The Conversation Quotes

I have been further enlightened by the conversation and correspondence of some illustrious Italians, whom I would gladly name, were I not afraid of exposing them to danger.
- Edmond About

She would make facial expressions as though she were having conversations with people in her head.They seemed to turn into debates more often than not,judging by the activity on her forehead...It was almost the conversations in her head were loud enough to fill her silence.
- Cecelia Ahern

Twitter is my bar. I sit at the counter and listen to the conversations, starting others, feeling the atmosphere.
- Paulo Coelho

People say strange things, the boy thought. Sometimes it's better to be with the
sheep, who don't say anything. And better still to be alone with one's books.
They tell their incredible stories at the time when you want to hear them. But
when you're talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that
you don't know how to continue the conversation.
- Paulo Coelho

..and better still to be alone with one's books. They tell their incredible stories at the time when you want to hear them. But when you're talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that you don't know how to continue the conversation.
- Paulo Coelho

I wonder if the conversations you've never had with someone count, if you've been over them a thousand times in your mind.
- Jodi Picoult

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn't mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you've forgotten high school.
- Madeleine Albright

I borrowed this from Kyle. My other shirt was pretty filthy."
"Wow, you're wearing each other's clothes now. That's, like, best friend stuff."
"Feeling left out?" said Kyle. "I suppose you want to borrow a black T-shirt too."
"As long as everyone's wearing their own pants."
"I see have come in on a fascinating moment in the conversation." Eric poked his head through the curtain.
- Cassandra Clare

As long as everyone's wearing their own pants."
"I see I have come in on a fascinating moment in the conversation.
- Cassandra Clare

Why write stories? To join the conversation.
- Dorothy Allison

To participate, then, in the pomp of the orchestra, in the full scintillation thereof, was in the highest degree thrilling. Is this not the image of the perfect republic -- each instrument singing its wonted melody, endeavoring at once to express its part, and, in the same instance to conform its voice to the conversation of the whole?
- M T Anderson

I hope thou shalt never retreat beneath the ground. The sun is thy inheritance. The sky is thy birthright. Stay here, my boy, and with the conversation of mankind. rejoice in the light.
- M T Anderson

I've never been to the websites. It's a lot healthier for me to keep out of the conversations about me.
- Fiona Apple

Beneath the conversations and silences and reconnecting intimacy, I tried to reconcile the adult Hardy had become with the boy I had known and longed for. It troubled me to realize they weren't the same...but of course I wasn't the same either.
- Lisa Kleypas

Fuck me, shut the fuck up," Cal entered the conversation, glaring at both Ryker and Devin. "Caked. Jesus. Seriously? Are we talkin' about cakes?
- Kristen Ashley

Does everyone just believe what he wants to?"
"As long as possible. Sometimes longer."
"What about you?"
"You mean, am I human? Certainly. I don't believe I'm really old. I believe I'm quite attractive. I believe you seek out my company because you think I'm charming - even when you insist on turning the conversation to physics.
- Isaac Asimov

Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.
Austen, Jane (1998-06-01). Pride and Prejudice (pp. 157-158). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.
- Jane Austen

I must have my share in the conversation...
- Jane Austen

She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.
- Jane Austen

I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it,
if there were not a friend?
The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Sometimes poetry is inspired by the conversation entered into by reading other poems.
- John Barton

In love, as in life, one misheard word can be tremendously important. If you tell someone you love them, for instance, you must be absolutely certain that they have replied "I love you back" and not "I love your back" before you continue the conversation.
- Lemony Snicket

They walked across 15th Street to the Madison Hotel's Montpelier Room, an opulent French restaurant. Bradlee asked for a corner table, and began the conversation. 'You'd better bring me up to date because...' He turned to order lunch in perfect French, and then turned back to Woodward. '...our cocks are on the chopping block now and I just want to know a little bit more about this.'
-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward
- Carl Bernstein

...The conversation had become unreal since Christianity had entered it. Ronny approved of religion as long as it endorsed the National Anthem, but he objected when it attempted to influence his life.
- E M Forster

I've literally, in my entire life I've had two guys come up to me and ask me out. Other than that I have had to go and try to like spend time with them, or sort of start the conversation, basically like spell it out in a Sharpie, like, you know?
- Jennifer Love Hewitt

I am really driven, but my drive doesn't effect the conversations I have in my head about life, and my worries and fears and insecurities.
- Zach Braff

The host took care to produce one or another of these whenever the current subjects seemed about used up, so that the conversation gathered new life and at the same time steered clear of political arguments, which are hindersome to both ingestion and digestion.
- Jean Brillat Savarin

