Long Conversations Quotes & Sayings

Because that's what people need after traumas, apparently - lots of long conversations about the effects of trauma. — Scott Westerfeld

In high school, during marathon phone conversations, cheap pizza dinners and long suburban car rides, I began to fall for boys because of who they actually were, or at least who I thought they might become. — J. Courtney Sullivan

My lawyer has been a good friend of mine for a long time. He and I continuously have conversations. — Matthew McConaughey

Few conversations, at any time of life, are more stimulating, more spontaneous and more genuinely original than those long ridiculous talks we all have, when we are very young, late at night about the meaning of life. — Jan Morris

I feel the theatre is the most unique one of all [the arts] for collaboration. I feel very fortunate to be in a field where I really do get to have long conversations with the visual artists, the actors, the musicians. It's all art forms rolled into one and I feel very fortunate to be a part of it. — Susan Stroman

I'm a huge Spike Lee fan. I saw 'Do The Right Thing' twice in the same night when it first came out and had long conversations with all my friends about the issues in it. — Joe Cornish

The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem underscores how stable mathematics is through the centuries - how mathematics is one of humanity's long continuous conversations with itself. — Barry Mazur

The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float. Nigeria was like that for me: mostly forgotten, except for those few things that I remembered with an outsize intensity. These were the things that had been solidified in my mind by reiteration, that recurred in dreams and daily thoughts: certain faces, certain conversations, which, taken as a group, represented a secure version of the past that I had been constructing since 1992. But there was another, irruptive, sense of things past. The sudden reencounter in the present, of something or someone long forgotten, some part of myself I had relegated to childhood and to Africa. — Teju Cole

Every writer has met with his words time and again. They have had frequent conversations. They have even flirted with each other. But there are those rare moments when the shadows and the naked bodies of the writer and the words, in one time frame of the story, in one setting of the story, are coupled. They become two lovers who have long known each other and who in their clandestine meetings have frequently concealed their longing for one another. — Shahriar Mandanipour

I spend so much time with the brightest and most talented and well-rounded people. I've had the privilege of having long and very intellectual conversations with people, and sometimes I just sit there and listen. It's like a better version of a class. Even though I'm not sitting at a desk and in school, I'm still learning all the time. — Hayden Panettiere

I've owned 41 airplanes. A few of them would talk with me. This little seaplane, though, we've had long conversations in flight. There's a spirit in anything, I think, into which we weave our soul. Not many pilots talk about it, but they think about it in the quiet dark of a night flight. — Richard Bach

David was the son of a famous Venetian rabbi. From his youth he had been accustomed to debate good principles and right conduct with all sorts of grave Jewish persons. These conversations had formed his own character and he naturally supposed that a small measure of the same could not help but improve other people's. In short he had come to believe that if only one talks long enough and expresses oneself properly, it is perfectly possible to argue people into being good and happy. With this aim in mind he generally took it upon himself to quarrel with Tom Brightwind several times a week -- all without noticeable effect. — Susanna Clarke

(God) being the old man invented in order to, and with whom to, hold long conversations. — Milan Kundera

Sheila taught me a survival technique for getting through seemingly intolerable situations-boring lunches, stern lectures on attitude or time management, those necessary breakup conversations, and the like: maintaining eye contact, keep your face inscrutable and masklike, with your faintest hint at a Gioconda smile. Keep this up as long as you possibly can, and just as you feel you are about to crack and take a letter opener and plunge it into someone's neck, fold your hands in your lap, one nestled inside the other, like those of a supplicant in a priory. Now, with the index finger of your inner hand, write on the palm of the other, very discreetly and undetectably, "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you ... " over and over again as you pretend to listen. You will find that this brings a spontaneous look of interest and pleased engagement to your countenance. Continue and repeat as necessary. — David Rakoff

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations. — E. M. Forster

I wish I'd known from the beginning that I was born a strong woman. What a difference it would have made! I wish I'd known that I was born a courageous woman; I've spent so much of my life cowering. How many conversations would I not only have started but finished if I had known I possessed a warrior's heart? I wish I'd known that I'd be born to take on the world; I wouldn't have run from it for so long, but run to it with open arms. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

If you say to people that they, as a matter of fact, can't protect their conversations, in particular their political conversations, I think you take a long step toward making a transition from a free society to a totalitarian society. — Whitfield Diffie

