Quotes & Sayings About Not Listening

If you give the government the right to determine the consumption of the human body, to determine whether one should smoke or not smoke, drink or not drink, there is no good reply you can give to people who say, More important than the body is the mind and the soul, and man hurts himself much more by reading bad books, by listening to bad music and looking at bad movies. Therefore it is the duty of the government to prevent people from committing those faults. And, as you know, for many hundreds of years governments and authorities velieved that it was their duty. — Ludwig Von Mises

One thing is clear, the president of North Vietnam is not a fanatic. He is a very strong and determined man, but capable of listening, something that is very rare in a person of his position. — Martin Niemoller

The reason that I have Global Grind is to communicate ideas to people who might otherwise not be listening. — Russell Simmons

I'm not listening for song ideas; I'm listening for soul ideas. — Chuck Cannon

A good listener is a witness, not a judge of your experience. — Michael P Nichols

The gospel is not outward rituals and sacrifices, it is a living sacrifice. It is to have the laws of God written in our heart. It is to have a soft, listening, responding heart to God. — Leslie Ludy

Listening to teens talk about social media addiction reveals an interest not in features of their computers, smartphones, or even particular social media sites but in each other. — Danah Boyd

The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain. People who say "stop complaining" always have the right to stop listening. But those who complain have often been denied the right to speak. — Sarah Kendzior

About happy endings. Folk like a story to finish well. Doesn't matter if that's true to life or not. Helps to hear about folk being content. About good folk getting what they deserve. While you're listening you can believe, for a bit, that you're good too. Worth a happy ending. — Juliet Marillier

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. — John Ruskin

I'm not a clever man, but I'm willing to listen to people who are, and I think you are. Just don't try poking me in the direction you want me to go. I don't like that Master Balwer. — Robert Jordan

If you ask Zen people they will say; tea is not something that you pour with unawareness and drink like any other drink. It is not a drink, it is meditation; it is prayer. So they listen to the kettle creating a melody, and in that listening they become more silent, more alert. — Rajneesh

So Custer's Indian scouts get him to the village but they're like "Dude, don't attack this you will definitely die" and Custer is like "DIE? MORE LIKE . . . NOT DIE" and his translators and his soldiers are like "No bro pretty sure we will actually die if we do this" and Custer is like "I appreciate your concerns but I did not get this far by listening to people. LET'S SPLIT UP, GANG WE'LL COVER MORE GROUND THAT WAY. — Cory O'Brien

Her ears, lightly fringed with white that looked silver, lifted and moved, back, forward, listening and sensing. Her face turned, slightly, after each new sensation, alert. Her tail moved, in another dimension, as if its tip was catching messages her other organs could not. She sat poised, air-light, looking, hearing, feeling, smelling, breathing, with all of her, fur, whiskers, ears
everything, in delicate vibration. — Doris Lessing

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

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

Empathic listening takes time, but it doesn't take anywhere near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you're already miles down the road; to redo; to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems; to deal with the results of not giving people psychological air. — Stephen Covey

I haven't heard any music on the BBC World Service in a long time. Maybe I'm listening at the wrong times. But not one single piece of music. — Aung San Suu Kyi

I'll talk to you about this later, Charles," she growled. To her surprise, his smile did not change. "Yes, dear, I suspect you will, but I think you'll find that I won't be listening. Good evening to you all." There was a click as the door shut behind him. There should have been a slam, but some doors never quite understand the situation. — Terry Pratchett

Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything . . . It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. Silence can be lost and also recovered. But silence cannot be imagined, although most people think so. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it. — Gordon Hempton

I wondered if I could call my experience in the chapel prayer
not a long list of asking, after all, or a rote string of words, but rather a kind of sacred listening. [p, 355] — Kim Edwards

Willie experienced the strange sensations of the first days of a new captain: a shrinking of his personal identiy, and a stretching out of his nerve ends to all the spaces and machinery of the ship. He was less free than before. He developed the apprehensive listening ears of a young mother; the ears listened on in his sleep; he never quite slept, not the way he had before. — Herman Wouk

