Talking Sense Quotes & Sayings

Fact is, the work place to a great extent is "where we live." We need star accountants. Boffo saleswomen. Over-the-top creatives in marketing and new product development. And so on. But, since we're effectively talking about "where we live," good sense and good business and "good" engagement throughout the "supply chain," from vendor's vendor to customer's customer, we would benefit mightily-including on the P & L-if we insisted (!) on: "Pleasant." "Caring." "Engaged." — Tom Peters

None of this made any sense to Benjamin, however hard he tried. Roll-Up Reg was talking another language. But then, he was no more persuaded by the things his parents told him, or the teachers at school. It was the world, the world itself that was beyond his reach, this whole absurdly vast, complex, random, measureless construct, this never-ending ebb and flow of human relations, political relations, cultures, histories . . . How could anyone hope to master such things? It was not like music. Music always made sense. The music he heard that night was lucid, knowable, full of intelligence and humour, wistfulness and energy and hope. He would never understand the world, but he would always love this music. — Jonathan Coe

Self-control is an exhaustible resource. This is a crucial realization, because when we talk about "self-control," we don't mean the narrow sense of the word, as in the willpower needed to fight vice (smokes, cookies, alcohol). We're talking about a broader kind of self-supervision. Think of the way your mind works when you're giving negative feedback to an employee, or assembling a new bookshelf, or learning a new dance. You are careful and deliberate with your words or movements. It feels like there's a supervisor on duty. That's self-control, too. — Chip Heath

I do not understand what makes mothers think they are walking-talking thermometers.But I think somewhere during the process of giving birth and changing diapers, they actually begin to belive they have this supernatural sense. — Melody Carlson

If we're talking about the science fiction or action genres, I've always tried when I could to do them in a way that's not just cookie-cutter - that they bring something fresh or original to it, have some kind of ideas to it. I've been fortunate, in some sense, to do those kinds of movies that are unique. — Keanu Reeves

For both of us, it had simply been too enormous an experience. We shared it by not talking about it. Does this make any sense? — Haruki Murakami

They live by symbols. They read meaning into the barrage of spam on the unused computer, the delete key that stops working, the imagined abandonment in the decision to replace it. The voice on my answering machine is still John's. The fact that it was his in the first place was arbitrary, having to do with who was around on the day the answering machine last needed programming, but if I needed to retape it now I would do so with a sense of betrayal. One day when I was talking on the telephone in his office I mindlessly turned the pages of the dictionary that he had always left open on the table by the desk. When I realized what I had done I was stricken: what word had he last looked up, what had he been thinking? By turning the pages had I lost the message? Or had the message been lost before I touched the dictionary? Had I refused to hear the message? I — Joan Didion

I was kidding. Even I'm not that promiscuous. You guru people have no sense of humor."
"I'm not a guru people, and I happen to have a very well developed sense of humor. Why else would I still be talking to you? — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

There is no sense talking about "being true to yourself" until you are sure what voice you are being true to. It takes hard work to differentiate the voices of the unconscious. — Marion Woodman

Every single one of the major world faiths, whether we're talking about Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Darwinism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have all come to the conclusion that what holds us back from our better self is ego, selfishness, greed, unkindness, hatred. And it all springs from a sense of thwarted ego. — Karen Armstrong

Thus far we have been talking about not getting hooked by strong emotions. The garuda goes beyond that practice, and does not even get hooked by set notions, which in some sense are the wellspring for strong emotions themselves. By training in not solidifying the way you think things ought to be, you are cutting through years of habitual response mechanisms, and beginning to see your discomfort in a more lucid manner. — Lodro Rinzler

I'm talking about the soul-crushing drudgery of day-to-day parenthood that we're too embarrassed to talk about. The boredom, the stress, the nagging dissatisfaction, and the sense of personal failure that parents feel when raising a kid isn't all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps worst of all is the guilt that so many women buy into because they're too ashamed to admit that despite the love they have for their kids, child rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking. — Jessica Valenti

