Conversation Norms Quotes

Most non-New Yorkers, finding themselves within hearing range of strangers' conversation, think it's nice to pretend they didn't hear. But many New Yorkers think it's nice to toss in a relevant comment.

Why focus on what somebody might think? Nobody talks [on TV] like people really talk most of the time.

I don't usually talk crap about guys.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

Unless you're a salesman, or a bad guest on a talk show, you don't call someone by his name that often.

Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?" Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together, and yet for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible.

It would scarcely be acceptable, for example, to ask in the course of an ordinary conversation what our society holds to be the purpose of work.

I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.

My mother certainly never altered the topics of her conversation based on children being present.

The British vice is overthinking before we speak, which is really annoying. I love the way that, in America, people are more straightforward.