Quotes about Communication

Never place your punch at the beginning of a column nor at the end. Sneak it in where it's least expected. Fill a whole column with drivel, just to get in that one important line.

He was searching for words to name his meaning without naming it, she thought, to make her understand that which he did not want to be understood.

He said it without greeting, as if they had parted the day before. Because it took her a moment to regain the art of breathing, she realized for the first time how much that voice meant to her.

He stood looking straight at her. Their understanding was too offensively intimate, because they had never said a word to each other.

She realized that she had always felt a sense of light-hearted relaxation in his presence and known that he shared it. He was the only man she knew to whom she could speak without strain or effort. This, she thought, was a mind she respected, an adversary worth matching.

She saw the man below looking at her, she saw the insolent hint of amusement tell her that he knew she did not want him to look at her now. She turned her head away.

In return, I gave him a sounding board for his frustrations.

And you won't have to wake up at four in the morning," she said, a point that I found most compelling.

We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.

knew policy; I knew how to consume and process information. It took a while to figure out that my problem wasn't a lack of a ten-point plan. Rather, it was my general inability to boil issues down to their essence, to tell a story that helped explain an increasingly uncertain world to the American people and make them feel that I, as president, could help them navigate it.

Once you became president, people's perceptions of you—even the perceptions of those who knew you best—were inevitably shaped by the media.

I was talking to my lawyer and he was saying we have to meet with somebody right away because they really want to get something done. I said, okay, how about tomorrow? He said, 'Well no, it's going to take at least two weeks.' And I had to explain, 'Where I'm from, right away means if we don't do something in half an hour somebody dies.