Conversation Starters Quotes

As I got older, I got craftier and less obvious, but I've always put a lot of energy and effort into people liking me. That's why I've never understood the compliment "effortless." People love to say: "She just walked into the party, charming people with her effortless beauty." I don't understand that at all. What's so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care. What about the girl who "walked into the party, her determination to please apparent on her eager face"? Sure, she might seem a little crazy, and, yes, maybe everything she says sounds like conversation starters she found on a website, but at least she's trying. Let's give her a shot! ~ Mindy Kaling

I tend to agree with my husband, that to continue the conversation about something that is an important topic, particularly now, which is that of gun control, through his narrative, which is actually what's happened, I don't think it was a conscious decision of, "That's what we're going to do," but that's what seems to have happened, and that's not a bad thing. ~ Katey Sagal

He went absolutely still for a split second, an error message flashing wildly in his brain. Another second passed before he resumed breathing, then another before he concluded that the conversation about procreation at lunch was to blame for his bizarre thoughts. ~ C.C. Gibbs

Your Highness, we must speak tonight," I whispered. "Alone." Enough was enough. I would not take any part in Princess Cantacuzene's plans, and I would not risk my life dallying with the Montenegrins any longer.
"Indeed?" he said, bringing my hand to his lips. I shuddered, realizing he had a different kind of conversation in mind than I did. ~ Robin Bridges

Looking back at that conversation, I can't help wondering: Did I know? Did I know what was coming, and did I think that as long as I wouldn't let Livvie say the words, they wouldn't be true? ~ Melissa Kantor

M. Vinteuil...carried politeness and consideration for others to such scrupulous lengths, always putting himself in their place, that he was afraid of boring them, or of appearing egotistical, if he carried out or even allowed them to suspect what were his own desires. On the day when my parents had gone to pay him a visit, I had accompanied them, but they had allowed me to remain outside, and as M. Vinteuil's house, Montjouvain, stood at the foot of a bushy hillock where I went to hide, I had found myself on a level with his drawing-room, upstairs, and only a few feet away from its window. When the servant came in to tell him that my parents had arrived, I had seen M. Vinteuil hurriedly place a sheet of music in a prominent position on the piano. But as soon as they entered the room he had snatched it away and put it in a corner. He was afraid, no doubt, of letting them suppose that he was glad to see them only because it gave him a chance of playing them some of his compositions. And every time that my mother, in the course of her visit, had returned to the subject he had hurriedly protested: 'I can't think who put that on the piano; it's not the proper place for it at all,' and had turned the conversation aside to other topics, precisely because they were of less interest to himself. ~ Marcel Proust

Once I was in a cafe in Portland and the woman at the next table and I began chatting and in the course of our conversation she strongly recommend I visit this web site called 'The Rumpus' so I could read this advice column called 'Dear Sugar.' It was so painful not to tell her that in fact I was Sugar, but I didn't. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Nothing could kill a conversation quite like fighting back tears after you're asked a simple question. ~ Katherine Pine

A modern woman sees a piece of linen, but the mediaeval woman saw through it to the flax fields, she smelt the reek of the retting ponds, she felt the hard rasp of the hackling, and she saw the soft sheen of the glossy flax. Man did not see 'just leather', he saw the beast - perhaps one of his own - and knew the effort of slaughtering, liming and curing.
Communities were smaller and whether our man lived on the outskirts of some feudal system, had escaped from it, or was entirely isolated, he would work alone, or daily with the same fellow-workers - conversation would soon languish.
But THINK he must. ~ Dorothy Hartley

I don't know enough about hip-hop, though I've heard some great hip-hop. I just did a thing with Qwest Love - we did a performance together in Memphis at the Folk Alliance Festival, and we had a great jam and a conversation. ~ Bela Fleck

One of the things about crowd work that's so exciting is when you discover a character in the audience who's interesting or funny, who you can vibe off of. If someone's got a weird job that you can make reference to throughout, or you can bring that person onstage - humiliate them, or celebrate them! You can put people in conversation with one another. The best is when something that they're doing can reflect back on something that you're doing. ~ John Hodgman

I swear conversation is such hard work! To make myself understood, it's like I have to speak in an unknown foreign language, every minute of every day.'
'The Reason I Jump' by Naoki Higashida ~ Naoki Higashida

I'm definitely a people person. I love socializing and being around people and having a good conversation. ~ Emily Deschanel

I nod, then let the conversation drop. But secretly I'm wondering if Haymitch sobered up long enough to help Peeta and me because he thought we just might have the wits to survive. Maybe he wasn't always a drunk. Maybe, in the beginning, he tried to help the tributes. But then it got unbearable. It must be hell to mentor two kids and then watch them die. Year after year after year. I realize that if I get out of here, that will become my job. To mentor the girl from District 12. The idea is so repellent, I thrust it from my mind. ~ Suzanne Collins

But they were worth worrying over. Paris didn't know what sort of irresponsible butterfly soul Romeo might have, that he could just forget his family didn't want him, but Paris wasn't - couldn't - did not have it in him to ignore and despise the family that birthed him.

