Listening To Someone Quotes & Sayings

The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It's overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt. — Leo Buscaglia

People have always had this craving to have someone tell them the future. Long ago, kings would hire people to read sheep guts. There's always been a market for people who pretend to know the future. Listening to today's forecasters is just as crazy as when the king hired the guy to look at the sheep guts. — Charlie Munger

When I became the White House press secretary, my mom looked me up and was shocked and upset by the things she read. I told her that we needed a rule - she could not put my name in any search engine under any circumstances. And she couldn't go searching for the criticism either. My advice is to ignore the chatter. (It's amazing - if you're not listening, you can't hear it!) If criticism builds to a point where you or someone on your behalf needs to respond, the chances are it will be brought to your attention. You don't need to go searching for negativity. Trust me - it'll find you. — Dana Perino

As the song goes, 'You are lost and gone forever, oh my darling, Valentine.'
[ ... ]
I'm listening to someone give up. Someone I knew. Someone I liked.
I'm listening. But still, I'm too late. — Jay Asher

And now I'm really, really, really tired and I want to fall asleep listening to someone tell me how much they like me and how pretty I am and stuff. That's all I want. And when I wake up, I'll be full of energy and I'll never make these kinds of selfish demands again. I swear. I'll be a good girl. — Haruki Murakami

Young people are going to go to someone, somewhere. And we had better see that that 'someone' is us. — Richard L. Evans

Of all radio program forms, the radio talk is the hardest to write, to give, and to make interesting and acceptable to the listening public. The first inclination of almost everyone, in turning on the radio and finding someone talking, is to switch the dial immediately until a music program is found. That is done almost as unconsciously as breathing. — Judith C. Waller

The solitude was intoxicating. On my first night there I lay on my back on the sticky carpet for hours, in the murky orange pool of city glow coming through the window, smelling heady curry spices spiraling across the corridor and listening to two guys outside yelling at each other in Russian and someone practicing stormy flamboyant violin somewhere, and slowly realizing that there was not a single person in the world who could see me or ask me what I was doing or tell me to do anything else, and I felt as if at any moment the bedsit might detach itself from the buildings like a luminous soap bubble and drift off into the night, bobbing gently above the rooftops and the river and the stars. — Tana French

Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream. — Joan Didion

For the Deist ... prayer is calling across a void to a distant deity. This lofty figure may or may not be listening. He, or it, may or may not be inclined, or even able, to do very much about us and our world, even if he (or it) wanted to ... all you can do is send off a message, like a marooned sailor scribbling a note and putting it in a bottle, on the off-chance that someone out there might pick it up. That kind of prayer takes a good deal of faith and hope. But it isn't Christian prayer. — N. T. Wright

Ridcully sat in horrified amazement. He'd always enjoyed Hogswatch, every bit of it. He'd enjoyed seeing ancient relatives, he'd enjoyed the food, he'd been good at games like Chase My Neighbor up the Passage and Hooray Jolly Tinker. He was always the first to don a paper hat. He felt that paper hats lent a special festive air to the occasion. And he always very carefully read the messages on Hogswatch cards and found time for a few kind thoughts about the sender. Listening to his wizards was like watching someone kick apart a doll's house. — Terry Pratchett

So even though Grandpa's life has closed its final chapter, the story that he embodied continues each time we take a handful of dirt to check moisture levels or turn our head at the sound of the wind shifting directions before a storm. It lives on as we give thanks for the abundance that we have, whatever it looks like. It lives on in every decision we make that puts someone else first. — Heidi Barr

Sometimes the best way to learn a lesson isn't just hearing the words, but putting it into practice by experimenting with it and finding its truth for yourself instead of taking someone else's word for it. — A.J. Darkholme

If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender. — Brian Eno

People. You're not crazy if there really are robot insects listening to every word you say."

