Tannen Quotes & Sayings

To say that a person feels listened to means a lot more than just their ideas get heard. It's a sign of respect. It makes people feel valued. — Deborah Tannen

Public discourse requires making an argument for a point of view, not having an argument - as in having a fight. — Deborah Tannen

Critiquing relieves you of the responsibility of doing integrative thinking. — Deborah Tannen

Jassaline's little potion seems to have brought up every meal I've had in the past five years." said Locke.
"Nothing left to spit up but my naked soul. Make sure it isn't floating around in one of those before you toss them, right?"
"I think I see it," Jean said. "Nasty, crooked little thing it is too; you're better off with it floating out to sea. — Scott Lynch

We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups. — Deborah Tannen

When those closest to us respond to events differently than we do, when they seem to see the same scene as part of a different play, when they say things that we could not imagine saying in the same circumstances, the ground on which we stand seems to tremble and our footing is suddenly unsure. — Deborah Tannen

Male-female conversation is cross-cultural communication — Deborah Tannen

In an ongoing relationship, each current criticism packs the punches of all the others that have gone before. — Deborah Tannen

Oh gods, Jean. Take a false name wherever we end up. Tavrin Callas is good. Let the bastard pop up all over the place. — Scott Lynch

Knowing that somewhere in the world there is someone who cares what you wore, an insignificant detail of your life that would seem unimportant to anyone else, makes you feel more connected to that person and less alone in the world. — Deborah Tannen

Early 1990s, Deborah Tannen, a linguist at Georgetown University, attracted international notice with her book You Just Don't Understand. Her book, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for over four years, argued that men and women often talk past each other without appreciating that the other sex is almost another culture. Women, for example, are highly attentive to the thoughts and feelings of others; men are less so. Women view men's speaking styles as blunt and uncaring; men view women's as indirect and obscure. — James W. Pennebaker

Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations. — Deborah Tannen

False dichotomies are often at the heart of discord. — Deborah Tannen

We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has. — Deborah Tannen

If the whole things goes to shit, just remember to throw yourself down the damn waterfall."
"I'll cover your back, the sharp and bloody way. — Scott Lynch

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation - or a relationship. — Deborah Tannen

Words can be like weapons of destruction: It takes so much effort, and the cooperation of so many people, to build something - and so little effort of so few to tear it down. — Deborah Tannen

Endure for another day, Mister Tannen, and you'll have all the foul black misuse of water you can drink. — Scott Lynch

I don't have to beat you. I don't have to beat you, motherfucker. I just have to keep you here ... until Jean shows up. — Scott Lynch

A perfectly tuned conversation is a vision of sanity--a ratification of one's way of being human and one's way in the world. — Deborah Tannen

Many men honestly do not know what women want, and women honestly do not know why men find what they want so hard to comprehend and deliver. — Deborah Tannen

[T]he seeds of [the Argument Culture] can be found our classrooms, where a teacher will introduce an article or an idea ... setting up debates where people learn not to listen to each other because they're so busy trying to win the debate. — Deborah Tannen

Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman. — Deborah Tannen

The key to conversation at work is flexibility and understanding how what you say might be perceived by others. — Deborah Tannen

It can be the best of relationships and the worst of relationships - often at the same time. The bond between a mother and daughter is one of the strongest, but it's also among the most complicated. — Deborah Tannen

Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women. — Deborah Tannen

Any criticism heard secondhand sounds worse than it would face to face. Words spoken out of our presence strike us as more powerful, just as people we know only by reputation seem larger than life. — Deborah Tannen

If women resent men's tendency to offer solutions to problems, men complain about women's refusal to take action to solve the problems. — Deborah Tannen

Though all humans need both intimacy and independence, women tend to focus on the first and men on the second. It is as if their lifeblood ran in different directions. — Deborah Tannen

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. — Deborah Tannen

All conversation, in addition to whatever else it does, displays, and asks for recognition of, our competence. — Deborah Tannen

But if you parry individuals points - a negative and defensive enterprise - you never step back and actively imagine a world in which a different system of ideas could be true - a positive act. — Deborah Tannen

The one who decides who goes ahead has the upper hand, regardless of who gets to go. This is why many women do not feel empowered by such privileges as having doors held open for them. The advantage of going first through the door is less salient to them than the disadvantage of being granted the right to walk through a door by someone who is framed, by his magnanimous gesture, as the arbiter of the right-of-way. — Deborah Tannen

Girls are not accustomed to jockeying for status in an obvious way; they are more concerned that they be liked. — Deborah Tannen

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's. — Deborah Tannen

You've got that motherly concern in your eyes, Jean. I must look like I'm hammered as shit," said Locke.
"Actually you look like you were executed last week. — Scott Lynch

Like most men, my father is interested in action. And this is why he disappoints my mother when she tells him she doesn't feel well and he offers to take her to the doctor. He is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy. — Deborah Tannen

I'm done losing. Do you fucking hear me? I am done losing. Spare me your precious self-pity, because this isn't a stage and I didn't pay two coppers to cry my eyes out over anyone's death speech. You don't fucking get one, understand? I don't care if you cough up buckets of blood. Buckets I can carry. — Scott Lynch

When people realize that in the long run you may be turning off the audiences more, even though they will look temporarily
in the end they turn away, we really need to develop other metaphors and not talk about two sides, but talk about all sides. — Deborah Tannen