Betting all your funds on the belief that you know what consumers want and are willing to pay for is like jumping into a river to test its depth - you'll need a lot of luck to stay afloat. To have a truly successful product launch, the conversations with your customers must start long before you write your first line of code. — Jay Samit

[Stanley] Kubrick was a fascinating, larger than life guy who had been a friend for many years prior to our working together on that film. I found the best part of working with him to be the long conversations we had between set-ups. — Sydney Pollack

If I had said that I didn't want to know if Christianity was true, David would not have pursued our conversations any further. He had long before realized that people who want to avoid the truth usually succeeded. — Nabeel Qureshi

Some people are good at being in love. Some people are good at love. Two very different things, I think. Being in love is the romantic part - sex all the time, midday naps in the sheets, the jokes, the laughs, the fun, long conversations with no pauses, overwhelming separation anxiety ... Just the best sides of both people, you know? But love begins when the excitement of being in love starts to fade: the stress of life sets in, the butterflies disappear, the sex becomes a chore, the tears, the sadness, the arguments, the cattiness ... The worst parts of both people. But if you still want that person by your side through all of those things ... that's when you know - that's when you know you're good at love. — Nick Miller

I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief. — Noam Chomsky

Mair sat down on the bed. The ancient pink electric blanket was still stretched from corner to corner, and she thought of the weeks of her father's last illness when she had come home to the valley to nurse him, as best she could, and to keep him company. They had enjoyed long, rambling conversations about the past and the people her father had once known. — Rosie Thomas

She poured out a measure but Temple declined. 'Drink and I have had some long and painful conversations and found we simply can't agree.'
'Drink and I can't agree either.' She shrugged and tossed it down herself. 'But we keep on having the argument. — Joe Abercrombie

For the most part, my characters don't talk to me. I like to lord over them like some kind of benevolent deity. And, for the most part, my characters go along with it. I write intense character sketches and long, play-like conversations between me and them, but they stay out of the book writing itself. — Sarah MacLean

I can tell you it makes a big difference to have a director who is collaborative. What motivates a character in my mind could be completely different from what the director's thinking. You have to have those conversations ahead of time and throughout the process. It affects the performance. — Nia Long

I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, — Oscar Wilde

You worry about your parents, siblings, spouses dying, yet no one prepares you for your friends dying. Every time you flip through your address book, you are reminded of it---she's gone, he's gone, they're both gone. Names and numbers and addresses scratched out. Page after page of gone, gone, gone. The sense of loss that you feel isn't just for the person. It is the death of your youth, the death of fun, of warm conversations and too many drinks, of long weekends, of shared pains and victories and jealousies, of secrets that you couldn't tell anyone else, of memories that only you two shared. — Michael Zadoorian

When I was a kid watching comedians on TV and listening to their records they were the only ones that could make it all seem okay. They seemed to cut through the bullshit and disarm fears and horror by being clever and funny. I don't think I could have survived my childhood without watching stand-up comics. When I started doing comedy I didn't understand show business. I just wanted to be a comedian. Now, after twenty-five years of doing stand-up and the last two years of having long conversations with over two hundred comics I can honestly say they are some of the most thoughtful, philosophical, open-minded, sensitive, insightful, talented, self-centred, neurotic, compulsive, angry, fucked-up, sweet, creative people in the world. — Marc Maron

I was painfully shy for a long time. I mean, that's something I really had to work my way out of. And I really think it was because, after the 2008 Olympics, I spent a whole year bartending. It was the one thing that really forced me to be just not so scared to start conversations with strangers. — Ronda Rousey

At times I have long conversations with God. Sometimes I ask questions. I admit that there are also times when I let out my frustrations, fears, and anxieties in less than honorable ways. No matter what I pray about or how I pray about it, the result I always get is comfort. — Iyanla Vanzant

Was it possible that perhaps the most plausible explanation was being offered by someone who anyone with an ounce of sanity would have long ago consigned to the realm of the insane? — Tim Horvath

Dying was such an elegant way to leave a relationship. No infidelity, no boredom, no long, complicated conversations late into the night. No "She's still single, I hear." No running into each other at parties and weddings. No "She's stacked on the weight" or "She's showing her age." Dying was final and mysterious and gave you the last word forever. — Liane Moriarty

