Playful Communication Quotes

Names generate meaning in a short amount of space — they provoke thoughts, questions. That's something I like doing. Of course, you have to be careful. Sometimes it can alienate the reader, it can be another level of mediation, to make a character carry the great burden of a metaphoric name. The character can be a device before he or she becomes a person, and that can be a bad thing for a writer who wants to offer up a kind of emotional proximity in the work. It's a constant struggle, the desire to be playful and the desire to communicate on some very stark emotional level.

Improvisation is about finding the best joke or the silliest way to get something across. Improvising conflict is always fun because you can just go for it.

It's hard for me to get embarrassed, but the things that do embarrass me would be if anybody ever heard my wife and I talking in our robust, made-up language.

I was never in an improv group. But when I went to school, we would do it all day long with friends, not knowing what it was called.

The true character of epistolary style is playfulness and urbanity.

It doesn't feel like you're preaching, if you can say something in a joke.

I want to create a kind of new monster language for kids to play with, pick up, and incorporate into their own vocabularies.

I think it's important to have a good sense of humor and joke around with your kids. That's what I do a lot.

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.