Family Conversation Quotes & Sayings

But they were worth worrying over. Paris didn't know what sort of irresponsible butterfly soul Romeo might have, that he could just forget his family didn't want him, but Paris wasn't - couldn't - did not have it in him to ignore and despise the family that birthed him.

"I could write a poem for you," said Romeo. "To make it clear."

"That wouldn't help," Paris said stiffly, wondering how this conversation had gotten out of control.

"A poem of comfort."

"No." Paris desperately wished that he had gotten stuck in this situation with somebody who was . . . anyone but Romeo. — Rosamund Hodge

Sometimes after an enjoyable family home evening, during a fervent family prayer, or when our entire family is at the dinner table on Sunday evening eating waffles and engaging in a session of lively, good-matured conversation, I quietly say to myself, 'If heaven is nothing more than this, it will be good enough for me!' — Marlin K. Jensen

Food was celebration, conversation, and nourishment. The table is where the big decisions of the family are made and all the arguing takes place. — Adriana Trigiani

How would my life change if I actually thought of each person I came into contact with as Christ - the person driving painfully slow in front of me, the checker at the grocery store who seems more interested in chatting than ringing up my items, the member of my own family with whom I can't seem to have a conversation and not get annoyed? — Francis Chan

One of my favorite things: good conversation with good friends. — Karen Salmansohn

The hours spent viewing TV are hours not available for actively participating in the real world, or playing, or being involved with friends and family. Watching television is an individual activity that tends to discourage interaction with others; as viewing time increases, family communication time decreases. As family communication decreases, people grow more distant from each other and may even forget how to carry on a good conversation. — Louise Hart

A theatrical spectacle is inherent whenever family members congregate and reacquaint themselves with powerful universal themes educed from homecomings including hugs, food, drink, conversation, politics, games, music, conflict, terror, mercy, smiles, tears, prayers, misfortune, and self-discovery. — Kilroy J. Oldster

And this totally normal conversation unspools from there, covering the basics: family, siblings, school, favorite composers, favorite movies, favorite wood (for carving puppets), the prehistory of the sandwich, and whether the ancient Romans got their togas caught in the spokes of their unicycles — Laini Taylor

And, for example, like, when you're having the conversation with your child about getting their driver's license. Well, a white family - their biggest fear is just that you're driving safely and that they're minding the rules of the road, whereas a black family - their biggest fear is that their child is going to get pulled over and treated unfairly for a reason that they won't understand. — Regina King

Most relationships are a blend of online and off-line interaction. Courtships take place via text. Political debates are sparked and social movements mobilize on websites. Why not focus on the positive - a celebration of these new exchanges? Because these are the stories we tell each other to explain why our technologies are proof of progress. We like to hear these positive stories because they do not discourage us in our pursuit of the new - our new comforts, our new distractions, our new forms of commerce. And we like to hear them because if these are the only stories that matter, then we don't have to attend to other feelings that persist - that we are somehow more lonely than before, that our children are less empathic than they should be for their age, and that it seems nearly impossible to have an uninterrupted conversation at a family dinner. We — Sherry Turkle

I don't want to analyze myself or anything, but I think, in fact I know this to be true, that I enter the world through what I write.
I grew up believing, and continue to believe, that I am a screw-up, that growing up with my family and friends, I had nothing to offer in any conversation.
But when I started writing, suddenly there was something that I brought to the party that was at a high-enough level. — Aaron Sorkin

The people with thriving careers and healthy personal relationships get the same amount of time each week as the burned-out professional who can't remember their last meaningful conversation with a family member. — Joe Jordan

As a kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation. My sister was five years older than I was, my brother was nine years older than I was, and my parents were both talkers. So at the dinner table when I was very young, I was boring to all those other people. They did not want to hear about the dumb childish news of my days. They wanted to talk about really important stuff that happened in high school or maybe in college or at work. So the only way I could get into a conversation was to say something funny. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