The implications are clear: Facebook wants to build an Internet where watching films, listening to music, reading books and even browsing is done not just openly but socially and collaboratively. — Evgeny Morozov

I am sort of proud that I think radio has become a dominant influence in shaping public opinion. Good radio paints the picture for the audience. The audience has to be actively involved. Sometimes, in television, you can get lulled into sleep watching the picture, not listening to what you're hearing. — Rush Limbaugh

The stuff that I've been doing lately is political. It's not always about people who are super famous movie stars. The fact that people are still taking a chance and listening to the blacklist episodes is really exciting. — Karina Longworth

With improv, it's a combination of listening and not trying to be funny. — Kristen Wiig

That's why people use terms like flow or effortless to describe writing that they regard as really superb. They're not saying effortless in terms of it didn't seem like the writer spent any work. It simply requires no effort to read it - the same way listening to an incredible storyteller talk out loud requires no effort to pay attention. Whereas when you're bored, you're conscious of how much effort is required to pay attention. — David Foster Wallace

On St. Patrick's Day, the traditional Irish family would rise early and find a solitary sprig of shamrock to put on their somber Sunday best. Then they'd spend the morning in church listening to sermons about how thankful they should be that St. Patrick saved such a bunch of ungrateful sinners. Nobody wore green clothing as it was considered an unlucky color not suitable for church. — Rashers Tierney

Listening to classical music is a journey not a state; it's an activity not a meditation. — Armando Iannucci

People don't only speak with their mouths. They speak with their whole being. Sometimes they mean what they don't say and say what they don't mean; so listen with your whole being also. Let your whole being connect to theirs. Do not only listen to their voice, but also to their body language and their emotions. Listen with your ears and your heart. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

When you're listening to music, you listen to it with a friend one day and it sounds one way. You listen to it with another friend the next day, and it sounds a little different. Sometimes the greatest pleasure of listening is not the music that you're listening to; it's the person that you're listening to it with. — Eyvind Kang

Do you know my best quality?" she asks.
"Of your many, I could not say, my darling."
"I see the best in people. I fall in love with people when I see a window into their beings, their shining moments. I've fallen in love with so many people but the trouble is I fall out of love so quickly too. I see the worst in them just as easily.
"Do you know I fell in love with you right away? That day at the Trotters' I had noted you because you were new, of course, and then you sat down at the piano, and you played a few notes, but you played them so well, with no self consciousness, and no idea that anyone might be listening. It was in that room off the garden and you were the only one there. I was passing through on the way to the ladies' room and saw you there. I fell in love with you right then, and so I slipped my drink all over myself so I could meet you." — Janice Y.K. Lee

During my sabbatical, I spent two years not listening to my songs at all. — Ricky Martin

Short stories are often strong meat. Reading them, even listening to them, can be challenging, by which I do not mean hard work, simply that a certain amount of nerve and maturity is required. — Sarah Hall

She sat for a moment, feeling the rhythmic rattle of the train's motion. "Does it ever bother you to be in his shadow, Wayne?"
"Who? Wax? I mean, he's been putting on weight, but he's not that fat yet, is he?" He grinned, though that faded when she didn't smile back. And, in an uncharacteristic moment of solemnity, he slid his boots off the table and rested one elbow on it instead, leaning toward her.
"Nah," he said after some thought. "Nah, it doesn't. But I don't care much if people look at me or not. Sometimes my life is easier if they ain't looking at me, ya know? I like listening. — Brandon Sanderson

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

I'm not ashamed, or embarrassed. I'm happy that I grew up listening to gospel music and came from where I came from. I feel like I have a history and a story. That's what I am and that's what I'll always be from. I was never running away from it. — Katy Perry

The opening bars of a new band's song comes on the radio and Sophie quickly flicks up the volume. A good omen. She's been listening out for the song for ages. She's in the early stages of falling in love with it, where she knows the chorus but not the verses and she makes up pretend words so she doesn't have to stop singing. She sings lustily, enjoying how stupid she must look to other people, with her mouth opening and shutting and her face twisting in rock-star anguish. — Liane Moriarty

