conversations Quotes

“When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen.”

It turned out that if you saw the same person with some degree of regularity, then the conversation was immediately pleasant and comfortable—you could pick up where you left off, as it were, rather than having to start afresh each time.

“How can I live without thee, how forgoe Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn’d?”

“I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes....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.”

“It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.”

“There you are,” Cardan says as I take my place beside him. “How has the night been going for you? Mine has been full of dull conversation about how my head is going to find itself on a spike.”

“For Louie and Phil the conversations were healing, pulling them out of their suffering and setting the future before them as a concrete thing . . . With these talks, they created something to live for.”

“‘I certainly admire your attitude,’ Talkative said. ‘For you speak with conviction; and I might add, what else is so pleasant and so profitable as to talk about the things of God? For instance, if a man delights in such wonderful things as that, what could be more pleasurable to talk about than the history or mystery of such things? Or if a man loves to talk about miracles, wonders, or signs, where else will he find such things so delightfully recorded and so sweetly penned as in the Holy Scripture?’ ‘That is true,’ Faithful admitted, ‘but the real purpose of such discussion is that we should be benefited by such things in our talk. That should be our intended focus.‘”

“To talk much about oneself may also be a means of concealing oneself.”

“Remember, if a man needs to pull away like a rubber band, when he returns he will be back with a lot more love. Then he can listen. This is the best time to initiate conversation.”

“I see that you are indifferent about money, which is a characteristic rather of those who have inherited their fortunes than of those who have acquired them; the makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their own, resembling the affection of authors for their own poems, or of parents for their children, besides that natural love of it for the sake of use and profit which is common to them and all men. And hence they are very bad company, for they can talk about nothing but the praises of wealth.”

“For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.”

“One of the biggest troubles of hitchhiking is having to talk to innumerable people, make them feel that they didn’t make a mistake picking you up.”

“The salon existed in opposition to university lecture halls. Guests believed that knowledge and culture could both be enhanced via intelligent dialogue.”

“Well, well, perhaps I am a bit of a talker. A popular fellow such as I am - my friends get round me - we chaff, we sparkle, we tell witty stories - and somehow my tongue gets wagging. I have the gift of conversation. I’ve been told I ought to have a salon, whatever that may be.”

“Our conversations were now stilted and reserved, as if [Aech and I] were both afraid of revealing some key piece of information the other might be able to use.”

“Leigh Anne listened to the doctors discuss how bizarrely lucky Sean Junior had been in his collision with the airbag. Then she went back home and relayed the conversation to Michael, who held out his arm. An ugly burn mark ran right down the fearsome length of it. ‘I stopped it,’ he said.”

“This was the pleasantest Year of all the Life I led in this Place; Friday began to talk pretty well, and understand the Names of almost every Thing I had occasion to call for, and of ever Place I had to send him to, and talk’d a great deal to me; so that in short I began now to have some Use for my Tongue again, which indeed I had very little occasion for before; that is to say, about Speech;”

Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present.

“Somehow, long ago, my little kid’s brain had pasted together pieces of overheard conversations: When Mom was a teenager, I started making her belly fat.”″

“You could say anything at any time to anyone. ”

“I couldn’t work out whether it was just coincidence. Whether his words were really intended for me, whether they truly reflected on our conversation, or whether they were just the throwaway ramblings of some bloke on a bus.”

“It never occurred to me until many years later that anyone could hate anyone because they had learned to write conversation from that novel that started off with the quotation from the garage keeper.”

“The Coffee Pot was where people went to loaf, talk tall, and swap gossip. Mary Alice and I were of some interest when we dropped by because we were kin of Mrs. Dowdel’s, who never set foot in the place. She said she liked to keep herself to herself, which was uphill work in a town like that.”

“The Ordinary Princess hardly ever had anyone to talk to, so she had made friends with the forest creatures and talked to them. It tended to make conversation rather one-sided, but that was sometimes an advantage. At least they could not answer back!”

“We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.”

“There’s a gentility on the road. A direct or personal question is out of bounds. But this is simple good manners anywhere in the world.”

“When I looked at Leah again, her beauty seemed too great for the size of the room. The only way to make room for it was to speak of it.”

“The way the profile of her face and body refracted in the soupy twilight made me feel a little drunk. When a few seconds had throbbed by, I said hello to her.”

“Ever since their relationship has changed from what it had been into what it now is, their conversations have become both more intimate and more mundane…the daily mapmaking that keeps their life together inching along.”

“They are conversation-openers in the arcane femine language of Shoe.”

“Art is the conversation between lovers. Art offers an opening for the heart. True art makes the divine silence in the soul break into applause.”

“Cesar is not a philosophical man. His life has been one long flight from reflection. At least he is clever enough not to expose the poverty of his general ideas; he never permits the conversation to move toward philosophical principles. ”

“Mr. Little said that, for one thing, there must be no references to “mice” in their conversations. He made Mrs. Little tear from the nursery songbook the page about the, ‘Three Blind Mice, See How They Run.’ ‘I don’t want Stuart to get a lot of notions in his head,’ said Mr. Little. ‘I should feel badly to have my son grow up fearing a farmer’s wife was going to cut off his tail with a carving knife.‘”

“Corrie and I were probably the most energetic. We took a few walks, back to the bridge, or to different cliffs, so we could have long private conversations. We talked about boys and friends and school and parents, all the usual stuff.”

“Good evening,′ said Andy. ‘And would you have such as thing as a birthday cake about? I need one for my friend Cowboy Ned so he can have a cake on his birthday.”

“ ‘Well, I want you to know I’m right here when you need me, Treehorn,’ said the Principal, ‘and I’m glad I was here to help you. A team is only as good as its coach, eh?’ The Principal stood up, ‘Goodbye, Treehorn. If you have any more problems, come straight to me, and I’ll help you again. A problem isn’t a problem once it’s solved, right?’ “

“The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself.”

″‘You is trying to change the subject,’ the Giant said sternly. ‘We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable.‘”

″‘I can hold conversations by myself. What do you call this?’ ‘I am the only exception. With everyone else you’re about as sociable as a cardboard box.’ ‘Maybe I am a cardboard box.‘”

“Years afterwards, Katy told somebody that the longest six weeks of her life were those that followed this conversation with Papa. Now that she knew that there was no chance of getting well at once, the days dragged dreadfully. Each seemed duller and dismaller than the day before. She lost heart about herself, and took no interest in anything.”

“Mom, it’s not like you have to know someone well to hate their guts. You don’t sit around and have a long conversation and then decide whether or not to hate their guts. You just do. And she does.”

“Behold the lavish tent under which the overeducated mingle, well versed in every art but the one of conversation.”

“I realized how many things the Pigman and his wife must have shared—even the fun of preparing good food. Good food is supposed to produce good conversation, I’ve heard. I guess it’s no wonder my mother and I never had an interesting conversation when all we eat is canned soup, chop suey, and instant coffee”

Mathew’s conversations with himself grew more and more intense - it was like listening to one end of a telephone conversation while someone argued, cajoled and reasoned with another person you couldn’t hear.

“I still don’t know what to do.” He fell quiet. I never knew how to reel a conversation back after the Dead Mother topic.”

“It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.”

“My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”

“I am afraid I don’t think so, Lady Henry. I never talk during music—at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.”

“One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.