In my family 'adventure' tends to be used to mean 'any minor disaster we survived' or even 'any break from routine'. Except by my mother, who still uses it to mean 'what she did that morning'. Going to the wrong part of a supermarket car park and, while looking for her car, getting into a conversation with someone whose sister, it turns out, she knew in the 1970s would qualify, for my mother, as a full-blown adventure. — Neil Gaiman

I thought of you when I read this quote from "The Advisor Playbook: Regain Liberation and Order in your Personal and Professional Life" by Duncan MacPherson, Chris Jeppesen, Michael Lane -

"If you think about a twenty-minute conversation with a great client, you talk about their Family, Occupation, Recreation and Money. — Duncan MacPherson

She wasn't very
interesting
but few people
are. — Charles Bukowski

The fact is, most people come to faith through the influence of family members, small-group Bible studies, or a conversation with a friend after a church service: Christians intentionally talking about the gospel. — J. Mack Stiles

Many tradesmen export their best commodities
the Christian should not. He should have all his conversation everywhere of the best savour; but let him have a care to put forth the sweetest fruit of spiritual life and testimony in his own family. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When the topic of food comes up in conversation with family, friends or casual acquaintances, it's fascinating to hear the litany of rationalizations, knee-jerk defense mechanisms, self-limiting belief statements and general confusion or ignorance from otherwise intelligent folks when it comes to eating healthfully. But then again, Conventional Wisdom has often led even the best and brightest minds in nutritional science astray. — Mark Sisson

Greet everyone you meet with a warm smile. No matter how busy you are, don't rush encounters with coworkers, family, and friends. Speak softly. Listen attentively. Act as if every conversation you have is the most important thing on your mind today. Look your children and your partner in the eyes when they talk to you. Stroke the cat, caress the dog. Lavish love on every living being you meet. See how different you feel at the end of the day ... — Sarah Ban Breathnach

We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts. — Jonathan Safran Foer

In Aristotle ... leisure is a far more noble, spiritual goal than work ... leisure is pursued solely for its own sake ... : the pleasures of music and poetry, ... conversation with friends, and ... gratuitous, playful speculation. In Latin, the ultimate good is otium - the opposite is negotium, or gainful work.
We have sought too much counsel in the proto-Calvinist work ethic preached by St Paul ... during the cessation of work we nurture family, educate, nourish friendships ... in loafing, most of our innovations come ... the routine of daily work has too often served as ... sleep ... a refuge from two crucial states - awakedness to the needs of others, and to the transcendent, which only comes ... loitering, dallying, tarrying, goofing off. — Francine Du Plessix Gray

In the courtyard there was an angel of black stone, and its angel head rose above giant elephant leaves; the stark glass angel eyes, bright as the bleached blue of sailor eyes, stared upward. One observed the angel from an intricate green balcony - mine, this balcony, for I lived beyond in three old white rooms, rooms with elaborate wedding-cake ceilings, wide sliding doors, tall French windows. On warm evenings, with these windows open, conversation was pleasant there, tuneful, for wind rustled the interior like fan-breeze made by ancient ladies. And on such warm evenings this town is quiet. Only voices: family talk weaving on an ivy-curtained porch; a barefoot woman humming as she rocks a sidewalk chair, lulling to sleep a baby she nurses quite publicly; the complaining foreign tongue of an irritated lady who, sitting on her balcony, plucks a fryer, the loosened feathers floating from her hands, slipping into air, sliding lazily downward. — Truman Capote

The youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation. — Kurt Vonnegut

You know, I get it. Being raised as a superstar must be really, really difficult for you. Always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking you're worth a damn off the court - yeah, sounds rough. Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time. I know it's not entirely your fault that you are mentally unbalanced and infected with these delusions of grandeur, and I know you're physically incapable of holding a decent conversation with anyone like every other normal human being can, but I don't think any of us should have to put up with this much of your bullshit. Pity only gets you so many concessions, and you used yours up about six insults ago. So please, please, just shut the fuck up and leave us alone. — Nora Sakavic

When you look at a family, if you have a family that never interacts with each other, never has strong conversation with each other, never has disagreements, nine times out of ten you have a very cold family and they're not going to be, at the end, they're not going to be close. — Mike Singletary

