Communication - the human connection - is the key to personal and career success.

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care, for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary, so that the necessary may speak.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

Most people have to talk so they won’t hear.

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.

Good words are worth much, and cost little.

The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

Effective communication is 20 percent what you know and 80 percent how you feel about what you know.

There is only one rule for being a good talker--learn to listen.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.

It’s much easier to be convincing if you care about your topic. Figure out what’s important to you about your message and speak from the heart.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.

We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

It's important to make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.

Most of the time, communication gets confused with conversation. In fact, the two are distinctly different.

Your words will either give you joy or give you sorrow, but if they were spoken without regret, they give you peace.

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

If I told you the words, you wouldn't believe them anyway.

'Come out' is so funny to me because I've never been in.

The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do.

Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

I think feminism is about the spirit.

I make mistakes; I'll be the second to admit it.

Writing is an abstract art of drawing pictures of the conscious and subconscious mind with words.

So many artists try to be something that they're not.

The Kurt thing has burdened me so much.

If we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society then it has to be wrong for everyone not just individuals but governments as well.

God is good.

Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thought and feelings, but it includes the state of the body; it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times.

Audiences just naturally hate me on screen. I could play a role in a tuxedo, and people would think I was rotten. You can do much more with a villain part.

The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny.

The physicality of any character is always split up into fast, slow, high energy, low energy, what kind of personality he has. So that's where the physicality comes in. And flying through the air is just something you have to do if they ask you.

I was 45 years old when I decided to learn how to surf.

Be generous in the bedroom. Share your sandwich.

The past could liberate or imprison - it creates a nation's character, provides the nourishment or the poison a people imbibe in their very marrow.

I have more free time than a lot of individuals, so, instead of talking, I sometimes write.

Cruelty is softened by fear not pity.

Alcohol is a misunderstood vitamin.

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

It's such a crass idea - you're either in love or out of love.