"I could write a poem for you," said Romeo. "To make it clear."

"That wouldn't help," Paris said stiffly, wondering how this conversation had gotten out of control.

"A poem of comfort."

"No." Paris desperately wished that he had gotten stuck in this situation with somebody who was . . . anyone but Romeo. ~ Rosamund Hodge

The silence became uneasy. It was broken by the elderly princess saying, The most distressing thing about being up here above the clouds is that there is no weather to make conversation out of. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Come back, come back, dear friend, only friend, come back. I promise to be good.
If I was short with you, I was either kidding or just being stubborn; I regret all this more than I can express. Come back and all is forgotten. It is unbearable to think you took my joke seriously. I have been crying for two days straight. Come back. Be brave, dear friend. All is not lost. You only need to come back. We will live here once again, bravely, patiently. I'm begging you. You know it is for your own good. Come back, all of your things are here. I hope you now know that our last conversation wasn't real. That awful moment. But you, when I waved to you to get off the boat, why didn't you come? To have lived together for two years and to have come to that! What will you do? If you don't want to come back here, would you want me to come to you?

Yes, I was wrong.

Tell me you haven't forgotten me.

You couldn't.

I always have you with me.

Listen, tell me: should we not live together anymore?
Be brave. Write immediately.
I can't stay here much longer.
Listen to your heart.
Now, tell me if I should come join you.
My life is yours. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

The real meaning of travel, like that of a conversation by the fireside, is the discovery of oneself through contact with other people, and its condition is self-commitment in the dialogue. ~ Paul Tournier

My goofiest-sounding secret is that I also believe in magic. Sometimes I call it God and sometimes I call it light, and I believe in it because every now and then I read a really good book or hear a really good song or have a really good conversation with a friend and they seem to have some kind of shine to them. The list I keep of these moments in the back of my journal is comprised less of times when I was laughing or smiling and more of times when I felt like I could feel the colors in my eyes deepening from the display before me. Times in which I felt I was witnessing an all-encompassing representation of life driven by an understanding that, coincidence or not, our existence is a peculiar thing, and perhaps the greatest way to honor it is to just be human. To be happy AND sad, and everything else. And yeah, living is a pain, and I say I hate everyone and everything, and I don't exude much enthusiasm when sandwiched between fluorescent lighting and vinyl flooring for seven hours straight, and I will probably mumble a bunch about how much I wish I could sleep forever the next time I have to wake up at 6 AM. But make no mistake about it: I really do like living. I really, truly do. ~ Tavi Gevinson

I don't like you being all alone in this big house, M.J."
"I believe we have already had this conversation."
"It's just hollow. Anyone could creep in and hide somewhere. It's just
creepy to think about. What if someone is hiding in your closet right now?"
"Well, I didn't think about it like that until now, so ... thank you for that."
"Sorry. ~ Kaitlin Scott

On the whole, and providing one is in good spirits and feeling reasonably bright, it is not hard to converse for a short space of time on subjects about which one knows little, and it is indeed often amusing to see how cunningly one can steer the conversational barque, hoisting and lowering her sails, tacking this way and that to avoid reefs, and finally racing feverishly for home with the outboard engine making a loud and cheerful noise. ~ Virginia Graham

I take a swig of booze. "I didn't do it. The surgery." "I heard," he says. "Can I ask why not?" I shrug, not because I don't know but because I don't feel like rehashing his role in my decision. "You know when you're hanging out with people and you have to leave early? Everyone tells you to stay, but you have to go, so you do a round of goodbyes and hugs and everything. Then, you're at the door, and you glance back, and you want everyone to still be staring after you, waving. But they've all already gone back to their conversation. You're not missed at all." I gaze out at the ocean, the endless shifting expanse. "That's what makes me feel sad about dying. That after I'm gone and everyone has said goodbye, life just goes on without me." "You're worried about leaving a legacy?" Cooper asks. "What you'll be remembered for?" "More like, I'll just miss life. Life. I'll miss being a part of it. I'll miss weddings and the ocean and music and champagne. I'll miss the drama and the gossip and the news and New York. I'll just miss it. ~ Georgia Clark

He opened his mouth to speak, finally initiating conversation with me!
"'Sup, Viv?"
The man was a poet. I had no words. Strike that, I had one.
"'Sup?"
He grinned at me, and I swear on all that is holy a sunbeam broke through the clouds and shone directly on him, highlighting the planes of his exquisite face and letting me know that beauty had a name, and its name was Hank. ~ Alice Clayton

