Quotes about talking
page 22

“President Obama says that conservatives hate women, that there’s a war on women, and that the only thing that women care about is birth control. Oh, Mr. President bless your heart. Which man in your administration came up with that one? Women aren’t a cheap date. Women want a little more out of life than contraceptives. Just the other day I got a call from a friend back home. She’s 64-years-old. She told me her insurance company contacted her to say that under Obamacare they would pay for contraceptives but not for her blood pressure medication. She told them to put it in writing so she could share it with her congressman. What women want is not free contraceptives. We want opportunity. We want all the potential of the American economy unlocked for us. We want the government to stay out of our way … stay out of our wallets… and stay out of our emails. We want to have choice. Not the type of choice that men in the Democratic Party talk about, but real choice.”

Marsha Blackburn (1952) American politician

Remarks To Freedom Summit, Manchester NH https://www.redstate.com/diary/marshablackburn/2014/04/12/remarks-freedom-summit-manchester-nh/ (April 12, 2014)

Life, Women, Men, Hate

“Interviewer: Are there any groups you won’t go after?
Penn: We haven’t tackled Scientology [in Penn & Teller: Bullshit! ] because Showtime doesn’t want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists—I’m not sure. And we haven’t tackled Islam because we have families.
Interviewer: Meaning, you won’t attack Islam because you’re afraid it’ll attack back …
Penn: Right, and I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you’re afraid to talk about it—I can’t think of anything more horrific.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

Interview in Las Vegas Weekly (24 June 2010) https://lasvegasweekly.com/ae/2010/jun/24/celebrity-issue/. 2010s

Family, Thinking

“It was only in the evenings that I played the violin [c. 1999-1901, to earn his money for living]. During the day I was free to spend my time as I wished. With a few colours in a box, a canvas and a cheap easel under my arm, I would make my way to the Banks of the Seine... I painted to restore my peace of mind, to calm my desires and, above all, to purify myself a little... Make a career of painting. How I would have laughed if someone had talked to me about that! To be a painter is not a profession, no more than being an anarchist or a lover, a race-track rider..”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 66

Money, Peace, Way, Lovers

“One of the things that I learned in the war is that we're not the top species on the planet because we're nice. We are a very aggressive species; it is in us. People talk a lot about how well the military turns kids into killing machines, and I'll always argue that it's just finishing school. What we do with civilization is that we learn to inhibit and rope in these aggressive tendencies, and we have to recognize them. I worry about a whole country that doesn't recognize them, because think of how many times we get ourselves into scrapes as a nation because we're always the 'good guys.”

Karl Marlantes (1944) Businessman, novelist

Sometimes, I think if we thought we weren't always the good guys, we might actually get into less wars.
The Vietnam War (2017), episode 5, documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

War, People, School, Guy

“Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?" We never do that, do we, being all of us too much poets. We like to talk in parables and in hints and in indirections — whether from diffidence or some other instinct.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Education by Poetry http://www.en.utexas.edu/amlit/amlitprivate/scans/edbypo.html", speech delivered at Amherst College and subsequently revised for publication in the Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly (February 1931) 1930s

People, Way, Thinking

“Money talks,
But it don't sing and dance.
And it don't walk.
And long as I can have you
Here with me, I'd much rather be
Forever in blue jeans.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Forever in Blue Jeans
Song lyrics, You Don't Bring Me Flowers (1978)

Money, Singing, Dance

“Punk: Wow, everybody, it's John Cena. He comes out here every Monday night, he's excitable, he throws his hat at somebody, everybody loves it. I am so impressed at how you do that. You get all these people to believe you're that friendly, smiling, everyday man, when I know the truth. And the truth, John Cena, is you're thoughtless, you're heartless, and above all else, you are dishonest. I'm sure there's millions of people worldwide, including yourself, that would love to believe this is over a spilled diet soda, but John, this goes way beyond my spilled diet soda. Yeah. John, you were fired from the WWE. You were gone. You gave a very tear-inducing speech in the middle of the ring about how you finally get to see your mom and hang out with your little brother, and you said you were gonna go away. You were gonna be a man of your way, but what happened? You came back later that night, and then you came back the next week, and then you came back the next week, showing all of these people who aren't intelligent to see through your facade what I have known all along—that your word is absolutely worthless. And then there's TLC, you have the man beaten. Wade Barrett, a very tough individual, and you have him beat in a chairs match, but that's not good enough for you. You don't take the high ground, you can't walk off into the sunset with your victory; you drag the man off to the side of the stage and you drop fifteen steel chairs on him, and I wanna know exactly why you think that's acceptable behavior. I wanna know why you think it's okay to show up the next night on Raw and humiliate the poor guy…
Cena: That is balderdash! Fifteen steel chairs? That's insane. It was 23 steel chairs. And in case you forgot, Wade Barrett and the Nexus gave me about five thousand beat-downs, made me their personal slave, and ended my career.
Punk: You wanna talk about ended careers, you hypocrite? This is exactly what I'm talking about. You ended the career of my good friend Dave Batista. John! John, look at me when I'm talking to you. This is a reoccurring pattern with you. Once again, you have the man beaten—last man standing, he verbally submits, how humiliating, the match is won. But, no, you AA him off a car through the very steel ramp that I'm sitting on, which facilitated the end of his career. Now we'll talk about Vickie Guerrero. I'm surprised the lovely Vickie Guerrero doesn't up and quit based on all the abuse you heap on her. It's not just the physical things to the Wade Barretts and the Dave Batistas, but it's the name-calling, it's the mental abuse to somebody as gorgeous and beautiful as Vickie Guerrero.
Cena: "It's the this… it's the that." Okay, CM Punk is gonna play Mr. Fingerpointer. Well…1.—Dave Batista broke my neck; 2.—He showed up on Raw the next night and quit on his own terms. And C—I didn't just single out Vickie Guerrero. In case you haven't been watching for the past… eight years, I talk about everybody. Uh… Michael Cole. Michael Cole has an anonymous fetish with Justin Bieber and has the word "The Miz" man-scaped right below his belly button. Me! Look at me. I look like the crazy sex child of the Incredible Hulk and Grimace. And then there's you.
Punk: Yeah, and then there's me, who happens to not be laughing. I don't know if you noticed that. You're not funny.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

