ Adam Smith

There is nothing like desire for obstructing any resemblance between what one says and what one has on one's mind.

~ Marcel Proust

It only needs a desire, not words; to start a conversation.

~ Pratik Akkawar

An advice is truly valuable when people not just give it their ears but also their obedience.

~ Amit Kalantri

I may just be on the outskirts of being okay.

~ Pawan Mishra

Is that the biggest favor your vocal cords have done to anyone this week?

~ Pawan Mishra

They were learning that New York had another life, too — subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city — a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more.

~ Malcolm Cowley

I am not knocking advances that provide a healthier life and alleviate suffering or unnecessary premature death. I am advocating inclusion of education on end-of-life matters and the promotion of understanding, conversation, and planning.

~ Lisa J. Shultz

Get specific sooner and reap many rewards. The specific detail or example proves the general conclusion, not the reverse. The more specific you are abut anything the more clear you become, for yourself and in telling others. Thus you reduce the chance of others misunderstanding you. And you become more compelling, credible and memorable.

~ Kare Anderson

We must understand that out of community and dialogue, the answers will arrive in their own time and way.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Why should conversation always be so much more coherent than experience?

~ Amy Leach

I am beginning to worry that my speech is becoming a rather incomprehensible mixture of a Victorian woman, an Australian Beach Bum and a Laddish city boy

~ C.s. Woolley

Most adults have a vocabulary of around 60,000 words, meaning that children must learn 10 to 20 words a day between the ages of eight months and 18 years. And yet the most frequent 100 words account for 60% of all conversations. The most common 4000 words account for 98% of conversation.

~ David Miller

The topics which language limits us to aren’t much worth discussing in the first place.(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)

~ Mort W. Lumsden

There is nothing more entertaining then leaving someone speechless. Yet, there is nothing sadder than realizing that person was incapable of retaining half of what you said, and will repeat the story all wrong to someone else.

~ Shannon L. Alder

My love and anger are in deep conversation these days, teaching and learning from one another. I'm doing my best to stay open to all of it.I’m curious to see what love does with all my anger.

~ Scott Stabile

Our hearts bear a similarity with storerooms. We hold in them our trampled convictions, our fears, suppressed acts of valor, disappointments, enmity, anguish, secrets, things we wish we should have done, things we wish we shouldn’t have, regret.And continue piling them up with emotions, memories, conversations which did happen and conversations which didn’t, soured relationships and bitter people all of which we should have discarded, we keep it within until there is no space left, until the room is full, occupied after which we go on to lock it. Once in a while we happen to open the room and sight the dust accumulated all over, we relive each moment, each memory and each emotion again and soon fall upon the realization as to how deeply the room is in need of cleaning and so we clean it.We clean it so that we can fill it once more, hold it, bear it, relish it, heal from it and then finally let it go.

~ Chirag Tulsiani

Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human.

~ Michael Finkel