Whenever Percy stopped by to see [Annabeth], she was so lost in thought that the conversation went something like this:
Percy: 'Hey, how's it going?'
Annabeth: 'Uh, no thanks.'
Percy: 'Okay...have you eaten anything today?'
Annabeth: 'I think Leo is on duty. Ask him.'
Percy: 'So, my hair is on fire.'
Annabeth: 'Okay, in a while.
- Rick Riordan

If you'd sat there any longer,' Annabeth said, 'you would have spontaneously combusted. I hope the conversation was worth it?
- Rick Riordan

So, destroy? Cal asked. Clearly, the conversation was giving his two brain cells a serious workout.
- Rick Riordan

In the middle of the conversation, I open a third ale. I cup my hand over the mouthpiece so they don't hear the tab of the ale being popped. It dawns on me that this is a slightly contrary action. Like stopping into Baby Gap before having an abortion.
- Augusten Burroughs

It was impossible to escape her. She provided no natural break in the conversation, and she spoke with such intensity that I would have had to abruptly shout "SHUT THE FUCK UP," punch her, and then run away in order to be free.
- Augusten Burroughs

It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about.
- Orson Scott Card

We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the
meaning of it all.
- William James

When I spoke, I was listened to; and I was at a loss to know how I had so easily acquired the art of commanding attention, and giving the tone to the conversation.
- Adelbert Von Chamisso

Boredom forces you to ring people you haven't seen for eighteen years and halfway through the conversation you remember why you left it so long. Boredom means you start to read not only mail-order catalogues but also the advertising inserts that fall on the floor. Boredom gives you half a mind to get a gun and go berserk in the local shopping centre, and you know where this is going. Eventually, boredom means you will take up golf.
- Jeremy Clarkson

Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.
- David Levithan

The conversation of human beings seldom interested him, but it crossed his mind that the males and females always got along best when neither actually listened fully to what the other one was saying.
- Terry Pratchett

Do you like vegetables?" Sophie asked, hoping to steer the conversation towards a slightly less dangerous kind of food.
"You is trying to change the subject," the Giant said sternly. "We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable.
- Roald Dahl

Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present.
- Kurt Vonnegut

I'm still not sure I didn't hallucinate the conversation while overdosing on his pheromones.
- Sylvia Day

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.
- Edgar Degas

How can you read and talk at the same time?" I asked.
"Well, I usually can't, but neither the book nor the conversation is particularly intellectually challenging.
- John Green

Everyone laughed, and just like that, the conversation shifted, jumping to another topic. It was fast and furious, the talking, the emotions, the back-and-forth and forth-and-back. I realized that if I tried to focus on it too much, I got overwhelmed. So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.
- Sarah Dessen

I should not have minded that, if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me.
- Charles Dickens

Jesus picked up the conversation. As the crowning glory of creation, you were made in Our image, unencumbered by structure and free to simply 'be' in relationship with Me and one another. If you had trully learned to regard one another's concerns as significant as your own, there would be no need for hierarchy.
- W Paul Young

Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.
- Elizabeth Drew

Travel, instead of broadening the mind, often merely lengthens the conversation.
- Elizabeth Drew

One develops an instinct for letting silence do the heavy lifting. In the three, four, five seconds that passed without either of us speaking, the many ways the conversation could go came and went like time-lapse film of flowers blooming and dying.
- Glen Duncan

Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic; it was supposed to engender difficult questions and to keep the conversation at a low temperature.
- Henry James

Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water... remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.
- John Irving

They [dogs] never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation.
- Jerome K Jerome

A raintree bent towards a window in one side of the bungalow, eavesdropping on the conversations that had taken place inside over years.
- Tan Twan Eng

If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.
- Jonathan Franzen

The almost egregiously English couple, Cedric and Rosamund Chailey, had slipped quietly away when the conversation turned to God. It had not seemed polite to be present when anything so American was being discussed.
- Michael Frayn

He tried to listen to the conversations going on at the table and he found that he could no longer concentrate on what anyone was saying and which was worse that he was not interested in any of what he was able to hear.
- Neil Gaiman

We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old.
- Neil Gaiman

She stood by the tea-table in a light-coloured muslin gown, which had a good deal of pink about it. She looked as if she was not attending to the conversation, but solely busy with the tea-cups, among which her round ivory hands moved with pretty, noiseless, daintiness.
- Elizabeth Gaskell

Don't let yourself be. Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often it succeeds and how often it doesn't. Write about it. Ask a patient or a colleague what they think about it. See if you can keep the conversation going.
- Atul Gawande