You could ask me to teach you."
"Huh?" This night is getting weird in a hurry. "Teach me like you're teaching a class or something? What are you going to call it: 'You Too Can Be a Sociopath 101'?"
"It would be more like a graduate-level class."
I start to snicker. His sense of humour sneaks up on you. Then I remember who's talking and bite it off. — Karen Marie Moning

The words make sense, but deeper than the words is the truth. She's right. If Mabel's talking about the girl who hugged her good-bye before she left for Los Angeles, who laced fingers with her at the last bonfire of the summer and accepted shells from almost-strangers, who analyzed novels for fun and lives with her grandfather in a pink, rent-controlled house in the Sunset that often smelled like cake and was often filled with elderly, gambling men - if she's talking about that girl, then yes, I dissapeared. — Nina LaCour

He [Barack Obama] talked about deficit reduction. This got me he was talking about how the deficit's being reduced faster in the last 60 years. That's because he's collected more taxes. That's like bragging that you paid your rent after you robbed a bank. It makes no sense. — Barack Obama

What does common sense have to do with it?" he exploded. "We're talking about a job interview! — Robert Asprin

That doesn't make any sense."

"Nothing makes any sense anymore. Like, why am I talking to you? Why am I telling you this when you don't care?"

This question, at least, I knew the answer to. "But that's why you're telling me." I knew it was true. If we'd had the opportunity to deliver our confessions to anyone who actually cared about their contents, there was no way either of us would've opened our mouths. Sharing revelations is easier when it doesn't matter.

She was quiet. I heard other girls' voices in the background, high, wordless streams of conversation, followed by the hiss of running water, and then silence again. "Okay," she said.

"Okay, what?" I asked.

"Okay, maybe you can call me. Sometime. Now you have my number."

I didn't even have time to say bye before she hung up. — Maggie Stiefvater

There was a beautiful feeling of calm in my groin, a sense of peace so remarkable it was almost ecstasy - anyone who' suffered bad pain and then recovered will know what I'm talking about. — Stephen King

He found himself smiling and talking politely to people who desired to show their respect and admiration for his uniform-instead of ignoring them and turning away. His sense of separation from and annoyance with these men and women who talked so glibly of war and who had not the faintest notion of what war was ebbed away; and he began to accept the fact that to chatter nonsense with neither knowledge nor perception was the ordinary manner of mankind. — Howard Fast

I really am opinionated, but not for long. I have found myself coming off of what I think of something because the guy I'm talking to makes better sense than I am. I have so many points of view, I can't keep track of 'em, because I talk to too many people ... I'm not so opinionated that I won't budge. — Jerry Lewis

If hatred strikes you, if you get accused, thrown to the lions, you can expect one of two reactions from people who know you: some of them will join in the kill, the others will discreetly pretend to know nothing, hear nothing, so you can go right on seeing them and talking to them. That second category, discreet and tactful, those are your friends. 'Friends' in the modern sense of the term. Listen, Jean-Marc, I've known that forever. — Milan Kundera

Nd how sometimes when she can't get her clients talking about what happened over there she'll get a map of the country, an appropriate map for their world, and pinpoint where they last lived, where their family went missing.
Sometimes they would be reluctant to talk, but when they saw the map they would point to a place and say, "There. My village,"
and that's how their dialogue would begin. With a sense of place. — Melina Marchetta

I know how easy it is to sound like a corny version of Noam Chomsky when talking about something like this, but in a country where millions of dollars are spent on nuclear weapons, corporate welfare, and many ridiculous things, doesn't it just make sense to take care of people first? As soon as we can make the South Bronx, Compton, Taos, and Astoria look like Beverly Hills I'll have no problem watching a guy orbit Mars. — Dito Montiel

Like a cross between Paul Auster's The Book of Illusions and Janice Lee's Damnation, The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing is at once smart and slyly unsettling. It is expert at creating a quietly building sense of dread while claiming to do something as straightforward as describe lost films - like those conversations you have in which you realize only too late that what you actually talking about and what you think you are talking about are not the same thing at all. With Rombes, Two Dollar Radio deftly demonstrates why it is rapidly becoming the go-to press for innovative fiction. — Brian Evenson