It's very you, that bike. Fast and dirty and loud."
"Watch it, missy. My girl hums like a lullaby."
"Oh yeah. Completely."
"You're just not listening right, that's all."
"I suppose my hearing's too sensitive."
"Just the opposite. You listen properly, behind the growl, it's all purrs. Pure pussycat. — Cara McKenna

My mum doesn't enjoy sometimes listening to me tell staff off, and I say to my mum, it's a kitchen, not a hair-dressing salon. — Gordon Ramsay

According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes, I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something, I'm listening to God. — Pete Seeger

Apologize for what?" "For hurting you. For not trusting you and listening to Lily and Alex instead of staying strong and doing what I wanted. — Helena Hunting

Unless you first do the hard work of answering those questions about a text, your meditations won't be grounded in what God is actually saying in the passage. Something in the passage may "hit" you - but it may hit you as expressing almost the opposite of what the biblical author, inspired by the Spirit, was saying. When that happens, you are listening to your own heart or to the spirit of your own culture, not to God's voice in the Scripture. A great number of books advise "divine reading" of the Bible today, and define the activity uncarefully as reading "not for information but to hear a personal word of God to you." This presents a false contrast. It is certainly true that meditation personalizes the Word, but before we can meditate on what the text personally means to us and our time, we must first need to know as much as possible what the author meant to say to his readers when he wrote it. — Timothy Keller

In mystical traditions, it is one's own readiness that makes experiences exoteric or esoteric. The secret isn't that you're not being told. The secret is that you're not able to hear. — Ram Dass

"Fine! Fine! I'm listening ... but it's not very interesting! ...
"Oh, that's what you think! that's what you think! but nothing is very interesting, dear Professor Y! jot this down! take some notes!"
"What notes?"
"Just write! ... that if it weren't for wars, alcohol, blood pressure and cancer, the people in our atheistic Europe would soon be bored to death of life! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Your two selves: Most people are not aware of the fact that they have two different selves. You have a mind and a spirit (consciousness), and though they seem like one thing, they are separate. The way to realize that this is true is to realize that something has to be listening to the thoughts created by your mind.

What is it that hears your thoughts?

There is the part of you that thinks and the part that hears the thoughts. The thinking part is your mind; the part that hears the thoughts is your spiritual-self. You do not actually hear thoughts through your ears, because your mind is already inside your head. The point is, your spiritual-self receives the things the mind creates in a similar way to hearing them.

Check it out: Just ask yourself, what is it that is hearing the thoughts you are thinking right now?

It is your spiritual-self, the same thing that receives all life. — Michael Smith

Journaling is the single most effective tool you may ever find for deeper intimacy with Father God and Jesus. It is a heart-to-heart method of communication with God. For you see, it is God's desire to intimately commune with you and to have you intimately commune with Him. Journaling facilitates this heart-to-heart communion - it is simply listening to each other's heart and writing it down.
Journaling helps you hear God's voice. God is speaking to you most of the time. Often you do not differentiate His voice from your own thoughts and therefore do not realize you are actually hearing God's voice. If you can learn to clearly discern His voice speaking within you, you have found the font of intimacy - the heart of God speaking to you. — Linda Boone

Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence. Moreover, they and their organs of hearing were much older than man and his music. Their power of appreciating music is therefore an uncontemplated side-faculty of a hearing apparatus which has become on other grounds what we find it to be. So it is, I believe, with man. He has not acquired his musical hearing as such, but has received a highly developed organ of hearing by a process of selection, because it was necessary to him in the selective process ; and this organ of hearing happens also to be adapted to listening to music. — August Weismann

Now you listen here, mister," I said, trying for a more adult tone. "I'm not going to spend every night listening to you try to crash you girl's head through my wall with the force of your dick alone! — Alice Clayton

