“You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to.”

“You can't make people listen to you. People only hear what they want to hear.”

“Listening to what people were saying wasn't even important. But it was important to look as if you were listening to what people were saying. Actually, listening to what people are saying, to me, interferes with looking as if you were listening to what people are saying.”

“It's absolutely ugly, but unfortunately quite true of the world today; the more money you make, the more people tend to listen to you. If you're not quoted in Fortune or Forbes or the Wall Street Journal, then nobody listens. If you say something that makes a lot of money, whether what you said is true or not, people listen.”

“There's only one thing more boring than listening to other people's dreams, and that's listening to their problems.”

“If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live. If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye.”

“Not many people are interested in what somebody else is thinking, or what they have to say. The best you can hope for is they'll listen to you just so you'll have to listen to them.”

“If you intend to create something that people will observe and listen to, you've got to listen to them first.”

“You can say anything if enough people will listen.”

“I find people only listen to you when they ask you to talk to them.”