Reading has always been in the chief joy, a never-ending topic of conversation, and often a lifesaver, in my family. — Elizabeth Borton De Trevino

A large family party is rather too much like a flight of tomtits; everlasting twitter, but no conversation; gregariousness without companionship. — Charles Buxton

She's a girl after my own heart. Food first, conversation later. — Kelly Risser

So the best defense against porn, for every member of our family, is a full life--the kind of life that technology cannot provide on its own. This is why the most important things we will do to prevent porn from taking over our own lives and our children's lives have nothing to do with sex. A home where wisdom and courage come first; where our central spaces are full of satisfying, demanding opportunities for creativity; where we have regular breaks from technology and opportunities for deep rest and refreshment (where devices "sleep" somewhere other than our bedrooms and where both adults and children experience the satisfactions of learning in thick, embodied ways rather than thin, technological ways); where we've learned to manage boredom and where even our car trips are occasions for deep and meaningful conversation--this is the kind of home that can equip all of us with an immune system strong enough to resist pornography's foolishness. — Andy Crouch

Evangelicals have like millions of rules. And it's just, uh, we have sort of an accepted, rationalism within which we frame religion. And we think that belief, intellectually, is of the same as relationship. And in our Western family conversation, that's become an incredible impediment toward actual wholeness, where the heart and the head are aligned and relationship
with not just God but with each other. — William P. Young

Ty's knee occasionally brushed against his under the table as they ate, but the conversation died down as the food was passed around. It was an odd, remarkable feeling, to be eating breakfast with Ty and his family and feel not only welcome, but like he might belong there.
Zane — Abigail Roux

With more time spent in their mother's presence, Maggie kept topics of conversation to small stuff, seldom ever wanted to dig below the surface, learned from her mother: just be polite, which makes Callie's own facile mental questioning and creative drive, paired with her physical rigidity, all the more oppositional, and, how they dance around serious subjects, laughable. — Justin Bog

I grew up in a family where the women were just nuts. They didn't stand around in cardigans making polite conversation while they chopped tomatoes. — Nadia Giosia

Just then, Larry recalled a conversation he had with a friend in Ireland, about the situation in Nepal between the King and the Maoists. The friend was sided with the Maoists, which was more or less his political leanings in any case, and stated that at least they were trying to help the people. So Larry had remarked upon the rising death rate, and how the Maoists are just as brutal as the security forces, yet the friend simply shrugged and said you have to expect some collateral damage in a revolution.
Oh how he hates that phrase, as that makes it sound like the people's lives are meant to be expendable, something that a person's life should never be. Of course, it is very easy to disregard people you have never met, and who are certainly not your friends or family members. After all, in the eyes of an outsider, who is in no danger whatsoever, the people caught up in the situation are nothing more than simply statistics. — Andrew James Pritchard

If you're using technology in a way that opens out conversation in your family, with your friends, with people you care about, I'm for that. But if you're using technology to silence the conversations with the people around you, then you have to create sacred spaces in your home, the kitchen, the dining room, the car. — Judy Woodruff

You are very sweet," she told him after a year of dating, as they shared dessert at a restaurant, "but it's like your family trained you to react to the world in a way that was so specific to their art that you don't know how to interact with people in the real world. You act like every conversation is just a buildup to something awful. — Kevin Wilson

The biggest thing that I get most excited about is, my family and I would watch television together, and we weren't just passive viewers. Something would happen, and then we would talk about it. When Will Smith was shot on 'Fresh Prince,' that sparked a conversation about safety. — Jerrod Carmichael

Do we regard language as more public, more ceremonial, than thought? Just as family men condemn the profanity on the stage that they use constantly in conversation, in the same way we may look to written language as an idealization rather than a reflection of ourselves. — Edmund White