December 27, 2010
WWE Raw

Love, People, Truth, Smile

“What do we mean by this Liberalism of which we talk? … I should say it means the acknowledgement in practical life of the truth that men are best governed who govern themselves; that the general sense of mankind, if left alone, will make for righteousness; that artificial privileges and restraints upon freedom, so far as they are not required in the interests of the community, are hurtful; and that the laws, while, of course, they cannot equalise conditions, can, at least, avoid aggravating inequalities, and ought to have for their object the securing to every man the best chance he can have of a good and useful life.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Liberal Magazine (January 1898), p. 530, quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 232

Life, Men, Truth, Law

“The Greeks used to put a lot of bodily functions in their plays, and a lot of graphic sexual material, because they believed, that in performing that way it released the demons of shame from the audience, which is what I believe. Cuz I think we’re all pretty much the same, and we all have grown up with that shame-based thing that America deals with, right? And to sit there and hear someone talk about their love of having sex, whatever, makes you feel like you’re not alone, with what you think maybe are dark, twisted thoughts, cuz they’re not. We all share these thoughts. So that’s why I talk like I do, or did, before I retired tonight.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Relentless (1992)

Love, Sex, Way, Feeling

“Let's give them something to talk about, other than H A I R!”

Sanjaya Malakar (1989) American reality television personality

Singing his farewell American Idol performance, ad-libbed in place of "how about love". http://niralimagazine.com/2007/04/he-may-be-gone-but-sanjaya-is-still-our-papaya

“I am not going to talk about patriotism, duty, liberty, and the defense of freedom — because that's all dung to a soldier.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 12

Freedom

“People like you always help the far-right, because you like to hurt people, and you like to talk about how bad people are and all their personal failings.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

On the emphasis in the news media on the Starr investigation and the Lewinsky affair (June 22, 2004) Panorama interview http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3829799.stm 2000s

People, Help, Hurt, Personality

“The initial press commentary in Moscow on the formation of the first Mussolini government was not overwhelmingly anti-Fascist, despite the Duce’s talk of a ‘revolutionary rivalry’ with Lenin. Fascism was sometimes perceived not inaccurately as more of a heresy from, rather than a moral challenge to, revolutionary Marxism.”

Stanley G. Payne (1934) American historian

Source: Fascism: Comparison and Definition (1980), A History of Fascism, 1914—1945 (1995), p. 126

“Talk can be cheap, very cheap. It can also be costly. “Speak out!” we say. “Why are you afraid to speak out?” we say. In dictatorships, it can be very, very hard to speak out. Many people have been imprisoned or worse for talk. But even in democratic societies, talk can be hard. It can be hard not only in politics but also in high schools and families and churches and professional communities and other arenas. But even in democratic societies, talk can be hard. It can be hard not only in politics but also in high schools and families and churches and professional communities and other arenas.”

Jay Nordlinger (1963) American journalist

2010s, Some Talk about Talk (2018)

People, School, Family, Communication

“Republican presidents who've talked and acted conservatively are as elusive as Big Foot. There hasn't been a sighting in maybe a century. A purist would cite Democrat Grover Cleveland as America's last conservative president. He preached and practiced the maxim that 'the people must support the government, but the government must not support the people.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump Doesn’t Need to Talk Like A Conservative," http://www.unz.com/imercer/trump-doesnt-need-to-talk-like-a-conservative/ The Unz Review, March 19, 2016. 2010s, 2016

People, Support

“I encourage you to visit the devastated areas and talk to the people and listen to them… Not just distribute relief and then leave. I encourage you to visit the devastated areas and talk to the people and listen to them… Not just distribute relief and then leave. I assure u that you will learn a lot by being able to see things from their eyes… and perhaps those who criticize would understand. Beyond receiving relief goods, sometimes they also need someone who will listen to them. Try it. I promise that u will learn a lot.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Francis Escudero Twitter feed: @SayChiz (5:44 p.m. 13 October 2009).
2009, Twitter Feed

People, Understanding, Learning

“Another stupid party last night; perhaps if larger they might be less intolerable, but here there were only just enough to make one card-table, with six people to look on and talk nonsense to each other.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1801-05-12) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

People, Stupidity, Night

“You have come a long way to talk to me, but I have a surprise for you: I have worked out most of the details already….”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

When Count Tarnowski, Polish, a polio affected person in a wheel chair came to his Anandwan to help him financially to set up learning centers in several trades for lepers, in page=17.
Baba Amte: A Vision of New India

Way

“Having spent 37 years of my life in the military as a reservist, and never having met a gay in all of that time, and never having even talked about it in all those years, I just thought, why the hell shouldn't they serve? They're American citizens. As long as they're not doing things that are harmful to anyone else… So I came out for it.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Washington Post interview (1994)

Life, Hell, Time

“My friends, does God invite you? If He does, why don't you accept the invitation? If you want to come, just come along, and don't be talking about feeling. Do you think Lazarus had any feeling when Christ called him out of the sepulchre?”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 245.

