I don’t know how to work a room. It’s a real skill.

I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy. The turning point was freshman year, when I was the biggest geek alive. No one, I mean no one, even talked to me.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

It’s pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.

I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.

Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something, or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe, and which mean very little.

I looked the people of Louisiana in the eye and told them exactly what I thought in terms that normal people use.

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

Of course you can’t ‚trust‘ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‚trust‘ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories… We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

If you can’t move and talk to people that you see, it’s not really my scene.

Nobody’s indispensable.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

No one ever doubts that I mean what I say. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.

Be not a slave of words.

The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

I don’t like talking to celebrities.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

Facebook and Instagram are both really popular with teens, both in the U.S. and globally across the world. I think what you’re starting to see is that there are all these different ways that people want to share and communicate.

You’ve got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you’ve got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say, ‚We want peace, we want stability,‘ we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

There are some people, you know, they think the way to be a big man is to shout and stomp and raise hell-and then nothing ever really happens. I’m not like that I never shoot blanks.

You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.

We’re not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren’t in a very good mood.

I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

I’ve always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.

If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

The richest people in the world look for and build networks; everyone else looks for work.

Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.

The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.

True politeness consists in being easy one’s self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

I like to get in among a set of people and get to know them very well.