An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

We’re in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

I’m really bad with answering questions. Usually, I don’t even answer them. I try to find inspiration inside of the question. I think, and I jump from one beam of inspiration or energy to the next, as opposed to explaining the energy.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

I’m modern because I make the difficult seem easy, and so I can communicate with the whole world.

You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

When people are connected, we can just do some great things. They have the opportunity to get access to jobs, education, health, communications. We have the opportunity to bring the people we care about closer to us. It really makes a big difference.

Letters are something from you. It’s a different kind of intention than writing an e-mail.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

A fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

Sometimes I’ve been to a party where no one spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties, would give me a wide berth. And the ladies would gang up in a corner to discuss my dangerous character.

What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

He who talks more is sooner exhausted.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

I know what I do for my team and what my teammates expect of me on both ends of the floor.

I don’t think people are going to talk in the future. They’re going to communicate through eye contact, body language, emojis, signs.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

War is what happens when language fails.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

Well I have a microphone and you don’t so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

Occasionally I’ve seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

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

We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed – and they’re, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.

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.

The greatest service that can be offered to children who show personality traits or inclinations that might not be understood by the adults around them is to allow them to express their own unique humanity.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

My readers – and I get 400 emails for a day, my readers normally they say, well, you understand me, and I answer, you do understand me also. We are in the same level.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

I’ve been a lot more into Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which was a bit complicated for me to understand the language of each social media, because they all talk in different ways. It’s a nice way for me to tell people I appreciate them, which I forget to do sometimes.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.

I try to speak in a way that people can understand.

Kids who have an understanding of how and why their feelings are what they are are much more likely to talk to us about what’s happening, and they have better skills to work it out.

Humans cannot avoid trying to influence others. Everything we say or do is examined and interpreted by others for clues as to our intentions.

Back when I was in school, few people understood dyslexia and what to do for it. My teachers thought I was lazy and not very clever, and I got bored easily… thinking of all the things I could do once I left school. I couldn’t always follow what was going on.

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

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given.