What did I think I was doing? What did she think she was doing? When I want to kiss people in that way now, with mouths and tongues and all that, it's because I want other things too: sex, Friday nights at the cinema, company and conversation, fused networks of family and friends, Lemsips brought to me in bed when I am ill, a new pair of ears for my records and CDs, maybe a little boy called Jack and a little girl called Holly or Maisie, I haven't decided yet. But I didn't want any of those things from Alison Ashworth. Not children, because we were children, and not Friday nights at the pictures, because we went Saturday mornings, and not Lemsips, because my mum did that, not even sex, especially not sex, please God not sex, the filthiest and most terrifying invention of the early seventies. — Nick Hornby

when my mother opens her mouth to have a conversation at dinner my father shoves the word hush between her lips and tells her to never speak with her mouth full this is how the women in my family learned to live with their mouths closed — Rupi Kaur

dreams at night. Secretly, he began to make plans to travel to the shack the following weekend. At first he told no one, not even Nan. He had no reasonable defense in any exchange that would result after such a disclosure, and he was afraid that he might get locked up and the key thrown away. Anyway, he rationalized such a conversation would only bring more pain with no resolution. "I am keeping it to myself for Nan's sake," he told himself. Besides, acknowledging the note would mean admitting that he had kept secrets from her, secrets he still justified in his own mind. Sometimes honesty can be incredibly messy. Convinced of the rightness of his impending journey, Mack began to consider ways to get the family away from home for the weekend without rousing any suspicions. There was the slim possibility that — William Paul Young

The dinner table is the center for the teaching and practicing not just of table manners but of conversation, consideration, tolerance, family feeling, and just about all the other accomplishments of polite society except the minuet. — Judith Martin

However, while the work of the experience stager perishes upon its performance (precisely the right word), the value of the experience lingers in the memory of any individual who was engaged by the event." Sounds a lot like practical magic, doesn't it? They went on to use Disney as an example of a notable experience stager. "Most parents," they wrote, "don't take their kids to Walt Disney World just for the event itself but rather to make the shared experience part of the everyday family conversation for months, and even years, afterward." 5 — Walt Disney Company

The first basic need of a male is sexual fulfillment; for a female, affection. The second most basic need of a male is recreational companionship; for a female, communication and conversation. The third basic need of a male in a relationship is an attractive woman; for a woman, honesty and openness. The fourth basic need of a male is domestic support; for a female, financial support. The fifth basic need of a male is admiration and respect; for a woman, family commitment. — Myles Munroe

Baseball is a movable conversation across nine innings. It is eye contact with the person seated next to you in a park where the pitcher is separated from the batter by 60 feet, six inches or in a family room where a 60-inch TV screen hangs on the wall. — Mike Barnicle

He listens when I talk. — Gwenda Bond

What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well. — Glenn Close

I like football. I find its an exciting strategic game. Its a great way to avoid conversation with your family at Thanksgiving. — Craig Ferguson

Our conversation with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you've ever been there, you know the signs don't tell you the exit you're coming up to, they only point out the exits you've just missed.
It puts parents in very foul moods
and since you're probably there to visit relatives, their mood was pretty touch and go to begin with. — Neal Shusterman

Idea that all the beats are wildly liberal and progressive is ridiculous. You have people thinking for themselves and having certain affinities because of their upbringing and who their family are, their own people who were close to them who fought in these wars and so on. It's complicated. But they had that ability to continue the conversation. — Anne Waldman

Until she had had children of her own she had not been able to contemplate the death of either of her parents; when the subject had arisen, in conversation or in her own imagining, she had said only: I just don't know what I'd do. — Sebastian Faulks

If your dad is anything like mine, then you have no clue what to buy him for Father's Day. The only Father's Day tradition in my family is the annual conversation he and I have where I say, 'Hey, Dad, what do you want for Father's Day this year?' and he says, 'Nothing.' Then I ask my mom what I should get him and she says, 'He likes sandalwood soap, dangly jewelry and Chanel No. 5 perfume.' — Michael Showalter

They had never been able to sustain fifteen minutes' conversation with one another without advancing irreconcilable points of view, invigorating in friendships, but in close blood relations producing only uneasy cordiality. — Harper Lee

