Conversation Quotes

As human being, we live in a perpetual conversation between conversation and violence; what apart from fundamental willingness to be reasonable, can guarantee that we will keep talking to one another?

~ Sam Harris

Speaking with her always felt like sitting on a seashore. Hearing the waves and feeling them crashing into my feet, While gazing the setting sun and the way he colours the whole sky. I never got tired of it.

~ Akshay Vasu

Dallas, is it remotely possible for you to carry on a conversation that's not loaded down with manure?

~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.

~ Sarah Orne Jewett

There is something hugely civilised about allowing long pauses in a conversation. Very few people can stand that kind of silence.

~ James Robertson

We fall back into silence. I look around XO Café and notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where the diners are young and hip. The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?

~ Jodi Picoult

Mr Rycroft said nothing. It was so difficult not to say the wrong thing to Captain Wyatt that it was usually safer not to reply at all.

~ Agatha Christie

Silence is also a form of speaking.

~ Herta Müller

Like a good Indian, he knew when to talk and when to remain silent. Like a good Indian, he knew there was never a good time to talk.

~ Sherman Alexie

Some people like to hear themselves talk, but I like to hear myself silent.

~ Dean Koontz

Most people he knew, his wife included, wouldn't make it through an hour on the promise of four sentences. But Frankie Bard was like a camel. She could hold her words for days--as long as she could watch the goings-on.

~ Sarah Blake

If a conversation is not working, then you need to make a different choice. Stop what you are doing & do something different.

~ John Stoker

The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.

~ Chuck Palahniuk

Finally! You're here!Uh....Do I know you?Well, no....But you're here, all the same...

~ Lynn Weingarten

Richard Nixon's conversation was loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries he'd called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his vacation slides.

~ Rick Perlstein

Frasier (Responding to the suggestion that he undertake the difficult work of closure in a relationship): What you just said about my success made a lot of sense. I tuned you out after that.

~ Frasier Crane

Fresh from the rarefied environments of Harvard, the author says he purposefully took journalism jobs in small southern towns so that he could learn the art of conversation with ordinary people. Is this gift for listening and for conversation, it seems, that allowed him to produce textured historical narratives of grand impact.

~ David Halberstam

I had a dream about you last night... it was about a dreamer and a drifter walking into a bar. They start talking and swapping stories. No matter what the drifter says the dreamer always one-upped him. The drifter then woke up and realized he was the dreamer.

~ Marshall Ramsay

In fact, the more each person can remove his or her ego from the discussion and focus on the subject matter, the more fruitful the conversation will be for all involved.

~ Matthew Kelly

I mean …” Dennis was saying, looking pointedly at Mave, but Mave was watching the waitress approach. Oh, life, oh, sweet, forgiven for the ice … He grabbed Mave’s wrist. There was always an emergency. And then there was love. And then there was another emergency. That was the sandwiching of it. Emergency. Love. Emergency. “I mean, it’s not as if you’ve been dozing off,” Dennis was saying, his voice reaching her now, high and watery. “I mean, correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but I don’t think I’ve been having this conversation alone.” He tightened his grip. “I mean, have I?

~ Lorrie Moore

Awareness is about improving social intelligence. If you can’t see, hear, or feel the dynamics of a conversation, you can’t manage them.

~ John Stoker

Madam: Are you lucky, Debora?Debora: What do you mean?Madam: Well, you don't look that happy today...Debora: Is it that clear?

~ Debora Van Der Velde

Heaven, envious of our joys, is waxen pale; And when we whisper, then the stars fall down To be partakers of our honey talk.(Dido, Queen of Carthage 4.4.52-54)

~ Christopher Marlowe

Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.

~ Julian Barnes

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.

~ William Hazlitt

Speaking up is important. Yet to speak up without listening is like banging pots and pans together: Even if it gets you attention, it’s not going to get you respect.

~ Gina Barreca

The notion that the only way you can critically engage with a person’s ideas is to take a shot at them, is to be openly critical — this is actually nonsense. Some of the most effective ways in which you deal with someone’s idea are to treat them completely at face value, and with an enormous amount of respect. That’s actually a faster way to engage with what they’re getting at than to lob grenades in their direction…If you’re going to hold someone to what they believe, make sure you accurately represent what they believe.

~ Malcolm Gladwell

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

~ Marquis De Sade

Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.

~ Guy De Maupassant

Want to play hangman? asks Theophile, and I ache to tell him that I have enough on my plate playing quadriplegic. But my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home. By the time you strike, even you no longer understand what had seemed so witty before you started to dictate it, letter by letter. So the rule is to avoid impulsive sallies. It deprives conversation of its sparkle, all those gems you bat back and forth like a ball-and I count this forced lack of humor one of the great drawbacks of my condition.

~ Jean-Dominique Bauby

Throw an idea into the world and its impact will ripple and reverberate beyond your side of the shore.

~ A.e. Samaan

Communication is now often experienced as a superhuman phenomenon that towers above individuals. A new generation has come of age with a reduced expectation of what a person can be, and of who each person might become.

~ Jaron Lanier

It's far more important why is being said, than what.

~ Aleksandra Ninkovic

He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.

~ Peter S. Beagle

Most of the time, communication gets confused with conversation. In fact, the two are distinctly different.

~ A.p.j. Abdul Kalam

Well-designed visuals do more than provide information, they bring order to the conversation.

~ Dale Ludwig

I find that often simple words say all that needs to be said in less time, using less energy, with all the details wanted- fully in tact. Love it.

~ Sereda Aleta Dailey

I like people who can keep the conversation going no matter how random the topic gets.

~ Turcois Ominek

Communication is the one class no one graduates from. Even the wisest man's words will be misinterpreted by a fool.

~ Shannon L. Alder

[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we’re out of purgatory for the weekend.”“Maybe later,” I murmur, still distracted by the day’s previous events.“So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested.” “Huh?” I say.

~ Jodi Picoult