Flannery O'Connor Quotes

I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.

You have to be able to communicate in life and probably schools underemphasize that. If you can't talk to people or write, you're giving up your potential.

Whether one talks well depends very much upon whom he has to talk to.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

Some people are very good at that, communicating with the world; I'm not sure I'm suited to it.

If you are knowledgeable about something and are able to talk about it, you should be able to express yourself.

Writing and speaking and communicating, it's something important to me, and something I want to get better at.

If you can't communicate and talk to other people and get across your ideas, you're giving up your potential.

Communication is the most important skill in life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: You've spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening?

If you can't make yourself understood by your friends, you'll be in trouble when your enemies come for you.

And I love to speak - I am very good at it. And if you love to do something, you're very good at it, and also you are paid well, why would you not do it? Why would you stop?

Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conservation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack.

As soon as you move one step up from the bottom, your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken and written word.

You don't have to be a preacher to talk about what matters, and you don't have to drop the pleasures of style

I like how I write better than how I speak.

I don't know how to speak to everybody, only to somebody.

At an early age my dad - probably because he's a journalist - said: "Just have something to say. Don't just blather. Always have one line in your mind." So, that was always my thing whenever I met someone when I was younger, if ever I got to meet a real celebrity.

Talkers have always ruled. They will continue to rule. The smart thing is to join them.

If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.

Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.

Great talkers should be cropt, for they've no need of ears.

Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.

I was under twenty when I deliberately put it to myself one night after good conversation that there are moments when we actually touch in talk what the best writing can only come near. The curse of our book language is not so much that it keeps forever to the same set phrases . . . but that it sounds forever with the same reading tones. We must go out into the vernacular for tones that haven't been brought to book.

If I went back to college again, I'd concentrate on learning to write and to speak before an audience . Nothing is more important than the abillity to communicate effectively.

The most important thing for a director is being able to communicate. When you communicate comfortably, regardless of what you're saying, it can always be processed.