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

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

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

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

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.

When I looked at the third base coach, he turned his back on me.

When we were shooting in Shreveport, me and a couple of friends went down to Lafayette, because they had a big Zydeco music festival down there. We spent two days dancing to Zydeco music, eating fried alligator... It was one of the craziest festivals I've ever been to in my life, but I loved it.

In college, I started out doing musicals and Shakespeare.

God does things that fly completely in the face of what we've all been taught that He is supposed to do and every time He does this, we all just say, 'Oh, well, I guess there must be some good reason why He did that.'

I feel like we've found an interesting little corner of the sandbox here as far as the way we're telling sci-fi stories. I don't think it's limited to sci-fi - I think anything fantastic can co-exist with people you and I know, and not these hyper-real movie people.

The whole European Federal plan is ridiculous. We are patriotic. The single currency is an outrage. We want the Queen's head - or the King's head, if we have a king - on our own coins.

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

Just recently I was in Target with my mom shopping, and out of the blue, I see this father and his two daughters and he says, 'Can they get a picture with you?' And I'm thinking to myself, 'Am I the one millionth customer or something?'

Shirley Jackson's writings are a must for aficionados of the gothic and of good literature.

I always like to start my morning with a good amount of fruit. I really like pineapple, particularly because of the enzymes that it has. Sometimes I have oatmeal. But if I'm feeling like I really want to be watching my weight more, then I definitely do a protein, like an omelet, scrambled eggs or some smoked salmon.

If I ever have sex with someone I might be able to develop a sense of humor.

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life.

Everything sells. Like integrity. Like democracy. Like truth. Like deeds.

I had a great career in Australia, so it was a hard decision to move to America. But in 2010, I was asked to audition for the part Melissa McCarthy ended up playing in 'Bridesmaids.'

Gerda Lerner was fierce, brilliant and unique. She lived history by her bravery, restored history by her scholarship, and democratized its study by her activism.

I learned that you don't take dishes from the table to the dishwasher; you have to rinse them first. I think that's stupid because I don't go out in the back yard and hose off before taking a shower.

The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.

I think beautiful independent films are made, and I think they're as close to what theater can be because they're not loaded with all of the extra stuff. It's human, and it's more organic, but theater is very unique... It's a different connection altogether.

I don't expect anyone to give me anything.

My mom's the strongest, boldest woman I know.

I never think it's right to chew gum in front of other people, but a lot of times I'll come in for a meeting chewing gum and I'll forget I'm chewing it. Then you don't want to swallow it because it stays in your system for seven years or something, so I've asked to throw it away. I've started to wonder if that's why I didn't get certain movies.

Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.

People who have come to appreciate well-sourced and well-cooked food refuse to pay too much for food that they wouldn't want to pay anything for.