God, Feeling, Thinking, Christ

“It was strange going back to Spain again: I had never expected to be allowed to return to the country that I loved more than any other except my own and I would not return so long as any of my friends there were in jail. But in the spring of 1953 in Cuba I talked with good friends who had fought on opposing sides in the Spanish Civil War about stopping in Spain on our way to Africa and they agreed that I might honorably return to Spain if I did not recant anything that I had written and kept my mouth shut on politics. There was no question of applying for a visa. They were no longer required for American tourists.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 1 (the opening paragraph of the book)

Love, War, Way, Spring

“The whole history of negotiation with the Soviet Union teaches us that if you do something they want without insisting on something in return, the Soviets do not regard it as a kindness to be reciprocated, but as a weakness to be exploited. There is a lot of fashionable nonsense talked about how we misunderstand Communism, misrepresent Communism, see Communists under every bed. An attempt is being made, it seems, to create an atmosphere where truth and commonsense on these matters is actively discouraged. I believe the people of this country understand better the truth of the matter than those who try to mislead them. We must work for a real relaxation of tension, but in our negotiations with the Eastern bloc we must not accept words or gestures as a substitute for genuine detente. No flood of words emanating from a summit conference will mean anything unless it is accompanied by some positive action by which the Soviet leaders show that their ingrained attitudes are really beginning to change.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750 Leader of the Opposition

People, Truth, History, Communication

“It [America] was founded and I hope that it resurges the notion of liberty, the notion of freedom, the notion of a system that treats everyone equally. I think we move further and further away from that not closer and closer and that if we could all focus on that that would be the focus and we could actually accomplish that. And that’s what I talk about all the time. As governor of New Mexico I like to think that on a daily basis it was about a system that was gonna treat everybody equally as opposed to politics which you know is hit and miss and it’s politics it’s who you know as opposed to a system that provides that equality.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement made to representatives of the Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC)
2011-10-16
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/2011/10/full-transcript-of-qa-with-presidential-candidate-gary-johnson/
2012-02-24
2011

Hope, Thinking, Freedom, Time

“Contact with like-minded painters, a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our ideas largely by talking them through... One depends on one's surroundings. And so the exchange with other artists – and especially the collaboration with Lueg and Polke – matters a lot to me.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 47

Idea, Dependency

“During my early years as an actor, Bond was never a desire, but when Cassie was playing in For Your Eyes Only, then, of course, it became a joke. I would do my own impersonations of James Bond. Just for fun. Just driving her home from work, or going out, or talking about her experience on it. But even so, it was not an ambition to play James Bond. I had my sights set on other aspects of the work.”

Pierce Brosnan (1953) Irish-American actor, film producer, and environmentalist

Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan. http://www.cigaraficionado.com/webfeatures/show/id/Brosnan-Pierce-Brosnan_6003/p/2 (November 1997)

Home

“We never took a vote in the Cabinet that I can remember and the most important of all the Prime Minister's functions is to give a firm lead in Cabinet so that decisions can be taken quickly. The Prime Minister musn't always listen to those who talk most.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to the Oxford University Law Society (14 June 1957), quoted in The Times (15 June 1957), p. 4.
1950s

Decision

“I’ve always felt that anyone who wants to talk about my private life is only demonstrating the paucity of his/her imagination when there are so many more important and exciting things to discuss.”

David Gerrold book The Man Who Folded Himself

in the Afterword, p. 117
The Man Who Folded Himself (1973)

Life, Imagination

“Then for the next eleven years, I tried to work up the nerve to talk to you.".
"Without success," I add.
"Without success.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Peeta Mellark and Katniss Everdeen, p. 301
The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

Success

“In my own prejudice … I would have of a poet … whose worlds would not be too esoteric … fond of talking … capable of pity and laughter … appreciative of women … involved in personal relationships … susceptible to physical impressions…”

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) poet

Qualities of a poet from Modern Poetry 1938.

Women, World, Laughter, Personality

“When I am on my own and quiet, the landscape tells you a great deal and Turner and Cotman talk to me from the clouds.”

Rigby Graham (1931–2015) British author and illustrator

Obituary, Daily Telegraph,London, 20th May 2015

“Yet today our military is still organized more for Cold War threats than for the challenges of a new century -- for industrial age operations, rather than for information age battles. There is almost no relationship between our budget priorities and a strategic vision. The last seven years have been wasted in inertia and idle talk. Now we must shape the future with new concepts, new strategies, new resolve.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Period of Consequences (September 1999)

War, Age, Future

“The pleasure of talking is the inextinguishable passion of a woman, coeval with the act of breathing.”

Alain-René Lesage book Gil Blas

Book VII, ch. 7.
Gil Blas (1715-1735)

Pleasure, Passion

“I even sponsored them myself, although I don't like really like to talk about my charity, erm, work. Which is a good job because I do so much that you'd never shut me up. If I spoke about it. Which I don't like to do.”

