#conversation

I remember very clearly at the first budget review having a pretty direct conversation with the head of manufacturing... We began to get huge improvements in productivity and responsiveness. I got a chance to see that firsthand. ↗

— Rick Wagoner

#budget #chance #clearly #conversation #direct

Congress's definition of torture in those laws - the infliction of severe mental or physical pain - leaves room for interrogation methods that go beyond polite conversation. ↗

— John Yoo

#congress #conversation #definition #go #infliction

But there's not enough time in life to go sit at a party, have a drink, and make idle conversation. There's too many important things to do. Just being together with my husband, spending time alone, which I have very little of. ↗

— Pia Zadora

#being #conversation #drink #enough #go

Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and comercials. ↗

— Neil Postman

#conversation #people #shallowness #talking #television

Sorrow spoken lends a little courage to the speaker. ↗

— Walter Wangerin Jr.

#grief #courage

I gotta go. Just got a taker on the rope. ↗

— Jillian Dodd

#phone-conversation #dating

Talking about one's feelings defeats the purpose of having those feelings. Once you try to put the human experience into words, it becomes little more than a spectator sport. Everything must have a cause, and a name. Every random thought must have a root in something else. ↗

— Derek Landy

#feelings #futility #language #psychiatry #psychoanalysis

Wayne's a little attached to that hat," Waxillium said. "He thinks it's lucky." Wayne: "It is lucky. I ain't never died while wearing that hat." Marasi frowned. "I ... I'm not sure I know how to respond." Wax: "That's a common reaction to Wayne. ↗

— Brandon Sanderson

#death #hat #humor #luck #death

Are you mad?" I ask. "I was." He glances at the ceiling then back at me. "Or confused, anyway. The whole thing threw me through for a loop. I thought I'd finally met a guy at Underwood I could relate to, and it turns out he wasn't a guy at all." I swallow. "I can see how that would be weird." "In a way though, I was relieved." "Relieved?" I echo. "Why?" He looks around embarrased. "Let's just say you had me questioning my sexual orientation. ↗

— Jody Gehrman

#humor #laugh #humor

If religion is true, one must believe. And if one chooses not to believe, one’s choice is marked under the category of a refusal, and is thus never really free: it has the duress of a recoil.” With literary belief, however, “one is always free to choose not to believe.” This, Wood argues, is the freedom of literature; it is what constitutes its “reality. ↗

— James Wood

#literature #quarterly-conversation #religion #freedom