Margaret Mitchell Quotes

Don't steamroll your way into a conversation before establishing any relational credibility.

The first time you meet someone, the conversation is sort of on life support. You're just trying to live another moment in the life of the conversation.

The social brain is in its natural habitat when we're talking with someone face-to-face in real time.

The brain was not built to walk into a bar, where you know nobody, and start a conversation. That's not the way humanity has courted.

Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.

The best way to know someone is to have a conversation with them.

Gossip is dying out because fewer and fewer people care to talk about anything besides themselves.

Lunch should consist of at least 1/3 relationship building talk. If you don't have time for business talk, it was a very successful lunch.

Whether in conversation we generally agree or disagree with others is largely a matter of habit: the one tendency makes as much sense as the other.

I think it's good to know more than the average guy. If I'm in a bar now and some pretty girl is talking to some handsome 24-year-old man, I'll say, "Okay, who's the emperor after Caligula? What chief mistake did Marcus Aurelius make in choosing a successor?" He'll just look like an idiot. She'll just gravitate toward me, I'm thinking. It works in Detroit.

It's a lovely answer and takes me entirely by surprise. I hadn't realized we were having a serious conversation, or I think I would've given a better reply when he asked me.

When people talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting.

If you show people how much you care and ask questions in a non threatening way, you'll be amazed by how much they'll tell you.

On the whole, and providing one is in good spirits and feeling reasonably bright, it is not hard to converse for a short space of time on subjects about which one knows little, and it is indeed often amusing to see how cunningly one can steer the conversational barque, hoisting and lowering her sails, tacking this way and that to avoid reefs, and finally racing feverishly for home with the outboard engine making a loud and cheerful noise.

Inevitably we construct ourselves. Let me explain. I enter this house and immediately I become what I have to become, what I can become: I construct myself. That is, I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you. And, of course, you do the same with me.

Here I have opportunity enough for the exercise of my talent, as the chief of my time is spent in conversation.

I think girls are surprised when you actually really listen and then you call it back at the end of the night.

Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?

Play is the establishment and exploration of relationship.

I feel very open with people, and I'm good at disarming them and having conversations.

Nothing will ruin an interesting intelligent argument more quickly than the arrival of a pretty girl.

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.

I just think that we have more opportunity to have a bit more of that banter between each other. And, given that the two women are so different, there's really something to play with.