I have an urge to communicate. I think I’m a change from what it would be like dating a normal guy who doesn’t talk too much.

I did my utmost to ensure that everyone below me in the chain of command felt comfortable approaching me with concerns, ideas, thoughts, and even disagreements.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

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.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.

I’ve had moments when I’ve thought about somebody, picked up the phone to call them and they are on the line already, and I think that maybe there’s some vibration, some connection.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: ‚Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?‘ They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

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.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

Money and women are the most sought after and the least known about of any two things we have.

Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook – they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing – so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

There’s a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Life’s too short to deal with other people’s insecurities.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

Complaining is dangerous business. It can damage or even destroy your relationship with God, your relationships with other people, and even with your relationship with yourself.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

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

The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

Often, I can scarcely hear any one speaking to me; the tones yes, but not the actual words; yet as soon as any one shouts, it is unbearable. What will come of all this, heaven only knows!

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

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.

I’m a human being and I fall in love and sometimes I don’t have control of every situation.

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

If I read a book that impresses me, I have to take myself firmly by the hand, before I mix with other people; otherwise they would think my mind rather queer.

My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that’s not so bad; but New York City?

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it’s a green light.

He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

A friend will tell you she saw your old boyfriend – and he’s a priest.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

If you get down and quarell everyday, you’re saying prayers to the devil, I say.

Fame may go by and – so long, I’ve had you.

I like being around people.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.