131 Inspiring Conversation Quotes

In the ever-evolving tapestry of human interaction, conversations hold a special place as they weave connections, inspire ideas, and spark change. Whether shared across coffee tables or digital screens, the right words have the power to resonate deeply, leaving lasting impressions. Our carefully curated selection of 131 inspiring conversation quotes is designed to celebrate the art of dialogue. These quotes capture the nuances of meaningful exchanges, offering wisdom for navigating conversations with empathy and understanding. Join us as we explore the words that inspire connection and illuminate the path to deeper, more enriching dialogues.

1. “Conversations consist for the most part of things one does not say.” - Cees Nooteboom

2. “Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.” - Doug Wright

3. “I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.” - Samuel Johnson

4. “Good Morning!" said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Gandalf looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat."What do you mean?" he said. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?""All of them at once," said Bilbo. "And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain...."Good morning!" he said at last. "We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water." By this he meant that the conversation was at an end."What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!" said Gandalf. "Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

5. “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

6. “He's never quite got the trick of conversation, tending to hear in dissenting views, however mild, a kind of affront, an invitation to mortal combat.” - Ian McEwan

7. “People say conversation is a lost art; how often I have wished it were.” - Edward R. Murrow

8. “The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.” - Chuck Palahniuk

9. “Manners are the ability to put someone else at their ease...by turning any answer into another question.” - Tina Brown

10. “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.” - Wodehouse

11. “Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversations was flow.” - Gregory Maguire

12. “I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone.” - J.D. Salinger

13. “Stairs," Valkyrie said, disappointed."Not just ordinary stairs," Skulduggery told her as he led the way down. "Magic stairs.""Really?""Oh, yes."She followed him into the darkness. "How are they magic?""They just are.""In what way?""In a magicky way."She glared at the back of his head. "They aren't magic at all, are they?""Not really.” - Derek Landy

14. “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 others—our parents, for instance—and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live.” - Charles Taylor

15. “How do we know we're not people in a movie?' she asked.I looked at her not knowing how to reply.Mama, [...] how do we know that things are real?'Great. Now we have a junior existentialist in the house.Well, we don't know. We just have to hope that what we think is real is real.'But how do we know?' she asked, insistently.Ah, a scientist, who wants empirical evidence.We don't know. We just have to hope.'Mama, how do we know things aren't a dream? You know, how sometimes life feels like a dream? Do you ever feel that way?'Yes, sweetie, I feel that way all the time.” - Julie Metz

16. “The middle path makes me wary. . . . But in the middle of my life, I am coming to see the middle path as a walk with wisdom where conversations of complexity can be found, that the middle path is the path of movement. . . . In the right and left worlds, the stories are largely set. . . . We become missionaries for a position . . . practitioners of the missionary position. Variety is lost. Diversity is lost. Creativity is lost in our inability to make love with the world.” - Terry Tempest Williams

17. “Clearly she was expected to say something, but panic at having to speak stole the thoughts from her head.” - Shannon Hale

18. “Finally! You're here!"Uh....Do I know you?"Well, no....But you're here, all the same...” - Lynn Weingarten

19. “There's so few things men can talk about. If a man doesn't like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn't like either of them, well, I'm in trouble anyway: he don't like girls.” - Truman Capote

20. “I've given guys blow jobs just because I've run out of things to talk about.'Oh, Rae. Who hasn't” - Anne Lamott

21. “The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.” - William Hazlitt

22. “Want to play hangman? asks Theophile, and I ache to tell him that I have enough on my plate playing quadriplegic. But my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home. By the time you strike, even you no longer understand what had seemed so witty before you started to dictate it, letter by letter. So the rule is to avoid impulsive sallies. It deprives conversation of its sparkle, all those gems you bat back and forth like a ball-and I count this forced lack of humor one of the great drawbacks of my condition.” - Jean-Dominique Bauby

23. “Tamina serves coffee and calvados to the customers (there aren't all that many, the room being always half empty) and then goes back behind the bar. Almost always there is someone sitting on a barstool, trying to talk to her. Everyone likes Tamina. Because she knows how to listen to people.But is she really listening? Or is she merely looking at them so attentively, so silently? I don't know, and it's not very important. What matters is that she doesn't interrupt anyone. You know what happens when two people talk. One of them speaks and the other breaks in: "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." and starts talking about himself until the first one manages to slip back in with his own "It's absolutely the same with me, I..."The phrase "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others. The whole secret of Tamina's popularity is that she has no desire to talk about herself. She submits to the forces occupying her ear, never saying: "It's absolutely the same with me, I...” - Milan Kundera