Enough of this. Does every conversation with you have to be the director's cut? Get out of the car. ~ Jonathan Lethem

Consensual intercourse of the minds happens when conversation between two like minded individuals, are brought together by mutually exclusive chemistry in conversation that causes mental arousal & orgasmic stimulation which then produces ideas which provoke conscious thoughts. ~ Niedria Dionne Kenny

Prayer is inward communication with yourself; action is outward conversation with God. ~ Steve Maraboli

If I was going to shoot you, we wouldn't be having this conversation. What's your name?" The Italian lifted his head enough to meet Sergei's gaze. "Who wants to know?" Sergei rolled his eyes. "The guy who's going to decide whether you wake up tomorrow in a hospital, a jail cell, or a morgue." He ~ L.A. Witt

In a conversation with the master jazz musician and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Wynton Marsalis, he told me, "You need to have some restrictions in jazz. Anyone can improvise with no restrictions, but that's not jazz. Jazz always has some restrictions. Otherwise it might sound like noise." The ability to improvise, he said, comes from fundamental knowledge, and this knowledge "limits the choices you can make and will make ~ Sheena Iyengar

A dearth of words a woman need not fear; But 'tis a task indeed to learn to hear: In that the skill of conversation lies; That shows and makes you both polite and wise. ~ Edward Young

He'll never be Jordan. This clearly takes him out of the conversation. He can win as much as he wants to. ~ Charles Barkley

Alec, who was watching this back-and-forth as if sitting center court in a tennis match, raised a hand. "I'm sorry, but did you two used to date?"
That stopped the conversation dead in its tracks. Both Tessa and Magnus turned to him with identical looks of shock.
"You seem more horrified than I do," Magnus told Tessa, "and somehow I am deeply wounded. ~ Cassandra Clare

That reminded him of how thrifty she was, and he promptly decided-at least for the moment-that her thriftiness was one of her most endearingly amusing qualities.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
He tipped his chin down so that he could better see her and brushed a stray lock of golden hair off her cheek. "I was thinking how wise I must be to have known within minutes of meeting you that you were wonderful."
She chuckled, thinking his words were teasing flattery. "How soon did my qualities become apparent?"
"I'd say," he thoughtfully replied, "I knew it when you took sympathy on Galileo."
She'd expected him to say something about her looks, not her conversation or her mind. "Truly?" she asked with unhidden pleasure.
He nodded, but he was studying her reaction with curiosity. "What did you think I was going to say?"
Her slim shoulders lifted in an embarrassed shrug. "I thought you would say it was my face you noticed first. People have the most extraordinary reaction to my face," she explained with a disgusted sigh.
"I can't imagine why," he said, grinning down at what was, in his opinion-in anyone's opinion-a heartbreakingly beautiful face belonging to a young woman who was sprawled across his chest looking like an innocent golden goddess.
"I think it's my eyes. They're an odd color."
"I see that now," he teased, then he said more solemnly, "but as it happens it was not your face which I found so beguiling when we met ~ Judith McNaught

During a late evening briefing, Jimmy listened as Harford told the group they would be teleporting. Harford's briefing didn't extend beyond saying the men might experience nausea, mild dizziness, and garbled sounds, and he couldn't tell them more because each person's experience of teleportation was unique. At last, Jimmy would find out what it was like, though the recent conversation with Vicar played on his mind. He wanted the answer to the one question that nagged him, but in the end, he didn't ask how many men had died during teleportation. He reasoned that Harford wouldn't tell him. ~ J.M. Johnson

There are things that are not spoken about in polite society. Very quickly in most conversations you'll reach a moment where someone goes, 'Oh, that's a bit heavy,' or 'Eew, disgusting.' And literature is a place where that stuff goes; where people whisper to each other across books, the writer to the reader. I think that stops you feeling lonely – in the deeper sense, lonely. ~ Alain De Botton

You have to figure out a way to endure that little bit of time with the media. Any question they ask you; beautiful thing is, you get the last word. You can spin it any way you want to ... If you can go third person on yourself, you can sit down and have a 10-15 minute conversation. ~ Warren Sapp

Tammy looked at the knife again. "I don't know ... " Bones let out an exasperated noise. "Justina, come here and show her how it's done." My mother looked more surprised than Tammy had when the whole conversation began. I was taken aback, too. "You want me to stab you?" my mother asked in disbelief. Bones gave her an impish grin. "Come on, Mum. How many times have you dreamed about that? ~ Jeaniene Frost

The food was so good that with each passing course, our conversation devolved further into fragmented celebrations of its deliciousness:
'I want this dragon carrot risotto to become a person so I can take it to Las Vegas and marry it. ~ John Green

The studio was immense and gloomy, the sole light within it proceeding from a stove, around which the three were seated. Although they were bold, and of the age when men are most jovial, the conversation had taken, in spite of their efforts to the contrary, a reflection from the dull weather without, and their jokes and frivolity were soon exhausted.