Rob Smyth (1977) English/Irish rugby league player

Cricket England versus India; Third Test, day two; Over-by-over: morning session http://sport.guardian.co.uk/cricket/overbyover/story/0,,2143527,00.html

“In his Table Talks, Hitler spoke of the eventual ‘elimination’ of those Germans who did not meet ‘Nordic’ criteria of racial purity. The fact was that according to Hans Guenther, Nazi Germany’s ‘racial scientist', ninety-five percent of Germans did not meet those criteria. It was no longer clear who would suffer in the serious implementation of National Socialist policy.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time, (1999), p. 182

Suffering

“To me, camp is two older queens talking about Rita Hayworth under a Tiffany's lampshade.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

From Vice interview

“Now all of us can talk to the NSA—just by dialing any number.”

David Letterman (1947) American comedian and actor

On the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program, on The Late Show with David Letterman, monologue (25 January 2006).

“Edna wondered if they had all gone mad, to be talking and clamoring at that rate. She herself could think of nothing to say about Mexico or the Mexicans.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

The Awakening (1899)

Thinking, Madness

“People who are given opiates after operations — sometimes for days — do not become addicts in the sense that I’m talking about. Moreover, it’s been shown that heroin addicts have to make considerable efforts — in other words to be determined — to become addicts, and addicted; and on average it takes them about a year or so. In other words, heroin does not hook them, they hook heroin. And this, I think should suggest, is a typical example of the way that when we think about social problems, or the way many of us think about social problems, we ascribe agency not to agents but to inanimate objects and substances, and forces.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

C-SPAN: Romancing Opiates https://www.c-span.org/video/?191384-1/romancing-opiates (May 30, 2006)

People, Way, Problem, Thinking

“You cannot work too hard at poetry. People are bad at it not because they have tin ears, but because they simply don't have the faintest idea how much work goes into it. It's not as if you're ordering a pizza or doing something that requires direct communication in a very banal way. But it seems these days the only people who spend time over things are retired people and prisoners. We bolt things, untasted. It's so easy to say, 'That'll do.' Everyone's in a hurry. People are intellectually lazy, morally lazy, ethically lazy… All the time. When people get angry with a traffic warden they don't stop and think what it would be like to be a traffic warden or how annoying it would be if people could park wherever they liked. People talk lazily about how hypocritical politicians are. But everyone is. On the one hand we hate that petrol is expensive and on the other we go on about global warming. We abrogate the responsibility for thought and moral decisions onto others and then have the luxury of saying it's not good enough.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Interview with The Daily Telegraph promoting his book The Ode Less Travelled. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3647424/The-would-be-don.html 2000s

Hate, People, Way, Communication

“When people talk of the Freedom of Writing, Speaking, or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (15 July 1817)
1810s

People, Hope, Thinking, Freedom

“The long-awaited "campaign finance reform" vote finally took place last week, with the House ultimately passing the measure. The debate was full of hypocritical high-minded talk about cleaning up corruption, all by the very politicians of both parties who dole out billions in corporate subsidies and welfare pork. It was quite a spectacle watching the big-spending, perennially-incumbent politicians argue that new laws were needed to protect them from themselves!”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Don't Believe the Hype- "Campaign Finance Reform" Serves Entrenched Interests http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=240 (February 18, 2002). 2000s, 2001-2005

Law, Housing

“Let me tell you something -- wait a minute. You know one things that's wrong with this country? Everybody gets a chance to have their fair say. My budget did more to fight AIDS than any in history, and we're having to put up with this. (Applause.) Tell them to let me talk. (Applause.) If you want to give a speech -- go out there and raise your own crowd. We'll be glad to listen to you. (Applause.) So there were those -- (interruption) -- I'll make you a deal. I'll ignore them if you will.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Applause. Response to hecklers, courtyard of Philadelphia City Hall (May 28, 1993). Remarks at City Hall in Philadelphia http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=46631, May 28, 1993. 1990s

History, Chance, Waiting, Fight

“The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the bother of talk after dinner.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue", p. 185. First published in two parts in The Reporter (July 18 and August 1, 1950)
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

People, Art, Wealth

“I understand where Bill Maher is coming from when he says, basically, the world is destroying itself over a bunch of fairy tales about talking snakes and men who are alive inside fishes. I'm very sympathetic to it, but at the same time, given the cosmos that we're living in, it's very persuasive, the idea that there is some kind of first cause that's running things. It might not be the god of Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, it might not be the god of al-Qaida, and it might not be the god of Abraham, but something very well could be running things. The order of the universe as we see it, the interlocking nature, and the way things work together, are persuasive of the idea that there may be some overarching first cause.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

[John, Marks, http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/10/23/stephen_king/print.html, Stephen King's God trip, Salon.com, 2008-10-23, 2008-10-23]

Men, God, World, Way

“I know we live in troubled times, my friends, I know things which once stood up suddenly don't stand up anymore. I know that innocent people shopping or buying gas are often shot down, shot down for no reason. And it makes a nation nervous. Now, personally, I like the nation to be nervous. And in these nervous times, sometimes people come up to me, and they say, "Perhaps, Jack, you should tone down your rhetoric a bit. Perhaps, the stuff you say in between songs might be construed as, well, not very patriotic. Well, actually, Jack, you might get yourself in some big trouble." And I say to myself, "Oh! Trouble is my business, friend." In these uncertain times, it's not a good idea to give up on your values, and change your mind about the things you hold dear. It's not. I want to talk about someone who fell pretty damn hard, and this song is called "I Shot President Reagan, and I'm Gonna Do It Again and Again and Again and Again!"”