Is time real? ... In one sense, it's a silly question. The "reality" of something is only an interesting issue if its a well-defined concept whose actual existence is in question, like Bigfoot or supersymmetry. For concepts like "time," which are unambiguously part of a useful vocabulary we have for describing the world, talking about "reality" is just a bit of harmless gassing. They may be emergent or fundamental, but they're definitely there. — Sean Carroll

Without question, purity is beautiful. We're not talking about repression or prudishness, but about having a confident and serene sense of your dignity and worth. — Jason Evert

There is something really horrific for any human being who feels he is being consumed by other people. I'm talking about a writer's critics, who don't address what you've written, but want to probe into your existence and magnify the trivia of your life without any sense of humor, without any sense of context. — Wole Soyinka

was standing inside the trailer talking to Jerod, Asher, Jason, and Mitch. He narrowed his eyes at me, "I sure hope you talked some sense into that boy, they won't listen to me!" Jet wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me against him, then bent down and rested his chin on my shoulder. "Oh she talked to me alright.." "Okay, enough!" John said. "Just go fucking race and quit pussy footing around. — H.M. Montes

Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion. — Umberto Eco

Half of a broadcast show, in my experience, is things happening, and the other half is people talking about how they feel about the things that happened. And so there's this sense of everyone saying their subtext out loud. — Noah Hawley

Egin by talking about the kind of existentialist chaos that exists in our own lives and our inability to overcome the sense of alienation and frustration we experience when we try to create bonds of intimacy and solidarity with one another. Now part of this frustration is to be understood again in relation to structures and institutions. In the way in which our culture of consumption has promoted an addiction to stimulation - one that puts a premium on packaged and commodified stimulation. The market does this to convince us that our consumption keeps oiling the economy for it to reproduce itself. But the effect of this addiction to stimulation is an undermining, a waning of our ability for qualitatively rich relationships. — Cornel West

Of everything, for better or worse. A cheater remains a cheater in the same way that an optimist remains an optimist. An optimist is a person who says, after being run over by a drunk driver and having both legs mangled and mortgaging the house to pay the hospital bills: "I was lucky. I could have been killed." To an optimist that kind of statement makes sense. To a cheater it makes sense to be living a double life and talking out of both sides of your mouth at the same time. — A.S.A Harrison

In Fyodor Dostoyevsky's great novel The Brothers Karamazov, there is a scene in which two people are talking about suffering. Ivan Karamazov is talking about there being any possibility that we can make sense of suffering, and here's what he says: "I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened."11 — Timothy Keller

She had a sense of comedy that was really exquisite, but she needed people, always people, to bring it out, with the inevitable result that she frittered her time away, lunching, dining, giving these incessant parties of hers, talking no sense, saying things she didn't mean, blunting the edge of her mind, losing her discrimination.. — Virginia Woolf

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

Cats were the easiest of the beasts for humans to talk to, if you could call it talking, and most fairies could carry on some kind of colloquy with a cat. But conversations with cats were always more or less riddle games, and if you were getting the answer too quickly, the cat merely changed the ground on you. Katriona's theory was that cats were one of the few members of the animal kingdom who had a strong artistic sense, and that aggravated chaos was the chief feline art form, but she had never coaxed a straight enough answer out of a cat to be sure. — Robin McKinley

People are always changing themselves and their world, dear. Very few of the changes are new. We rather confuse change and newness, I think. What is truly new never changes."

"You speak in riddles, aged progenitor."

