Meaningful Communication Quotes

We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

I know everyone is busy in life and for them to take out the time to still think about me and send me a card or a letter, that really meant the world to me. I'm grateful for that.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

The truth is, rarely can a response make something better - what makes something better is connection.

Conversation, which is friendship's mode of expression, is a superficial digression which gives us nothing worth acquiring. We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute.

Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.

I was born into a profession in which my love of words, chosen with care for their meaning and nuance, was extremely important, not only to me, but also to the people with whom I worked with.

I can't tear up a poem and be a sound bite for you. Why is that so hard for anyone to understand?

Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. "Yes," he replied, "there is a meaning; at least, for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.

If I were proud of anything in my life, it would be of our love. I feel we have to tell to each other as many things as we can, so we are not only lovers, but the closest of friends at the same time.

Good thoughts not delivered mean squat.

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.

If words don't have vibration behind them, and a real feeling behind them, then they're just words.

Much more is accomplished by a single word of the Our Father said, now and then, from our heart, than by the whole prayer repeated many times in haste and without attention.

I would rather people take me as straightforward and not have to wonder if I'm kidding or not. Because what I have to say, and what I'm interested in doing and communicating, is worthwhile enough that I don't want to muck it up with people being confused about where I'm really coming from.

Image isn't everything, It's what comes from your heart, and what you learn and what you say and how you act that means more than anything.

To share poetry is one of the most intimate acts of friendship possible.

One glance, one word from you gives more pleasure than all the wisdom of this world.

I mean, artistic processes are all about making choices all the time, and the very act of making a choice is the distilling down and the getting to the core of what it is that you care about and what you want to say, really.

I realized that I started writing songs to make people feel how I felt, rather than just making them feel something. That's not the way I should do things.

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.