Phoebe Robinson Quotes

I'm over the word 'like' in conversation, and 'you know' seems to be the placeholder of choice, but when I'm writing dialogue, I tend to use those phrases because that's how people talk.

The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.

I don't know anyone who curses the way they do on the Sopranos. Not in an Italian household. I never said the word hell in front of my mother.

I have been told I say 'shucks' quite frequently... Shucks, I'll have to work on that.

People love to drop in 'you betcha' as often as they can.

When I hear an interview that I've done, and I've said 'like' a bunch of times, it just cheapens the sentiment.

Even my trolls have started taking the trouble to spell their Tweets correctly, which is thoughtful.

Language is our way of communicating what we want and who we are. By using bad language, we diminish the divine spark within us that defines our humanity.

Never trust people that like to call things by initials, that's my philosophy.

I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.

If you use a colloquialism or a slang word or phrase, simply use it; do not draw attention to it by enclosing it in quotation marks. To do so is to put on airs, as though you were inviting the reader to join you in a select society of those who know better.

I've never found an interesting person with a foul mouth.

When persons are present to one another they can function not merely as physical instruments but also as communicative ones. This possibility, no less than the physical one, is fateful for everyone concerned and in every society appears to come under strict normative regulation, giving rise to a kind of communication traffic order.

One can choose to obsess over prescriptive rules, but they have no more to do with human language than the criteria for judging cats at a cat show have to do with mammalian biology.

Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.

Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.

A study at the University of Utah found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he’ll say it is because he and his friend share similar attitudes. But if you actually quiz the two of them on their attitudes, you’ll find out that what they actually share is similar activities. We’re friends with the people we do things with, as much as we are with the people we resemble. We don’t seek out friends, in other words. We associate with the people who occupy the same small, physical spaces that we do.

Guys with nice person names try to be sympathetic.

A bad mood is like bad breath. Both are wrong to inflict onto others

Impoliteness is frequently the sign of an awkward modesty that loses its head when surprised and hopes to conceal this with rudeness.

I don't know if people have gotten ruder or if my tolerance level has declined.

That man will never be unwelcome to others who makes himself agreeable to his own family.

A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.

Gossiping is the plague of little towns.

Good manners reflect something from inside-an innate sense of consideration for others and respect for self.