The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.
- William Temple

I've found that if I say what I'm really thinking and feeling, people are more likely to say what they really think and feel. The conversation becomes a real conversation.
- Carol Gilligan

I have not made any suggestions about climate change. This is more about blending or shifting the conversation about the environment versus the economy. It's just such an old, outdated conversation.
- Jennifer M Granholm

Once again I had asked an innocent question, and because of it, I was banished from the conversation.
- John Grisham

Why are you so pissed off? he asked, sounding genuinely surprised. Sometimes I wondered if Dex actually had any recollection of 90% of the conversations he was involved with.
- Karina Halle

To stutter through it with you or even stop stuttering and say nothing, was so lucky and soft, better talk than mile-a-minute with anyone. After a few minutes we'd stop rattling, we'd adjust, we'd settle in, and the conversation would speed into the night.
- Daniel Handler

The conversation of the gods! - I didn't resent or feel aggrieved because I couldn't understand it. I was the smallest of the planets, and if I carried messages between them and I couldn't always understand, that was in order too: they were something in a foreign language - star-talk.
- L P Hartley

I disapprove of lots of decisions made by George Bush: the war, the meddling in the affairs of other countries, the conversations with dictators; it was a dark time.
- Tommy Hilfiger

Tonight was a great opportunity to take on the political status quo that has given us trillion dollar deficits and put millions out of work. Our objective was to inject some common sense into the conversation among Republicans at a time when business-as-usual simply won't work.
- Gary Johnson

After I speak, my words merge with the wind, and if you're listening, your ears act like sails and carry the conversation.
- Jarod Kintz

The conversation went like this:
Me: Hello? You left your panties over here.
Her: Hello?
Me: Oh, hi, grandma! I thought you were someone else. Still, the same applies to you. You also left your panties over here. Now put grandpa on the phone. I need to tell him he left his panties over here.
- Jarod Kintz

But what happens when you don't find that right person? Do you just spend the rest of your life in a relationship where the conversation isn't great, everything isn't perfect, but it is nice and sweet?
- Miranda Kenneally

The conversation of bullets.
- Markus Zusak

No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.
- Fran Lebowitz

The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive.
- Fran Lebowitz

Over the summer we chatted one night while Angie stripped a bed, changed wet sheets, comforted and repajamaed a toddler, and chased down a car of speeding teenagers while shaking a brick at them, never once interrupting the conversation or setting down her margarita. The only reason this woman isn't president of General Motors is because she's chosen not to be.
- Jen Lancaster

Salander leaned back against the pillow and followed the conversation with a smile. She wondered why she, who had such difficulty talking about herself with people of flesh and blood, could blithely reveal her most intimate secrets to a bunch of completely unknown freaks on the Internet.
- Stieg Larsson

I get really starstruck and tongue tied when I'm around other writers and the conversation tends not to go well.
- Jennifer Weiner

Eden is a conversation. It is the conversation of the human with the Divine. And it is the reverberations of that conversation that create a sense of place. It is not a thing, Eden, but a pattern of relationships, made visible in conversation. To live in Eden is to live in the midst of good relations, of just relations scrupulously attended to, imaginatively maintained through time. Altogether we call this beauty.
- Barry Lopez

Very rarely does food enhance the conversation. If the food is really good, there'll be much less conversation because you'd be concentrating too much on the food.
- Richard Lugar

~ You know young Francis Weston? He that waits on the king? His people are giving out that you're a Hebrew... Next time you're at court, take your cock out and put it on the table and see what he says to that.
~ I do that anyway, if the conversation flags.
- Hilary Mantel

The conversations rests uneasily; one doesn't expect good-byes to be burdened by such trivialities. This is not how it is in the books, he thinks, or in the theater, and he feels the need to speak of mission, of duty, of love. They reach home and close the door and he doesn't drop her hand. Where speech fails, touch compensates.
- Daniel Mason

Saying good-bye is basically an invitation not to see a person again. It's making it okay for that to be the last conversation you have. So if you don't say it--if you leave the conversation open--it means you'll have to see them again..
- Morgan Matson

I do expect that the President will say something at the beginning of his remarks today, at the conversation.
- Scott Mcclellan

The conversation had turned again to those moments, by now enriched by a private mythology, when they first set eyes on each other
- Ian Mcewan

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
- H L Mencken

Seeing Josh is my homecoming. I didn't tell him I was coming back. He doesn't say anything when he sees me, and neither do I, because the fact that I'm here is an answer. We just look at each other and speak in the silence like we always have and no one interrupts the conversation.
- Katja Millay