Someone said, "I fucking told you — Warren Ellis

I'd much rather hear someone's unique interpretation of their own experience. Those who negate or override someone else's experience in order to one-up them or to show off their own knowledge or perceived abilities are in truth showing off their lack of listening skills and wisdom. — Tonya Sheridan

Perhaps we don't like what we see: our hips, our loss of hair, our shoe size, our dimples, our knuckles too big, our eating habits, our disposition. We have disclosed these things in secret, likes and dislikes, behind doors with locks, our lonely rooms, our messy desks, our empty hearts, our sudden bursts of energy, our sudden bouts of depression. Don't worry. Put away your mirrors and your beauty magazines and your books on tape. There is someone right here who knows you more than you do, who is making room on the couch, who is fixing a meal, who is putting on your favorite record, who is listening intently to what you have to say, who is standing there with you, face to face, hand to hand, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. There is no space left uncovered. This is where you belong. — Sufjan Stevens

Everything that happens to us, everything that we say or hear, everything that we see with our own eyes or we articulate with our tongue, everything that enters through our ears, everything we are witness to (and for which we are therefore partially responsible) must find a recipient outside ourselves and we choose that recipient according to what happens, or what we are told or even according to what we ourselves say. Each thing must be told to someone - though not necessarily to the same person - and each thing will undergo a selection process, the way someone out shopping might scrutinize, set aside, and assess presents for the season to come. Everything must be told at least once, although ... it must be told when the time is right, or, which comes to the same thing, at the right moment, and sometimes, if you fail to recognize that right moment or deliberately let it pass, there will never again be another. — Javier Marias

There comes a time in life that all you need is just someone to listen to you without judging or telling you what you should have done and should do, but simply just listening to you. — Bernard Kelvin Clive

Go Slow to Go Fast in Growing a Stronger Bond With Others: When you see someone's interest rise in the conversation, you have a glimpse of the hook that can best connect you together. Ask follow-up questions, directly related to what that person just said. If you do just this much, recent research shows you are among the five percent of Americans in conversation. In so doing, you accomplish two things. You've increased their openness and warmth toward you, because you've demonstrated you care. And you've had a closer look at the hook that most matters to them in the conversation. Now you can speak to their hottest interest, in a way that can serve you both. — Kare Anderson

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong or good and bad. We just see things as they are with him, and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other. Usually when you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion you may accept it, but if it does not, you will reject it or you may not even really hear it. — Shunryu Suzuki

On Christmas Eve," Joe said, "when you were reading 'The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids' to Matty, Corrie and I were sitting on the stairs listening."

Jo looked at Lilli, his face stern.

"The bit I always remember best in that story is the bit when the wolf goes to the miller and tells him to throw flour over his paws to disguise them." He began to quote from the story: "'The miller thought to himself, "The wolf is going to harm someone," and refused to do as he was told. Then the wolf said, "If you do not do as I tell you, I will kill you." The miller was afraid, and did as he was told, and threw the flour over the wolf's paws until they were white. This is what mankind is like.'"

He repeated the final sentence.

"'This is what mankind is like. — Peter Rushforth

When you are accompanying someone, you are listening to them the way you listen to a Bach Chorale, where four parts are going on at the same time, all of which are gorgeous melodies, all being played simultaneously. — David Amram

What most people want in a leader is something that's very difficult to find: we want someone who listens ... The secret, Reagan's secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you hear what they said - they're less focused on whether or not you do what they said. — Seth Godin

Wrong again. I'll tell you, shall I?" The djinni fixed him with its black-eyed stare. "You knocked yourself out, like the idiot you are. The golem was approaching, doubtless planning to take the Staff and crush your head like a melon. It was foiled - "
"By your prompt action?" Nathaniel said. "If so, I'm grateful, Bartimaeus."
"Me? Save you? Please - someone I know might be listening. No. My magic is canceled out by the golem's, remember? I sat back to watch the show. In fact ... it was the girl and her friend. They saved you. Wait - don't mock! I do not lie. The boy distracted it while the girl climbed on the golem's back, tore the manuscript from its mouth, and threw it to the ground. Even as she did so, the golem seized her and the boy - incinerated them in seconds. Then its life force ebbed and it finally froze, inches from your sorry neck. — Jonathan Stroud