Jack Terricloth (1970)

Introducing "Secret Service Freedom Fighting U.S.A."
Live

People, Idea, Business, Change

“Joel groaned softly. “I-ah-I don’t think I was altogether myself,” he excused.
“Are you ever?” Bertrand countered.
“What?”
“I am always my self, even when my objurgatory circuits are cut in by some frustration-inducing outside event. But you’re invariably either drunk or suffering indigestion or still half-asleep or so excited as to be manic or so downcast as to be suicidal or—”
Loftily Joel broke in: “That’s part of the marvel and wonder of the subjective human experience, not susceptible machine analysis.” He gulped the last of his brandy and set the glass aside. “And we are a fantastic species really, aren’t we? For all our shortcomings! I mean, well—here I am talking to a machine, for pity’s sake, a machine, a manufactured article! So cleverly designed, it’s impossible to tell that its responses are programmed in, not the result of intelligence.””

John Brunner (1934–1995) British author

“I resent that,” Bertrand said, but Joel ignored the comment.
Section 6 (pp. 135-136)
You’ll Take the High Road (1973)

Intelligence, Thinking, Suicide, Suffering

“We still think and talk of the basic problems of an industrial society as problems that can be solved by changing the system, that is the superstructure of political organization. Yet the real problems lie within the [industrial] enterprise. …our representative institution… a mirror in which we look when we want to see ourselves.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

1930s- 1950s, The New Society (1950)

Lie, Problem, Thinking, Change

“Back in 2014, when no one else was planning how to win the referendum, @DouglasCarswell talked tactics at the @Tate. He said: "We can win in one of two circumstances: a visible failure of the renegotiation, or one of the two main party leaders being neutral."”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

In the event, we got both. Thanks @jeremycorbyn. Series of tweets following Jeremy Corbyn's sacking of shadow ministers who defied a Labour whip not to support an amendment calling for the UK to stay in the single market after Brexit https://twitter.com/DanielJHannan/status/880721871720808448 (30 June 2017) 2010s

Failure

“Once upon a time leftists and radicals talked of liberation or the abolition of work. Now the talk is about full employment.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: The End of Utopia (1999), p. 21

Time

“Take God here / I have to talk to him / I want to tell him / about a life I have lived / and which I haven't understood / what it has been worth living / what has changed / or better / what have I earned?”

Vasco Rossi (1980) Italian singer-songwriter

from Portatemi Dio, 1983)
Song lyrics

Life, God, Change

“Total abstraction was something intellectual to me. I didn't feel it; I could talk about Mondrian but it didn't occur to me to do it. [around 1950]. I saw a Dubuffet show at Pierre Matisse [the son of Henri Matisse, running an art-gallery in New York then] in the late forties and came back with a new vocabulary. Also when Baziotes won the Carnegie (1948) there was a reproduction in 'The Times'. I remember bringing it to class. It was source of bewilderment, delineated configurations that seemed to come out of Cubism. It was something new. Those were the tastes of a whole dimension that was to come, much more abstract and allover and I didn't see much more of it until I came to New York. I would go to the old Guggenheim to look at Kandinsky. I liked the early abstractions but the later ones I didn't like at all..”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Source: 1960s, Interview with Henry Geldzahler', in 'Artforum', 1965, p. 36

Art, Feeling, Time

“What are the great faults of conversation? Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don't doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil more good talks than anything else;—long arguments on special points between people who differ on the fundamental principles upon which these points depend. No men can have satisfactory relations with each other until they have agreed on certain ultimata [finalities] of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation, and unless they have sense enough to trace the secondary questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their source. In short, just as a written constitution is essential to the best social order, so a code of finalities is a necessary condition of profitable talk between two persons.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Men, People, Idea, Question

“(talking about how girls like mystery) Next time your lady leaves the room, take a dump on the floor! 'Cuz there is nothing more mysterious than a dump on the floor! And it always starts a conversation, am I right? Honey, what happened? You better hold me 'cause I'm afraid.”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Girl, Time

“I really don't care that much about "Beauties." What I really like are Talkers. To me, good talkers are beautiful because good talk is what I love. The word itself shows why I like Talkers better than Beauties, why I tape more than I film. It's not "talkies." Talkers are doing something. Beauties are being something. Which isn't necessarily bad, it's just that I don't know what it is they're being. It's more fun to be with people who are doing things.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 4: Beauty

Love, People, Beauty

“Our "pathway" is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning…We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1868-01-13).

Women, Box

“Talking with Gary Busey is kinda like sex. You want to do it, you just don't want to be alone when you do it.”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

Comedy Central Roast of Larry the Cable Guy

Sex

“It’s hard to know how to deal with liberalization in cultures that have been repressed for a long time, that don’t have strong civil societies. But for the United States, of all countries, to be talking about human rights just rings very, very hollow in light of all the objections to our policy in Israel — the perception that we’re hard on one side and not on the other, and that we don’t contest the settlements or human-rights abuses committed by Israeli soldiers, and so on. Plus the fact that we have turned our back on international treaties and not been a global citizen, I think, makes people, even democrats, the leading lights in these repressed societies, very squeamish about being associated with the United States.”