We talked for hours. Long, rambling conversations about everything under the sun. Spending time with her was intoxicating. We seemed to have everything in common. We shared the same interests. We were driven by the same goal. She got all of my jokes. She made me laugh. She made me think. She changed the way I saw the world. I'd never had such a powerful, immediate connection with another human being before. — Ernest Cline

The devil take these people and their language! They take a dozen monosyllabic words in their jaws, chew them, crunch them and spit them out again, and call that speaking. Fortunately they are by nature fairly silent, and although they gaze at us open-mouthed, they spare us long conversations. — Heinrich Heine

When you experience discomfort in your body and a strong reaction to what's happening, and yet you choose not to express your emotions, you've probably convinced yourself of one of these myths to justify your choice: Myth 1: The other person can't handle it. (Yes she can. It's that you think you can't handle being in the presence of her emotional reaction.) Myth 2: It's not the "right" time to bring this up. (Ask yourself: Is the time really not right, or is it just that you feel uncomfortable?) Myth 3: It will make the situation worse. (Short term or long term? In the short term, some conflict may arise. In the long term, you'll move closer to honest conversations and feel empowered.) Myth 4: The other person might not like you anymore. (If she likes you because you don't speak your truth, it's not you she really likes.) Myth 5: If you ignore the issue, it will go away. (Left unaddressed, the conflict will likely grow in intensity.) — Neha Sangwan

The staying awake was a great self-sacrificaing gesture of friendship, and wonderfully in keeping with our current mood of intense friendship and religious fervour. We were all in a state of shock. We engaged in a long Dostojevskyan conversations and drank one black coffee after another. It was sort of night typical of youth, the sort you only can look back on with shame and embarassment once you've grown up. But God knows, I must have grown up already by then, because I don't feel the slightest embarassment when I think back to it, just a terrible nostalgia. — Antal Szerb

Long-distance train conversations are unlike the perfunctory exchanges one normally associates with strangers, or the truncated, cut-to-the-chase kind that sometimes take place between seatmates on a plane. — Alan Huffman

Had he liked her all along? Was she the girl he saw every day and was I the girl who fed him and showered him with kisses once a week? It occurred to me that maybe all the time he omitted in our stolen conversations wasn't simply long, boring hours of inventory. I was too angry to cry. — Kiera Cass

The writer crafts their ideal world. In my world, everyone has really long conversations or just picks apart pop culture to death and everyone talks in monologue. — Kevin Smith

There is no good talking to him," said a Dragon-fly, who was sitting on the top of a large brown bulrush; "no good at all, for he has gone away."
"Well, that is his loss, not mine," answered the Rocket. "I am not going to stop talking to him merely because he pays no attention. I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
"Then you should definitely lecture on Philosophy," said the Dragon-fly. — Oscar Wilde

The White House tapes, the recordings that Nixon made of his conversations in office, have long been recognized as a marvel of verbal incontinence. — Pankaj Mishra

It probably wasn't smart to judge them based on appearance. I, for instance, was destined to be a world-renowned surgeon, but between my long, brown braid, square-framed glasses, and boyish figure, I looked more like the kind of girl who works in a library and spends Friday nights having deep, meaningful conversations with her cats. — Carrie Harris

Having the privilege of sitting down and having 3 hour long uninterrupted conversations with hundreds of brilliant people is an awesome perspective enhancer. — Joe Rogan

I don't have bad relationships with my players. But I don't get into long conversations with them either. — Scotty Bowman

Q: Why don't boys talk?
A: Boys do talk! You watch a group of them from a distance you will see that their lips are moving. They are probably making hand gestures as well. But what are they talking about?
I do my hare of talking with my guy friends, but I have no idea what we talk bout. guys have absolutely no short-term memory for conversations. This is why a girl can have a long, heart-to-heart talk with her sweetie, and the next day she makes some reference to what they talked about, and he looks at her with utter incomprehension and says, "Huh?"
The reason for this forgetfulness is that guys almost never anything in conversation that is worth remembering. — Pete Hautman

I had three long conversations with Marusya over a cup of coffee. She told me her whole rather silly story. To some degree we became friends. I like people like that
doomed, dying, helpless, and brazen. I always say, if you're in trouble, you're not sinning. — Sergei Dovlatov

