On Listening Quotes

In China there was more emphasis on listening, on asking questions rather than holding forth, on putting others' needs first. In the United States, he feels, conversation is about how effective you are at turning your experiences into stories, whereas a Chinese person might be concerned with taking up too much of the other person's time with inconsequential information. ~ Susan Cain

All he knew was that sometimes a man had to be grateful for normality, that a story could end less dramatically, and not half as badly as it might have done; that there was merit in an averted crisis, and that in finding his nephew Sidney had, at last, done something quietly responsible, without fuss or fanfare. Perhaps the rest of his life should be like this? he thought. It would involve a concentration on things close to the heart; a dedicated care of friends and family; a quieter existence, one that depended on listening harder and loving better; never resting in complacency; acknowledging faults, doubts and insecurities; the balance between solitude and company, the wish to escape and the need to come home: a loving attention. ~ James Runcie

If you can concentrate on listening to another person - without your own viewpoint getting in the way, without judging or discarding or thinking of a response - for the simple purpose of taking in someone else's reality, you start to understand her. ~ L. Alison Heller

We are all wounded. But wounds are necessary for his healing light to enter into our beings. Without wounds and failure and frustrations and defeats, there will be no opening for his brilliance to tickle in and invade our lives. Failures in life are courses with very high tuition fees, so I don't cut classes and miss my lessons: on humility, on patience, on hope, on asking others for help, on listening to God, on trying again and again and again. ~ Bo Sanchez

If my mother was odd enough to crave a bubble bath at three in the morning, Dorothy was inventive enough to suggest adding broken glass to the tub. If my mother insisted on listening to West Side Story repeatedly, it was Dorothy who said, 'Let's listen to it on forty-five!' And when my mother announced that she wanted a fur wrap like Auntie Mame, Dorothy bought her an unstable Norwegian elkhound from a puppy mill. ~ Augusten Burroughs

When things get personal, we need to resist the natural male instinct to run for cover, man the defenses, or--worst of all--reach for the big guns. Much better to set aside our natural defensiveness and focus on listening well even though we feel under attack. Because we're probably not. ~ Jeff Feldhahn

There's nothing like turning on the radio and listening to the high-speed chase that you're leading police on! ~ Danny Bonaduce

Hearing God is not all that difficult. If we know the Lord, we have already heard His voice - after all it was the inner leading that brought us to Him in the first place. But we can hear His voice and still miss His best if we don't keep on listening. After the what of guidance comes the when and how. (11) ~ Loren Cunningham

He turned and walked across the floor and out. I watched the door close. I listened to his steps going away down the imitation marble corridor. After a while they got faint, then they got silent. I kept on listening anyway. ~ Raymond Chandler

On listening to Gute Nacht Aus Schuberts Winterreise

Great music has much the same effect upon humans as cyanide, I managed to think: It paralyzes the respiratory system. ~ Alan Bradley

I'm the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I'm the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I've had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself. ~ Haruki Murakami

To despair over one's sins indicates that sin has become or wants to be internally consistent. It wants nothing to do with the good, does not want to be so weak as to listen occasionally to other talk. No, it insists on listening only to itself, on having dealings only with itself; it closes itself up within itself, indeed, locks itself inside one more inclosure, and protects itself against every attack or pursuit by the good by despairing over sin. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

... Like having to be able to say to yourself, 'I am pretending to sit here reading Albert Camus's The Fall for the Literature of Alienation midterm, but actually I'm really concentrating on listening to Steve try to impress this girl over the phone, and I am feeling embarrassment and contempt for him, and am thinking he's a poser, and at the same time I am also uncomfortably aware of times that I've also tried to project the idea of myself as hip and cynical so as to impress someone, meaning that not only do I sort of dislike Steve, which in all honesty I do, but part of the reason I dislike him is that when I listen to him on the phone it makes me see similarities and realize things about myself that embarrass me, but I don't know how to quit doing them - like, if I quit trying to seem nihilistic, even just to myself, then what would happen, what would I be like? ~ David Foster Wallace

