Conversation Quotes

I've been talking to myself a lot lately. I don't know what that's about, but my mother was the same way. She hated to make small talk with other people, but get her into a conversation with herself and she was quite the raconteur. She would tell herself a joke and clap her hands together as she let out a laugh; she would murmur to the plants as she watered them, and offer encouragement to the food as she cooked it. Sometimes I would walk into a room and surprise her as she was regaling herself with some delightful story, and I remember how the sound would dry up in her mouth. She stood there, frozen in the headlights of my teenage scorn.

~ Dan Chaon

If they’re together long enough, every couple has one conversation over and over. This was ours.

~ Frederick Weisel

Words were few and failing between them as though the silence that sat with them had laid its old lips on theirs and sucked them dry of speech. For where could one begin? With the weather? But here there was no weather. These few sad rooms were the old man's world. His horizons were all walls.

~ Michael Bedard

The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier's call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later the would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man. The word horror was spoken six times and the word happiness once (by Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve times. The word solipsism seven times. The world euphemism ten times. The word category, in the singular and the plural, nine times. The word structuralism once (Pelletier). The term American literature three times. The words dinner or eating or breakfast or sandwich nineteen times. The words eyes or hands or hair fourteen times. The the conversation proceeded more smoothly.

~ Roberto Bolaño

Conversation is the Best Content.

~ Ted Rubin

In the best conversations, you don't even remember what you talked about, only how it felt. It felt like we were in some place your body can't visit, some place with no ceiling and no walls and no floor and no instruments

~ John Green

I love talking the way Trappists love silence.

~ Marty Rubin

I love to talk to people who love to talk. The warmth, the energy, the humanity.

~ Marty Rubin

Talking to people is the most educational thing I know.

~ Marty Rubin

I sort of thought that maybe people had to talk that way, sort of saying the same things over and over because that way they can get along together without thinking. She stopped and thought. Why I was so worried,” she said, “was because if people didn't say those damn things over and over, then they wouldn't talk to each other at all.

~ Shirley Jackson

Talking to Rhett was comparable only to one thing, the feeling of ease and comfort afforded by a pair of old slippers after dancing in a pair too tight.

~ Margaret Mitchell

As the Athenians to the Pnyx, the antique Romans to the Campus Martius, or our Nordic ancestors to the All-Thing, so the folk of Tilling flocked to the High Street for extempore parliament.

~ Tom Holt

Perfect the art of the pause for this is when the Holy Spirit speaks. Pausing creates white space in a conversation that enables the Holy Spirit to sort out our thoughts before we let out our words of life or death.

~ John M Sheehan

Everyone had something disparaging to say about the unfortunate Maltyshcheva, and the conversation began crackling merrily like a kindling bonfire.

~ Leo Tolstoy

[I retained] only the Habit of expressing my self in Terms of modest Diffidence, never using when I advance any thing that may possibly be disputed, the Words 'Certainly, 'undoubtedly', or any others that I give the Air of Positiveness to an Opinion; but rather say 'I conceive', or 'I apprehend a Thing to be so or so', 'It appears to me', or 'I should think it so or so for such & such Reasons', or 'I imagine' it to be so or so, or 'it is so' if I am not mistaken.—This Habit I believe has been of great Advantage to me, when I have had occasion to inculcate my Opinions and persuade Men into Measures that I have been from time to time engag'd in promoting.—And as the chief Ends of Conversation are to inform, or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well meaning sensible Men would not lessen their Power of doing Good by a Positive assuming Manner that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create Opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which Speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving Information or Pleasure: For if you would inform, a positive dogmatical Manner in advancing your Sentiments, may provoke Contradiction & prevent a candid Attention.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Perhaps it is easy for men to start a conversation by admiring women. Many times they may not mean it, but still they say it. Women may not believe it, but still they like to believe it.

~ Girdhar Joshi

And there you go again, that tone in your voice, never a word out of place, but your tone says clearly, 'You are a fucking psycho bitch and I hate you.