Self-confidence is not pride. Just the contrary: only a person or a nation that is self-confident, in the best sense of the word, is capable of listening to others, accepting them as equals, forgiving its enemies and regretting its own guilt. — Vaclav Havel

My dad loves to be talked about, good or bad. He just loves it. He's not even hearing the content, he's just hearing him. When I'm onstage, he's looking at the audience members and can't believe that there are strangers listening to me, and he's just delighted by the whole thing. — Sarah Silverman

This is not exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to miss lunch," Alex said grumpily forty minutes later. He shifted uncomfortably and tried to see what I was doing.
I stared him back into submission. "Wait."
The art room is usually empty Thursday afternoons except for me. Ms. Evers leaves early to teach her UArts class and looks up.Of course, I am one of the few entrusted with the Secret Location of the Key.
A few feet away from where I sat perched on a stool,Alex was posed on the anchient chaise we use for figure drawing. It's a relic, probably from the Palladinetti years: chipped mahogany and dusty velvet, what little remaining stuffing pokes out from a century of holes. I was probably luxurious once. Now it's like sitting on a slightly smelly board. But I'd wanted to sketch Alex as I so often saw him, reclining with his head propped on one hand,listening or talking or coaxing me to put down the glass, already,Ella,and come here. — Melissa Jensen

I swear you don't know how to have any fun at all," I teased.
"This is not exactly my idea of it," he said wryly.
I gestured toward the ballroom. "But you're royal. It's your kind of party. You should be relaxed, letting everyone suck up to you."
He laughed and my chest tightened. God, I loved that sound.
"Kendra, not everything about being royal is enjoyable."
"So what would you consider fun?" I asked, curious.
Tristan was obviously well-liked and respected. But I'd never seen him when he wasn't in either instructor, gardinel, or prince mode. I got the feeling he wasn't very social and spent a lot of time alone.
His eyes turned thoughtful. "Relaxing in a quiet room with a nice glass of scotch, listening to Bach."
I rolled my eyes. "Are you serious, grandpa?"
He hid a smile. — Emma Raveling

What daughter thinks of her parents in flagrante delicto? Yet, my mother, even after years with him, dropped hints such as, 'You know, your father enjoys his matinees.' I never even saw them go to the movies together. What could she mean? All those afternoons, I thought she was upstairs listening to La Traviata, and those high notes apparently were not coming from the radio. — Joy Behar

Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imaginal bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion, attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Yes, I've listened to just a few audiobooks - but hope to listen to more. I've wanted to investigate how my own books sound in this format and find the experience of listening, and not reading, quite fascinating. — Joyce Carol Oates

Listening better. Caring more. Being there. Its not big changes, but the little ones in our daily lives that make all the difference. With little ways to love more, big things happen — Yehuda Berg

If I take a lick from so and so, I'm not going to get that many variations from it, because their phrases are just based on a scale. That's why I say Wes Montgomery has more substance than others. I find myself listening to the older players. You see one bar of theirs and you can get one hundred more licks out of it. — Emily Remler

A Warrior of the Light does not waste his time listening to provocations; he has a destiny to fulfill. — Paulo Coelho

We all talked at the same time, not listening to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to be seconded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another - just as in a lunatic asylum. — Leo Tolstoy

Much of poetry in the making is the fiddle with a few items. You lay a word against another and wait. You try another word. And another. Yet another. You wait. You begin again. Listening. Looking. For the elusive inevitable thing which has to arrive before it is recognised. And, like Odysseus, may not be recognised at first. — Craig Raine

You learn when you listen. You earn when you listen-not just money, but respect. — Harvey MacKay

I do not want to be bored listening to music that is muffled and known only to the poet himself. — F. Sionil Jose

As an actor, you're listening to the other person and always trying to be present and take everything they're giving you, but when they're not there, you have to produce that yourself. — Tatiana Maslany

I want the young people to pay attention because, see, back when I first met Barack, we started dating, he had everything going for him. All right, ladies, listen to this. This is what I want you to be looking for. Yes, he was handsome-still is. I think so. He was charming, talented, and oh-so smart, truly. But that is not why I married him. Now, see, I want the fellas to pay attention to this. You all listening? What truly made me fall in love with Barack Obama was his character. You hear me? It was his character. It was his decency, his honesty, his compassion and conviction. — Michelle Obama

Come sit, dear," the old woman said. "We were just discussing kelpies and changelings."