Growing up in Ireland, there never seemed to be the notion that children should be seen and not heard. We all looked forward to mealtimes when we'd sit around the table and talk about our days. Storytelling and long, rambling conversations were considered good things. — Maeve Binchy

People had long conversations with him, only to realize later that he hadn't spoken. — Laura Hillenbrand

I watch the confusion of friends all numb with love moving like stray dogs to the anthem of night long conversations of pulsing rhythms and random voltage voices in spite of themselves graceful as these raindrops creeping spermlike across the car window. — Bruce Cockburn

The cook didn't respond, keeping his bony beige headcrest down over his work as four massive hands worked the pots and pans. "I'll miss these great conversations," Kanan added. Drakka looked up long enough to growl, a creepy sound made creepier by the way the fleshy sac beneath his mouth fluttered. Then he returned to his cooking. — John Jackson Miller

There's a lot of health information available on your smart phone. There's financial information. There's your conversations, there's business secrets. There's an enormous long list of things that there's probably more information about you on here than exists in your home, right. Which makes it a lot more valuable to all the bad guys out there. — Tim Cook

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

We told each other what movies we were currently watching and what books we were reading. — Ernest Cline

Most of the Mardukans were laughing, now. Some of them were accusing him of being just too utterly ridiculous.

"Why, the people are the Government. The people would not legislate themselves into slavery."

He wished Otto Harkaman were there. All he knew of history was the little he had gotten from reading some of Harkaman's books, and the long, rambling conversations aboard ship in hyperspace or in the evenings at Rivington. But Harkaman, he was sure, could have furnished hundreds of instances, on scores of planets and over ten centuries of time, in which people had done exactly that and hadn't known what they were doing, even after it was too late. — H. Beam Piper

I have an issue with others ordering for me, and I spend far too long haranguing people that my choices are the best. I apologize for the amount of conversations I have ruined with this attitude. — Ben Elliot

misses opportunities to influence the direction. Rachel needs to work on considering issues from the other person's agenda or point of view so that she can more effectively influence, or at least directly address, their perspective. It will also help her to work on making her conversations as concise and targeted as possible. People can lose interest or get confused during long explanations, or when they are unclear about the message. — Anonymous

Wiping his mouth and tossing the napkin on the table, Wake leaned on his elbow and studied Kabe, long and hard.

Long and hard enough that Kabe started to stare back.

Finally, Wake blurted out, "So have you found God?" I thought Kabe was going to swallow his straw.

Kabe licked his lips. "Joe's been talking to me about religion." I had no idea what was about to come out of his mouth. "Out alone, having some real deep, personal conversations. I think Joe has figured out how to get right inside me and know what I need."

"We all need to hear it."

"Touched me real far inside," My chest tightened up. I twisted my ankle and dropped my boot heel onto the arch of his foot. He yanked it back and leaned over the table a little.

"All burning with it."

My chair scraped the floor as I stood. "Know what, we need to be heading out. — James Buchanan

Even if I live not in a big city, even if I detest to go to parties, I love street fairs and long conversations with people in the countryside. — Paulo Coelho

But I was bored, I could scarcely understand them. I started to borrow novels from the circulating library, and read one after the other. But in the long run they didn't help. They presented intense lives, profound conversations, a phantom reality more appealing than my real life. So, in order to feel as if I were not real, I sometimes went ... — Elena Ferrante

I wish you could have been there for the sun & the rain & the long, hard hills. For the sound of a thousand conversations scattered along the road. For the people laughing & crying & remembering at the end. But, mainly, I wish you could have been there. — Brian Andreas

He trailed through hallways, ducking under arms no longer there, excusing himself as he pressed through conversations long since ended. — Maggie Stiefvater

I want to have conversations, because they give you confidence in your choices. I learned it first on Boyz n the Hood, but it is not a race-based experience - it is part of the artistic process. — Nia Long

I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped up in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations. — Neil Gaiman

In that sense, this is not a standard book of interviews. Nor is it what you might call a book of 'celebrity conversations.' What I was searching for - with increasing clarity as the sessions progressed - was something akin to the heart's natural resonance. What I did my best to hear, of course, was that resonance coming from Ozawa's heart. After all, in our conversations I was the interviewer and he was the interviewee. But what I often heard at the same time was the resonance of my own heart. At times that resonance was something I recognized as having long been a part of me, and at other times it came as a complete surprise. In other words, through a kind of sympathetic vibration that occurred during all of these conversations, I may have been simultaneously discovering Seiji Ozawa and, bit by bit, Haruki Murakami. — Haruki Murakami