Kashayam [was] a drink the vanaras had morning, noon and night, and a few times in between. It was a kind of brew with all kinds of herbs thrown in: the thick, sharp-tasting furry karpuravalli, the strong spicy tulsi, the slightly bitter bark of the coconut tree, pungent pepper roots, the breathcatching nellikai, the cool root of vetriver, and just about anything else that was considered edible. And some things that weren't. In their craze for novelty, vanaras sometimes flung in new kinds of leaves or berries just because they smelt interesting; whole families had been known to fall ill, or even die. Gind's family were not a very adventurous lot, and stuck to things they knew not to be poisonous. Still, every day's kashayam was different, and this was a great topic of conversation among the vanaras. — Harini Gopalswami Srinivasan

But being is making; not only large things, a family, a book, a business; but the shape we give this afternoon, a conversation between friends, a meal. — Frank Bidart

I've invited Captain Phelan to join us," Beatrix announced. "He doesn't want to talk. Do not ask him direct questions unless absolutely necessary."
The rest of the family received this unorthodox pronouncement without turning a hair. A footman was dispatched to set a place for him.
"Come in, Phelan," Leo said easily. "We love silent guests--it allows us to talk all the more. By all means, sit and say nothing."
"But if you can manage it," Catherine added with a smile, " try to look impressed by our wit and intelligence."
"I will attempt to add to the conversation," Christopher ventured, "if I can think of anything relevant."
"That never stops the rest of us," Cam remarked. — Lisa Kleypas

Politics ... is the hottest, most dangerous subject in the land. It's not only a conversation-wrecker, it's a friendship-wrecker, a family-wrecker, a job-wrecker, a future-wrecker. — Barbara Walters

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions. — Susan Cain

This is supposed to be a touch-feely conversation where we tell you, 'Don't worry, you'll always have a family here with us.' And then we may or may not have sappy music piped in."
Ted rolled his eyes. "That was tactful, Eve. Wonderful. — Debra Anastasia

At the same time, Ambrosio had given me a brief glimpse of a different, compelling sort of life, a life in which there seemed to be more time for family and conversation, for stories and food, a life I was desperate to lead now as an antidote to my own. It was okay to squander a day, a week, a year, sitting in that telling room, summoning ghosts, because no one saw it as squandering. No, if you squinted a little bit, maybe what seemed like wasted time was, in fact, true happiness. — Michael Paterniti

The world is full of unrequited love,' I said finally.
'You and Patrick having problems?' Dad said, reaching around to get the butter out of the fridge.
'No, I was just wondering what you would say if I was a lesbian.'
'Come again?' said Lester. 'I'm having a hard time following this conversation. — Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Finally his father looks at him. "Are you satisfied now? Are you happy with the results of your actions?"

Lev has imagined this conversation between him and his father a hundred times. In each of those mental confrontations, Lev has always been the one making accusations, not the other way around. How dare he? How dare he? Lev wants to lash out, but he refuses to take the bait. He says nothing.

"Do you have any idea what you've put this family through?" his father says. "The shame? The ridicule?"

Lev can't maintain his silence. "Then maybe you shouldn't surround yourself with people as judgmental as you. — Neal Shusterman

It was entirely taken for granted that there wasn't any lying in our family, and I was advanced in adolescence before I realized that in plenty of homes where I played with schoolmates, and went to their parties, children lied to their parents and parents lied to their children and to each other. It took me a long time to realize that these very same everyday lies, and the stratagems and jokes and tricks and dares that went with them, were in fact the basis of the scenes I so well loved to hear about and hoped for and treasured in the conversation of adults. My instinct - the dramatic instinct - was to lead me, eventually, on the right track for a storyteller: the scene was full of hints, pointers, suggestions, and promises of things to find out and know about human beings.I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken - and to know a truth, I also had to recognize a lie. — Eudora Welty

I guess what really forms you as a person is what you do within your family to receive love or attention. In my family, what you had to do to receive attention was to have good conversation at the dinner table or for me to do well at school, and those were really my focuses because that was what was valued the most. — Emma Watson