24. “It’s no company at all, when people know nothing and say nothing,’ she muttered.” - Emily Brontë

25. “Funny how nobody talks on the tubes, isn't it? I rarely catch the tube myself, or lifts. Confined spaces, everybody shuts down. Why is that? Perhaps we think everybody on the tube is a potential psychopath or a drunk,so we close down and pretend to read a book or something.” - John Hannah

26. “Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.” - Evelyn Waugh

27. “I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.” - Andrew Solomon

28. “Bit by bit, I found myself relaxing into the conversation. Kitty had a natural talent for drawing people out of themselves, and it was easy to fall in with her, to feel comfortable in her presence. As Uncle Victor had once told me long ago, a conversation is like having a catch with someone. A good partner tosses the ball directly into your glove, making it almost impossible for you to miss it; when he is on the receiving end, he catches everything sent his way, even the most errant and incompetent throws. That’s what Kitty did. She kept lobbing the ball straight into the pocket of my glove, and when I threw the ball back to her, she hauled in everything that was even remotely in her area: jumping up to spear balls that soared above her head, diving nimbly to her left or right, charging in to make tumbling, shoestring catches. More than that, her skill was such that she always made me feel that I had made those bad throws on purpose, as if my only object had been to make the game more amusing. She made me seem better than I was, and that strengthened my confidence, which in turn helped to make my throws less difficult for her to handle. In other words, I started talking to her rather than to myself, and the pleasure of it was greater than anything I had experienced in a long time.” - Paul Auster

29. “The American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar, I met a man, and within five minutes he explained that he had just been released from prison. Another drinker told me that his wife had passed away, and he had recently suffered a heart attack, and now he hoped that he would die within the year. I learned that there's no reliable small talk in America; at any moment a conversation can become personal.” - Peter Hessler

30. “Of course, to avoid getting stuck in that convo with someone you dislike or feel uncomfortable around, don't be passive, be proactive. Do not let them direct your interaction on their terms, do it on yours. Ask a Misdirection Question--something too difficult to answer quickly--e.g., 'What's Congress up to?' or 'You ever learn any cool science?' When you ask the question, don't make eye contact, keep moving and get out of there. Do not wait for a response and deny ever asking it. Repeat these actions until you are never again spoken to by that individual (about four times).” - Eugene Mirman

31. “This, I believe, is the appropriate image of human intercourse -- appropriate because it recognizes the qualities, the diversities, and the proper relationships of human utterances. As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.” - Michael Joseph Oakeshott

32. “The first conversation began awkwardly, although Espinoza had been expecting Pelletier's call, as if both men found it difficult to say what sooner or later the would have to say. The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man. The word horror was spoken six times and the word happiness once (by Espinoza). The word solution was said twelve times. The word solipsism seven times. The world euphemism ten times. The word category, in the singular and the plural, nine times. The word structuralism once (Pelletier). The term American literature three times. The words dinner or eating or breakfast or sandwich nineteen times. The words eyes or hands or hair fourteen times. The the conversation proceeded more smoothly.” - Roberto Bolaño

33. “Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker.” - Ann Patchett

34. “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 Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

35. “In good company there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly coextensive with the several consciousnesses there present. No partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running of two souls into one.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

36. “A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

37. “He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to which to reply.” - Leo Tolstoy

38. “I don't know what he means by that, but I nod and smile at him. You'd be surprised at how far that response can get you in a conversation where you are completely confused.” - Jodi Picoult

39. “Are you mad?" I ask."I was." He glances at the ceiling then back at me. "Or confused, anyway. The whole thing threw me through for a loop. I thought I'd finally met a guy at Underwood I could relate to, and it turns out he wasn't a guy at all."I swallow. "I can see how that would be weird." "In a way though, I was relieved.""Relieved?" I echo. "Why?"He looks around embarrased. "Let's just say you had me questioning my sexual orientation.” - Jody Gehrman

40. “It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.” - Sarah Orne Jewett