The airport in Sofia was a tiny place; I'd expected a palace of modern communism, but we descended to a modest area of tarmac and strolled across it with the other travelers. Nearly all of them were Bulgarian,
I decided, trying to catch something of their conversations. They were
handsome people, some of them strikingly so, and their faces varied
from the dark-eyed pale Slav to a Middle-Eastern bronze, a kaleidoscope
of rich hues and shaggy black eyebrows, noses long and flaring, or
aquiline, or deeply hooked, young women with curly black hair and noble
foreheads, and energetic old men with few teeth. They smiled or laughed and talked eagerly with one another; one tall man gesticulated to his companion with a folded newspaper. Their clothes were distinctly not Western, although I would have been hard put to say what it was about the cuts of suits and skirts, the heavy shoes and dark hats, that was unfamiliar to me. — Elizabeth Kostova

I know without a question you love me and you know I love you, but I am unwilling to let your awkwardness with personal conversations keep us at a distance. Now let's be clear. I'll call when I want to, for as long as I want to, and I will ask anything I want about how you are feeling, what you think of as you face death, what your relationship is with the Lord, and anything else I want to know. You can do as you choose. Hang up on me. Refuse to answer. Refuse to feel. Do what you want, but I will too. — Dan B. Allender

It's boring."
"Oh," I said. I rubbed at my jaw. "You think I should have gone four-color?"
Bob stared at me for a second and said, "I have nightmares about Hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you."
I glowered up at the skull and nodded. "Okay, fine. You think it needs more drama."
"More anything. Drama would do. Or breasts."
I sighed and saw where that line of thought was going. "I am not going to hire a leggy secretary, Bob. Get over it."
"I didn't say anything about legs. But as long as we're on the subject ... — Jim Butcher

I've been around politics a long time. I've seen it at its best and its worst, been at so many events, listened to private conversations versus public speaking, understood the game of it, and in many ways the theatrics. — Kevin Spacey

But I do have conversations about the Patriarchy and I am having them with gay men. At eighteen, I am discovering what generations of women have long known. The natural ally of the straight woman is the gay man because they are others losers too. — Caitlin Moran

Walking helps me a lot to feel alive, and I do this every single day, my wife and I. We have long conversations about nature, and we also walk silently, just contemplating. — Paulo Coelho

Yet in Paul's letters we can hear something more than his own genius: an echo of female voices, of conversations over the years with the women of the Aegean cloth trade who were his close collaborators. During this long fellowship, the apostle has not only been talking to women: he has been listening. — Kate Cooper

Visualize the conversations your friends have about how they all knew you'd never be able to make it. Imagine having to explain quitting to every single person who knew you were going to BUD/S. You have to face them. You have to live with many of them. Imagine trying to find a way to overcome the shame of failing. How long is it going to take for them to stop thinking of you as a failure, a quitter, a pussy? How long until anyone takes anything you say seriously again? Visualize being sent to a crappy ship, an undesignated Seaman. Imagine, if you will, a life below deck where you spend 18 hours chipping paint and repainting the spot you chipped. Imagine not seeing the sun for days or weeks at a time. This picture is worse than anything in BUD/S. Experience the shame and humiliation of quitting once in your head. Feel how much you hate yourself for giving up on your dream. Then never, ever, ever experience it in real life. — Mark Owens

Jesus was short on sermons, long on conversations; short on answers, long on questions; short on abstraction and propositions, long on stories and parables; short on telling you what to think, long on challenging you to think for yourself. — Brian D. McLaren

But I was not quite with him in my thoughts, and I wonder whether that is how we got to be after living alone for a long time, that in the middle of a train of thought we start talking outloud, that the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversations we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see, and when you live alone for too long the line which divides the one form the other becomes vague, and you do not notice when you cross that line. Is this how my future looks? — Per Petterson

These conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts
were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago? Or might yet not as well say, anticipations of a choice to be made at the end of all things? But ye'd do better to say neither. Ye saw the choices a bit more clearly than ye could see them on earth: the lens was clearer. But it was still seen through the lens. Do not ask of a vision in a dream more than a vision in a dream can give. — C.S. Lewis