Samantha Power (1970) Irish-American academic, author and diplomat

Samantha Power: How to lose friends and make enemies http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/top/features/documents/02844399.htm, Boston Phoenix, 2003.

People, Thinking, Light, Strong

“I know very well that I'm not the dancer that Danny is. He's on a completely different level. For the last four years, I've known who he is, and I just wanted to talk to him. So standing there with him tonight [as the final two] was the craziest thing.”

Danny Tidwell (1984) American dancer

Sabra Johnson, Starr Seibel, Deborah (2007-08-17). "Backstage at the So You Think You Can Dance Finale!" http://www.tvguide.com/news/dance-finale-sabra/070817-05 TVGuide.com. Retrieved 2007-08-17 About

“[In response to "Do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?"] "Well, I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House…. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that."”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

2000s, 2003

People, Way, Question, Thinking

“The reason that economic textbooks now begin with imaginary villages is because it has been impossible to talk about real ones. Even some economists have been forced to admit that Smith's Land of Barter doesn't really exist.

The question is why the myth is perpetuated anyway.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Three, "Primordial Debts", p. 43

Question

“You're damn right when you say I've shown people how to make a firebomb, I've done my time for my crimes, and I should be able to talk about them.”

Rod Coronado (1966) Native American eco-anarchist and animal rights activist

Feds arrest environment radical over S.D. speech http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20060223-9999-1m23rod.html

People, Time

“Immigration is not a simple issue. There are at least three major parts of it: there’s border security, legal immigration, and the status of the 11 million, 15 million, 30 million … pick a number – it’s the status of the folks who are here illegally. People say, ‘oh, comprehensive reform is a bad idea.’ Ok? But, unless you deal with all three of those you haven’t dealt with immigration. There are jobs that American citizens will not do. There are jobs that American citizens will not do. We can talk about why that is. We can talk about how our welfare state is broken, how we encourage people not to work, but that doesn’t help the farmer pick his peaches this summer. We have businesses that rely on migrant – legal – migrant workers, and a lot of them are in this state”

Mick Mulvaney (1967) Director of the Office of Management and Budget

Mick Mulvaney's Summer Of Apostasy http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/06/08/mick-mulvaneys-summer-of-apostasy/ (June 2014)

People, Idea, Business, Help

“When I talk to people about how to design a carbon price, I think the model is British Columbia. You raise electricity prices by $100 a year, but then the government gives back a dividend that lowers internet prices by $100 year. In real terms, you’re raising the price of carbon goods but lowering the prices of non-carbon-intensive goods.”

William D. Nordhaus (1941) American economist

"After Nobel in Economics, William Nordhaus Talks About Who’s Getting His Pollution-Tax Ideas Right: A few governments — notably, parts of Canada and South Korea — have adapted his ideas in ways that frame them as a financial windfall for taxpayers." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/climate/nordhaus-carbon-tax-interview.html The New York Times. Oct. 13, 2018.

People, Thinking

“Morris Louis and I were interested in how Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler [famous for her soak-painting technique] were using paint. Of necessity we had to get more interested in the stuff of painting. We talked a lot about whether to size the painting or not to size, how to mix up paint.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 14
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Painting

“[Quoting Seneca] Cornelia kept her in talk till her children came from school, "and these," said she, "are my jewels."”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 2, member 2, subsection 3.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III

Children, School, Quotes

“I find that I would like now, best of all, to be a good conversationalist. I know I'm not one at present. Oh, I can sit and talk a little of this and that, but I realize that I haven't any definite or profound knowledge. I won't be satisfied with just a patter, a surface glaze of information. I don't want short-cuts to learning. I want to know all about the thing I study.
I'd like to be able to hold my own, to meet on a common ground, with scientists, inventors, clerics, doctors, athletes, authors.
The most worthwhile thing in life is to store your mind with knowledge.
I wish now that I had been able to go to college, if only so that I might have had appreciations earlier in the game.
People often say to me now that I have my home, my career, fame (if you call it that), there must be nothing left for me to live for. But there is everything left to live for. All the things I don't know about, all the things I want to know about.
Pictures, I've discovered, were practically all I did know about up to very recently. I've had to work so hard, to concentrate so closely, that I never have had time to read or to travel or to think about other things. I'm just at the beginning of living…”

Harold Lloyd (1893–1971) American film actor and producer

"Discoveries About Myself". Motion Picture, October 1930, pg. 58 & 90. (Brewster Publications). https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n563/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/motionpicture1923040chic#page/n595/mode/2up

Life, People, Travel, Home

“Philosophers are never quite sure what they are talking about — about what the issues really are — and so often it takes them rather a long time to recognize that someone with a somewhat different approach (or destination, or starting point) is making a contribution.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Source: The Intentional Stance (1987), p. 350

Time

“The paucity of its vocabulary and syntax is for the Beats essentially expressive of withdrawal from the standard civilization and its learning. On the other hand this paucity gives, instead of opportunities for thought and problem solving, considerable satisfaction in the act and energy of speaking itself, as is true of any simple adopted language, such as pig Latin. But this can have disadvantages. One learns to one’s frustration that they regard talk as an end in itself, as a means of self-expression, without subject matter. In a Beat group it is bad form to assert or deny a proposition as true or false, probable or improbable, or to want to explore its meaning.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

(describing the language of the “Beat” generation, p. 175.
Growing Up Absurd (1956)

Problem, Learning, Falseness

“We were talking a lot, but we weren't communicating at all.”

