A Quote by Deborah Tannen

The long history of conversations that family members share contributes not only to how listeners interpret words but also to how speakers choose them.

Deborah Tannen

Quote Topics

Also Choose Conversations Family Family Member Family Members History How Interpret Listeners Long Long History Members Only Share Speakers Them Words

Quote Author

Deborah Tannen
American - Sociologist
Born: June 7, 1945

A willingness to vocalize feelings. How important it is to be willing to voice one's thoughts and feelings. Yes, how important it is to be able to converse on the level of each family member. Too often we are inclined to let family members assume how we feel toward them. Often wrong conclusions are reached. Very often we could have performed better had we known how family members felt about us and what they expected.

Marvin J. Ashton

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Personally, I love the cookie monster grunts. I like how they alienate listeners. We sound the way we sound. We're individuals. We don't all like the same music. Everybody contributes their own influences, style, and history.

David Pajo

History doesn't choose individual people. History chooses everyone. Every day. The only question is: How long will you ignore the call?

Brad Meltzer

America's strength in the past has been our ability to bring family members to join other family members in the United States and to look at skills but not have it be the only determination of how you get here.

Chris Murphy

Sometimes it is a way of controlling others, including family members, because you don't know how to connect to them in any other way. Money can also serve as a scorecard to indicate how well you are doing, the impact you are having, if you are winning.

Justine Musk

The great jazz radio stations have a duty to continue evolving their format just as audiences ask the musicians to evolve. How do you do that with a form of music that has 100 years of recorded history? How do you also keep it contemporary so you don't isolate your listeners? These are major questions.

Jason Moran

I get so much inspiration from my travels, but I also started an exercise where I write down so many words every week. Then I begin crossing them off. We create a grid of words and also images, but words for me are more ample because you can interpret them your own way.

Francisco Costa

The three short years I spent at Harvard, where I lived with excellent people, taught me not only that I must know how to choose my partners but also that choosing excellent partners is a skill you can learn. Obviously, when you spend time with the best, you learn how to choose among them.

Jorge Paulo Lemann

The freedom fighters in India's long struggle for independence from British rule, or members of the African National Congress, were once classed as terrorists. History, as they say, is written by victors, but history also has many cunning corridors - how much time must elapse before all those tricky side-passages are revealed?

Neel Mukherjee

The big guys choose who they want to fight and they think about history: 'how many times I defended my title.' They try to break a record: 'how long I was there.' But if you look at the pedigree, who they fought, ain't nobody gonna give them credit for it because they fought a lot of people with no experience.

Evander Holyfield

I think where you're born brings a history with it - a cultural history, a mythical history, an ancestral history, a religious context - and certainly influences your perception of the world and how you interpret everyday reality.

Deepak Chopra

One of the best side effects about working on 'Billions' that I did not anticipate were the number of conversations I had about gender identity with my fellow actors and also members of the crew. From the person holding the boom to the person wiring my microphone, just how many conversations I had with so many open minds and hearts.

Asia Kate Dillon

Surrounded by all the members of my dear family, enjoying the affection of numerous friends, who have never abandoned me, and possessing a sufficient share of all that contributes to make life agreeable, I lift my grateful eyes towards the Supreme Being and feel that I am happy.

John James Audubon

In our day-to-day actions, it is often the small and simple things that will have a long-lasting impact (Alma 37:6-7). What we say, how we act, and how we choose to react will influence not only ourselves but also those around us. We can build up, or we can tear down.