#conversation

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

You have to wait together - for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained ... and exhausted. So that ... That in effect was love. ↗

— Ford Madox Ford

#intimate #love #tietjens #love

The conversation was mesmerizing, not for its content but for the cadences of the talk, the rhythm we fell into when we were alone, now as before. Every conversation between friends or lovers creates its own easy or awkward rhythms, hidden talk that runs like a subterranean river under even the most banal exchange. ↗

— Robert Charles Wilson

#friendship #love #friendship

This is a time for a national conversation. A conversation about the document that binds us as a nation and a people. That document, of course, is the Constitution. ↗

— Mike DeWine

#binds #constitution #conversation #course #document

Americans cannot realize how many chances for mental improvement they lose by their inveterate habit of keeping six conversations when there are twelve in the room. ↗

— Ernest Dimnet

#chances #conversations #habit #how #improvement

I can wear a hat or take it off, but either way it's a conversation piece. ↗

— Hedda Hopper

#either #hat #i #i can #off

Prior to being allowed to enter the profession, prospective teachers should be asked to talk with a group of friendly students for at least half an hour and be able to engage them in an interesting conversation about any subject the prospective teacher wants to talk about. ↗

— William Glasser

#about #allowed #any #asked #being

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal. ↗

— Eddie Izzard

#conversation #each #every #gig #good

Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversations was flow. ↗

— Gregory Maguire

#life

A person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've been throughout your whole relationship. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#been #conversation #during #had #last