I'm saying: to be continued, until we meet again. Meanwhile, keep on listening and tapping your feet. ~ Count Basie

Healing depends on listening with the inner ear - stopping the incessant blather, and listening. Fear keeps us chattering - fear that wells up from the past, fear of blurting out what we really fear, fear of future repercussions. It is our very fear of the future that distorts the now that could lead to a different future if we dared to be whole in the present. ~ Marion Woodman

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole. ~ Eudora Welty

I picked him up and set him against the steering wheel, facing me, his feet on my thighs. The huge lament continued, wave on wave. It was a sound so large and pure I could almost listen to it, try consciously to apprehend it, as one sets up a mental register in a concert hall or theater. He was not sniveling or blubbering. He was crying out, saying nameless things in a way that touched me with its depth and richness. This was an ancient dirge all the more impressive for its resolute monotony. Ululation. I held him upright with a hand under each arm. As the crying continued, a curious shift developed in my thinking. I found that I did not necessarily wish him to stop. It might not be so terrible, I thought, to have to sit and listen to this a while longer. We looked at each other. Behind that dopey countenance, a complex intelligence operated. I held him with one hand, using the other to count his fingers inside the mittens, aloud, in German. The inconsolable crying went on. I let it wash over me, like rain in sheets. I entered it, in a sense. I let it fall and tumble across my face and chest. I began to think he had disappeared inside this wailing noise and if I could join him in his lost and suspended place we might together perform some reckless wonder of intelligibility. I let it break across my body. It might not be so terrible, I thought, to have to sit here for four more hours, with the motor running and the heater on, listening to this uniform lament. It might be good, ~ Don DeLillo

I can talk to you all day. I just might not say anything though. ~ Lisa M. Cronkhite

Technology is helping more and more deaf people hear, but here at Gallaudet, we focus on learning and achieving-not on listening. So I would still say deaf people can do anything, except hear. ~ I. King Jordan

I never focus on success; I only focus on listening to my online community and being consistent. ~ Rosanna Pansino

I'm very easily distracted unless I have music on. Listening to music while I brainstorm makes me think of scenes that would fit the mood of the music I'm playing. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

You are a piece of work, you know that?" I glared at Tony, then turned to René who'd been sitting quietly by, listening to everything and not saying anything. "René, what will you do if I kick his ass?" I jerked my head toward Tony.

"Nothing, as long as you do not inflict permanent harm," René smiled slightly.

I got up to go after Tony, but Wlodek hauled me back.

"We will not allow a brawl between our two youngest," he declared and settled me back in my seat. "Now, Anthony, where may we find your father and does he have other children? ~ Connie Suttle

She cried before she slept. I reached out to touch the ends of her hair. She didn't notice. I didn't know what to do. Listening to her made me ache. I felt tears stream down my face too. And when I accidentally brushed Eli with my arm his face was wet where his tears ran down. We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls. ~ Ally Condie

I spent a lot of time listening to people. But it's also true that I liked details and listening to people when I was a bartender and when I was a waitress and probably when I was a babysitter as well. I suspect that's part of what drew me to psychotherapy rather than the other way around. ~ Amy Bloom

I'm an American songwriter, and I write from a very American perspective, and so did the records I grew up listening to. ~ Jenny Lewis

It was psychological trick called empathic listening. You say what the person is feeling so they feel understood. ~ John Green

Especially when those days turn into nights, and I have to lie in ny bed alone, listening to the silence ~ Colleen Hoover

All the things that girls feel they are not when they fear that if they become, if they are, they will no longer be loved by the sisters whose hearts they have not meant to break. And besides, if the sisters are gone and only the beloved remains with his dense curls and his lips, how safe are you then? You have to have him or you will die if the sisters are gone with their listening ears and their feet to rub and their bodies to dress and their shared loneliness. ~ Francesca Lia Block

