Ruth Bernhard Quotes

One of the greatest gifts you can give to anyone is the gift of attention

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.

Most people - and particularly people whose lives have nothing to do with books at all - are intrigued by the idea that somebody wants to listen to them and get it right.

I think if you can get people to laugh, you can get people to listen.

It's important for me who is at the table with me; the moment when everyone speaks to each other and everyone listens. If there's good food, it's much better.

We don't get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

I wanted to communicate what I had seen, so that others could see it.

There are many benefits to this process of listening. The first is that good listeners are created as people feel listened to. Listening is a reciprocal process - we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us.

The best thing I could say is you do have to be a really good listener. If I go to a family reunion, and there's 400 people there, everybody comes up and tells me their stories, right? And I think that when you're a good listener, and you can imagine how someone's talking, dialogue is your key friend, is it not?

She was a genius at listening.

The best thing anybody ever told me about acting - and I think it's probably true for life, generally - is listen. You've really got to watch, and you've really got to listen. Not see and hear.

I've always been interested in listening to people's stories.

In apartments and cottages, on the street and in the train... I listen... More and more, I turn into one large ear, always turning to another person.

Listening is everything. Listening is the whole deal. That's what I think. And I mean that in terms of before you work, after you work, in between work, with your children, with your husband, with your friends, with your mother, with your father. It's everything. And it's where you learn everything.

What people really want, no matter who they are, is someone to listen to them. ... people have a lot on their minds, however trivial, and if you're simply willing to sit there like a sack of dirt and let them yammer, they will tell it to you.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking our words more seriously and discovering their true selves.

More and more I've come to understand that listening is one of the most important things we can do for one another. Whether the other be an adult or a child, our engagement in listening to who that person is can often be our greatest gift. Whether that person is speaking or playing or dancing, building or singing or painting, if we care, we can listen.

There is a craft and a power in listening.

You're not listening with your eyes.

I'm glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility. (U.S. poet and writer, 1943- )

You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.

The radio is good for taking somebody else's experience and making you understand what it would be like. Because when you don't see someone, but you hear them talking - and, uh, that is what radio is all about - it's like when someone is talking from the heart. Everything about it conspires to take you into somebody else's world.

You should communicate with your other one. Understanding what they are on about is pretty key.

I'm a conduit for telling people's stories. It's a privilege.