Deborah Tannen Quotes

A lot of times in life, women want to talk, but men don't want to listen, and if they do want to listen, they turn it back to themselves.

Directing is genderless. The only thing... I love men. I'm not being mean to them, but they can't hear you. I don't have a husband, and so I'm not really attuned to it, but I didn't know that they could not really hear you. Like, I'm talking, and they just walk away.

I have really good female friends. I've never bought the whole men-and-women-can't-be-friends thing. I think that's sort of nonsense.

The difference between men and women seems to be this: I can argue with my promoter downstairs, accuse him of ripping me off, and 20 minutes later we'll be playing golf together. With a lady, the same argument can go on for, like, years.

Women are good listeners, but it's a waste of time telling your troubles to a man unless there's something specific you want him to do.

There are two ways to handle a woman, and nobody knows either of them.

Guys are so easygoing and girls are a little harder to please, but that's okay.

And it's absolutely true that male sexual behaviour and female responses to male demands change a lot when they start communicating - and the levels of the communication that I've seen on the ground in very, very poor areas are so high and I think why don't we have that here?

Boys always like to see girls kiss. I don't get it; girls don't want to see boys kiss.

What women need to understand is that men don't communicate. It's not intentional or on purpose. We're just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

I think that the day you've figured out the differences between women and men is the day that you're no longer attracted to women. It's the difference that is so fantastic and frustrating and angering, and really sexy.

There is a fundamental difference between men and women - women need romance, men need intrigue.

I love women in all their different incarnations. My friends are practically all women. They are much more intelligent than men.

I am one of the few men honest enough to say they do not understand women.

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

We teenage girls are faced with a quandary: we know what we want but are forced to wait for our male counterparts to grow up. We are ready for intense and meaningful relationships, but research indicates that males will not reach maturity until their mid-20s.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

I don't believe for a minute that women really want to be understood by men.

Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.

Something that always fascinated me was the psychology and the psychology differences between men and women and how we relate to one another.

Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?

And verily, a woman need know but one man well, in order to understand all men; whereas a man may know all women and understand not one of them.

I've noticed over my 22 years of living that, yes, women can be difficult, and I call myself a ladies' man, thinking I have them figured out. But as men, we will never understand women.

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalistic mode of production.