If you can concentrate on listening to another person - without your own viewpoint getting in the way, without judging or discarding or thinking of a response - for the simple purpose of taking in someone else's reality, you start to understand her. — L. Alison Heller

Nobody said anything that time. Or maybe I just wasn't listening. After all, someone had to keep an eye on the fridge. — Karen Chance

In the context of the autism world (and my outlook in general) this is were I stand equality is for everyone, everybody in the world - I look at both sides of the the coin and take into account peoples realities (that makes me neutral/moderate/in the middle).
That means that you look in a more three dimensional perspective of peoples diverse realities you cannot speak for all but one can learn from EACH OTHER through listening and experiencing.
I also try my best to live with the good cards I was given not over-investing in my autism being the defining factor of my being (but having a healthy acknowledgement of it) that it's there but also thinking about other qualities I have such as being a writer, poet and artist.
I do have disability, I do have autism and I have a "mild" learning disability that is true but I a human being first and foremost. And for someone to be seen as person equal to everyone else is a basic human right. — Paul Isaacs

Occasionally I'll be sitting somewhere and I'll be listening to someone perhaps not saying the kindest things about me. And I'll look down at my hand and I'll sort of pinch my skin to make sure it still has the requisite thickness I know Eleanor Roosevelt expects me to have. — Hillary Clinton

Listening is more than being quiet. Listening is much more than silence. Listening requires undivided attention. The time to listen is when someone needs to be heard. The time to deal with a person with a problem is when he has the problem. The time to listen is the time when our interest and love are vital to the one who seeks our ear, our heart, our help, and our empathy. — Marvin J. Ashton

So we left the spear in the wagon and I dressed and still was not sick and together we walked to the head of the century. Tears had been ready to lead them. Macer was there, holding his horn. I saw them both shrug and get ready to swap Tears' shield for the horn.
'No, stay as you are,' I said. 'It doesn't hurt to have someone else learning the signals. Tears can stay as Macer's shield-man. Taurus, stay with Horgias.'
'And you?' someone asked.
'Don't worry about me.' I grinned, careless of the listening gods. 'I'm indestructible. I'll outlive you all. — M.C. Scott

Kestrel climbed down and studied the garden in the lamplight thrown from her sunroom. She chewed the inside of her cheek, and was wondering whether books stacked on the chair on top of the table would make a difference when she heard something.
The grate of a heel against pebbles. It came from beyond the door, and the other side of the wall.
Someone had been listening.
Was listening still.
As quietly as she could, Kestrel took the chair down from the table and went inside.


Before Arin left for the mountain pass, during the coldest hours of the night, he found time to order that every piece of furniture light enough for Kestrel to move be taken from her suite. — Marie Rutkoski

Calpurnia evidently remembered a rainy Sunday when we were both fatherless and teacherless. Let to its own devices, the class tied Eunice Ann Simpson to a chair and placed her in the furnace room. We forgot her, trooped upstairs to church, and were listening quietly to the sermon when a dreadful banging issued from the radiator pipes, persisting until someone investigated and brought forth Eunice Ann saying she didn't want to play Shadrach any more - Jem Finch said she wouldn't get burnt if she had enough faith, but it was hot down there. — Harper Lee

The boys have to have a chance to be at peace, at rest, without someone listening, to favor or despise them depending on the way they talk act and think. — Orson Scott Card

Whenever I come across someone speaking negatively about escapism or looking down on those who seek a temporary escape from this world, I can't help but look at them as absolute fools. To deny someone the right to find temporary peace in escapism is to deny human nature itself as well as all the benefits of such a beautiful concept. Often times, these instances show them saying that "it'll only make things worse" or "it's not gonna change anything", except, a lot of times, that's not the case at all. How many times has someone shut themselves away from the world by listening to a song they hold dear only to return more ready to face the world than before, how many times has someone learned something about themselves through the fictional events of a novel that they wouldn't have other wise, how many times has society experienced great change through people who dreamed of making the world a better place, only to eventually make those dreams into a reality. — Justin Allen