There is no way that I could pinpoint just one person. When I first started, I was listening to Randy Rogers quite a bit, and I was also pretty big into Josh Grider back then. I remember going to a lot of Kevin Fowler shows early, and Eli Young Band was another one of the groups I listened to a lot of when I was learning to write and play guitar. ~ Curtis Grimes

You can make your point all day long, and you can even be right about your point, but if you stop listening, if you stop really hearing and seeing that other person, something fundamental will be lost. ~ Shauna Niequist

As a songwriter, you tend to develop your own style, your own technique, based around what it is you're trying to write and perform, in terms of your own music. So a way of evolving a guitar style as a songwriter is much easier, I think, than developing a true style of your own just from listening to music or playing other people's music. ~ Ian Anderson

Listening to Eddy describe his relationship with our mom seemed to indicate that what I feared would be my reality. He never talked poorly about our mother, but he was as honest and sincere as he could be. In a way, he was almost defensive of her to us – trying to help us understand what life had been like for her, so that we could comprehend the choices that she had made. ~ Janet Louise Stephenson

I listened to the radio, so I was influenced by everyone from Michael Jackson to Milli Vanilli. But thankfully my dad had a collection of Cat Stevens albums while my mom was listening to jazz. ~ Jason Mraz

It had been in a Paris house, with many people around, and my dear friend Jules Darboux, wishing to do me a refined aesthetic favor, had touched my sleeve and said, "I want you to meet-" and led me to Nina, who sat in the corner of a couch, her body folded Z-wise, with an ashtray at her heel, and she took a long turquoise cigarette holder from her lips and joyfully, slowly exclaimed, "Well, of all people-" and then all evening my heart felt like breaking, as I passed from group to group with a sticky glass in my fist, now and then looking at her from a distance (she did not look ... ), and listening to scraps of conversation, and overheard one man saying to another, "Funny, how they all smell alike, burnt leaf through whatever perfume they use, those angular dark-haired girls," and as it often happens, a trivial remark related to some unknown topic coiled and clung to one's own intimate recollection, a parasite of its sadness. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me ~ Carl R. Rogers

Other people's life stories are not a topic for debate. One should hear them out, and reciprocate in the same coin. ~ Olga Tokarczuk

My real log is written in the sea and sky; the sails talking with the rain and the stars amid the sounds of the sea, the silences full of secret things between my boat and me, like the times I spent as a child listening to the forest talk. ~ Bernard Moitessier

In Washington and Moscow they are saying, 'Man has finally come of age; he doesn't need paternalistic help.' Which is another way of saying, 'We have abolished that help, and in its place we will rule,' offering no help at all: taking but not giving, ruling but not obeying, telling but not listening, taking life and not giving it. The slayers govern now, without interference; the dreams of mankind have become empty. ~ Philip K. Dick

He was not a good salesman, especially if selling himself. He didn't believe in boasting, and didn't like listening to others do it, either. He wanted to be recognized for his actions, not his words. "I don't know how to ask people to sponsor me," Zhou said. "It feels just like begging people for money. I can't do that. ~ Dan Washburn

People talking without speaking,/ People listening without hearing ... Sounds of Silence. ~ Paul Simon

Learning from every source - reading, listening, dreaming, life experiences - is the key to the creative quest. Creativity has neither limits nor boundaries; it is eternal, an endless horizon waiting for us to discover it. ~ Linda Martinez-Lewi

NAMING THE EARTH
(a poem of light for national poetry day)

And the world will be born again
in circles of steaming breath
and beams of light
as each one of us directs
our inner eye
upon its name.

Hear the cry of wings,
the sigh of leaves and grass,
smell the new sweet mist rising
as the pathway is cleared at last.

Stones stand ready -
they have known
since ages and ages ago
that they were not alone.

Water carries the planet's energy
into skies and down
to earth and bones.

