Conversation Quotes

Everything that happens now in the online world is part of a conversation.

~ David Amerland

I wondered if having conversations with your dog was less crazy than babbling to yourself when no one else was around. I guess it depended on whether or not the dog answered.

~ Deb Baker

In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: I wish you luck. I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me.And now they do not strike me as meaningless any more.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o'clock]. It makes me talk in my sleep.

~ Oscar Wilde

You know you're about as forthcoming as a mime.

~ Shirley Jump

So they left the subject and played croquet, which is a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancor.

~ Rose Macaulay

If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me.

~ Pat Conroy

R.E.A.L. conversation: Recognize judgments. Express thoughts neutrally. Ask questions. Listen for verbal & non-verbal messages.

~ John Stoker

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.

~ Emily Post

You must endeavor to seem interested in the conversations of others, you'll be surprised by what you might learn.

~ Ge Paulus

The art of conversation lies in listening.

~ Malcom Forbes

Give me a half hour's conversation. I will know more than I will reading 20 magazines.

~ Joseph Kennedy

It comes down to this: If you want to be seen, heard and understood in the most genuine way possible, be open to the possiblity of vulnerability. Allow yourself to be open. I know it’s a scary place, a place very few people dare to venture, but just try it. Try moving the masks away and really looking at a person the next time they engaged in conversation with you.

~ Leigh Hershkovich

How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say something? For how many of us is that what conversation means - the setting up of our lines?

~ Alexander Mccall Smith

He could see that drinking and conversation were inexorably intertwined and that one did not occur without the other.

~ Kenneth Eade

Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?

~ Stella Gibbons

The head of Goldwater's California operation what was so uncomfortable around people that he worked up a routine to deal with employees with whom he was forced to share an elevator: Taken your vacation yet? he would ask when they entered; answer took just long enough to deliver him to his fourth-floor office.

~ Rick Perlstein

The conversation limped along this line of thought much like a zombie: lifeless and mindless and making a jelly of whatever healthy brains were within its reach.

~ Steve Hockensmith

High school parties exhausted me because I always felt like I was the only thinking person in a room mostly full of morons obliterating precious IQ points with every gulp of whatever booze they managed to steal out of their parents' liquor cabinets. College parties are exhausting in a diametrically opposite way. They are full of smart, funny people who are all used to being the smartest, funniest person in the room, so they spend the whole party talking over one another, overlapping and overtaking the conversation to prove that they are the smartest, funniest person in the room, if not the entire planet.

~ Megan Mccafferty

...insisting that you control the topic of behavioral conversation ensures accountability by students...

~ Doug Lemov

I don't know what he means by that, but I nod and smile at him. You'd be surprised at how far that response can get you in a conversation where you are completely confused.

~ Jodi Picoult

The conversation did not go very well and I began telling him about the people with their trays in the great cafeteria and suggesting that it would have done us more good to go there to be put in mind of our own mortality.

~ Barbara Pym

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Clearly she was expected to say something, but panic at having to speak stole the thoughts from her head.

~ Shannon Hale

Just so you know, I’m goin’ to enlist.”“I’m proud of you. But why?”I groan against the pain but manage to give him a half smile. “I want to make sure Kiara’s got a boyfriend who has more to offer than a hot bod and a face that could make angels weep.

~ Simone Elkeles

That’s not the only reason I’m stayin’, chica. I can’t leave you any more than I could walkout that door right now while my leg is busted up. I was just thinkin’ . . . should we tell yourparents now or later?”“Tell them what?” I ask, eyes wide.He kisses me softly, then says proudly, “That we’re in a serious, monogamous, committedrelationship.”“We are?”“Sí. And when I get out of here, I’m gonna fix the door to your car.

~ Simone Elkeles

Are you mad? I ask.I was. He glances at the ceiling then back at me. Or confused, anyway. The whole thing threw me through for a loop. I thought I'd finally met a guy at Underwood I could relate to, and it turns out he wasn't a guy at all.I swallow. I can see how that would be weird. In a way though, I was relieved.Relieved? I echo. Why?He looks around embarrased. Let's just say you had me questioning my sexual orientation.

~ Jody Gehrman

A good conversation always involves a certain amount of complaining. I like to bond over mutual hatreds and petty grievances.

~ Lisa Kleypas

Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not, the whole point of conversations was flow.

~ Gregory Maguire

It’s no company at all, when people know nothing and say nothing,’ she muttered.

~ Emily Brontë

Bit by bit, I found myself relaxing into the conversation. Kitty had a natural talent for drawing people out of themselves, and it was easy to fall in with her, to feel comfortable in her presence. As Uncle Victor had once told me long ago, a conversation is like having a catch with someone. A good partner tosses the ball directly into your glove, making it almost impossible for you to miss it; when he is on the receiving end, he catches everything sent his way, even the most errant and incompetent throws. That’s what Kitty did. She kept lobbing the ball straight into the pocket of my glove, and when I threw the ball back to her, she hauled in everything that was even remotely in her area: jumping up to spear balls that soared above her head, diving nimbly to her left or right, charging in to make tumbling, shoestring catches. More than that, her skill was such that she always made me feel that I had made those bad throws on purpose, as if my only object had been to make the game more amusing. She made me seem better than I was, and that strengthened my confidence, which in turn helped to make my throws less difficult for her to handle. In other words, I started talking to her rather than to myself, and the pleasure of it was greater than anything I had experienced in a long time.

~ Paul Auster

It was the kind of conversation you could only hold in whispers.

~ Aimee Bender

He's never quite got the trick of conversation, tending to hear in dissenting views, however mild, a kind of affront, an invitation to mortal combat.

~ Ian Mcewan

Manners are the ability to put someone else at their ease...by turning any answer into another question.

~ Tina Brown

He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to which to reply.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Betsy liked to talk. Her father always said she got it from her mother, and her mother always said she got it from her father. But whomever she got it from she was certainly a talker.

~ Maud Hart Lovelace

She felt that her speech was voicing the incoherency her thoughts, and stopped abruptly.

~ Kate Chopin

It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the appropriate point in a conversation to say goodbye

~ Haruki Murakami

Can I get a lock for my tent?Bears can't unzip tents, Lana.Well, chainsaw psychos who wander the woods looking for young girls all alone to chop up into pieces can.There are no chainsaw psychos! I can't believe you've never been camping. It's safe, Lana. I promise.Easy for you to say. You'll be snuggled up safely in the arms of Beau Vincent. I'm more than positive he could take on a black bear.

~ Abbi Glines

Tamina serves coffee and calvados to the customers (there aren't all that many, the room being always half empty) and then goes back behind the bar. Almost always there is someone sitting on a barstool, trying to talk to her. Everyone likes Tamina. Because she knows how to listen to people.But is she really listening? Or is she merely looking at them so attentively, so silently? I don't know, and it's not very important. What matters is that she doesn't interrupt anyone. You know what happens when two people talk. One of them speaks and the other breaks in: It's absolutely the same with me, I... and starts talking about himself until the first one manages to slip back in with his own It's absolutely the same with me, I...The phrase It's absolutely the same with me, I... seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others. The whole secret of Tamina's popularity is that she has no desire to talk about herself. She submits to the forces occupying her ear, never saying: It's absolutely the same with me, I...

~ Milan Kundera