#conversation

[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we’re out of purgatory for the weekend.” “Maybe later,” I murmur, still distracted by the day’s previous events. “So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested.” “Huh?” I say. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

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#conversation #delilah-mcphee #humor #jules #paying-attention

I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good. ↗

— Andrew Solomon

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#depression #fear #life #speaking #words

We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these others—our parents, for instance—and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live. ↗

— Charles Taylor

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#dialogue #life #parents #self #self-identity