Real Listening Quotes & Sayings

I kept listening, kept going to see people, kept sitting in with people, kept listening to records. If I wanted to learn somebody's stuff, like with Clapton, when I wanted to learn how he was getting some of his sounds - which were real neat - I learned how to make the sounds with my mouth and then copied that with my guitar. — Stevie Ray Vaughan

Besides, static isn't so bad to listen to. Beats listening to your thoughts when your thoughts are a scramble of stories and you're having trouble telling what's real and what's a dream and what's a coincidence and what's basically what. — Aaron Starmer

The Tone is the Message. — Kevin T. McCarney

The real miracle here, or stunning thing to me, is that Angela Merkel thought that she could talk on a cellphone and no one would be listening to her, allies or foes. — Joe Trippi

I like the plain, old-fashioned churches, built for use, not show, where people met for hearty praying and preaching, and where everybody made their own music instead of listening to opera singers, as we do now. I don't care if the old churches were bare and cold, and the seats hard, there was real piety in them, and the sincerity of it was felt in the lives of the people. I don't want a religion that I put away with my Sunday clothes, and don't take out till the day comes round again; I want something to see and feel and live by day-by-day, — Louisa May Alcott

I don't like listening to records a lot after they're done. There's just no real nourishment there for me. — Tom Waits

Faith isn't hearing the voice of God. It's listening and hearing nothing, but moving toward the miracle anyway. God hears us even when we don't hear him. Knowing that requires real faith. — Toni Sorenson

We think we know our friends, our lovers, but really all we know is pieces of them. Fragments we learn by watching, sharing time and place, listening to their stories; over the years there are more and more of these fragments and we can draw lines between them, fill them with what we imagine is truth. But of course we only know what they show us; lines we think jig here may actually curl somewhere else altogether. The lines we draw aren't always real, and often have more to do with our own selves. — Elizabeth Joy Arnold

Meant to be together? Are you listening to yourself? This isn't one of your fairy tales, Fallon. This is real life, and in the real world you have to bust your ass for the happy ever after! — Colleen Hoover

My real passion is for opera. It was born and developed by listening to records, and my dream as a child was to record entire operas when I grew up, and this dream came true. — Andrea Bocelli

The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I'm willing to let them change me, something happens between us that's more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues. — Alan Alda

What I hear all the time is to stop and listen. When you do a scene 30 times, and know the lines, you stop listening. The point is to listen, that's the only thing that can make it real. — Parker Stevenson

THE REAL ART OF LISTENING IS RESPONDING TO A PERSON'S FEELINGS, NOT HIS/HER WORDS — Dr. Ingrid Schweiger

I'm a real music fan, so I listen to all kinds of music all the time. I listen to a lot of what my friends or people I know are listening to. I'm always checking out new bands. — Conor Oberst

Mack was lying in the darkness, listening intently. "Aren't you talking about a real indwelling, not just some positional, theological thing?" "Of course," answered Jesus, his voice strong and sure. — William Paul Young

He was smiling and listening. So even if the "real past" and memories of it are completely different, he smiles without saying anything. And then he cries. He cries without telling anyone. — Sakura Tsukuba

Lately I've been falling asleep listening to 'Common One' by Van Morrison, specifically the song 'Summertime in England.' It's 15 minutes long, so to make it through the entire song is a real task unto itself, but Van has that emotional payoff that makes even his most tiresome songs more powerful than most people's entire catalog. — Nate Ruess

Nevertheless, some free time remains. What's to be done? How do you use your time? In dedicating yourself to helping people? But basically other people don't interest you. Listening to records? That used to be a solution, but as the years go by you have to say that music moves you less and less. Taken in its widest sense, a spot of do-it-yourself can be a way out. But the fact is that nothing can halt the ever-increasing recurrence of those moments when your total isolation, the sensation of an all-consuming emptiness, the foreboding that your existence is nearing a painful and definitive end all combine to plunge you into a state of real suffering. And yet you haven't always wanted to die. You — Michel Houellebecq

If anybody is interested in listening to good modern music, I would recommend Jim Fassett, 'Symphony of the Birds.' It's really beautiful ... with real birds. — Gael Garcia Bernal

Scientists blame the audience for being too stupid, shallow, or lazy to understand. There has been a fascinating debate in the blogosphere lately about communicating science to the public, and it's clear that most scientists just don't get it. They can't be bothered to talk to real people. Nobody will care about your issues if the price they have to pay is listening to a long lecture from Morton the science bug. — Mark Powell