41. “Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.” - Guy de Maupassant

42. “Sometimes when it looks like I'm deep in thought I'm just trying not to have a conversation with people.” - Pete Wentz

43. “All the inane, meaningless noises people make that pass for intelligent conversation. They might as well be pigs grunting in the pen. (92)” - Norma Fox Mazer

44. “At some point, one asks, "Toward what end is my life lived?" A great freedom comes from being able to answer that question. A sleeper can be decoyed out of bed by the sheer beauty of dawn on the open seas. Part of my job, as I see it, is to allow that to happen. Sleepers like me need at some point to rise and take their turn on morning watch for the sake of the planet, but also for their own sake, for the enrichment of their lives. From the deserts of Namibia to the razor-backed Himalayas, there are wonderful creatures that have roamed the Earth much longer than we, creatures that not only are worthy of our respect but could teach us about ourselves.” - Diane Ackerman

45. “Friendship is an obstetric art; it draws out our richest and deepest resources; it unfolds the wings of our dreams and hidden indeterminate thoughts; it serves as a check on our judgements, tries out our new ideas, keeps up our ardor, and inflames our enthusiasm.” - Antonin Sertillanges

46. “Where are you?" he asked. "I'm right here" she said. "I know, but it feels like one percent of you is somewhere else, where is that one percent?" he said. "I don't know....I think I'm always like that..." she answered. "I like that." "You do?" "Yes, because that way, I have to always look for the one percent to find it.” - C. JoyBell C.

47. “Dallas, is it remotely possible for you to carry on a conversation that's not loaded down with manure?” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

48. “Betsy liked to talk. Her father always said she got it from her mother, and her mother always said she got it from her father. But whomever she got it from she was certainly a talker.” - Maud Hart Lovelace

49. “Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?''It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an...imperfect God?''What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals...''No,' I interrupted. 'I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a...sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.'Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks:'There was Manicheanism...''Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil,' I broke in immediately. 'This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot...'Snow pondered for a while:'I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been...necessary. If i understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.'I kept on:'No, it's nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom--apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being--the being I have in mind--cannot exist in the plural, you see? ...Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while...''We already have,' Snow said sarcastically. 'Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on his altar.''If you're going to take what I say literally...'...Snow asked abruptly:'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?''I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.” - Stanisław Lem

50. “I've been talking to myself a lot lately. I don't know what that's about, but my mother was the same way. She hated to make small talk with other people, but get her into a conversation with herself and she was quite the raconteur. She would tell herself a joke and clap her hands together as she let out a laugh; she would murmur to the plants as she watered them, and offer encouragement to the food as she cooked it. Sometimes I would walk into a room and surprise her as she was regaling herself with some delightful story, and I remember how the sound would dry up in her mouth. She stood there, frozen in the headlights of my teenage scorn.” - Dan Chaon

51. “Corrival looked around. 'So is this it? Is everyone here? Erskine, maybe you should start the ball rolling. I have places to go and things to do.''Me?' Ravel asked. 'Why do I have to start it? You're the most respected mage here. You start it, or Skulduggery.'Skulduggery shook his head. 'I can't start it. I don't like most of these people. I might start shooting.” - Derek Landy

52. “She felt that her speech was voicing the incoherency her thoughts, and stopped abruptly.” - Kate Chopin

53. “You asked why the rate hate Overlanders so deeply. It is because they know one will be the warrior of the prophecy," said Vikus."Oh, I see," said Gregor. "So, when's he coming?"Vikus fixed his eyes on Gregor. "I believe he is already here.” - Suzanne Collins

54. “He did it (listened) as the world's most charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker's face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet.” - Stephen King

55. “We men are fascinated by the things we don't really understand. It gives us something to think and talk about: like females, they drive us nuts.” - Criss Jami

56. “Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.” - Criss Jami

57. “Everyone has their own ways of expression. I believe we all have a lot to say, but finding ways to say it is more than half the battle.” - Criss Jami

58. “Talking about one's feelings defeats the purpose of having those feelings. Once you try to put the human experience into words, it becomes little more than a spectator sport. Everything must have a cause, and a name. Every random thought must have a root in something else.” - Derek Landy

59. “Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.” - Julian Barnes

60. “I appricated that Nell was talking to me like a grown-up, but I had no idea what she meant. Still, I could see that the words flowed together like water over a riverbed.” - Silas House