You shouldn't spend your time listening to the advice of
people who have never done what you want to do. You
should never get fitness tips from an over-weight trainer,
business tips from your broke Uncle Jim, or marital tips from
someone who has been divorced three times. If you think like a successful entrepreneur and do what a successful entrepreneur does wouldn't you become successful? If you only get your advice from some college professor or academic who has never achieved business or financial success, isn't it likely that you will never achieve success as well? My friend you need to listen to a successful entrepreneur. — Clay Clark

We can't find the truth listening to our own voice's echo. We can find ourselves only in someone's mirror — Rumi

She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned. She had plenty of evidence that she had a good life. She just couldn't feel the life she had. It was as though she had cancer of the perspective. — Carrie Fisher

"Someone": I understood that this was a character who in her own life her voice hadn't much been heard and in literature her life isn't much heard. For me, it was resisting all the more appealing characters and listening to the voice that hadn't been much heard from. — Alice McDermott

I suppose I don't hear things, but I listen, if you know what I mean. And there is a big difference between hearing and listening. So it's like a conversation, you know. When you speak to someone, it's one on one, and that's exactly how I play. — Evelyn Glennie

Music is a matter of taste. Bitching at someone for liking a certain style of music is like yelling at someone for liking broccoli with melted cheese (which, might I add, is awesome). I don't understand why there are so many snobs out there who deem it necessary to force-feed their opinions to others, and claim that their experience i ... n the matter makes their statement any more credible than the next, when, as I said before, its all a matter of taste. If you dig it, awesome. If you don't, awesome. Its just another plate being served at the world's biggest (in this case musical) buffet. Don't make some kid feel guilty for listening to what he / she enjoys. — Alex Gaskarth

But I took a deep breath, and she sat there listening to me across my dirty coffee table, and we talked about community and family and authenticity. It's easy to talk about it, and really, really hard sometimes to practice it. This is why the door stays closed for so many of us, literally and figuratively. One friend promises she'll start having people over when they finally have money to remodel. Another says she'd be too nervous that people wouldn't eat the food she made, so she never makes the invitation. But it isn't about perfection, and it isn't about performance. You'll miss the richest moments in life - the sacred moments when we feel God's grace and presence through the actual faces and hands of the people we love - if you're too scared or too ashamed to open the door. I know it's scary, but throw open the door anyway, even though someone might see you in your terribly ugly half-zip. — Shauna Niequist

The world is in sore need of good listeners. And in our own lives, it's amazing to recognize just how valuable listening can be for us. How many mistakes have you made because you didn't listen well? Personally, I've made many - and I've missed out on some wonderful opportunities because I was more interested in sharing what I had to say than I was in listening to what someone else had to say. — Tom Walsh

What seemed novel about the use of focus groups in the 1992 campaign was the increasingly narrow part of the population to which either party was interested in listening, and the extent to which this extreme selectivity had transformed the governing of the country, for most of its citizens, into a series of signals meant for someone else. — Joan Didion

There is another peculiar satisfaction in really hearing someone: It is like listening to the music of the spheres, because beyond the immediate message of the person, no matter what that might be, there is the universal. Hidden in all of the personal communications which I really hear there seem to be orderly psychological laws, aspects of the same order we find in the universe as a whole. So there is both the satisfaction of hearing this person and also the satisfaction of feeling one's self in touch with what is universally true. — Carl Rogers

Somewhere deep in my mind I knew that looking into someone's eyes shouldn't cause me to come undone like this, but my body wasn't listening to the tiny voice in my mind.