"The world worships a certain kind of newness. People are always talking about a new car, or a new drink or p-p-play or house, but these things are not truly new, are they? They begin to get old the minute you acquire them. New is not in things. New is within us. The truly new is something that is new forever: you. Every morning of your life and every evening, every moment is new. You have never lived this moment before and you never will again. In this sense the new is also the eternal. — Tony Hendra

You're talking!"
"I know I am."
"And making sense!"
"Thank you kindly."
"And in sentences!"
"I've noticed." - Stefan and Elena — L.J.Smith

My interest in this started one night when I was doing stand-up in a small club in New York. I was talking about texting and I asked for a volunteer who'd met someone recently and had been texting back and forth with them. I read the back-and-forth messages of one gentleman and made jokes about how we were all dealing with some version of this nonsense. I quickly noticed that one woman seemed very puzzled. I asked her why she looked so bewildered, and she explained that this was something that just didn't happen in France, where she was from. This kind of back-and-forth simply didn't exist, she claimed. I asked her, "Okay, well, what would a guy in France text you, if you met him at a bar?" She said, "He would write . . . 'Fancy a fuck?'" And I said, "Whoa. What would you write back?" She said, "I would write yes or no depending on whether I fancied one or not." I was stunned - that kind of makes so much more sense, right? — Aziz Ansari

It seemed like a hybrid of Spinal Tap, the British The Office, and something entirely original. Scenes would be blocked and rehearsed almost like a play, with entire scenes performed top to bottom many times. Two or three cameras would find the action and just follow the actors as they moved around. Actors often didn't know when they were on camera or where the cameras were. "Spy shots" lent a sense of intimacy to moments. Actors were allowed to look into the camera to show their reactions to things and spoke directly to the camera with "talking heads," used to further the story or display another side of what a character was feeling.15, 16 Camera operators were very close or very far away but a dynamic part of the action. We would shoot eight or nine pages in a twelve-hour day, which is about double what one shoots on a feature film. — Amy Poehler

Where everyone else sees a straight line, you see a maze, and when I'm done talking to you, the maze starts to make more sense
Reply by Dove to Aly's silent inquiry — Tamora Pierce

I feel like when we talk about post-apocalyptic themes that's what we're really talking about. We're always returning to this sense of being alone in a strange new place where all is bleak and all is lost. And it is this sense of isolation that permeates the whole album. I wanted to go into the balance between fear and transcendence. — Colin Stetson

Everyone can be in a relationship. And being in a relationship doesn't means that you have to catch each other hands and walk in-front of everyone without caring anyone. Make conversations short and sweet..and to the point. Don't keep talking over the phones for hours with the things that doesn't makes sense. First priority should be parents. If wanna be in a relationship do it in a standard way. And first focus on what you should do. Do not prioritize your ambition on some one just without caring your parents.First focus on making life so that you can keep your parents and relationship happy. That when you are successful only then take a big step. — Lalit Sharma

What you're doing is building a horrible kind of logic. People read what you write and they say, 'Yes, he is talking about things that really happen,' and they keep reading, and it makes sense to them. You're explaining things that can't be defended, and the explanations themselves are mad, just bizarre - but you offer them with such confidence. It was because she kept the chain on the door; it was because he needed to let off steam after a hard day's scraping and bowing at work; it was because she was irritating and stupid; it was because she lied to him, made a fool of him; it was because she had to die, she just had to, it makes dramatic sense; it was because 'nothing is more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman'; it was because of this, it was because of that. It's obscene to make such things reasonable. — Helen Oyeyemi

Some people never learn how to talk to kids. They turn up the volume and enunciate with extra care, as if talking to a partially deaf immigrant. They sound as if they're reading lines somebody else wrote for them, or as if what they're saying is really for the benefit of other adults listening and not just for the child. Kids sense that and turn off. — F. Paul Wilson

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about — John Von Neumann

We're all talking about the same thing, whether it's religious people or New Age spiritual people or Buddhists or scientists. We're all talking about having a sense of awe and wonder at something grander than ourselves. — Michael Shermer

Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it. — Augustus Hare

There's no talking sense to sentiment, — Scott Lynch

I felt the taste of mortality in my mouth, and at that moment I understood that I was not going to live forever. It takes a long time to learn that, but when you finally do, everything changes inside you, you can never be the same again. I was seventeen years old, and all of a sudden, without the slightest flicker of a doubt, I understood that my life was my own, that it belonged to me and no one else.
I'm talking about freedom, Fogg. A sense of despair that becomes so great, so crushing, so catastrophic, that you have no choice but to be liberated by it. That's the only choice, or else you crawl into a corner and die. — Paul Auster

This country is transforming before our eyes. In thirty years or so, the majority will no longer be European Americans; the first generation of mostly babies of color has already been born. This new diversity will give us a better understanding of the world and enrich our cultural choices, yet there are people whose sense of identity depends on the old hierarchy. It may just be their fear and guilt talking: What if I am treated as I have treated others? — Gloria Steinem

I didn't really get the chance to talk to girls. I was a straight boy with hormones kicking in, and I wanted to talk to girls, but they weren't interested in talking back to me, so there was a real sense of loneliness. — Andy Biersack

The words Lafayette used to describe that triumph - "I did not hesitate to be disagreeable to preserve my independence" - applied to getting his way regarding America as well. Perhaps the most emblematic anecdote foretelling Lafayette's stubborn refusal to give up his American dream was the boyhood story about how one day, one of his Parisian schoolteachers was talking up the virtues of an obedient horse. According to Lafayette, "I described the perfect horse as one which, at the sight of the whip, had the sense to throw his rider to the ground before he could be whipped. — Sarah Vowell

Don't be afraid of us, for now you are not a prisoner. We are extending you an invitation to collaborate with us and maybe to help us put an end to this war that we are engaged in without even looking for it. We are also hoping that, with your special mental abilities, you can help throw some light into this Ancient message," the "Humanoid" said. "You are *The Chosen One*, we think. If it's in your veins to use your powers, as we think it is, we may all win and I am not only talking about the war. Maybe if we make sense of what the Ancient message says, we can all survive in Harmony, and I mean all the worlds and civilizations in the Universe. — AD Proca

Who said that justice is what you imagine? Can you be sure that you know it when you see it, that you will live long enough to recognize the decisive thunder of its occurrence, that it can be manifest within a generation, within ten generations, within the entire span of human existence? What you are talking about is common sense, not justice. Justice is higher and not as easy to understand - until it presents itself in unmistakable splendor. The design of which I speak is far above our understanding. But we can sometimes feel its presence. — Mark Helprin

The art world has become so insular. The rules have become so autodidactic that, in a sense, they lose track of what people have any interest in thinking about, talking about or even looking at. — Kehinde Wiley

I don't like poetry that doesn't give me a sense of ritual, but I don't like poetry that doesn't sound like people talking to each other. I try to do both at once. — Miller Williams

But now came another old theme: self-blame. She was selfish, crabbed, drily ambitious. Pursuing her own ends, pretending to herself that her career was not in essence self-gratification, denying an existence to two or three warm and talented individuals. Had her children lived, it would have been shocking to think they might not have. And so here was her punishment, to face this disaster alone, without sensible grown-up children, concerned and phoning, downing tools and rallying round for urgent kitchen-table conferences, talking sense to their stupid father, bringing him back. But would she take him in? — Ian McEwan

Military deployments have never been something to enjoy, but the consequence of the actions, the shared nature of the sacrifices, and the nobility of the cause are invigorating. To be clear, I'm not talking about the killing and the death; rather, the sense of purpose that pervades every action, reaction, and outcome. — Pete Hegseth

Standup keeps me grounded and keeps me in touch. I get to go from small towns to big cities, across Canada and the U.S., and you're out there and talking to people. You get a sense of what they respond to. — Howie Mandel

At about 3:30 on May 9, 2013, then, I was puttering around when Pavel came over to say, "There is something interesting you might want to see. Little sparks and fireworks outside." Pavel's English isn't the greatest, so it took me a second to figure out what he was talking about. Then I got it: fireworks, Russia, Victory Day - made sense, though it was surprising that he could see them from space. I floated over to the Russian segment to look out the window: no, it wasn't happening on Earth - it looked like fireflies were coming off the left side of the Station. — Chris Hadfield