61. “Conversationally, we were Fred and Ginger -- spin, slide, shuffle, bend.” - Marisa de los Santos

62. “A good conversation always involves a certain amount of complaining. I like to bond over mutual hatreds and petty grievances.” - Lisa Kleypas

63. “Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.” - Charles Bukowski

64. “The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.” - Ernest Hemingway

65. “The day drags along, you make thousands of plans, you imagine every possible conversation, you promise to change your behavior in certain ways–and you feel more and more anxious until your loved one arrives. But by then, you don't know what to say. The hours of waiting have been transformed into tension, the tension has become fear, and the fear makes you embarrassed about showing affection.” - Paulo Coelho

66. “High school parties exhausted me because I always felt like I was the only thinking person in a room mostly full of morons obliterating precious IQ points with every gulp of whatever booze they managed to steal out of their parents' liquor cabinets. College parties are exhausting in a diametrically opposite way. They are full of smart, funny people who are all used to being the smartest, funniest person in the room, so they spend the whole party talking over one another, overlapping and overtaking the conversation to prove that they are the smartest, funniest person in the room, if not the entire planet.” - Megan McCafferty

67. “...And tonight—Geryon? You okay?Yes fine, I'm listening. Tonight—?Why do you have your jacket over your head?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Can't hear you Geryon. The jacket shifted. Geryon peered out. I said sometimesI need a little privacy.” - Anne Carson

68. “Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.” - Neil Postman

69. “Just so you know, I’m goin’ to enlist.”“I’m proud of you. But why?”I groan against the pain but manage to give him a half smile. “I want to make sure Kiara’s got a boyfriend who has more to offer than a hot bod and a face that could make angels weep.” - Simone Elkeles

70. “Do you ever lose the ego?” Westford asks me.“Yeah.” When his daughter kisses me, my ego flies out the window.” - Simone Elkeles

71. “That’s not the only reason I’m stayin’, chica. I can’t leave you any more than I could walkout that door right now while my leg is busted up. I was just thinkin’ . . . should we tell yourparents now or later?”“Tell them what?” I ask, eyes wide.He kisses me softly, then says proudly, “That we’re in a serious, monogamous, committedrelationship.”“We are?”“Sí. And when I get out of here, I’m gonna fix the door to your car.” - Simone Elkeles

72. “You’re not the only one in this relationship who loves achallenge,” he says. “And just so you know for the future, I like my double-chocolate chipcookies warm and soft in the middle . . . and without magnets glued to them.” - Simone Elkeles

73. “On Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday:"These two simply appreciate one another more than either of them appreciates anyone else, and they would rather be appreciated by one another more than by anyone else. They just are at home with one another, whether or not they can ever live together under the same roof -- that is, ever find a roof they can live together under.” - Stanley Cavell

74. “Are you really going back there with me?" I ask."Hell yes I am. Your wish is finally coming true. I will see your vagina. Plus, I really want to see the look on that woman's face when she gets a peek at your plethora of pubes. Your copious curls, your abundant bush, the wild mane that if it sees a spark will start a forest fire," she states."Are you finished?" I ask irritably."I think so. But give me five minutes and I might be able to get one more in.” - Tara Sivec

75. “Chester nods all the way through this, but does not rudely interrupt Randy as a younger nerd would. Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an ssertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances.” - Neal Stephenson

76. “I don't believe that." She seems like suck a force,this reasonable girl who kills with a turn of her fingers. She would have left all this behind, if she had the chance. "I honestly don't remember," she sighs "I don't think I was strong in life. Now it seems like I loved every moment, that every breath was charmed and crisp." she clasps her hands comically to her chest and breaths in deep through her nose, then blows it out in a huff. "I probably didn't. For all my dreams and fancies, I can't recall being...what would you call it? Perky?” - Kendare Blake

77. “I possess the faculty of enjoying the company of those I - of my friends as well in silence as in conversation.” - Anne Brontë

78. “Most bad," the host concluded. "If you ask me, something sinister lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and dinnertime conversation. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly detest everyone around them.” - Mikhail Bulgakov

79. “Communication is the one class no one graduates from. Even the wisest man's words will be misinterpreted by a fool.” - Shannon L. Alder