I think listening to real classic soul material made me learn how to feel music that's sung. — Gavin DeGraw

Have you ever watched people when they don't know you're watching them? Like in a movie theater or a concert. When people get caught up in watching something, their faces change. The lines on their faces get softer, because whatever they're watching has made them forget how they think they're supposed to be looking. Instead, they just ARE - just sitting there, listening and watching and being real. — Claire Legrand

Real-life discussions involve a great many bores and boors who have never learned that the art of conversation demands listening as well as talking. — Susan Jacoby

While her emotions were very real and they gnawed at her with a raw sincerity, she was listening to something deeper. She was listening to her will, not letting what she felt dictate what she would do. Didn't let it dictate her life. — Charles Martin

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it's not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That's how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be a musician. — Dave Grohl

I think that was going on with bands like The Strokes was that the idea of the band, a real band, was making a comeback. My brother in law is an example- before he was listening to some country music, even some of that awful nu-metal stuff , but there weren't many options really. — James Mercer

I wanted to go away. It took me not listening for them to listen to me. Sometimes people don't listen until bad things happen. They realize then they should have listen instead of talked. Sometimes people are too busy hearing what they want to hear, seeing what they want to see, they don't care what's real only what they think is real. — Katie McGarry

It's easy listening to a record, but a live performance is so personal and real. — Gin Wigmore

And sitting there against the wall, listening to Billy's inhalations and exhalations, and watching the light in the glass and through the glass, Cleve knew without doubt that even if he escaped this trap, it was only a temporary respite; that this long night, its minutes, its hours, were a foretaste of a longer vigil. He almost despaired then; felt his soul sink into a hole from which there seemed to be no hope of retrieval. Here was the real world; he wept. Not joy, not light, not looking forward; only this waiting in ignorance, without hope, even of fear, for fear came only to those with dreams to lose. — Clive Barker

The third facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that the client is experiencing and communicates this understanding to the client. When functioning best, the therapist is so much inside the private world of the other that he or she can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. This kind of sensitive, active listening is exceedingly rare in our lives. We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know. — Carl R. Rogers

What is the use of merely listening to lectures? The real thing is practice. — Ramakrishna

The sensuous person is liquid, flowing, fluid. Each experience, and he becomes it. Seeing a sunset, he is the sunset. Seeing the night, dark night, beautiful silent darkness, he becomes the darkness. In the morning he becomes the light. He is all that life is. He tastes life from every nook and corner, hence he becomes rich. This is real richness. Listening to music he is music, listening to the sound of water he becomes that sound. And when the wind passes through a bamboo grove, and the cracking bamboos, and he is not far away from them: he is amidst them, one of them - he is a bamboo. — Osho

I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions. — Lee Iacocca

So to you, or anyone else who has spent four minutes on me in some way
listening to just one song, or watching one of my videos ... .Thank you. I love you like I love sparkles and having the last word. And that's real love. — Taylor Swift

Vulnerability brings honesty. We become most honest with ourselves when we are faced with real fear around a situation or an outcome. Yet many still stay in their comfort zone, listening to their own excuses and lies. — Tony Curl

The way we interact online becomes the norm for how we interact offline. Facebook and Twitter communications are pretty short, clipped, and very rapid. And that is not a way to have a good conversation with someone. Moreover, a good conversation involves listening and timing and that is pretty much taken away with Internet communications, because you are not there with the person. So someone could send you a message and you could ignore it, or someone could send you a message and you get to it two hours later. But if you are in real time in a real place with real bodies and a real voice, that is a very different dynamic. You shouldn't treat another person the way you would interact with Twitter. — Douglas Groothuis

The church is the real thing when it is not consumed with the assertion of power in culture, but it is driven by service to others. The word ministry translates the Greek word diakonia, which means service. The church must be about serving others. When a church can lay claim to all three criteria, namely, preaching of the Word, being true to its confession, and focusing on serving, then it's a church worth going to. And then it's a church full of sermons worth listening to. — Stephen J. Nichols

The parent is the strongest statement that the child hears regarding what it means to be alive and real. More than what we say or do, the way we are expresses what we think it means to be alive. So the articulate parent is less a telling than a listening individual. — Polly Berrien Berends

Learning to listen relationally, listen with cool heads and clear boundaries, listen with the quietness of the heart and the gentleness of the body, means having a self so developed it can afford to yield. — Terrence Real