There's this overly friendly sense of community built up by very isolated people, and there's this Lutheran humbleness that keeps people from talking about their own feelings and asking about yours. What does that do in this modern age where everyone takes pictures of their food, and they share every thought they've ever had in real time? — Noah Hawley

In my personal life, I will do whatever it takes to make a situation comfortable if I sense - if I'm talking to someone [and] I sense there's a silence, I'll try to fill that gap. It makes me very anxious when things get uncomfortable. — Nathan Fielder

When I give a speech at a corporate event, I often ask those in attendance, 'Do you know how to tell if you're doing the job?' As heads start whispering back and forth, I provide these clue: 'If you're up at 3 A.M. every night talking into a tape recorder and writing notes on scraps of paper, have a knot in your stomach and a rash on your skin, are losing sleep and losing touch with your wife and kids, have no appetite or sense of humor, and feel that everything might turn out wrong, then you're probably doing the job.' — Bill Walsh

Chronicle Books is a wonderful book company. I love how everything represents who I am. The Diva Rules! is not an autobiography in the sense that I am talking about my life but more about my journey as to where I am now. People told me I would never make it. I was staring in the face of adversity and did it anyway. I chronicle it through the years. It is about finding your strength. — Michelle Visage

Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened. — Hannah Kent

We're talking about the struggle to drag a thought over from the mush of the unconscious into some kind of grammar, syntax, human sense; every attempt means starting over with language. starting over with accuracy. — Anne Carson

We've placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people's rights. That's how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities. — Randy Pausch

So you decided to help us by killing the guy we were talking to?" Clary demanded "Because you thought he had a shady past? Who- who does that? It doesnt make any sense. — Cassandra Clare

Jeremy Taylor, Charles I's personal chaplain, wrote a tract, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living, in 1650 that illustrates that not much has changed in over 360 years. He characterised drunkenness by: Apish gestures. Much talking. Immoderate laughing. Dullness of sense. Scurrility, that is wanton jeering or abusive language. A useless understanding. Stupid sleep. Epilepsies, or — Simon Wills

In one sense what may pass between the pope and myself may be trivialities. In another sense the fact of talking trivialities is itself a portent of great significance. But the pleasantries which we exchange may, as one church leader said, be pleasantries about profundities. — Geoffrey Fisher

I could sing and play as well. I've got some brothers; one of them is the drummer in the band. They're good musicians. I play for fun. They play properly. Music in general, I grew up in a house of musicians. Everybody's life has a soundtrack, I'm sitting here talking to you but there are horns beeping outside. I know I'm in New York. That's an element in the film as well. How strong that sense can be. — Jonathan Rhys Meyers

She sat silently in her rocking chair. Some people are good at talking, but Granny Weatherwax was good at silence. She could sit so quiet and still that
she faded. You forgot she was there. The room became empty.
Tiffany thought of it as the I'm-not-here spell, if it was a spell. She reasoned that everyone had something inside them that told the world they
were there. That was why you could often sense when someone was behind you, even if they were making no sound at all. You were receiving their
I-am-here signal.
Some people had a very strong one. They were the people who got served first in shops. Granny Weatherwax had an I-am-here signal that bounced off the mountains when she wanted it to; when she walked into a forest, all the wolves and bears ran out the other side. She could turn it off, too. She was doing that now. Tiffany was having to concentrate to see her. Most of her mind was telling her that there was no one there at all. — Terry Pratchett

They are lonely. I'm not talking about lonely for a lover or a friend. I mean lonely in the universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars of stars. — Donald Miller

I realize that the times I have known some sort of inner peace in my life, those have always been times when I focused on helping others more than myself ... babysitting, cooking dinner for my family, cleaning up the house, talking to a friend on the phone and just listening to them vent about something or other without offering an opinion or judging. Those have been the moments when I get to stop obsessing about myself and really feel a sense of liberation. 'Freedom from the bondage of self ... — Nic Sheff