80. “If they’re together long enough, every couple has one conversation over and over. This was ours.” - Frederick Weisel

81. “Heaven, envious of our joys, is waxen pale; And when we whisper, then the stars fall down To be partakers of our honey talk.(Dido, Queen of Carthage 4.4.52-54)” - Marlowe Christopher

82. “Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.” - Chinua Achebe

83. “Slowly, even though I thought it would never happen, New York lost its charm for me. I remember arriving in the city for the first time, passing with my parents through the First World's Club bouncers at Immigration, getting into a massive cab that didn't have a moment to waste, and falling in love as soon as we shot onto the bridge and I saw Manhattan rise up through the looks of parental terror reflected in the window. I lost my virginity in New York, twice (the second one wanted to believe he was the first so badly). I had my mind blown open by the combination of a liberal arts education and a drug-popping international crowd. I became tough. I had fun. I learned so much.But now New York was starting to feel empty, a great party that had gone on too long and was showing no sign of ending soon. I had a headache, and I was tired. I'd danced enough. I wanted a quiet conversation with someone who knew what load-shedding was.” - Mohsin Hamid

84. “You have to wait together - for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained ... and exhausted. So that ... That in effect was love.” - Ford Madox Ford

85. “They were learning that New York had another life, too — subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city — a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more.” - Malcolm Cowley

86. “He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter—the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face.” - Helen Simonson

87. “Prayer at its highest is a two-way conversation-and for me the most important part is listening to God's replies.” - Frank C. Laubach

88. “The conversation was mesmerizing, not for its content but for the cadences of the talk, the rhythm we fell into when we were alone, now as before. Every conversation between friends or lovers creates its own easy or awkward rhythms, hidden talk that runs like a subterranean river under even the most banal exchange.” - Robert Charles Wilson

89. “Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?''Very likely they do,' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight.” - Anne Brontë

90. “There is something hugely civilised about allowing long pauses in a conversation. Very few people can stand that kind of silence.” - James Robertson

91. “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

92. “There is nothing more entertaining then leaving someone speechless. Yet, there is nothing sadder than realizing that person was incapable of retaining half of what you said, and will repeat the story all wrong to someone else.” - Shannon L. Alder

93. “Surely she had endured enough for one evening without having to listen to intelligent conversation?” - Stella Gibbons

94. “Words were few and failing between them as though the silence that sat with them had laid its old lips on theirs and sucked them dry of speech. For where could one begin? With the weather? But here there was no weather. These few sad rooms were the old man's world. His horizons were all walls.” - Michael Bedard

95. “The conversation limped along this line of thought much like a zombie: lifeless and mindless and making a jelly of whatever healthy brains were within its reach.” - Steve Hockensmith

96. “More of your conversation would infect my brain.” - William Shakespeare

97. “[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we’re out of purgatory for the weekend.”“Maybe later,” I murmur, still distracted by the day’s previous events.“So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested.” “Huh?” I say.” - Jodi Picoult

98. “Everybody talks, but there is no conversation.” - Dejan Stojanovic

99. “We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound.” - J.D. Salinger

100. “Sorrow spoken lends a little courage to the speaker.” - Walter Wangerin, Jr

101. “They should.""Should be like a wood bee," she said.It was a private joke, a mocking appreciation of the slipperiness of even the simplest hope, a nonce catchphrase like so many others lifted from favorite movies or TV shows that served as a rote substitute for conversation and bound them like shut-in twins, each other's best and, most often, only audience.” - Stewart O'Nan

102. “Things are embarrassing, best to avoid them. But since your death I prefer a naturalist style of conversation. Let's strip it down to what matters. Let's have emotions and beliefs on show without the modest covering of small talk.” - Rosamund Lupton

103. “As far as I am concerned, philosophic questioning is just as likely to make you confused and depressed as it is to improve your condition.” - Christopher Paolini

104. “Our words were a shaky ladder; all I could do was climb, uncertain if I was about to surmount a glorious peak or fall and smash myself on the rocks below.” - Deva Fagan

105. “How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say something? For how many of us is that what conversation means - the setting up of our lines?” - Alexander McCall Smith

106. “[I]t is things that make us happy when conversation begins to reveal itself as a paltry substitute.” - rick moody