I don't like listening to music that isn't real. — Joss Stone

It was not the privileged and the fortunate who took in the Jews in France. It was the marginal and damaged, which should remind us that there are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish. If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. If you bomb a city, you leave behind death and destruction. But you create a community of remote misses. If you take away a mother or a father, you cause suffering and despair. But one time in ten, out of that despair rises as indomitable force. You see the giant and the shepherd in the Valley of Elah and your eye is drawn to the man with sword and shield and the glittering armor. But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine. — Malcolm Gladwell

I know what love feels like. That is one thing I have found. That is one thing that is much clearer because of fibromyalgia. Because once you experience real pain you recognize the vibration, the feeling of being healthy, happy and loved. If I'm not living from my heart, I get sick. I need to do things that feed my soul, like being with people I love, or playing my guitar, or listening to music. — A. J. Langer

Anytime we're not converting to others the same glorious realities that sealed our own redemption in Christ, we're always an inch or less away from doing something wicked to somebody else - from not listening to them, not caring about them, not working hard for them, not valuing them, and all the various, ugly expressions that our lack of real love can embody. We won't give people the benefit of the doubt. We won't feel inclined to be gracious. We'll all too quickly assume our attack positions, establishing ourselves on a war footing. We'll flare up at perceived injustices and fight back with counterstrikes. We'll turn against people. We'll do it all. And know we're doing it. And sometimes, we won't even care. — Matt Chandler

I knew what real instruments I wanted and, in some cases, who I wanted to play them. I had started listening to a lot of ambient music and jazz and I wanted to incorporate stuff like that, too. — Dan Bejar

An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied ... It is virtually impossible at this distance merely by reading, or listening, or even seeing photographs or motion pictures, to grasp at all the real significance of the situation. And yet the whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment. — George C. Marshall

I said very little. I knew that for the time being I was the open air, the place to put the words, not a real interlocutor. And then, ekthout a transition of any kind, she began to tell me .... {p. 134} — Siri Hustvedt

Real communication is an attitude, an environment. It is the most interactive of all processes. It requires countless hours of eyeball to eyeball, back and forth. It involves more listening than talking. — Jack Welch

The Internet is a very intimate entertainment experience. I'm in my own apartment talking to people, and I want them to feel like they're with me in my apartment. So if I'm listening to them and taking ideas from them and being honest with how I'm feeling, it resonates even more that we're having a real, actual conversation. — Grace Helbig

As an American I must say I haven't been very encouraged by the way in which the people who run the government in the United States have been listening to those contrary voices. And so long as the power to run the world lies in the hands of people who are quite happy to see it get warmer, or fuel be used more, then would those people who oppose it are crying in the wilderness - that's the real problem. — Richard Lewontin

The goal is to identify what your counterparts actually need (monetarily, emotionally, or otherwise) and get them feeling safe enough to talk and talk and talk some more about what they want. The latter will help you discover the former. Wants are easy to talk about, representing the aspiration of getting our way, and sustaining any illusion of control we have as we begin to negotiate; needs imply survival, the very minimum required to make us act, and so make us vulnerable. But neither wants nor needs are where we start; it begins with listening, making it about the other people, validating their emotions, and creating enough trust and safety for a real conversation to begin. We — Chris Voss

If you are preaching on the first commandment ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me") or Ephesians 5:5 (which calls greed idolatry) or any of the several hundred other places in the Bible that speak of idols, you could quote David Foster Wallace, the late postmodern novelist. In his Kenyon College commencement speech he argues eloquently and forcefully that "everyone worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."32 He goes on to say everyone has to "tap real meaning in life," and whatever you use to do that, whether it is money, beauty, power, intellect, or something else, it will drive your life because it is essentially a form of worship. He enumerates why each form of worship does not merely make you fragile and exhausted but can "eat you alive." If you lay out his argument in support of fundamental biblical teaching, even the most secular audience will get quiet and keep listening to what you say next. — Timothy J. Keller

When I'm listening to stuff on the computer or through a horrible little speaker on my phone, and then I hear the real version with the bass and everything, I sometimes don't like it as much. I definitely believe that any medium is viable in that respect. — Kevin Shields