~The Forgotten Ones — Laura Howard

You are never listening to what someone is saying, you are only ever listening to what you are hearing — Julia Heywood

When someone tells you something big, it's like you're taking money from them, and there's no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening. — Banana Yoshimoto

People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else. — Douglas Coupland

Sainthood emerges when you can listen to someone's tale of woe and not respond with a description of your own. — Andrew Mason

Listening to learn isn't about giving advice
at least not until asked
but about trying to understand exactly what someone means,how it is that someone looks at and feels about her particular situation ... Listening to learn from a daughter in adolescence, conspiring with her thoughts and feelings, keeps a mother in touch with a daughter's growing and changing self. — Elizabeth Debold

I like what a third man brings. A kind of oblique vision, seeing something in the material that you didn't know was there. As a comedian, I'm always listening to the audience. And in movies, sometimes the only audience you have is the producer and the director. I like having someone else's opinion, especially if you're on the same wavelength. — Steve Martin

True listening is another way of bringing stillness into the relationship. When you truly listen to someone, the dimension of stillness arises and becomes an essential part of the relationship. — Eckhart Tolle

When I'm singing I feel like I'm talking to someone. I'm in conversation when I perform - either with myself or with whomever is listening. — Laura Marling

His voice just stops, exactly like when the needle is lifted from a phonograph record by the hand of someone who is not listening to the record. [ ... ] She speaks the same dead, level tone: two bodiless voices in monotonous strophe and anistrophe: to bodiless voices recounting dreamily something performed in a region without dimension by people without blood [ ... ] Two of them are also motionless, the woman with that stonevisaged patience of a waiting rock, the old man with a spent quality like the charred wick of a candle from which the flame has been violently blown away. — William Faulkner

How many people are watching a movie right now, or reading a book or listening to a song or looking into their life or dreaming with this profound, conscious or not, yearning more than anything for some kind of relationship somewhere with someone or something that would cause them to stagger in intimate rawness in friendship and love? — Darrell Calkins

The difference between my beliefs and having a religious faith is that I am prepared to change my views in light of new evidence, but someone of a religious faith will just stick their fingers in the ears and say: 'I'm not listening, there's nothing you can say that will make me change my mind. — Jim Al-Khalili

I am afraid that you have been listening to the conversation of someone older than yourself. That is always a dangerous thing to do, and if you allow it to degenerate into a habit, you will find it absolutely fatal to any intellectual development. — Oscar Wilde

I want someone to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, and its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarrelling and reconciliation I need privacy - to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits. — Virginia Woolf

The thing is, I don't know if these stories he was telling were mine, or his, or someone else's. You spend your life among words, listening, making sense out of what you say and out of what you imagine other people are saying to you, believing that something in particular happened like this or that, as a result of this or that, with these or those consequences. But it is never so simple, is it? I suppose that if we read about ourselves in a book, we wouldn't recognize ourselves, we wouldn't realize that those people doing certain things and behaving in a particular manner are us. I always believed that I knew Alejandro, that I knew him intimately, I mean, the way you might know a doll you've once taken to pieces. But it wasn't true. — Alberto Manguel

With repeated listenings, a piece eventually becomes its own being. I very often say to students that this is like meeting a person for the first time. When you first meet someone, you reference that person with others who are similar; but, as you get to know that person better, you begin to understand his unique qualities. — Paul Lansky

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind's hearing to your ears' natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. — Peter Senge

There is nothing more entertaining then leaving someone speechless. Yet, there is nothing sadder than realizing that person was incapable of retaining half of what you said, and will repeat the story all wrong to someone else. — Shannon L. Alder

I sensed him leaning forward. It's weird to feel someone's attention on you that way, like you're the only thing in the world they're listening to. Most of the time people are distracted, or just thinking about what they're going to say next. — Lilith Saintcrow

Listening to as many guitar solos as possible is the best method for someone in the early stages. But saxophone solos can be helpful. They're interesting because they are all single notes, and therefore can be repeated on the guitar. If you can copy a sax solo you're playing very well, because the average saxophonist can play much better than the average guitarist. — Ritchie Blackmore

Then with Lucy [Hale], her little thing that I kind of learned from her is her country music because she's obsessed with country and at the beginning, I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I was listening to some songs that she plays in the hair and makeup room and she's also so funny, too. She does these character impersonations and they're just so funny. Made up characters of course, but she can switch into someone else so fast. I'm always laughing at Lucy and she's like a little Polly Pocket, you know? The tiny one. — Shay Mitchell

There are times that all you need is someone who will listen to you without judging you - not telling you what you should have done or should do, but simply, listening to you — Bernard Kelvin Clive

