Conversation With Strangers Quotes & Sayings

The death of a friendship was usually slow and insidious, like the wearing away of a hillside after years of too much rain. A handful of misunderstandings, a season of miscommunication, the passing of time, and where once stood two women with a dozen years of memories and tears and conversation and laughter - where once stood two women closer than sisters - now stood two strangers. — Karen Kingsbury

I often don't endorse what I tweet, rather I want to throw things about to spark conversation or controversy. What I think about something is not particularly important when talking to thousands of unknown strangers. — Kenneth Goldsmith

I'm somewhat socially inept. Slide me between two strangers at any light-hearted jamboree and I'll either rock awkwardly and silently on my heels, or come out with a stone-cold conversation-killer like, "This room's quite rectangular, isn't it?" I glide through the social whirl with all the elegance of a dog in high heels — Charlie Brooker

Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done." "My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault - because I will not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution." Darcy smiled and said, "You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers." Here — Jane Austen

I hear you're a writer,' said 2040..."What are you writing about?'

Not liking to discuss my writing with strangers, I had been privately auditioning possible conversation stoppers, but I didn't think that I would ever have the nerve to use one. But now, in the most awkward of situations, it seemed appropriate.

'Actually, I'm writing a biography,' I responded casually. 'About a man in Alaska who makes foie gras from penguins. — Phoebe Damrosch

Someone said to me at a party once, 'Oh, yeah, you're a comedian? Then how come you're not funny now?' And I just wanted to say, 'Well, I'm just going to take this conversation we're having and then repeat that to strangers, and then that's the joke. You're the joke later.' — Mike Birbiglia

Reading is a solitary pursuit, even a lone passage to a separate world. Yet to read in public, amid strangers, gives it another dimension. Sometimes the city speaks to the page, or the page seems to open up to people passing by. An outdoor reader shares the pulse of a timeless urban conversation between the world and the written word. — Nina Bernstein

I can't- we can't do that."
"But you'll play strip poker with strangers?" He seemed to be studying me very closely.
"Well, yeah-" this was a strange conversation to be having as I was speaking both in the theoretical and the literal. Theoretically, I'd play strip poker with strangers, depending on the circumstances and the strangers, but I had no literal intention of doing so.
Quinn quickly countered, "And if I happened to be playing poker- strip poker- at the only table in the casino, would you still play?"
I hesitated, feeling like I was being led into a trap that involved Quinn getting naked ... which actually sounded really nice. I reluctantly said, "No."
"Why?"
"Because ... I- you're you." I congratulated myself for not slurring the words even as sweat was beading on my chest and upper back. — Penny Reid

I have never had much need for companionship, unless it was the companionship of someone I could call a friend. Certainly I have seldom wished the conversation of strangers or the sight of strange faces. I believe rather that when I was alone I felt I had in some fashion lost my individuality; to the thrush and the rabbit I had been not Severian, but Man. The many people who like to be utterly alone, and particularly to be utterly alone in a wilderness, do so, I believe, because they enjoy playing that part. But I wanted to be a particular person again, and so I sought the mirror of other persons, which would show me that I was not as they were. — Gene Wolfe

You may never learn the names of any of the people you talk to in a dog park, even after many, many hours spent there with them, and many hours of conversation. But if - knock on wood - anything should ever happen to your dog, these nameless non-strangers will rally, sympathize, offer to help, and hold your hand. I know this from experience. — Susan Orlean

Ours was a relationship of small talk. We'd never stayed awake long into the night hoping to find in that nocturnal physical conversation a connection of minds. We hadn't stared into each others eyes because if eyes are the window to the soul it would be a little rude and embarrassing to look in. We'd created a ring-road relationship, circumventing raw emotions and complex feelings, so that our central selves were strangers. — Rosamund Lupton

Stories are all around us, caught in the throats of the strangers you walk past and scrawled on the pages of locked diaries. They're in love letters that were never sent and between the lines of every conversation ever spoken. Just because your story's not written down doesn't mean it doesn't exist. — Jodi Picoult

They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps, of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples) there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so simliar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become aquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement. — Jane Austen

It is a well-known fact that of all the species on earth Homo sapiens is among the most adaptable. Settle a tribe of them in a desert and they will wrap themselves in cotton, sleep in tents, and travel on the backs of camels; settle them in the Arctic and they will wrap themselves in sealskin, sleep in igloos, and travel by dog-drawn sled. And if you settle them in a Soviet climate? They will learn to make friendly conversation with strangers while waiting in line; they will learn to neatly stack their clothing in their half of the bureau drawer; and they will learn to draw imaginary buildings in their sketchbooks. That is, they will adapt. — Amor Towles

I later realized that this is my view of passion: It is rooted in genuine friendship. Chemistry may be two strangers exchanging smoldering looks - but passion has to be able to survive at least a twenty-minute conversation! — Helen Simonson

The plane blew up."
"I wonder what happened to all the other people?"
As soon as I'd spoken, I wished I hadn't said that. I decided shy people shouldn't try to make conversation, not even in an emergency. If I manage to talk to strangers at all, nervousness always makes me say the wrong thing. — Ann Halam

He possessed the six attributes of the adventurer
a memory for names and faces, with the aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon. — Thornton Wilder

We can begin the process of making community wherever we are. We can begin by sharing a smile, a warm greeting, a bit of conversation; by doing a kind deed or by acknowledging kindness offered to us. Doing this we engage in love practice [...] we lay foundation for the building of community with strangers. The love we make in community stays with us wherever we go. With this knowledge as our guide, we make any place we go, a place where we return to love. — Bell Hooks

She hardly ever began conversations with strangers just to talk. It was not a matter of shyness. For her, a conversation had a straightforward function. How do I get to the pharmacy? or How much does the hotel room cost? Conversation also had a professional function. [ ... ] When she worked as a researcher [ ... ], she had never minded having a long conversation if it was to ferret out facts. On the other hand, she disliked personal discussions, which always led to snooping around in areas she considered private. — Stieg Larsson

I had the worst feeling, when I hung up, that I had missed the purpose of our conversation, that we both had. We had been apart for so long and no longer knew how to speak, other than as strangers. How are you feeling? we said, but what we meant was, Where are you? who are you now? Are you still in there? — Jennifer Gilmore

If I release you, you won't scream? I'd rather not continue the conversation like this."
She shook her head, and he freed her. She scrambled away from him, feeling the grooves of the headboard bite into her back when she slammed into it.
He sat back on her bed, his hands on his jean-clad thighs. The hair at his neck curled from dampness. "You don't have to be afraid of me."
She almost laughed. "A stranger breaks in, and I'm supposed to be cool with that?"
"Amy, we're not strangers. — Jaime Rush