~ Laurell K. Hamilton

Brock sighed. “Alright then, Spunky. I was thinking about life, I guess.” Spunky grunted. “In other words, you were thinking about a woman.” “I didn't say that—” “No.” Spunky grinned knowingly. “But your face did.

~ Willowy Whisper

Four days, eight days, twelve days passed, and he was invited to teas, to suppers, to lunches. They sat talking through the long green afternoons - they talked of art, of literature, of life, of society and politics. They ate ice creams and squabs and drank good wines.

~ Ray Bradbury

I cherish genuine conversation, where people actually care what someone else has to say.

~ Charles F. Glassman

Hey, ... my name is DeYtH Banger, (So far thanks for reading this it's pretty interesting coversation... isn't it?).

~ Deyth Banger

You don't talk much, do you? she blurted out.I didn't think there was a need. You seem to be holding up both our ends of the conversation admirably.

~ Julia Quinn

I know my rights.And I know you're wrong.

~ Scott Blagden

Her English was sweet, an effort for her, anachronistic and unpractised.

~ Ruth Ahmed

The trouble is that many people regard disagreement as unrelated to either teaching or being taught. They think that everything is just a matter of opinion. I have mine, and you have yours; and our right to our opinions is as inviolable as our right to private property. On such a view, communication cannot be profitable if the profit to be gained is an increase in knowledge. Conversation is hardly better than a ping-pong game of opposed opinions, a game in which no one keeps score, no one wins, and everyone is satisfied because he does not lose - that is, he ends up holding the same opinions he started with.

~ Mortimer J. Adler

And once again, only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside.

~ Arundhati Roy

Though we've talked and talked and talked, we've all agreed not to say a word.

~ J.d. Salinger

At that moment I would have welcomed spider-rats nibbling on my toes about as much as the idea of chatting with a missionary priest.

~ Dan Simmons

Some conversations are not about what they're about.

~ Anne Carson

It does seem so pleasant to talk with an old acquaintance that knows what you know. I see so many of these new folks nowadays, that seem to have neither past nor future. Conversation's got to have some root in the past, or else you've got to explain every remark you make, an' it wears a person out.

~ Sarah Orne Jewett

It is distressing how often we repeat ourselves. When we ask questions, we know the answers already. We've grown accustomed to horizontal communication, flatlining banalities and droning insignificance.

~ Louisa Hall

Can I get your cell phone number so we can text like normal antisocial human beings, since we are both too fucked up to have a conversation?

~ J.p. Barnaby

They said words they did not mean, and their conversations seemed to follow all kinds of rules—rules that no one has ever explained to Oscar.

~ Anne Ursu

Why is it women can never let a man have any fun, they just want to fuss about something.” “They’re practical” Austin said, shaking off some of the water droplets from his hair. “We live in the moment and they think about what’s coming. If they didn’t keep us in check, we’d fuck up the planet”.

~ Dannika Dark

Three-Step Method for Making Stronger Connections: Take the Triangle Talk approach to connecting and reaching agreement with others: You, Me, Us. First refer to their interest, then yours - and then note how your interests coincide. This approach enables diverse people to gain traction sooner toward a common goal.

~ Kare Anderson

The quality of conversation appears to be a key factor in the evolution of an organization.

~ Philip Streatfield

I see the pain of miserly love in young people,' I say. 'You don't have that kind of melancholy on your face. But I'm careful not to step on your feet when I speak with you. It's not like dancing. It's like a stone walkway with a little grass between the cracks. It's strong but I will try to tread carefully and not ruin it. In Muslim homes you leave your shoes outside. This is how I behave with you.

~ Erri De Luca

At some point in my early forties I realized that my primary goal in just about any verbal exchange is to lighten the mood.

~ Meghan Daum

One never said the things one wanted — one remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other hand one usually said a lot of things one shouldn't, simply from a sense that one had to say something.

~ Henry James

Past conversations were slowly realigning in Blue's head, taking on new shades of meaning as they did.

~ Maggie Stiefvater