Mario'd fallen in love with the first Madam Psychosis programs because he felt like he was listening to someone sad read out loud from yellow letters she'd taken out of a shoebox on a rainy P.M, stuff about heartbreak and people you loved dying and U.S. woe, stuff that was real. It is increasingly hard to find valid art that is about stuff that is real in this way. The older Mario gets, the more confused he gets about the fact that everyone at E.T.A. over the age of about Kent Blott finds stuff that's really real uncomfortable and they get embarrassed. It's like there's some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn't happy. — David Foster Wallace

Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. — Alan Alda

Dialogue is a token of genuine Christian love, because it indicates our steadfast resolve to rid our minds of the prejudices and caricatures that we may entertain about other people, to struggle to listen through their ears and look through their eyes so as to grasp what prevents them from hearing the gospel and seeing Christ, to sympathize with them in all their doubts, fears and "hang-ups." For such sympathy will involve listening, and listening means dialogue. It is once more the challenge of the incarnation, to renounce evangelism by inflexible slogans, and instead to involve ourselves sensitively in the real dilemmas that people face. — John R.W. Stott

Should I give money to homeless folks or beggars? Jesus said to give to everyone who asks. That's a tough command. Sometimes we wonder what Jesus would do in the Calcutta slums or in our heroin-haunted streets, where folks ask for change on every corner. What we can say with confidence is that Jesus would not ignore them. "Give to everyone who asks" means "do not ignore people." We can always give dignity, attention, time, a listening ear. Sometimes we give money, sometimes not. But we can always give love. Ironically, giving money can be a cheap way to love someone. Many folks give money because they don't want to have an interaction; they just want to get someone off their back. There are times when giving money can even be a way to avoid the responsibility that a real relationship might demand. So I want to suggest, sure, give money, but give more than money . . . give yourself. — Shane Claiborne

When I was 13, listening to Choice FM, I would listen to a lot of R&B from America, and whenever a British person tried to do it, it didn't really work, they just sounded like they were trying to copy that whole style. Now the music sounds British, something real rather than an imitation. — Katy B

We're, w-we're." Green was at a complete lost for words. He had his body turned away from Curtis as he hid behind Ruxs, his hard-on still pitching a huge tent in his thin pants. "I want my room sound-proofed. I'll end up traumatized for real this time," Curtis grumbled as he walked sleepily to the bathroom. His hair stuck up in a bunch of directions. He had one sock on and his robe was hanging off his shoulder. He continued to seethe while Green and Ruxs went to their room. "If you want me to grieve, then make me keep listening to that crap. — A.E. Via

It's not like I listened to music and then stopped. I still don't have a real appreciation for music because I didn't really start listening to it until my 20s. — Kumail Nanjiani

I'm worried I will leave grad school and no longer be able to speak English. I know this woman in grad school, a friend of a friend, and just listening to her talk is scary. The semiotic dialetics of intertextual modernity. Which makes no sense at all. Sometimes I feel that they live in a parallel universe of academia speaking acadamese instead of English and they don't really know what's happening in the real world. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

With real relationship within, you are as delicateness really listening. — John De Ruiter

When we don't tell those we love about what's really going on or listen carefully to what they have to say, we tend to fill in the blanks with stories. — Sharon Salzberg

It is not real," he whispered. "This place is only a thought that has grabbed hold of you. It cannot harm you. You are not of this place, and it has no power over you. You do not need it, nor do you owe it your allegiance." I nodded, listening only to his words and not to the rattling of the windows, which had begun as soon as we stepped inside. — Rita Murphy

When I tell children that they are far too dependent on their gizmos, they do not deny it. But they really don't care. This is their real life - texting about trivial things; listening to numbing music on their private headphones. The machines block everything out - you create your own little trivial world. — Bill O'Reilly

Real communication is impossible without listening. — Ralph C. Smedley

The light bounced off the water and shimmered against the buildings on the other side of the river. Joseph walked, listening to the sound of what was beneath his feet, and soon he noticed he was alone. He turned and saw Frankie had stopped beside Albert and filled her jacket pockets. Looking at the two of them, Joseph wondered for a moment if Leo had ever come down here to go mudlarking, his red hair shining in the sun. the vision seemed so vivid, but then Joseph remembered that Leo wasn't real, and the boy dissolved like smoke into the winter sky. — Brian Selznick

Enough to using Texas as a political laboratory for testing far-right ideas. Enough to using Texas as a workshop for fattening the wallets of their special interest friends and supporters. And enough of politicians listening only to each other, rather than real Texans. — Wendy Davis