The other day I met a man who didn't know where Tripoli was. Tripoli happened to come into the conversation, and he was evidently at a loss. "Let's see," he said. "Tripoli is just down by the - er - you know. What's the name of that place?" "That's right," I answered, "just opposite, Thingumabob. I could show you in a minute on a map. It's near - what do they call it?" At this moment the train stopped, and I got out and went straight home to look at my atlas.
- A A Milne

The way to get a man interested and to hold his interest was to talk about himself, and then gradually lead the conversation around yourselfand keep it there.
- Margaret Mitchell

I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.
- Edvard Munch

The conversation of kisses. Subtle, engrossing, fearless, transforming.
- Alice Munro

Every mystery novel I ever read, the great detective was such an arrogant fuck you could replace 70% of his dialogue with 'Are you stupid?' and the conversation would still make sense.
- Nisio Isin

I keep repeating the conversation with Taduesz in mind, reaching out to touch it to make sure it doesn't disappear.
- Brigid Pasulka

I painted one dining room red and I must say, the conversation became very heated in that room.
- Amanda Pays

When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.
- Fernando Pessoa

Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.
- Bill Watterson

Where are you from, Mr. Pendergast? Can't quite place the accent."
"New Orleans."
"What a coincidence! I went there for Mardi Gras once."
"How nice for you. I myself have never attended."
Ludwig paused, the smile frozen on his face, wondering how to steer the conversation onto a more pertinent topic.
- Douglas Preston

There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.
- Anna Quindlen

On our watch, the conversation with a would-be suicide bomber will not begin with the words, 'You have the right to remain silent.'
- Mitt Romney

Ty's knee occasionally brushed against his under the table as they ate, but the conversation died down as the food was passed around. It was an odd, remarkable feeling, to be eating breakfast with Ty and his family and feel not only welcome, but like he might belong there.--Zane
- Abigail Roux

I love this time of day,' Josh says-talking to me, he's talking to me!-and I try to think of the right thing to say.
'I love you' sounds a little intense for the conversation.
'Can we make out?' sounds like something Jackson would say, and even if I am thinking it, I never want to sound like Jackson. Ever.
'Me too,' is what I come up with.
Brilliant, right?
- Elizabeth Scott

I think that certainty is a closed door, It's the end of the conversation. Doubt is an open door.
- John Patrick Shanley

Nicole will come up in conversations where it's in a part of the conversation. Or we may be somewhere and I would tell some story about their mother and I. You know, we always honor her birthday.
- O J Simpson

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
- George Adam Smith

I don't think of love in terms of relationships. It happens in terms of seconds, but it goes away like that, too. I pass a nurse, I love her, it ends when I go around a corner; at a restaurant I see a forlorn man at the table next to me, and I love him, and the conversation pulls me back, and it's ended. A patient comes in, and she is sick, and I love her, and then she dies, and I never see her again. This is what I live for. Don't think that it's sad.
- Patrick Somerville

To have God speak to the heart is a majestic experience, an experience that people may miss if they monopolize the conversation and never pause to hear God's responses.
- Charles Stanley

You want people walking away from the conversation with some kernel of wisdom or some kind of impact.
- Harry Dean Stanton

There is one instance that we cite in the report where in one of the conversations a member of organized crime is talking to another member of organized crime and he suggests that Attorney General Kennedy should be murdered.
- Louis Stokes

If you're yelling you're the one who's lost control of the conversation.
- Taylor Swift

We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these othersour parents, for instanceand they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live.
- Charles Taylor

The captain would...turn off the conversation, like a consummate man of the world, to some topic of general interest, such as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at Carlton House, or the weather - that blessing to society.
- William Makepeace Thackeray

Listen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as between individuals. They are, for the most part, dialogues of the deaf.
- Paul Tournier

All my life I've felt on the outside wherever I am - out of the picture, the conversation, at a distance, as though I were the only one able to hear the sounds or words that other's can't, and deaf to the words that they hear. As if I'm outside the frame, on the other side of a huge, invisible window.
- Delphine De Vigan

You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.
- Michael Wilding

The conversation topic in my head is not what role I should play; it is whether I am going to play at all.
- Jonny Wilkinson

What ho!" I said.
"What ho!" said Motty.
"What ho! What ho!"
"What ho! What ho! What ho!"
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
- P G Wodehouse

...though the conversation always touched an exceptionally high level of brilliance, there was apt to be a good deal of sugar thrown about.
- P G Wodehouse