107. “And besides . . . I don’t want to leave you. Er, you guys.”He smiled, and it lit up his whole face. “Well, ‘we’ are certainly happy to hear that. Oh, and I’m also happy to watch our darling little love child dragon while you’re in St. Louis.”I grinned back.” - Richelle Mead

108. “I wanted to listen to him, but I did not want to answer now. That strange responsibility we feel towards others when they speak, to offer them the solace of any answer. Poor humans! And anyway he had not asked a question. He was merely floating there in the room, insubstantial, a living man in the midst of life, dying imperceptibly on his feet, like all of us.” - Sebastian Barry

109. “...I only told you about it because I thought I might get a laugh out of you for once even if it wasn't the truth, Jessie. Things don't have to be true to talk about 'em, you know.” - Marsha Norman

110. “Can I get a lock for my tent?Bears can't unzip tents, Lana.Well, chainsaw psychos who wander the woods looking for young girls all alone to chop up into pieces can.There are no chainsaw psychos! I can't believe you've never been camping. It's safe, Lana. I promise.Easy for you to say. You'll be snuggled up safely in the arms of Beau Vincent. I'm more than positive he could take on a black bear.” - Abbi Glines

111. “طه: بالسهولة دي .. هيلاقوا العضم .. و هيعرفوا إنه (السرفيس) .. الـ(DNA)...وليد: ليه .. (تامر حسني) .. عضمه منقوش عليه اسمه ؟ وبعدين ده معندهوش (DNA)أصلاً.. لما بنلاقي حاجة كده بنبقى عارفين إنّها مِش جاية .. و مالهاش ديّة .. ده إذا حد بلّغ أصلاً.” - أحمد مراد

112. “Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.” - Laurence Sterne

113. “The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.” - William Hazlitt

114. “It's basically the same in all periods of societies. If you belong to the majority, you can avoid thinking about lots of troubling things.''And those troubling things are all you /can/ think about when you're one of the few.''That's about the size of it,' she said mournfully. 'But maybe, if you're in a situation like that, you learn to think for yourself.''Yes, but maybe what you end up thinking for yourself /about/ is all those troubling things.” - Haruki Murakami

115. “I particularly value conversations which are meetings on the borderline of what I understand and what I don't, with people who are different from myself.” - Theodore Zeldin

116. “If not for sports, I do not think my father would have ever talked to me.” - Pat Conroy

117. “Imagine going to work every day to do only and exactly what you love!! All the work gets done because of the abundant diversity of your team. Different skills, interests and talents are woven together into a whole that is much greater than the sum of the parts!” - Denise Moreland

118. “Weird people don't care if they're weird. They are the most entertaining to converse with because nothing is off-limits.” - Donna Lynn Hope

119. “Just because you talk about it or advocate for one position doesn't mean you care more. Just because someone doesn't talk about it and advocates a different position doesn't mean they care less.” - Donna Lynn Hope

120. “Surely only boring people went in for conversations consisting of questions and answers. The art of true conversation consisted in the play of minds.” - Ved Mehta

121. “what a sad pair we are," she said. "Surely we can manage a conversation on a topic other than our respective terrible evenings.” - Julia Quinn

122. “I wondered if having conversations with your dog was less crazy than babbling to yourself when no one else was around. I guess it depended on whether or not the dog answered.” - Deb Baker

123. “It was the kind of conversation you could only hold in whispers.” - Aimee Bender

124. “She said one thing and I said another and the next thing I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the middle of that conversation.” - Hank Moody

125. “But before she tells you anything." I glared at him suspiciously."your seed..."Tsaeb winced."What the hell are you talking about?""your...well, your seed. You know, you have to knock her up.” - J.A. Redmerski

126. “My idea of good company, Mr. Eliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.” - Jane Austen

127. “Every person has something meaningful to say in the conversation of life.” - Bryant McGill

128. “CONVERSATION is the vehicle for change.” - Terry Tempest Williams

129. “We must understand that out of community and dialogue, the answers will arrive in their own time and way.” - Bryant McGill

130. “In Nepal, the quality of conversation is much more important than accuracy of the content. Maybe we get overexcited about information in England?” - Jane Wilson-Howarth

131. “What I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most. I mean you can't help it sometimes. What I think is, you're supposed to leave somebody alone if he's at least being interesting and he's getting all excited about something. I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.” - J.D Sallinger