John Steinbeck Quotes

Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak.

There's a lot you can do without words.

In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.

Musicians understand each other through means other that speaking.

In human relationships, as mutual love deepens, there comes a time when two friends convey their exchanges without words. They can sit in silence sharing an experience or simply enjoying each other's presence without saying anything.

We should be sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven.

Why do you tell me... so much?" Luthe considered her. "I tell you... some you need to know, and some you have earned the right to know, and some it won't hurt you to know--" He stopped.... "Some things I tell you only because I wish to tell them to you.

The last thing that you need to fret about is my feeling emasculated, Kitten; but talk is cheap, so I'll be sure to show you later." ~Bones

Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything

My best Acquaintances are those With Whom I spoke no Word

Just the fact that you need me to prove I love you is probably a clue it isn’t working

When we want to talk, we can instead listen, and let our attentiveness to another's need to speak be our silent statement.

We didn't talk much. But we didn't need to.

There is a form of communication that transcends the power of words.

True communication depends upon our being straightforward with one another... But the best way to communicate may be just to sit without saying anything.

It is silence that most needs an answering -- when I can no longer speak, hear me.

Communication is to relationships what breath is to life.

You don't need the right facts if you have the right inflection.

Silence is not silent. Silence speaks. It speaks most eloquently. Silence is not still. Silence leads. It leads most perfectly.

Sometimes speech is no more than a device for saying nothing - and a neater one than silence.

Human communication, 'as the saying goes, is a clash of symbols' it covers a multitude of signs. But it is more than media and messages, information and persuasion; it also meets a deeper need and serves a higher purpose. Whether clear or garbled, tumultuous or silent, deliberate or fatally inadvertent, communication is the ground of meeting and the foundation of community. It is, in short, the essential human connection.

And Nedley started saying,'Shut Up!Quit that! And i knew it really meant something to him. So I asked for his help,"Mark said. "Don't tell the story like that," Nedley laughed. "What he said was 'Quit pretendin you're a bad guy I need your help, and I need it now!

Sex is a conversation carried out by another means.

Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and chasing about that produce a friendship’s more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramatic moments.

Sometimes words are not enough.