This is for girls who have the tendency to stay up at night listening to music that reminds them of their current situation. Who hide their fears, hurt, pain and tears under the smiles, laughs and giggles on a daily basis. The girls who wear their heart on their sleeve. The girls who pray that things will work out just once and they'll be satisfied. The girls who sceam and cry to their pillows because everyone else fails to listen. The girls who have so many secrets but wont tell a soul. The girls who have mistakes and regrets as a daily moral. The girls that never win. The girls that stay up all night thinking about that one boy and hoping that he'll notice her one day. The girls who take life as it comes, to the girls who are hoping that it'll get better somewhere down the road. For the girls who love with all their heart although it always gets broken. To girls who think it's over. To real girls, to all girls: You're beautiful. — Zayn Malik

In the Middle Ages, as in antiquity, they read usually, not as today, principally with the eyes, but with the lips, pronouncing what they saw, and with the ears, listening to the words pronounced. hearing what is called the "voices of the pages." It is a real acoustical reading. — Jean Leclercq

Our relations seemed poor to me, and I wasn't surprised that the US intelligence picture in the Horn of Africa was weak. Much of what I read consisted of recycled news headlines repackaged as intelligence. Real, valuable intelligence only came from real people, yet we hadn't done much to meet and work with the people. — Eric Greitens

Not everyone wants to take up meditation, but most people can feel an alignment with values like mutual respect, insightful investigation, listening to one another.
Meditation is a way to help those values become real in day-to-day life, helping people to understand themselves more and more and have a way to not get lost in old patterns. — Sharon Salzberg

You can't live your life worrying that the world is staring at you. When you let people's opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power...The key to feeling confident is always listening to your inner self - the real you. And in the kingdom of God, the real you is more precious than rubies. — Jeffrey Holland

Spirituality doesn't mean a blind belief in a spiritual teaching. Spirituality is a practice that brings relief, communication, and transformation. Everyone needs a spiritual dimension in life. Without a spiritual dimension, it's very challenging to be with the daily difficulties we all encounter. With a spiritual practice, you're no longer afraid. Along with your physical body, you have a spiritual body. The practices of breathing, walking, concentration, and understanding can help you greatly in dealing with your emotions, in listening to and embracing your suffering, and in helping you to recognize and embrace the suffering of another person. If we have this capacity, then we can develop a real and lasting spiritual intimacy with ourselves and with others. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Listening to Evanescence makes me want to break up with a girl in real time as a giant antique hourglass falls to the floor in slow motion. — Dane Cook

You see, to me, the art of music is listening to it, not playing it. The real art of it is hearing it. — Keith Richards

If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work, cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and do when you get to your desk. Then you'll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which real life deviates from the narrative inside your head. If you want to become better at listening to your children, tell yourself stories about what they said to you at dinnertime last night. Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you'll encode those experiences deeper in your brain. If you need to improve your focus and learn to avoid distractions, take a moment to visualize, with as much detail as possible, what you are about to do. It is easier to know what's ahead when there's a well-rounded script inside your head. — Charles Duhigg

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

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

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 United States, almost alone today, offers the liberties and the privileges and the tools of freedom. In this land the citizens are still invited to write their plays and books, to paint their pictures, to meet for discussion, to dissent as well as to agree, to mount soapboxes in the public square, to enjoy education in all subjects without censorship, to hold court and judge one another, to compose music, to talk politics with their neighbors without wondering whether the secret police are listening, to exchange ideas as well as goods, to kid the government when it needs kidding, and to read real news of real events instead of phony news manufactured by a paid agent of the state. This is a fact and should give every person pause. — E.B. White

But what if
I realize that I don't want him to disappear. I may not fully believe he's real; I may not understand why I can hear him speaking to me
but I sort of like it. I like knowing that of all the people in the world, I'm the only one listening to what he has to say. It makes me feel like we've been destined for each other. — Jodi Picoult

Republicans are listening to America's job creators and working to address their concerns with real solutions. — Peter Roskam

I patterned the accent after this guy I was in a play with, but that was three years ago. Now I'm listening to Tony Head (Giles in Buffy), who sounds kind of like Spike in real life. It's much more tough-guy talk in real life. His accent (as Giles) is just as fake as mine. His is nice and gritty, but it's not North London. I'm always afraid that I'm morphing over into Tony Head, wherever he's from. — James Marsters