Ibelius," said Jean. "If what Locke is doing were lurking about, corpses could be acrobats. — Scott Lynch

Many women feel it is natural to consult with their partners at every turn, while many men automatically make more decisions without consulting their partners. — Deborah Tannen

Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball. — Deborah Tannen

The desire for freedom and independence becomes more of an issue for many men in relationships, whereas interdependence and connection become more of an issue for many women. — Deborah Tannen

Part of the reason images of women in positions of authority are marked by their gender is that the very notion of authority is associated with maleness. — Deborah Tannen

The Pavlovian view of women voters - plug the words in, and they will respond - sends a chill down my spine because it sounds like an adaptation of something I have written about communication between the sexes: When a woman tells a man about a problem, she doesn't want him to fix it; she just wants him to listen and let her know he understands. But there's a difference between a private conversation and a presidential election, between what we want from our leaders. — Deborah Tannen

If women are often frustrated because men do not respond to their troubles by offering matching troubles, men are often frustrated because women do. — Deborah Tannen

Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations. — Deborah Tannen

Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone. — Deborah Tannen

Cooperation isn't the absence of conflict but a means of managing conflict. — Deborah Tannen

It is natural in interaction to assume that what you feel in reaction to others is what they wanted to make you feel. If you feel dominated, it's because someone is dominating you. If you can't find a way to get into a conversation, then someone is deliberately locking you out. Conversational style means that this may not be true. The most important lesson to be learned is not to jump to conclusions about others in terms of evaluations like "dominating" and "manipulative. — Deborah Tannen

Smashing heads does not open minds. — Deborah Tannen

Jean," Locke gasped out during a brief lull between spasms of retching, "next time I conceive a plan like this, consider putting a hatchet in my skull."
"Hardly efficacious." Jean swapped a full bucket for an empty one and gave Locke a friendly pat on the back. "Dulling my nice sharp blades on a skull as thick as yours ... — Scott Lynch

The chivalrous man who holds a door open or signals a woman to go ahead of him when he's driving is negotiating both status and connection. — Deborah Tannen

All communication is more or less cross-cultural. We learn to use language as we grow up, and growing up in different parts of the country, having different ethnic, religious, or class backgrounds, even just being male or female - all result in different ways of talking ... — Deborah Tannen

If Jeb Bush gets elected, I'll know that on my way back from overseas, I entered Biff Tannen's parallel universe. — Matthew D. Heines

That sounds dangerous,'said Jean.
'For anyone else, maybe.For Gentlemen Bastards,we,it;s just what we do.'
'We?'
'We. — Scott Lynch

My name's Jean Tannen, and I'm the ambush. — Scott Lynch

The allure of love is to have someone who knows you so well that you don't have to explain yourself. It is the promise of someone who cares enough about you to protect you against the world of strangers who do not wish you well. — Deborah Tannen

More men feel comfortable doing "public speaking," while more women feel comfortable doing "private" speaking. — Deborah Tannen

It's our tendency to approach every problem as if it were a fight between two sides. We see it in headlines that are always using metaphors for war. It's a general atmosphere of animosity and contention that has taken over our public discourse. — Deborah Tannen

She pinned him to the bulkhead with a kiss that was pure alchemy, and his hands found their way down her tunic, down to her breeches, where he unhitched her weapons belt with as much gratuitous fondling of the areas not covered by it as he could manage.
She took the belt from his hands and flung it against one of the stiffened canvas walls, where it struck with a clattering racket and slid to the floor. "If there is no way, make a way, Jean Tannen. Losers don't fuck in this particular cabin."
He picked her up, making a seat for her from his crossed arms, and whirled her around so that her back was against the bulkhead and her feet were dangling. He kissed her breasts through her tunic, grinning at her reaction. He stopped to put his head against her chest; felt the rapid flutter of her heart against his left cheek. — Scott Lynch

Treating people the same is not equal treatment if they are not the same. — Deborah Tannen

A woman will be inclined to repeat a request that doesn't get a response because she is convinced that her husband would do what she asks, if he only understood that she really wants him to do it. But a man who wants to avoid feeling that he is following orders may instinctively wait before doing what she asked, in order to imagine that he is doing it of his own free will. — Deborah Tannen

The argument culture urges us to approach the world - and the people in it - in an adversarial frame of mind. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as 'both sides'; the best way to settle disputes is litigation that pits one party against the other; the best way to begin an essay is to attack someone; and the best way to show you're really thinking is to criticize. — Deborah Tannen

Locke moaned.
'Quit sobbing, you damn baby,' Jean hissed as he began to lope back along the dock. 'You must have at least a half beer glass of blood left somewhere in there.'
But Locke was now well and truly unconscious ... — Scott Lynch

The more contact people have with each other, the more opportunities both have to do things in their own way and be misunderstood. The only way they know of to solve problems is to talk things out, but if different ways of talking are causing a problem, talking more isn't likely to solve it. Instead, trying harder usually means doing more of whatever you're doing - intensifying the style that is causing the other to react. So each unintentionally drives the other to do more and more of the opposing behavior, in a spiral that drives them both up the wall. — Deborah Tannen

We all want, above all, to be heard. We want to be understood - heard for what we think we are saying, for what we know we meant. — Deborah Tannen

In dialogue, there is opposition, yes, but no head-on collision. Smashing heads does not open minds. — Deborah Tannen