Cathleen Schine Quotes

You have to think not about what you mean but about what people hear.

I was once told by someone wise that writing is perilous as you cannot always guarantee your words will be read in the spirit in which they were written.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they have been in.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

A signal is comprehended if it serves to make us notice the object or situation it bespeaks. A symbol is understood when we conceive the idea it presents.

I don't think you really can send an exact message, because any two viewers are so disparate, in terms of their backgrounds, their point of view, their histories, that there's no telling what that message might be.

The medium is not the message - the message is the message.

Words are slippery and thoughts are vicious.

A picture can say a thousand words but maybe not the correct ones.

Typography tended to alter language from a means of perception and exploration to a portable commodity.

Between what I think, what I want to say, what I believe I say, what I say, what you want to hear, what you believe to hear, what you hear, what you want to understand, what you think you understand, what you understand...They are ten possibilities that we might have some problem communicating. But let's try anyway...

Before any of it could make sense, it had to be heard.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.

My radar, after all these years of sanity, is still off when it comes to what people do or don't mean.

When you work with people who misunderstand you, instead of getting transmissions, you get transmutations, and that's much more interesting in the long run.

Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.

Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know." "Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!

You can mean more than one. You can mean thousands. I'm not in any immediate danger, I'll say to you. I'll pretend you can hear me. But it's no good, because I know you can't.

A letter is a risky thing; the writer gambles on the reader's frame of mind.

One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another.

What I mean and what I say is two different things," the BFG announced rather grandly.

Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

I like delivering a message, but what I find interesting is providing those details in a different context. Then the readers can make up their minds what it means.