Here are the real jewels of mankind: Breathing, smiling, walking, watching the sunrise, listening to the birds, smelling the forests ... Know thy true treasures! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I believed in fictional characters as if they were a part of real life. Poetry was important, too. My parents had memorized poems from their days attending school in New York City and loved reciting them. We all enjoyed listening to these poems and to music as well. — Alice McDermott

Watch the actors who are on a very high frequency, very alert to everything and very much in touch with their feelings -- simple. Acting should be economical and simple. It's not complicated. So many actors make it complicated, fill it with screaming, yelling, crying, a lot of emotion but no real inner action, no real focus. Actors who have good technique are pursuing a very simple objective. They know what they're listening for, they know what they're looking for. They know what the obstacles are that stand in the way and what they're doing to get what they want. They allow themselves to respond right off their partner, spontaneously.

Acting is not difficult. It's simply a matter of defining the action. — Michael Beckett

A relatively primitive village in which there are still real feasts, common artistic shared expressions, and no literacy at all is more advanced culturally and more healthy mentally than our educated, newspaper-reading radio-listening culture. — Erich Fromm

The Jackson gaffe, with its Oedipal violence ("I want to cut his nuts out"), is especially poignant because it goes to the heart of a generational conflict in the black community, concerning what we will say in public and what we say in private. For it has been a point of honor, among the civil rights generation, that any criticism or negative analysis of our community, expressed, as they often are by white politicians, without context, without real empathy or understanding, should not be repeated by a black politician when the white community is listening, even if (especially if) the criticism happens to be true (more than half of all black American children live in single-parent households). — Zadie Smith

I trust the mystery. I trust what comes in silence and what comes in nature where there's no diversion. I think the lack of stimulation allows us to hear and experience a deeper river that's constant, still, vibrant, and real. And the process of deep listening with attention and intention catalyzes and mobilizes exactly what's needed at that time. — Angeles Arrien

In listening and stillness there is nobody who is still, and this stillness doesn't refer to any object; it is absolutely objectless; it is our real nature. — Jean Klein

My real log is written in the sea and sky; the sails talking with the rain and the stars amid the sounds of the sea, the silences full of secret things between my boat and me, like the times I spent as a child listening to the forest talk. — Bernard Moitessier

The mission sat in a converted store front on the corner of a medium-busy street. There was a small crowd gathered in front - no real surprise, since they gave out food and clothing, all all you had to do was spend a few moments of your life listening to the good reverend explain why you were going to Hell. It seemed like a pretty good bargain, even to me, but I wasn't hungry. — Jeff Lindsay

Although she was unenthusiastic about theology, she had long since realised that the real point of prayer was not to flatter those addressed; prayer was a form of meditation, she decided, and it did not detract from its efficacy that nobody was listening. — Alexander McCall Smith

Asking questions is an opportunity for creativity and personal expression, both for the person asking and the person answering. — Sharon Salzberg

Listening and trying to understand the needs of those we would communicate with seems to me to be the essential prerequisite of any real communication. And we might as well aim for real communication. — Fred Rogers

A pair of werewolves occupied another booth. They were eating raw shanks of lamb and arguing about who would win in a fight: Dumbledore from Harry Potter books or Magnus Bane.
"Dumbledore would totally win," said the first one. "He has the badass Killing Curse."
The second lycanthrope made a trenchant point. "But Dumbledore isn't real."
"I don't think Magnus Bane is real either," scoffed the first. "Have you ever met him?"
"This is so weird," said Clary, slinking down in her seat. "Are you listening to them?"
"No. It's rude to eavesdrop," said Jace. — Cassandra Clare

While we can learn or study techniques for almost anything we might want to accomplish, real understanding is not the mere accumulation of knowledge. Understanding cannot be realized by listening or reading about the realization of others. It must be achieved firsthand via substantive, direct perception in the moment. — H.E. Davey

Most of the EDM tracks right now are not very musical, they have one note that keeps playing. You really don't need to be a musician to do records like this, so I think me playing guitar for so many years and listening to rock 'n' roll and real music helps me when I work with vocalists like Lana Del Ray and Miley Cyrus. — Cedric Gervais

I love listening to old school stuff. I listen to some new cats out here, but I'm really into, like, Tech N9ne and his clique; I really like Eminem and those guys - cats that got real flow: I really connect with that. But I do love rock. I love a lot of electronica because I love programming synthesizers. — Sir Mix-a-Lot