I meet people overseas that know five languages – that the only language I’m comfortable in is English.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‚Did you sleep good?‘ I said ‚No, I made a few mistakes.‘

It’s tough to negotiate from a position of weakness.

I would heartily welcome the union of East and West provided it is not based on brute force.

‚I wish life was not so short,‘ he thought. ‚Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.‘

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

But I’m pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

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.

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it’s very inexpensive to send mail.

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.

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

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.

Girls talk to each other like men talk to each other. But girls have an eye for detail.

My mother always taught us that if people don’t agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you’ve listened to them carefully and you still think that you’re right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.

Extremely religious, legalistic people have a criticism or judgment about everyone and everything. They just have a way of bringing people down with what they say.

It’s a very good question, very direct, and I’m not going to answer it.

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

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

These days, children can text on their cell phone all night long, and no one else is seeing that phone. You don’t know who is calling that child.

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

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

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.

A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.

Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

When the players go home, I can’t tell them what to do, so you need to create an atmosphere of trust. I don’t want to think, ‚What are they doing now? Do I need to call them?‘

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

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

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

Don’t ever call a guy first. The thing they want the most is whatever they can’t have. It sounds really juvenile, but it works.

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.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

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

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

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

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

Though I do manage to mumble around in about seven or eight languages, English remains the most beautiful of languages. It will do anything.

As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable.

You always have to remember that if you say something negative, it’s going to come back to haunt you.