Deborah Tannen Quotes

I love the honesty of New Yorkers. When a New Yorker says 'let's do lunch,' they actually mean it. In L.A., when they say 'let's do lunch,' they're just trying to say good-bye.

I grew up in the Midwest, so I have sort of an honorable moral code. But I moved to a city and joined a sort of fast crowd. A lot of people who grew up in the city sort of aren't aware of manners and other ways of life and 'common decency.'

Growing up in the South, we say 'Yes Ma'am' and 'No Ma'am.' Here in Hollywood, people get offended.

I don't really want to be in the business of observing conversations.

As an American married to an Englishman and living in France, I've spent much of my adult life trying to decode the rules of conversation in three countries. Paradoxically, these rules are almost always unspoken.

In London, people don't make eye contact; it's almost too provocative.

L.A. is uninhibited: You're encouraged to express yourself, wear what you want, do what you want, and to speak from a very emotionally honest place. D.C. is different. In Washington, you have to be much more careful about what you say and do. Especially about what you wear!

As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren't cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones.

Canadians are more polite when they are being rude than Americans are when they are being friendly.

When one is polite in German, one lies.

I don't intentionally eavesdrop. I'm not looking for salacious gossip, I'm just looking for vocabulary items.

In India, you can just show up at a friend's house, and they will feed you; you can borrow someone's clothes and touch each other. In London, they would say, 'Oh, let's meet for coffee at 4:15, and we will talk about, I don't know, this play that we saw.'

People have no concept of boundaries.

URBANITY, n. The kind of civility that urban observers ascribe to dwellers in all cities but New York. Its commonest expression is heard in the words, "I beg your pardon," and it is not consistent with disregard of the rights of others.

Walls have tongues, and hedges ears.

How happily some people would live if they troubled themselves as little about other people's business as about their own.

The American vice would be sometimes speaking too loudly. You can always hear American people on the trains!

Friends told me that the latest trend, at least in Europe, is public sex. They showed me some clips, and they're terrifying. A couple enters a streetcar, half-full, simply takes a seat, undresses, and starts to do it. You can see from surprised faces that it's not staged. It's pure working-class suburb. But what's fascinating is that the people all look, and then they politely ignore it. The message is that even if you're together in public with people, it still counts as private space.

When you go to that other country you realize that in France and in England, you don't ask somebody what they do for a living when you meet someone. A lot of the obvious things, the shortcuts we take in America - in America you can talk about money all you want. You can ask how much they make, rent they pay, how much their house costs and how much their car costs, and they'll feel comfortable telling you. But it's scandalous to ask anyone in England or France a question like that.

Let's all commit ourselves to the basic civility of minding our own business. Failing that, let's go back to a time when we were nasty and judgmental, but only behind one another's backs.

When strangers meet, great allowance should be made for differences of custom and training.

I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam "She has a wonderful personality" really means something. But I couldnt figure out a polite way to ask.

The English delight in Silence more than any other European Nation, if the Remarks which are made on us by Foreigners are true.

The English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion - unless he happens to be an American, when his ignorance of good manners is indulged.

Whenever I visit my family in Canada, I remind myself that what many Americans would consider forthright, many Canadians would consider overbearing.