If you want someone to stop listening to you go ahead and yell. If you want them to listen to every word, whisper. -Mimi — Erin McKean

I am very much out of my element here. There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am going to lose my mind. Earlier today, I heard someone say the words, "I felt at one with the divine source of creation." Mary Roach on a conducted tour of Hades. I had to fight the urge to push back my chair and start screaming: STAND BACK! ALL OF YOU! I'VE GOT AN ARTHUR FINDLAY BOX CUTTER! Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to. — Mary Roach

I've been getting into different gospel artists; Aretha Franklin is someone I've been listening to a lot of. — Jonny Lang

There's something about the silence of people listening to someone or watching someone - I just ... I love that. — Sam Heughan

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don't jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going. — Sarah Dessen

But this was the way I liked things. I ended it (or he did), I had a few weeks' getting over it and
listening to lots of girl-power music and eating ice cream, and then, before too long, I'd start to crush
on someone new and would begin the whole cycle over again. It worked for me. — Morgan Matson

MARGARET HAD SEEN ASH cheerfully powerful, as talkative as a jaybird. She'd seen him silently powerful while he was listening to those around her. She didn't like seeing him vulnerable. It made her feel odd inside - hotly angry on his behalf, and enraged that someone had made him feel that way. — Courtney Milan

Listening to your own mind gives you "good reasons" why you should be fearful over unexpected events is just like being friends with someone who thinks it's funny to find new ways to hurt you! — Guy Finley

When I'm following someone, I'm listening to a bear bell strapped to their packs. When I'm leading on a climb, like on a rock, I like to feel my way through it on my own, so I know the tricky moves and where to place gear. — Erik Weihenmayer

It's so important to keep a marriage alive with small treats and doing little things for each other. Just remembering to say nice things and to have listening time is vital. That ghastly phrase 'quality time' means taking three minutes to sit down and be still with someone rather than yelling over your shoulder as you rush out. — Joanna Lumley

Being in love is a very strange thing. Your thoughts constantly drift towards this other person, no matter what you're doing. You could be reaching for a glass in the cupboard or brushing your teeth or listening to someone tell a story, and your mind will just start drifting towards their face, their hair, the way they smell, wondering what they'll wear, and what they'll say the next time they see you. And on top of the constant dream state you're in, your stomach feels like it's connected to a bungee cord, and it bounces and bounces around for hours until it finally lodges itself next to your heart. — Pittacus Lore

Ski racing was drawing in time, I said to Sandro. I finally had someone listening who wanted to understand: the two things I loved were drawing and speed, and in skiing I had combined them. It was drawing in order to win. — Rachel Kushner

Imagine Jesus today: He is leaning over, bending down close to someone who is hurt. He's listening. His eyes fill with tears as He hears that person's troubles. Then His hand gently brushes away a tear. He was hurt once too. He understands. — Max Lucado

After weeks on the road, listening to a language you don't understand, using a currency whose value you don't comprehend, walking down streets you've never walked down before, you discover that your old "I," along with everything you ever learned, is absolutely no use at all in the face of those new challenges, and you begin to realize that buried deep in your unconscious mind there is someone much more interesting and adventurous and more open to the world and to new experiences. — Paulo Coelho

People are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the "apostolate of the ear," and it is important. Very important. I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them. — Pope Francis

And if someone felt that his life had been an utter failure, and that he himself was only one among millions of wholly unimportant people who could be replaced as easily as broken windowpanes, he would go and pour out his heart to Momo. And, even as he spoke, he would come to realize by some mysterious means that he was absolutely wrong: that there was only one person like himself in the whole world, and that, consequently, he mattered to the world in his own particular way.
Such was Momo's talent for listening. — Michael Ende

I'm listening to Neil Young, I gotta turn up the sound. Someone's always yellin', 'Turn him down'."
"Highlands" from "Time Out of Mind" (1997) — Bob Dylan

We all were silent for a reason, maybe our hearts were talking to us, and it is a human behavior whenever someone is in a crisis or something great is happening, our hearts speaks to us. More and more, only that time because we are too obsessed to use our brains after every work every day that listening to heart becomes secondary — Shaikh Ashraf