Bean sighed inwardly. It never failed. Whenever he had any conversation with Ender, it turned into an argument. — Orson Scott Card

Sending our kids in my family to private school was a big, big, big deal. And it was a giant family discussion. But it was a circular conversation, really, because ultimately we don't have a choice. I mean, I pay for a private education and I'm trying to get the one that most matches the public education that I had, but that kind of progressive education no longer exists in the public system. It's unfair. — Matt Damon

Everyone stumbles through it all the same; the main difference lies not in the lack of dysfunction but in the desire to be dishonest about it. Every family has problems, but only some let you see them. The rest just keep their chaos behind closed doors and out of conversation. — Kevin Breel

It was the least I could do after what you did for us," Gregori said. Mikhail graciously thanked each of the Lycan hunters for their help. Vikirnoff and Natalya along with Destiny and Nicolae immediately came over. Destiny had fought with the Lycans and she introduced her lifemate, his brother and Natalya as she led the other pack members over to the tables of food and drink. Fen knew immediately that Mikhail had planned for just that move. The pack respected Destiny's abilities and would relate to her and her family. Out of the corner of his eye he could see other Carpathian couples going up and introducing themselves to the pack members and engaging them in conversation. Mikhail inclined his head toward Fen. "I believe you two know one another." "We've certainly fought a few battles together now," Zev said, holding out his hand to Fen. — Christine Feehan

At a dinner party in north London, I listened to friends bragging about buying Porsches with their bonuses and sending out from their offices for pizzas and clean shirts because they were clinching a deal and could not leave their desks. I wanted to tell them of a place where every family had lost a son or a husband or had a leg blown off, almost every child seen someone die in a rocket attack and where a small boy had told me his dream was to have a brightly coloured ball. But, when I began to talk about Afghanistan, I watched eyes glaze and felt as if I was trying to have a conversation about a movie no one else had seen. — Christina Lamb

Leadership is about relationships - whether it's a business deal with a client or a conversation with a family member - our ability to understand and appreciate individual uniqueness and perspective is paramount to living a fulfilled life. — Steve Knox

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also. — Dorothy L. Sayers

New Evangelization is the work of the whole Church - lay, ordained, and consecrated. It's about friends, family, and co-workers reaching out to one another and proclaiming the truth of Christ using all available means - conversation, personal witness, media, and the vast array of intellectual and spiritual riches the Church has built up in her two-thousand-year history. It's about simple acts of kindness, simple challenges issued in love, and simple questions asked with sincerity. More fundamentally, the New Evangelization is more for the baptized than the unbaptized. It's for those who've been inadequately catechized but all too adequately secularized, and it's for those who've been de-Christianized in the very process of being sacramentalized. — Scott Hahn

My entire life had been this long, pressured conversation about the family I represented. 'When you walk out the door, you represent us. You have to dress well and make sure your hair is combed.' — Armie Hammer

The worst part of it has been, I think, the adverse effect on family life. It kills off family conversation. And it's harder to get your children to read books. I became a confirmed reader when I was growing up in Glendale. I've loved reading all my life. Now I've got this daughter, Aissa, a very bright young lady
but it is a hard job to get her to read. Television's just too easy. — John Wayne

Where did you come from?" she asked impulsively.
"The same place you did."
It took her a minute, then she chuckled. "I don't mean biologically. Geographically."
He shrugged, trying not to be pleased she had caught on so quickly. "South of here."
"Oh,well that's specific," she muttered, then tried again. "What about family? Do you have family?"
He stopped to study her. "Why?"
With an exaggerated sigh, Gennie shook her head. "This is called making friendly conversation.It's a new trend that's catching on everywhere."
"I'm a noncomformist."
"No! Really?"
"You do that wide-eyed, guileless look very well, Genvieve. — Nora Roberts

The act of nutrition is not a purely physiological event ... The family meal is a formality that cultivates in us ... a capacity for sharing, generosity, thoughtfulness, a talent for civilized conversation. — Francine Du Plessix Gray

