One Sided Conversation Quotes & Sayings

On these expanded membranes [butterfly wings] Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole world. — Henry Walter Bates

The round silence of night,
one note on the stave
of the infinite.

Ripe with lost poems,
I step naked into the street.
The blackness riddled
by the singing of crickets:
sound,
that dead
will-o'-the-wisp,
that musical light
perceived
by the spirit.

A thousand butterfly skeletons
sleep within my walls.

A wild crowd of young breezes
over the river.

- Hour of Stars (1920) — Federico Garcia Lorca

I think humor is key [to a successful middle-grade novel]. Kids like to read for entertainment, and the best way to entertain kids is to make them laugh. — Jeff Kinney

I eat 'The Walking Dead' like its made of brains. Can't even watch the show, I love the book so much. — Joss Whedon

In the realm of culture in America, white European culture has held the floor for centuries; just as with any one-sided conversation, a balance can only be achieved if the speaker who has dominated speaks less and listens more. — David Mura

But why? Why do you need prophets to tell you how you ought to live? Why do you need anyone to tell you how you ought to live — Daniel Quinn

He looked like a Greek god. Jade's thoughts snapped from togas to white sheets to sex in the span of two seconds. — Alyssa Goodnight

A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It's a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer. Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there's a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith. The writer has to choose the right words to express his sentences, and then, once he has sealed the envelope, he has to place those thoughts in the hands of someone else, trusting that the feelings will be delivered, and that the recipient will understand the writer's intent. How childish to think that could be easy. — Adriana Trigiani

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

We fought over the bill when it came. By fought I mean: I insisted loudly on paying half and he responded with beleaguered silence. Instead of discussing it or attempting to engage in my one-sided conversation, he wordlessly put his credit card in the holder; he kept it carefully out of my reach as I continued to list all the reasons we should split the check, not the least of which was that we'd agreed earlier that this was not a date,
then handed it stealthily to the waiter as he passed. I was still oblivious, making my case, when Quinn signed the receipt."Wait- what are you doing?" I looked from him to the paper slip.Silence. Scribble. Silence. "Did you just sign that? Was that the check?" My voiced hitched, my eyes wide with pseudo outrage. He glanced up at me, something like mock innocence lighting his features, and said, "I'm sorry. Did you want to split that? — Penny Reid

With your lips on mine, your song still in my ears, I forget that I never said yes, that all of it - the dance, us - was a foregone conclusion. You told me to be your girlfriend. You didn't wait for me to answer about prom. I gave you my heart on a silver fucking platter and you ate it, piece by bloody piece. — Heather Demetrios

And then there was a long conversation, mostly one-sided, definitely biased toward the LA guy doing all the talking, which Reacher couldn't hear, and Chang's facial expressions could have launched a thousand competing scenarios, so he got no real guidance from her. He had a sense the guy worked hard on one thing after another, episodically. And in great detail. Maybe he was an actor. Or a movie person. The context was unclear. In the end Reacher gave up trying to construct a plausible narrative, and just waited. — Lee Child

That's the great thing about being in a band: it's a gang for people who are too wimpy to fight. You can create a gang and have an identity and fight for something and stand up for something just by making pop songs. They're my gang members and gang members are for life, and if you try and leave, we execute you. That's the way it goes. A simple bang, back of the head, into the river, and we keep moving on. — Torquil Campbell

The prophet is the eye of the people. — Lailah Gifty Akita

A pair of glasses on which the temperature and chance of rain pops up or someone's trying to schedule me for a project or a drink is not going to help with reveries about justice, meaning, and the beautiful deep marine blue of nearly every dusk. — Rebecca Solnit

Does that feel better?" she asked, not expecting any sort of an answer but feeling nonetheless that she ought to continue with her one-sided conversation. "I really don't know very much about caring for the ill, but it just seems to me like you'd want something cool on your brow. I know if I were sick, that's how I'd feel."
He shifted restlessly, mumbling something utterly incoherent.
"Really?" Sophie replied, trying to smile but failing miserably. "I'm glad you feel that way."
He mumbled something else.
"No," she said, dabbing the cool cloth on his ear, "I'd have to agree with what you said the first time." He went still again.
"I'd be happy to reconsider," she said worriedly. "Please don't take offense." He didn't move.
Sophie sighed. One could only converse so long with an unconscious man before one started to feel extremely silly. — Julia Quinn

I despise this weakness in myself
this endless one-sided conversation that takes the place of action ... — Stef Penney

The end occurred mostly in her whispers and his silence - because he couldn't whisper and they didn't want to wake Colin's parents. They succeeded in staying quiet, in part because it felt like the air had been shocked out of him. Paradoxically, he felt as if his getting dumped was the only thing happening on the entire dark and silent planet, and also as if it weren't happening at all. He felt himself drifting away from the one-sided whispered conversation, wondering if maybe everything big and heartbreaking and incomprehensible is a paradox. — John Green

Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. — Stephen King

How old were you when you first realized that your parents were human? That they were not omnipotent, that what they said did not, in fact, go, they had dreams and feelings and scars? Or have you not realized that yet?Do you still call your parents and have a one-sided conversation with them, child to parent, not adult to adult? — Eleanor Brown

From "Lady In Waiting" in the anthology The Morgue :

Now I have yet to meet the corpse could hold up its end of a conversation, so at most I might whistle while fixin' one up 'stead of engagin' myself in any small talk that's goin' to be so one-sided anyways. But Cindy Flowers' corpse weren't no ordinary body when it walked upright, and it sure weren't ordinary just because it was lyin' before me in a pine wood box. So for the first time I felt the need to get a few things said to one of our visitors, and I leaned down to get myself real close to her face. Her eyes was closed 'cause Pa had already sewed her lids shut. — Kenneth C. Goldman

The philosopher Schopenhauer said, 'Opposites throw light upon each other.' Beauty does not belong exclusively to the regions of light and loveliness, cut off from the conversation of oppositions. The vigour and vitality of beauty derives precisely from the heart of difference. No life is one-sided; the life of each of us is animated by the inner conversation of forces which counter and complement each other. Beauty inhabits the cutting edge of creativity
mediating between the known and unknown, light and darkness, masculine and feminine, visible and invisible, chaos and meaning, sound and silence, self and others. — John O'Donohue