John Updike Quotes

It's a difficult competition against silence, because silence is a perfect language, the only language which says with no words.

Words are how people think. When you misuse words, you diminish your ability to think clearly and truthfully.

It's not that I don't like words. There's sometimes no need for words.

Something's that written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means.

Tone is often the most important part of a conversation - and listening is so much more important than what you say.

I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

Words are powerful.

Words, words. They're all we have to go on.

The words that are coming out of my mouth and how I mean them, it's so much different.

Listen twice as much as you speak.

Why must one talk? Often one shouldn't talk, but live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean. (Nana Kleinfrankenheim, Vivre Sa Vie)

Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.

He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak.

Everyone knows how to talk, and no one knows what to say.

Communication: the thing humans forgot when we invented words.

If you think communication is all talking, you haven't been listening.

Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human.

How or by what magic is it, that we convey our thoughts to one another with such case and accuracy?

Listen with your eyes for feelings.

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

Words are much better at relating emotions and thoughts.

Words are all we have.

The biggest mistake most people make when it comes to listening is they're so focused on what they're going to say next or how what the other person is saying is going to affect them that they fail to hear what's being said.

I like words. Words are places, rooms, distant airs, thin and tropical. They make us feel and imagine we are more than our bodies.