The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to 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.

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

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

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

It’s never happened in history that every region in the world could affect every other region simultaneously. The Roman empire and the Chinese empire didn’t know much about each other and had no means of interacting. Now we have every continent able to reach every other.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

The second time around, I’ll understand that, as a husband, my wife doesn’t care about my opinions. I just need to tell her the things that will continue to help me stack the brownie points.

One must steer, not talk.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

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

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

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.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

I’ll be glad to reply to or dodge your questions, depending on what I think will help our election most.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures. I enjoy communicating science. It is important that the public understands basic science, if they are not to leave vital decisions to others.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

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.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

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.

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

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

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

‚For Whom the Bell Tolls‘ was a problem which I carried on each day. I knew what was going to happen in principle. But I invented what happened each day I wrote.

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

How we experience memory sometimes, it’s not linear. We’re not telling the stories to ourselves. We know the story; we’re just seeing it in flashes overlaid.

I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people – and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

I can honestly say, after talking about my mom passing away, I got the biggest weight off of my chest. Comedy is my therapy. That’s how I deal with my problems, my personal battles. I talk about it. I give it to my fans. When they laugh at it, it’s a release, for lack of a better word.

A special effect is a tool, a means of telling a story. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.

A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it’s employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.

Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.

I’m blessed to have such a tight-knit family that we can talk about anything. Whether we talk frequently or not, since we’re on separate ends of the country, there are a lot of moving parts, and we always stay tight and find that center ground that keeps us together.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

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

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

We live in an image society. Speeches are not what anybody cares about; what they care about is the picture.

In many ways, I’ve been writing personal stories all my life.

It’s probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

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.