I turned a delightfully amused face at Ronan, hoping to see him embarrassed to be caught in a world of fantasy, but his face was impassive, completely unperturbed. Those were the hardest boys to ignore: the ones that weren't concerned with your opinion of them, not afraid to be caught listening to fairytales. — Annie Cosby

I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening. — Charles Durning

Take a look around, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. Now by the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence. — Plato

The therapist can interpret, advise, provide the emotional acceptance and support that nurtures personal growth, and above all, he can listen. I do not mean that he can simply hear the other, but that he will listen actively and purposefully, responding with the instrument of his trade, that is, with the personal vulnerability of his own trembling self. This listening is that which will facilitate the patient's telling of his tale, the telling that can set him free. (5) — Sheldon B. Kopp

The thing about improvisation is that it's not about what you say. It's listening to what other people say. It's about what you hear. — Paul Merton

Only other backpackers will understand what it's like to leave home to follow your dreams. Those pals back home will nod along, listening to your travel tales, but for them it's just words and pretty pictures. For you, everything has changed and you look around feeling like an alien in the most foreign place you have visited: home. That's why it's called a travel bug - you literally get bitten with this desire to keep moving and keep exploring, as the life you had back home isn't enough any more and may not ever be enough again. — Katy Colins

People of very different opinions
friends who can discuss politics, religion, and sex with perfect civility
are often reduced to red-faced rage when the topic of conversation is the serial comma or an expression like more unique. People who merely roll their eyes at hate crimes feel compelled to write jeremiads on declining standards when a newspaper uses the wrong form of its. Challenge my most cherished beliefs about the place of humankind in God's creation, and while I may not agree with you, I'll fight to the death for your right to say it. But dangle a participle in my presence, and I'll consider you a subliterate cretin no longer worth listening to, a menace to decent society who should be removed from the gene pool before you do any more damage. — Jack Lynch

Self-growth does not always mean that we've changed. It means that we've stopped listening to what others say we 'ought' to be doing and finally live our lives according to our own values. — Anthea Syrokou

Stevie: (Not listening) That you can do these two things ... and not understand how it ... SHATTERS THE GLASS!!?? How it cannot be dealt with-how stop and forgiveness have nothing to do with it? and how I am destroyed? How you are? How I cannot admit it though I know it!? How I cannot deny it because I cannot admit it!? Cannot admit it, because it is outside of denying!? — Edward Albee

Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, "This ... this ... "; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos. — Paul Goodman

Ricky just listens. He isn't shocked. He isn't surprised. He listens to me because he knows. He knows the shame and the guilt and the sorrow and the rage. And he does not judge me. He just listens. — Emily Andrews

It's a fact of life that how you dress affects how you are perceived and whether your contribution to a meeting is registered as worth listening to. It was most alarming the way people's attitudes changed when I started wearing my designer suits to committee meetings. Obviously, it's not just the clothes that count; you have got to have something worth saying. But it si true that some people's views are dismissed before they speak because others perceive them as just a secretary! — Stephanie Ellis

Forget "minimum viable products" - ever since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others' successes. — Peter Thiel

Thinking of you is pretty, hopeful,
It is like listening to the most beautiful song
From the most beautiful voice on earth ...
But hope is not enough for me any more,
I don't want to listen to songs any more,
I want to sing. — Nazim Hikmet

I never read in school. I got really bad grades-D's and F's and C's in some classes, and A's and B's in other classes. In the second week of the 11th grade, I just quit. When I was in school, it was really difficult. Almost everything I learned, I had to learn by listening. My report cards always said that I was not living up to my potential. — Cher