Chetan Bhagat book One Night @ the Call Center

Source: One Night @ the Call Center (2005), P. 145

Communication

“Seventy million people will talk about seventy million solutions to the same problem.”

Neamat Imam book The Black Coat

The Black Coat (2013)

People, Problem

“He’s one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

On Richard Nixon, as quoted Plain Speaking : An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman (1974) by Merle Miller, p. 179

History, Lying, Time, Country

“At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

Unidentified page
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

New Year

““You’ve got to do something!” insisted Fani. “I saw Father talking to them! He looked happy, and he never looks happy unless he’s planning some skulduggery!””

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 6

Happiness

“…the way we talk…you know that our people like to talk around a subject even when there's no danger. They enjoy it, and if they know you well enough they're apt to leave their true subject unstated so you'll have to supply the missing meaning.”

Ralph Ellison book Three Days Before the Shooting...

Source: Three Days Before the Shooting... (2010), pp. 680-1.

People, Way

“They have kept us in submission because they have talked about separation of church and state. There is no such thing in the Constitution. It's a lie of the Left, and we're not going to take it anymore.”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

http://www.earthrenewal.org/Analysis.htm

Lie

“"You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessation from all hankerings.' It's this business of desiring, if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line — in one damn incarnation or another, if you like — you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to — be God's actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to — there's nothing wrong in trying." There was a slight pause. "You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world."”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)

Life, God, Truth, World

“The thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did; saying that which is made, is, and that which made it, is not. But this folly is infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing.”

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) English clergyman

"Apples of Sodom," part II, sermon XX of Twenty-Five Sermons for the Winter Half-Year, Preached at Golden Grove (1653)

Hell, Light

“The unkissed girls and boys of paradise
Are lining up around the block
Back pockets full of dynamite
While their neighbors talk and talk.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"Black Rainbow"
Actor (2009)

Girl, Boy

“(mimicking a big fish talking to a little fish)
"Hey - Perch…"
(points at his eyes, then at the imaginary perch's)
"Look at me…"
(thinks, concedes, then points at the sides of his head where a fish's eyes would be)
"Look at me… Both eyes…" - oh, I've thought it all through - "if you ever see a worm… in the shape of a J… swim away. That's how we lost your Uncle Pike."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

15° Off Cool (2007)

Thinking, Fish

“Bill Rogers has got — to his credit it’s a decent feeling — but somewhat sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he’s been in New York. He says well, ‘They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on. My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years.
What has to happen is they have to be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

Conversation with secretary Rose Mary Woods on tapes recorded February-March 1973 http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/3_VIETNAM.mp3 on tapes recorded February-March 1973; as quoted in "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/us/politics/11nixon.html, by Adam Nagourney, New York Times (10 December 2010); with sound recording http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/national/20101211_NIXON_AUDIO/4_BLACKS.mp3. 1970s

Feeling, Thinking, Strong, Country

“A system is anything that talks to itself.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

“[Snow White talking to herself] “… No wonder we who are twenty-two don’t trust anybody over twelve. That is where you find people who know the score, under twelve. I think I will go out and speak to some eleven-year-olds, now, to refresh myself. Now or soon.””

Donald Barthelme book Snow White

Source: Snow White (1967), p. 145.

People, Thinking

“The American League must be that fountain of youth they talk about. A lot of National League pitchers did pretty good in the American League this year.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "D.C. Money Will Talk" by Bob Addie, in The Washington Post (Wednesday, October 11, 1972), p. D4
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1972</big>

Youth

“When I had my own company on Traffic and Coonskin, all metaphors were able to get to the screen clearly. In Cool World, with the producer and Paramount watching me carefully to make sure I was in good taste, I instinctively poured stuff into the picture that I wanted to talk about. But when you force stuff, it's not really very clear. But, I have a great love for Max Fleischer, especially some of his Black & White Betty Boops with their strange Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong black folk tale jazz hipness that part of Cool World was a homage in style to those films and that style of cartooning. The Grim Reaper is right out of a Max Fleischer cartoon or old Terrytoons, which is why I hired and love Milton Knight the artist. He understands totally the Uncle Remus fable like qualities behind Fleischer and Terrytoons. Milton Knight is probably the purest artist of that style in the business. He has a hard time because studios think he is old fashioned…but that's the point.”

Ralph Bakshi (1938) Animator, filmmaker

[c. 17 September 2004, http://www.wild-things.com/bray/documents/ralphb.doc, Questions for Ralph Bakshi, DOC, Ralph Bakshi Forum, 2007-11-27]

Love, World, Fashion, Understanding

“Talk can neither be verified nor falsified in any rigorous sense. This is an open secret which hermeneutics and aesthetics, from Aristotle to Croce, have laboured to exorcise or to conceal from themselves and their clients. This ontological, which is to say both primordial and essential axiom (or platitude) of ineradicable undecidability needs, none the less, to be closely argued.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), II: The Broken Contract, Ch. 2 (p. 61).