In addition to the light which issued from the crannies in the stove, there was another emitted from a bowl of spirits, which was ceaselessly stirred by one of the young men, as he poured from an antique silver ladle some of the flaming spirit into the quaint old glasses from which the students drank. The blue flame of the spirit lighted up in a wild and fantastic manner the surrounding objects in the room, so that the heads of old prophets, of satyrs, or Madonnas, clothed in the same ghastly hue, seemed to move and to dance along the walls like a fantastic procession of the dead; and the vast room, which in the day time sparkled with the creations of genius, seemed now, in its alternate darkness and sulphuric light, to be peopled with its dreams.

Each time also that the silver spoon agitated the liquid, strange shadows traced themselves along the walls, hideous and of fantastic form. Unearthly tints spread also upon the hangings of the studio, from the old bearded prophet of Michael Angelo to those eccentric caricatures which the artist had scrawled upon his walls, and which resembled an army of demons th ~ James Hain Friswell

I think one of the reasons with problems with conversation on race is that this is such a deeply personal conversation that it requires trust and someone you know. ~ Jonathan Capehart

Went on, taking first one side and then the other, and making quite a conversation of it altogether; but after a few minutes she heard a voice outside, and stopped to listen. 'Mary Ann! Mary Ann!' said the voice. 'Fetch me my gloves this moment!' Then came a little pattering of feet on the stairs. Alice knew it was the Rabbit coming to look for her, and she trembled till she shook the house, quite forgetting that she was now about a thousand times as large as the Rabbit, and had ~ Lewis Carroll

Listen, Misaki. In this world, there is an evil organization. Its name is N.H.K. N.H.K. is a huge organization that spans the entire globe. They're an evil, secret society, and they're the ones who put us through this pain. It's all the N.H.K.'s fault. After this, if anything bad happens around you, it's all the N.H.K.'s doing. Everything is the N.H.K.'s fault!
For starters, the name N.H.K. itself is simply a coincidence. The actual name doesn't matter at all. If you don't like "N.H.K.", you can call it whatever you want. If you wish, you can even call it Satan. Or call it the evil God. It all means the same thing.
It's true. The names don't matter at all. They're just a set of sounds. An imaginary enemy torturing you: That is the real essence of N.H.K. For example, take that girl from my high school literature club. To her, it could signify the 'Nihon Hiyowa Kyokai', as her own weakness continually defeated her. She was weak in both mind and spirit.
[...] In the case of Misaki, N.H.K. means 'Nihon Hikan Kyokai'. Because of the misfortunes you were born with, Misaki, you saw everything in a pessimistic way. Please, forgive me for being alive. Don't hate me. You were always were self-defeating like that.
Then, my own N.H.K... Well, it's actually the N.H.K.'s fault that I became a hikikomori, just as it's their fault that you suffer, Misaki. That's the truth. I learned this through a certain technique. I fought with them. I've been fighting them for a long t ~ Tatsuhiko Takimoto

Brains are like representative democracies. They are built of multiple, overlapping experts who weigh in and compete over different choices. As Walt Whitman correctly surmised, we are large and we harbor multitudes within us. And those multitudes are locked in chronic battle.
There is an ongoing conversation among the different factions in your brain, each competing to control the single output channel of your behavior. As a result, you can accomplish the strange feats of arguing with yourself, cursing at yourself, and cajoling yourself to do something – feats that modern computers simply do not do. ~ David Eagleman

All problems exist in the absence of a good conversation. ~ Thomas Leonard

... but I love language. It is a living, breathing, evolving thing, and language has power. Whether in a song lyric, a poem, a speech, or a simple conversation, we've all experienced words that resonate with us. They may make us recall a powerful moment, inspire us, move us, or perhaps, comfort us…. But at the same time, we don't think in words. We think in pictures. If I say the word 'dog' to you, you aren't picturing the letters, d-o-g, you're picturing a dog from your memory... ~ Lily Velden

If we were having this conversation, that meant something was either wrong with me, or it was wrong with everybody else, and I had a basic enough understanding of probability to know that the odds did not rest with an entire planet. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I've met a lot of people and happened to inspire a lot of people who I'm in conversation with about business. It's just how things are going for me and it's great, but music is always going to be number one for me. ~ Nas

Boy, as far as you're concerned, my word is law, and you're just a bitch without a number. Now, you keep on with this conversation, and I'll have to hurt your sensitive little feelin's. Fuckin' yuppie. ~ Alex Morgan

I wondered if having conversations with your dog was less crazy than babbling to yourself when no one else was around. I guess it depended on whether or not the dog answered. ~ Deb Baker

People teaches children how to be in a relationship, beginning with the ability to have a conversation. ~ Sherry Turkle