Listeners Quotes - Page 4

• Twenty years ago I might have hired a professional listener, but somewhere along the way I had lost faith in the talking cure. A genteel fraud in my view.

  Ian Mcewan

  Views, Talking, Years

  Ian McEwan (2010). “Enduring Love”, p.99, Random House

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• [Her] work taught me that you could be all the traditional feminine things -- a mother, a lover, a listener, a nurturer -- and you could also be critically astute and radical and have a minority opinion that was profoundly moral.

  Anne Lamott

  Mother, Minorities, Taught

  Anne Lamott (2000). “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith”, Anchor

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• An appreciative listener is always stimulating.

  Agatha Christie

  Appreciative

  Agatha Christie (2009). “The Mysterious Affair at Styles: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition”, p.16, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.

  Jimmy Buffett

  Song, Writing, Songwriting

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• Our struggle is--isn't it?--to achieve and retain faith on a lower level. To believe that there is a Listener at all. For as the situation grows more and more desperate, the grisly fears intrude. Are we only talking to ourselves in an empty universe? The silence is often so emphatic. And we have prayed so much already

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Struggle, Talking

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• When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine. Why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ...Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Errors, Silence

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• They ended every speech with the word hiro, which means: like I said. Thus each man took responsibility for intruding into the inarticulate murmur of the spheres. To hiro they added the word koue, a cry of joy or distress, according to whether it was sung or howled. Thus they essayed to piece the mysterious curtain which hangs between all talking men: at the end of every utterance a man stepped back, so to speak, and attempted to interpret his words to the listener, attempted to subvert the beguiling intellect with the noise of true emotion.

  Leonard Cohen

  Mean, Responsibility, Men

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• The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener— a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.

  Dale Carnegie

  Kings, Kickers, Poison

  Dale Carnegie (2010). “How To Win Friends and Influence People”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

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• The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like.

  Frank Zappa

  Musical, Sound, Radio

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• What do you mean, 'playing really creatively'? Can you give me an example?" "Hmm, let's see ... you send the music deep enough into your heart so that it makes your body undergo a kind of a physical shift, and simultaneously the listener's body also undergoes the same kind of physical shift. It's giving birth to that kind of shared state. Probably.

  Haruki Murakami

  Heart, Mean, Giving

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• A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

  Diane Setterfield

  Stories, Cases, Significance

  Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale”, p.269, Simon and Schuster

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• It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright.

  Carson McCullers

  Heart, Causes, Cold

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Collected Stories of Carson McCullers”, p.271, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In this world of gossip, a good listener is rarer than a great orator.

  Christopher Pike

  Gossip, World, Good Listener

  Christopher Pike (2013). “Thirst: Thirst No. 1; Thirst No. 2; Thirst”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

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• ...the reader who plucks a book from her shelf only once is as deprived as the listener who, after attending a single performance of a Beethoven symphony, never hears it again.

  Anne Fadiman

  Book, Symphony, Shelves

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• I am a patient listener, but opinionated to the point of stubbornness when my mind is made up.

  Walt Disney

  Mind, Patient, Stubbornness

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• ... and when he put his mind to it, he could make his words coil themselves around and around the listener until they held her in some sort of a mild hypnotic spell.

  Roald Dahl

  Mind, Spells, Hypnotic

  Roald Dahl (2012). “Switch Bitch”, p.9, Penguin

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• I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate.

  John Steinbeck

  Liars, Lying, Loss

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.67, Penguin

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• ...in our time art is encrusted with a noisy, opaque, logorrhea of theory that prevents a work from coming into direct, media free, non-interpreted contact with its viewer (its reader, its listener)

  Milan Kundera

  Art, Media, Opaque

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• It’s like someone who prays every night saying God’s a good listener. Just because you’re talking to us doesn’t mean we’re listening. With me and God, you never really know.

  Paul Neilan

  Mean, Night, Talking

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• Most secrets should never be told, but especially those that are more menacing to the listener than to the teller.

  Truman Capote

  Secret, Should

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• Some nights I need to be held. Tonight I'm a listener. So nice to lie in rumpled sheets and listen. Cover me with words.

  Don DeLillo

  Nice, Lying, Night

  Don DeLillo (1991). “Libra”, p.71, Penguin

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• For most of my life I've been a listener. At least in the beginning, I think the reason I listened so intently was to have a chance of hearing the train before it ran over me.

  Steve Rasnic Tem

  Thinking, Hearing, Chance

  Steve Rasnic Tem, Melanie Tem (2008). “The Man on the Ceiling”, Wizards of the Coast Discoveries

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• You must walk to the beat of a different drummer. The same beat that the wealthy hear. If the beat sounds normal, evacuate the dance floor immediately! The goal is to not be normal, because as my radio listeners know, normal is broke.

  Dave Ramsey

  Goal, Sound, Different

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• It’s a rule that we never listen to sad music, we made that rule early on, songs are as sad as the listener, we hardly ever listen to music.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Song, Sad Music, Made

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.108, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Though now we think of fairy tales as stories intended for very young children, this is a relatively modern idea. In the oral tradition, magical stories were enjoyed by listeners young and old alike, while literary fairy tales (including most of the tales that are best known today) were published primarily for adult readers until the 19th century.

  Terri Windling

  Children, Thinking, Ideas

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