They'd paid some madman who thought he was a decorator a lot of money to make the place look hip and unique. Maybe it's my lack of fashion sense talking, but I thought they should have held out for one of these gorillas who has learned to paint. The results would have been of similar quality, and they could have paid in fresh produce. — Jim Butcher

Whenever he reads articles in newspapers or magazines written by politicians using global warming or the destruction of the environment for their electoral campaigns, he thinks:
How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing.
Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us? Because "Saving the planet" gives a sense of power, action and nobility. Whereas "not letting the planet destroy us" might lead us to feelings of despair and impotence, and to a realisation of just how very limited our capabilities are. — Paulo Coelho

I started by looking everything up in a Star Trek dictionary so I knew what I was talking about, but you can't do that because they talk in circles, and half of it doesn't make sense, so you'll just end up driving yourself more insane. — Jeri Ryan

Mistrust is the fuel for so much mental pain, so many mental disorders. I am not talking here about the suspicions we sometimes have of one another, the distant but lurking sense that perhaps our lover lies to us, our best friend whispers behind our back. I am talking about a belief that betrayal inundates the atoms of the universe, is so woven into the workings of the world that every step is treacherous, and that below the rich mud lies a mine. — Lauren Slater

And as we talked, I remembered just why we'd been such good friends when we were kids. It was in the way he listened when you were talking, the way he wasn't just waiting to jump in with his own story. It was the way he always weighed his words, meaning I always knew that when he responded, it had been carefully considered. It was in the way that every time he laughed - which wasn't often - it seemed earned, and made me want to do everything I could to get him to laugh more. It was his enthusiasm for things, and how when he discussed what he was passionate about - like how much he loved being in the woods, how he felt things made sense there - I found myself getting swept up in it along with him. — Morgan Matson

You don't have to be involved with my parents. Not if you don't want to be. Yes, you're the father,
but you aren't my boyfriend or husband. My family is my problem."
"I do," he said, before he even realized what he was saying. "I do want to be involved. With all of it.
We're talking about really making this work, about making a ... I don't know if we're talking about a
family, not in the traditional sense, but we're in this together, right?"
"I guess."
"That means I get to help you with parent things, and other unpleasantness. And you have to know
my brother. — Maisey Yates

The immigration thing has to be brought to a head, and I feel that the best way to do that is endorse the worst, in the sense of he is a racist and he knows what I'm talking about. — Tom Metzger

It makes no sense to talk about people's rights without also talking about responsibilities. The Last Lecture — Randy Pausch

A sense of dislocation has been spreading through our societies like a bone cancer throughout the twentieth century. We all feel it: we have become richer, but less connected to one another. Countless studies prove this is more than a hunch, but here's just one: the average number of close friends a person has has been steadily falling. We are increasingly alone, so we are increasingly addicted. "We're talking about learning to live with the modern age," Bruce believes. The modern world has many incredible benefits, but it also brings with it a source of deep stress that is unique: dislocation. "Being atomized and fragmented and all on [your] own - that's no part of human evolution and it's no part of the evolution of any society," he told me. — Johann Hari

Among the responsibilities of any writer is that, no matter what else, they know what they mean. So, even if no one else knows what you're talking about, you do. The listener can sense that, even if they don't get the literal meaning. The faith that they place in the clues and the connections and the secrets of the lyrics is of the utmost importance. — Joanna Newsom

Selfies, they call 'em, and that makes sense 'cause even though they're sending these pictures to others, it still smells like selfish to me. Is that why they call it an "I phone"? 'Cause it's all about me me me. Like talking to hear yourself talk. — David Duchovny

Go buy milk,' Robert said at last.
Dylan moved for Buggy's door.
But if ou come around here with that old lady's money next time I might have to take it off you.'
Dylan recognized this as a sort of philosophical using. He was grateful for the implied sense of pooled information. He and Robert could move forward together from this point into whatever was required. — Jonathan Lethem