What if you could meet your soul mate?" the ghost asked. "You 'd want to avoid that?"
"Hell, yes. The idea that there's one soul out there, waiting to merge with mine like some data-sharing program, depresses the hell out of me."
"It's not like that. It's not about losing yourself."
"Then what is it?" Alex was only half listening, still occupied with the viselike tightness of his chest.
"It's like your whole life you 've been falling toward the earth, until the moment someone catches you. And you realise that somehow you 've caught her at the same time. And together, instead of falling, you might be able to fly. — Lisa Kleypas

I'm still trying to discover my position on my own artwork and hopefully at this exhibition someone will come and tell me. I'm open to listening to criticism. — Graham Coxon

When you talk to yourself, at least you know that someone is listening. — Craig Bruce

I'd say the best way to train someone is to remember that you have two ears and one mouth, and use them in that ratio. That's hard to do, and ultimately what we've learned is how many false positives you get from listening to what someone says they're going to do instead of observing what they actually do. — Brad D. Smith

A typical National World Weekly would tell the world how Jesus' face was seen on a Big Mac bun bought by someone from Des Moines, with an artist's impression of the bun; how Elvis Presley was recently sighted working in a Burger Lord in Des Moines; how listening to Elvis records cured a Des Moines housewife's cancer; how the spate of werewolves infesting the Midwest are the offspring of noble pioneer women raped by Bigfoot; and that Elvis was taken by Space Aliens in 1976 because he was too good for this world. Remarkably, one of these stories is indeed true. — Neil Gaiman

My [singing] style really has no style, because I try to sing each number differently. I've always believed that if style takes precedent over the words and music, the audience get's cheated. It's like when people see a fine play or movie. They imagine themselves in the leading role. I want them to imagine that they're singing - not just listening to someone else. — Judy Garland

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him. — Simone Weil

Be very careful what you say to yourself because someone very important is listening ... YOU! — John Assaraf

A true friend is someone who never gets tired listening to your pointless drama over and over again. — Lauren Conrad

It's like someone who prays every night saying God's a good listener. Just because you're talking to us doesn't mean we're listening. With me and God, you never really know. — Paul Neilan

Lying flat against the tile of the kitchen floor listening to someone else have sex is essentially my early twenties in a nutshell. — David Rakoff

Someone curating songs for you through your computer or being able to hold 10,000 songs on your watch - that convenience is pretty incredible, but so is the emotional impact of holding a Beatles record in your hand and listening to Let It Be. — Dave Grohl

It is not I who mix the colors but your own vision,' he answered. 'I only place them next to one another on the wall in their natural state; it is the observer who mixes the colors in his own eye, like porridge. Therein lies the secret. The better the porridge, the better the painting, but you cannot make good porridge from bad buckwheat. Therefore, faith in seeing, listening, and reading is more important than faith in painting, singing, or writing.'
He took blue and red and placed them next to each other, painting the eyes of an angel. And I saw the angel's eyes turn violet.
'I work with something like a dictionary of colors,' Nikon added, 'and from it the observer composes sentences and books, in other words, images. You could do the same with writing. Why shouldn't someone create a dictionary of words that make up one book and let the reader himself assemble the words into a whole? — Milorad Pavic

Liv sits in the silent cubicle for as long as she can without someone staging an intervention, listening as several women come in, sometimes in pairs, chattering as they check hair and makeup. She checks for nonexistent e-mail and plays Scrabble on her phone. Finally, after scoring "flux," she gets up, flushes, and washes her hands, staring at her reflection with a kind of perverse satisfaction. Her makeup has smudged beneath one eye. She fixes this in the mirror, wondering why she bothers, given that she is about to sit next to Roger again. — Jojo Moyes

When I was a kid, I was always going to bed creating a story, and that was the birth of filmmaking for me. I would like going to the dream-state by telling the story to someone else in my mind. That was my imaginary friend; it was an imaginary audience listening to my story. — Denis Villeneuve