Secret, Sense

“First she studied her husband's flower arrangement. He had chosen the blossom of a single white wild rose and put a single pearl of water on the green leaf, and set it on red stones. Autumn is coming, he was suggesting with the flower, talking through the flower, do not weep for the time of fall, the time of dying when the earth begins to sleep; enjoy the time of beginning again and experience the glorious cool of the autumn air on this summer evening…soon the tear will vanish and the rose, only the stones will remain — soon you and I will vanish and only the stones will remain.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun (1975), Ch. 43

Flowers, Autumn, Tear, Sleep

“I want to say something about Picasso as a revolutionary. A revolution in the history of art is a reflection of the history of society. Art cannot revolutionize society. It is a reflection of that revolution.. You [= Joseph Beuys ] talking in the same interview] have revolutionized art. But I do not see that you have revolutionized society directly. You have depicted what has not yet existed.... art and life are not two separate realms, but they have shifted out of phase with each other.”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

Life, Art, History

“Don't bother. Bram doesn't know what he's talking about.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linus vs. Bram Cohen, 2005-04-27, Torvalds, Linus, 2013-10-03 http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/archives/git/0504/2197.html, 2000s, 2005

“but then I remembered how crass it is to talk money or stocks with university types.”

Andy Kessler (1958) American writer

Part VII, The Margin Surplus, Ghana a Goner, p. 281.
Running Money (2004) First Edition

Money, Universe

“If I propose something distant, you may sayː interesting, but utopian. If I propose something close, you may answerː feasible but trivial. In contemporary efforts to think and talk programmatically, all proposals are made to seem either utopian or trivial. We have lost confidence in our ability to imagine structural change in society, and fall back upon a surrogate standardː a proposal is realistic if it approaches what already exists. It is easy to be a realist if you accept everything.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Democracy Realizedː The Progressive Alternative (1998), p. 29

Confidence, Imagination, Thinking, Effort

“[O'Brien's heroes are] William Butler Yeats, Michael Collins, André Malraux, Maurice Ravel, Giorgio Di Cirico, Laurence Olivier and Max Schmeling. And of course the great Douglas Baader, the war pilot who had no legs. When he was captured by the Germans, they allowed the British to parachute his steel legs. And he escaped! So, I don't care about The Merry Wives of Windsor, but talk to me about Douglas Baader!”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

War

“If you want to change people by talking about God, then there is only one way: instead of teaching God, you must live God. Because: “teaching” God is unthinkable in any other way than the way you would teach love or poetry. You teach love only through love, poetry only through writing poetry, faith in God only through a contagious way of trusting.”

Eugen Drewermann (1940) German psychologist and theologian

Jesus von Nazareth (1996)

Love, God, People, Faith

“You talk like they
don’t kick dreams
around downtown.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Comment on Curb"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

Dreams

“Mr. Duff Cooper, landing at New York, cools his mind by blowing off about a forthcoming revolt of the German Army and a return to monarchy in Germany, a Holy Roman Empire, I suppose, leading that new Crusade of which the Pope has been talking about recent against anti-God Russia. But quite a lot of radical people in the world, in spite of the folly, stupidity and brutality of the Stalin–Molotov attack on Finland, are averse from this idea of a religious war against Socialism and Atheism.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

The Rights of Man, or what are we fighting for? (1940)

God, War, People, Stupidity

“I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.”

Saki The Chronicles of Clovis

"Adrian"
The Chronicles of Clovis (1911)

Love

“You've never produced a Michleangelo or a Bach. You've never even produced a great chef. And if you talk to me about opportunity, all I can say is, are you joking? Have you ever lacked the opportunity, to give history a great chef? You've produced nothing great, nothing!”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Oriana Fallaci (December 30, 1973), The Mystically Divine Shah of Iran (interview), Chicago Tribune
Interviews

History

“(Talking about what he wants at his funeral)”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

15° Off Cool (2007)

“People say to me, "Bill, quit bringing up Kennedy, man. Let it go. It was a long time ago. Just forget about it." All right, then don't bring up Jesus to me. I mean, as long as we're talking shelf-life here. "You know, Bill, Jesus died for you …" Yeah, it was a long time ago. Forget about it. How about this: get Pilate to release the fuckin' files. "Quit washing your hands, Pilate, and release the files. Who else was on that grassy Golgotha that day? Oh yeah, the three Roman peasants in $100 sandals. Yeah, right!"”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Arizona Bay (1997)

Life, People, Time, Forgetting

“And then there’s this guy, Barack Obama, who lost – I could take up a whole afternoon talking about his failures, but – he lost his first race for Congress, and now he gets to call himself my husband…”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

"Michelle Obama Tells Grads: ‘I Could Take Up a Whole Afternoon Talking About’ Barack Obama’s Failures", in CNSNews (20 May 2013) http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michelle-obama-tells-grads-i-could-take-whole-afternoon-talking-about-barack-obama-s 2010s

Guy, Failure

“As I go musing through this mournful land
Soothed by the pine-tree's solemn harmony,
Thy well-loved image comes and walks by me.
I seem to hold thee by the gentle hand
And talk of things I dimly understand,
That thy dear spirit set to mine may be
As to an intricate lock the simple key.”

John Barlas (1860–1914) British writer

XXXII. "As I go musing through this mournful land" Love Sonnets http://www.sonnets.org/love-sonnets.htm (1889)

Love, Understanding, Tree

Quotes about talking page 22

Quotes about talking
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