The prayer of listening makes things simple but it also makes us vulnerable, and that is frightening. Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church, and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings. To listen at prayer is to take the chance of hearing the voice of Christ in the poor, the weak, those whom we love and those whom we do not love. — Benedict Groeschel

Prayer is not just asking. It is listening for God's orders. — Billy Graham

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions. — Parker J. Palmer

After listening to hundreds and hundreds of [people's] stories over the last twenty years, I think I would have to say that most people do not recognize the strength of the life force in them or the many ways that it shows itself to them...So when people first come, this is the place we usually start - talking about life itself, our attitude toward it, our experience of it, our trust or distrust of it. Developing an eye to see it, in others and in ourselves. In the beginning is the life force. After more than fifty years of living, I have learned it can be trusted. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Leela: Why are we listening to them? It is a waste of time.
The Doctor; It is difficult to know what will be a waste of time until after the time has been wasted, by which time it is too late. So predicting what will be a waste of time is something of a waste of time. Unless it gives you pleasure of course when it probably doesn't count as a waste of time.
Leela (yawning): I am sorry I did not hear what you said, Doctor.
The Doctor (smiling): That was a waste of time then. — Chris Boucher

We should all know this: that listening is not talking; [it] is the gifted and great role and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one. — Brenda Ueland

Please, help me. Young werewolves in love. I turned to walk into the house, moving carefully.
I had never much believed in God. Well, that's not quite true. I believed that there was a God, or something close enough to it to warrant the name if there were demons, there had to be angels, right? If there was a Devil, somewhere, there had to be a God. But He & I had never really seen things in quite the same terms.
All the same. I flashed a look up at the ceiling. I didn't say or think any words, but if God was listening, I hoped he got the message nonetheless. I didn't want of these children getting themselves killed. — Jim Butcher

What he had said to me a moment ago was true. I hadn't been listening to him, not for years. I'd wanted him to be better for so long that I had stopped hearing him tell me he was sick. For the first time I saw him now as a man, not a member of a family. A separate person, who had been trying as hard as he could for most of his life simply to get by. — Adam Haslett

Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person. — John Coltrane

We [Virgin Group] have been successful not by wasting time scrutinising our competitors but by looking at ourselves from the point of view of our customers do and seeking feedback through listening. — Richard Branson

Those who hear and do not understand are like the deaf. Of them the proverb says: "Present, they are absent." — Heraclitus

Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room. — Charles Dickens

So our ears got used to listening to jazz in the place that it was that the bass player could not play. No one really realized it and really addressed it until the bass players who could play their instrument came along and started doing something with it. — Miroslav Vitous

Prayer is not first and foremost talking to God, it's first and foremost listening to God. — Leslie Ludy

To not look at the data is foolish, but to look at the data as having all the answers is even more foolish. It is a collision of new-school statistics and statisticians against old-school managers, coaches, and instructors. Neither side is right, neither is wrong; there is so much to be gained from listening to both sides. — Tim Kurkjian

I need to be alone. After a full day of talking, smiling, listening, showing, nodding, translating, I want to be alone. I want simply to come home, close the door, and sit in silence, gathering up the bits of myself that have come loose. I want to think, or not think. I want to rest. — Jamie Zeppa

But being able to talk to so many patients from so many walks of life gives a tremendous window into people's lives. This is not to say I want to write about individual patients, but I think that after listening to the concerns of people who are so different from me, I can more realistically portray characters who are so different from me. — Daniel Mason

I'm not attached to a certain scene. There was certain music - and techno was a part of it - that really formulated something for me, that really was a direct connection to what I experienced in my life. Going to parties and listening to techno at home helped form my musical identity. And that changed throughout my life. — Pantha Du Prince

And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement. To spend a Saturday afternoon mopping your kitchen floor while listening to opera on the radio, and to go that night to an Indian restaurant with a friend and be home by nine o'clock - these are enough. They are gifts. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I think I've been called edgy - but in all honesty, there is a safety in what I do because I'm always the idiot. Unless you're just listening to buzz words and not taking into account the context of the situation, you see I'm always the ignoramus. — Sarah Silverman