He had had many conversations during his long life. Some were fascinating and stayed with him more than a century later. Others were less so. As a younger man he had tolerated those as part of the cost of doing business - a sort of tax that all people must pay in order to take part in civilized society. When he had turned one hundred, he had decided to stop paying that tax. Henceforth he would engage only in conversations that really interested him - which, with a few exceptions for close friends and family members, meant conversations with a purpose. — Neal Stephenson

He looked at her for a long moment, as if remembering unfinished conversations, and then went back to place some damp, slow-burning turf on the fire. — Pete Hamill

I had siblings from South Asia, from East Asia, from depressed communities around America, and you know, we'd have long conversations. — Ronan Farrow

We understand and recognize what is good, but we do not labor to bring it to fulfillment, some of us out of laziness, some because we put something else, some pleasure, before virtue
and there are many pleasures in life, long conversations and indolence-that pleasing vice.. — Euripides

After the injury he began to dress more like an artist. He wore nice scarves and saved his money for a good hat, a full-round brim with a small feather under the band. He wore bright socks and loved long conversations over supper - rich, funny conversations that could easily replace dessert. If there was a lull in the dialogue, he'd point to you and say it was your turn to talk. Now you say something interesting. — Donald Miller

In the day school she went to in New York she had long intimate conversations with them all in her imagination, but never in reality. — Madeleine L'Engle

I was right when I said a very long time ago that our age would leave few living documents behind it: it was rare for anyone to keep a diary, letters were short and businesslike--"I'm alive and well"--and few memoirs were written. There are many reasons for this. Let me mention just one, not perhaps recognized by everybody: we were too often at loggerheads with our own past to give it proper thought. Within the half-century, our ideas on people and events have changed many times; conversations were broken off in mid-sentence; thoughts and feelings could not but be affected by circumstances. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Extended discourse, whether in the form of novels or expository treatises, presents the mind with a category of stimuli that can guide thinking though a long, complex, and coherent line of reasoning. Books structure ideas almost uniquely: The vocabulary and thought forms that are commonplace in book-length texts are rare in daily conversations. Books present a much wider range of vocabulary, concepts, and inferences than can be found in our daily banter with friends and family members. — Michael E. Martinez

Only certain portions of the line had to undergo carnage in the French style, but knowledge of it was all-pervasive. Everything the 19th River Guard knew came from quiet meetings in the communications trenches, conversations with sleepless, bitter infantrymen who had been transferred up from the fiercer fighting in the south. If some of the River Guard were on the edge, many of the regular infantry had gone over it long before. Especially disturbing to the naval contingent were reports from down below that Italian troops now were shot quite casually for disciplinary reasons, and that the Italian generals, like their French counterparts, were executing men in decimations for crimes they had not committed. Men with families were pulled from the ranks along with equally mystified adolescents and put to death for acts attributed to others whom they had never seen. — Mark Helprin

G'Kar: I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us and part of us remains. Go anywhere in the station when it is quiet, and just listen. After a while, you will hear the echoes of all our conversations, every thought and word we've exchanged. Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls for as long as this place remains. But I will admit that the part of me that is going will very much miss the part of you that is staying. — J. Michael Straczynski

You tell me why the government needs this information on every Verizon customer but they don't need to know who's coming across our border? They don't need to know where the 15,000 foreign nationals are that skipped out on their visa, just didn't show up to school but they're here in the United States. You tell me why they need my grandmother's phone records but they don't need to know where the Saudi nationals are. Why they don't need - why they need to know who's calling who inside the United States of America. They need to know who's calling who, how long the phone conversations were lasting, the GPS locators for all of the cellphones, when those phones, when that phone call was made. Why do they need all of that for domestic terror but they can't seem to get it right with the Boston bombers? They don't know where that guy was. You tell me why they need all of this information. Why do you need to go for the AP? You don't need to go for the AP and target the reporters. — Glenn Beck

Long conversations with pals when neither you nor they have had a drink can be a test of palship. — P. J. O'Rourke

I have been in situations where actors are treated like robots: say the lines, say it like this, we don't have time for conversations. That is a terrible position to be in as an artist. You feel used. — Nia Long

I made sure we fucked whenever the conversations got too emotional or too long - we weren't lesbians, after all. — Manil Suri