communication approach Quotes

Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach.

Franklin [D. Roosevelt] had a good way of simplifying things. He made people feel that he had a real understanding of things and they felt they had about the same understanding.

Remember that how you say something is as important as what you say.

I like to praise and reward in a loud voice and to scold in a whisper.

What you say is who you are. How you say it is your style.

I tell my students that when you write, you should pretend you’re writing the best letter you ever wrote to the smartest friend you have. That way, you’ll never dumb things down. You won’t have to explain things that don’t need explaining. You’ll assume an intimacy and a natural shorthand, which is good because readers are smart and don’t wish to be condescended to.

I guess I'm more of a direct person than an indirect one.

I think the best thing that you can do with your kids is to talk to them like they're human beings, not like they're children and they don't know what they're doing.

It's not what happened but how it is told.

With each individual, everybody takes instructions in a different way.

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

I speak to my players when I deem it necessary, but they are private conversations.

Sometimes, when I'm doing an interview, my delivery or my take on a story may lean a little feminine, depending on the story, but it's never intentional.

I'm not friends with my players, but I am very close to my players. When I speak to them, I want to speak to the man, always the man.

I don't lead with an iron fist. I don't yell at people. I have a way of making my opinion clear.

I am geared towards communicating on a female level.

I've always wanted to work for, like, "Assume your audience is cleverer than you," rather than the other way around.

I would like to make one thing quite clear. ... I never explain anything.

A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.

In the Gospel we have just heard, Jesus, the Master, teaches the crowds and the small group of his disciples by accommodating himself to their ability to understand. ... Jesus does not seek to 'play the professor.' Instead, he seeks to reach people's hearts, their understanding and their lives, so that they may bear fruit.

It's not the matter you cover so much as it is the manner in which you cover it.

I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

I think humor can be an effective way of getting the point across, but there are definitely times where I just write very earnestly.

Obama's style of argumentation is unlike any president I have ever met, and I've met a lot of them. And the condescension that oozes from him when he's talking about his opponents, it's really striking.

I think that what I do, in terms of how I craft my words rhetorically, is fairly simple stuff. I don't mean that to denigrate myself. I mean that in the sense of, when I write, the person that I keep in mind is my mother-in-law.