Trying To Make Conversation Quotes & Sayings

I'll do it," she said before she could talk herself out of it.
His dimples flashed as he slapped a hand over his heart in mock surprise. "Just like that?"
"Did you want me to argue with you first?"
"Hell no, but I had pictured this conversation going somewhat differently. You'd get all offended I didn't think you could do your job and then you'd get all pissed off and accuse me of trying to be the boss of you and then ... "
"And then?"
"And then I had kinda pictured us having make-up sex. And then christening-the-new-office-chair sex. And maybe christening-the-old-office-desk sex because, as far as I know, it was never christened. And - — Shannon Stacey

The British lady, trying to make conversation, asked Zoe and me what our parents did if we were "bad girls." "When I'm bad, I get a time-out," Zoe said. "When I'm bad," I announced, "my father sticks a fork in my vagina." This is hard to share without alarm bells sounding. We're taught to listen to little girls, particularly when they say things about being sodomized with cutlery. Also my father makes sexually explicit artwork so he's probably already on the FBI's fork-in-vagina radar. — Lena Dunham

And so, a never-ending, rather edgy conversation between them, an undercurrent of roiling sound that reminded them they were married, they had two sons, they were living a life, they had preparations to make and disasters to avert and a world to interpret, sign by sign, symbol by symbol, to each other, and that at this point the only fate worse than staying together would be trying, each of them, to live alone. — Michael Cunningham

I'm not forcing you to do anything. You need to make your own damn decisions . And I'm not playing this game where we ignore reality and pretend to have a normal conversation for a few hours. You need to face reality and stop turning life into a movie. I'm not a puppet in your show. This is real life and you're always trying to ignore it for some cheap fantasy version where no problems exist. That's not noble of you, okay? You're not strong. You're a weak person like the rest of us. You've just learned to excel at avoiding issues. But there are issues . Life has so many freaking issues and if you can't force your own self to face life and make decisions without someone telling you what the hell to do, you're just going to end up another chess piece moved around by others. — Marilyn Grey

I'm trying to make the readers feel as if he or she is right there in the conversation, and so I don't try to manipulate it too much. — Susan Straight

I think that the desire to be cruel and to hurt (with words because any other way might be dangerous to ourself) is part of human nature. Parties are battles (most parties), a conversation is a duel (often). Everybody's trying to hurt first, to get in the dig that will make him or her feel superior, feel triumph. — Jean Rhys

I quoted David Hare one of his lines the other day to illuminate whatever point we were trying to make in the conversation, and I said 'What play was that?' and he said 'It was your line, you said it about a hundred and fifty times in The Vertical Hour.' — Bill Nighy

I can go an entire day without any socialisation, without a conversation with anyone. I wonder sometimes if I'm invisible. I feel like the old men and women who used to bother me by engaging in unnecessary chit-chat with the cashiers while I was stuck behind them, in a hurry, wanting to get on to the next place. When you don't have a next place to go to, time slows down enormously. I feel myself noticing other people more, catching more eyes, or seeking out eye contact. I'm now ripe and ready for a conversation about anything with anyone; it would make my day if somebody would meet my eye, or if there was someone to talk to. But everyone is too busy, and that makes me feel invisible; and invisibility, contrary to what I believed before, lacks any sense of lightness and liberty. Instead it makes me feel heavy. And so I drag myself around, trying to convince myself that I don't feel heavy, invisible, bored and worthless, and that I am free. I do not convince myself well. — Cecelia Ahern

If you're trying to make someone happy, you gotta try and make them happy. If you're trying to have a normal conversation, you've got to have a normal conversation. If you're trying to make them sad, you've got to make them sad. I think that's how you get real performances out of people. — Jonah Hill

The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody. — Wynton Marsalis

What's on your mind, doc?" he asked as he flashed his ID at the staff duty sergeant.
"Just wondering why the driver didn't make conversation," she said after a moment, following him down the hallway and trying not to feel like she was rushing to keep up.
"We don't take warm showers together, if that's what you're asking."
Emily laughed quietly. "Was that a line from Heartbreak Ridge?"
"You didn't strike me as a war movie kind of girl." Reza stopped short, studying her. "Are you honestly telling me you've watched that movie?"
Heat crept up her neck. "Before I signed up for the army, I needed to know what I was getting myself in for. I watched every war movie I could find."
Reza simply stared at her, his dark eyes glittering. She was sure he was laughing at her. "You know those were Marines in Heartbreak Ridge, right?"
"Of course."
He cracked the barest grin. She supposed it was better than yelling at her, so there was that. — Jessica Scott

Like most bookworms I read so as not to be alone, which often annoys those who are trying to make conversation with me. — Jonathan Hull

There are credentials for admission to our democratic society [ ... ]. You have to be educated in order to be a participant in our conversation So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours. — Richard Rorty

Samantha: Listen, you need to get your head around the demographics of this place. So first of all you've got your blue collars - tradies, we call them. We've got a lot of tradies in Pirriwee. Like my Stu. Salt of the earth. Or salt of the sea, because they all surf, of course. Most of the tradies grew up here and never left. Then you've got your alternative types. Your dippy hippies. And in the last ten years or so, all these wealthy execs and banker wankers have moved in and built massive McMansions up on the cliffs. But! There's only one primary school for all our kids! So at school events you've got a plumber, a banker and a crystal healer standing around trying to make conversation. It's hilarious. No wonder we had a riot. — Liane Moriarty

We have to enforce the laws we've already got, make sure that we're keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, those who are mentally ill. I also share a belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don't belong on our streets. And so what I'm trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. — Barack Obama

Music is like a conversation. One person says one thing that speaks with a harmonica, with a bass, with a drum. They're all conversating, and we're just trying to find a way to make conversation rather than blah, blah, blah. But it's not really so hard a thing to do if you know the way to approach it. — Stephen Marley

English is the product of a Saxon warrior trying to make a date with an Angle bar-maid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation. — H. Beam Piper

Moaning about how his own brilliance disadvantaged him was not a recipe for popularity. Stanley was initially as isolated in high school as Shirley would be in Rochester: "miserably lonely, reading prodigiously, hating everyone, and wishing I had enough courage to talk to girls." One day a boy he recognized from class sat down next to him in the locker room. Stanley, trying to make conversation as he best knew how, asked his classmate if he read Poe. "No, I read very well, thank you," came the reply. Stanley responded huffily that he didn't think puns were very clever. "I don't either," said the other boy, "but they're something I can't help, like a harelip. — Ruth Franklin

Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it. — Barbara Kingsolver

So now she was trying her best to make conversation, but a parent can't leave a child alone for so long and expect the occasional nicety to count for much. Those bonds break away much more quickly and permanently than most people would like to believe. — Anthony Breznican