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

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

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

I used to live on one candy bar a day – it cost a nickel. I always remember the candy bar was called Payday. That was my payday. And that candy bar tasted so good, at night I would take one bite, and it was so beautiful.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

My childhood was endless – from eight to 18 felt like hundreds of years.

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

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.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

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

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of ‚like‘ has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking – all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

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.

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

Both times I was in India, I could not get people to listen to each other. I had to literally tell people to listen to each other and tell them that they can’t get creative and find alternate solutions if they don’t listen to each other. There’s a lot of arguing and justifying.

The people of Northern Ireland have sorted out my whole life.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

The voice I use is a very old hardware speech synthesizer made in 1986. I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other.

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

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

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‚infinitely‘ when you mean ‚very‘; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

I don’t know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.

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

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

I think we basically saw that the messaging space is bigger than we’d initially realized, and that the use cases that WhatsApp and Messenger have are more different than we had thought originally.

Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, ‚You don’t know how to use the English language,‘ or ‚How could you make that argument?‘ It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.

FaceTime helps me a lot. I feel like I’m at home even though I’m not.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

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

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

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.

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

Diplomacy is listening to what the other guy needs. Preserving your own position, but listening to the other guy. You have to develop relationships with other people so when the tough times come, you can work together.

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

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

Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length.