My mother was addicted to being rich, to servants and unlimited charge accounts, to giving lavish dinner parties, to taking frequent first-class trips to Europe. So one might say she was tormented by withdrawal symptoms all through the Great Depression. She was acculturated! Acculturated persons are those who find that they are no longer treated as the sort of people they thought they were, because the outside world has changed. An economic misfortune or a new technology, or being conquered by another country or political faction, can do that to people quicker than you can say "Jack Robinson." As Trout wrote in his "An American Family Marooned on the Planet Pluto": "Nothing wrecks any kind of love more effectively than the discovery that your previously acceptable behavior has become ridiculous." He said in conversation at the 2001 clambake: "If I hadn't learned how to live without a culture and a society, acculturation would have broken my heart a thousand times." *** — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Talking about abstract things is important. Having big, wild conversations about concepts like art, music, time travel, and dreams makes it much easier when you'll eventually need to talk about things like anger, sadness, pain, and love. — Tom Burns

It seemed to me that Mr. Forrester would approve of a woman who could follow him in conversation and not be baffled by ledgers and currency conversions. I had grossly overestimated him. — Gwenn Wright

Do not arrive as an interruption or disruption, attempting to divert your reader's attention from the object it is focused on, fighting to interest him in something different from what he is already, at this moment, interested in. Instead, align yourself with the subjects already possessing his attention, the matters already garnering his interest, the self-talk conversation already occurring in his mind, and the conversations he is already having around the water-cooler at work or at the kitchen table at home with peers, friends, and family. — Dan S. Kennedy

The best way for women to acquire knowledge is from conversation with a father, a brother, or a friend, in the way of family intercourse and easy conversation, and by such a course of reading as they may recommend. — Anna Letitia Barbauld

The trombone and side-drums in the chamber music of Stravinsky will do well enough in a very smart house-party where all the conversation is carried on in an esoteric family slang and the guests are expected to enjoy booby-traps. Very different is the outlook of some of our younger masters such as Hindemith, Jarnach, and others, whose renunciation of beauty was in itself a youthfully romantic gesture, and was accompanied by endless pains in securing adequate performance. The work of masterly performers can indeed alone save the new ideas from being swamped in a universal dullness which no external smartness can long distinguish from that commemorated in the Dunciad. — Donald Francis Tovey

The shared meal is no small thing. It is a foundation of family life,
the place where our children learn the art of conversation and acquire
the habits of civilization: sharing, listening, taking turns, navigating
differences, arguing without offending. What have been called the
"cultural contradictions of capitalism" - its tendency to undermine
the stabilizing social forms it depends on - are on vivid display today
at the modern American dinner table, along with all the brightly colored packages that the food industry has managed to plant there. — Michael Pollan

The first thing that struck me was how the single women of my acquaintance were exceptionally alert to the people around them, generous in their attention, ready to engage in conversation or share a joke. Having nobody to go home to at night had always seemed a sad and lonesome fate; now I saw that being forced to leave the house for human contact encourages a person to live more fully in the world. In the best instances, the result was an intricate lacework of friendships varying in intensity and closeness that could be, it seemed, just as sustaining as a nuclear family, and possibly more appealing. — Kate Bolick

Without any particular discussion, the Gansey family in its entirety moved the conversation to the upstairs study, out of earshot. Although several engagements had been canceled and Helen had missed a flight to Colorado that evening, no one had mentioned the inconvenience. And they never would. It was the Gansey way. — Maggie Stiefvater

Perfect and bulletproof are seductive, but they don't exist in the human experience. We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be - a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation - with courage and the willingness to engage. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen. This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly. — Brene Brown

Family wasn't like that, not really. It was not something small and compact, a "nuclear family": it was a great big mess of people, all interlinked, cousins and aunts and relatives-by-marriage and otherwise
it was a network, like the Conversation or a human brain. It was what he had tried to escape, going into the Up and Out, but you cannot run away from family, it follows you, wherever you go. — Lavie Tidhar