There's an immense dramatic possibility in describing that universe. The books, for me, were an enormous relief in that sense of how they were written to allow primary emotion, elemental emotion, to matter enormously but to give the thing an extraordinary flow so you don't notice at what point that you're actually overwhelmed by this. There's no showiness, at all. It's the opposite of showiness. I think, if it was a painting, it could be very grey abstract, almost, with some lines and very, very beautiful. But you wouldn't have a notion of where the beauty was.
(Talking about the short stories of Alistair MacLeod, who he discovered while working on The Modern Library.) — Colm Toibin

As part of "moral philosophy," the concept of "natural liberty" clicks easily into place. Man, as an ethical integer, is either free to choose between good and bad courses within the
limits of his circumstances, or he is not. If he is not free, if he can
only accept what is handed to him from above (by fate, or by decree of the human agents of fate), then there is not much use in talking about morality or ethics. To make any sense of the idea
of morality, it must be presumed that the human being is responsible for his actions-and responsibility cannot be understood apart from the presumption of freedom of choice. — John Chamberlain

It seemed to me as we were talking about Christ rising from the dead, the sun popped over the mountain. That was indicative of Christ rising - a new day. It just makes sense. — Robert Hayden

In general, American social life constitutes an evasion of talking to people. Most Americans don't, in any vital sense, get together; they only do things together. — Louis Kronenberger

Liberals want Conservatives to shut up. Conservatives want Liberals to keep talking. Because our arguments make sense and theirs don't — Bill Whittle

I'm not totally uncompetitive. It's just that for some reason I never cared all that much whether I beat others or lost to them. This sentiment remained pretty much unchanged after I grew up. It doesn't matter what field you're talking about
beating somebody else just doesn't do it for me. I'm much more interested in whether I reach the goals that I set for myself, so in this sense long-distance running is the perfect fit for a mindset like mine. — Haruki Murakami

For us, as actors, and even for the director, it gave us a sense of authenticity to what we were doing because we were talking about Hollywood and we were in Hollywood. — Berenice Bejo

Thia pulled Darice away from Hauk. "Son, we need to talk about your inability to sense near-death experiences." "What are you talking about?" Thia glanced back to Hauk, who still hadn't moved. He hadn't even blinked. "Can you not see how pissed off he is?" "So?" Rolling her eyes, Thia sighed. "You're an idiot, Darice. I seriously hope you have no intention of entering any kind of military service." He lifted his chin defiantly. "Of course, I am. I'm Andarion. I'm going to be a fighter pilot like my parents." "No, punkin'." She patted him on the cheek. "With those well-honed survival instincts, you're going to be a bright stain on someone's blast shield." Darice — Sherrilyn Kenyon

By a 'silly' theory I mean one which may be held at the time when one is talking or writing professionally, but which only an inmate of a lunatic asylum would think of carrying into daily life ... It must not be supposed that the men who maintain these theories and beliefs are 'silly' people. Only very acute and learned men could have thought of anything so odd or defended anything so preposterous against the continual protests of common sense. — C. D. Broad

Even if it's a "talking head documentary" about a social movement or something along those lines, I've always thought of editing the timing and the sense of the piece for the theatrical experience. — Robert Greene

Gloria was still talking, something about how shooting people was in a sense safer than making art, in terms of avoiding serious lapses in taste. — Rachel Kushner

The forgiving heart is capable of anything.
I believe that deeply.
And that's where in terms of becoming an empowered individual ...
when you get to the point where you realize you can look at someone and say
I love myself enough -
not in a schmaltzy garbage sense, Hallmark stuff,
I'm talking respect myself -
I respect my life-force enough to no longer waste it. — Caroline Myss

Talking to Time Magazine a few years back, Peter Drucker got to the heart of things: "I will tell you a secret: Dealmaking beats working. Dealmaking is exciting and fun, and working is grubby. Running anything is primarily an enormous amount of grubby detail work . . . dealmaking is romantic, sexy. That's why you have deals that make no sense. — Warren Buffett