The cold parts steadily
as we come together,
bodies and hearts warm,
hands tingling.
We are silent
but our eyes are singing.

We look, we feel, we know,
we trust each other's souls,
we have no need to speak.
Not now, but later,
when the time is right,
the name will ring
within the iron core
of each other's listening -
and the very earth's being.

Every creature, every plant,
will hear it calling,
tolling like a bell -
a sound we've always felt
but never dared to hope
to hear reverberating -
true at last, at every level
of existence.

The poets come together
to open the intimate centre.
Believe
in life and air -
breathe the light itself,
for these are the energies
and rhythms that we need
to see, to touch, to reach,
t ~ Jay Woodman

One who listens learns, and one who learns listens. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I enjoyed listening to it, but I didn't think I could do it. ~ Wanda Jackson

I don't know how to talk because I'm feeling.
I'm listening to my voice as if it were someone else's,
And my voice is speaking about her as if she were speaking.
She has hair as blond as yellow wheat in the sun,
And when she speaks her mouth says things that aren't words.
She laughs, and her teeth are as clean as stones in a river. ~ Alberto Caeiro

It was cool to see reading become such a transparent act - it was as if her face had a different expression for each punctuation mark, and when there was dialogue you could see her actually listening to it in her head. ~ David Levithan

When you hear Portuguese, if you're listening fleetingly, it's as if you're hearing Russian, which never happens with Spanish. Because the Portuguese and the Russians share the open vowels and the dark "L," the "owL" sound. ~ Gregory Rabassa

Become better listeners. Practice the art of listening in everything you do. Not just listening to yourself and your body, but listening to the people around you, listening to the plant world, the animal world. Really open your ears to what's coming at you. From there, see if you can have the ability to respond instead of react. And that usually comes with listening. If the observation and the listening are deep, then your action will be deep also. ~ Rodney Yee

Also, I realized a lot of kids are listening to me. Whether I want to be or not, they're looking up to me. ~ Donald Glover

Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul's language. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

I grew up listening to most of my parents' music like The Beatles and ABBA and all that stuff. ~ Tammin Sursok

feel that God was so very close, so very concerned with my particular life, so very ready to protect and to love. Always nearby. Always listening. Always leading. But ~ Lisa Wingate

Hip-hop to me right now is really easy listening. It's very easy listening, like there's nothing abrasive about it. There's no album that I put in my car that makes me roll down the windows - all the windows - and ride past the club line three times before I get out the car. ~ Pusha T

If you aren't creeped out by the No Birth Control Left Behind rhetoric of the White House and Planned Parenthood, you aren't listening closely enough. The anesthetic of progressive benevolence always dulls the senses. Wake up. ~ Michelle Malkin

From the very beginning, I was involved in talking to people, listening to people. And it hasn't stopped. The idea was that people send me information; I'd ask them about it, listen, try to do something about it - and then ask for more feedback. ~ Craig Newmark

The thing is, I don't know if these stories he was telling were mine, or his, or someone else's. You spend your life among words, listening, making sense out of what you say and out of what you imagine other people are saying to you, believing that something in particular happened like this or that, as a result of this or that, with these or those consequences. But it is never so simple, is it? I suppose that if we read about ourselves in a book, we wouldn't recognize ourselves, we wouldn't realize that those people doing certain things and behaving in a particular manner are us. I always believed that I knew Alejandro, that I knew him intimately, I mean, the way you might know a doll you've once taken to pieces. But it wasn't true. ~ Alberto Manguel

Some people are natural beauties, some have great style, but sometimes it comes from talent. Take Kate Winslet: I was listening to her speech at the Golden Globes. That woman has so much intensity. She's amazing to watch and to listen to. With some people, it can even be their voice that makes them attractive. ~ Mary-Kate Olsen

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride. ~ C.S. Lewis

Research shows that loneliness damages the body in much the same way as aging.1, 2 It sure felt that way. Every day felt like losing a fight. I learned that loneliness isn't fixed by listening to other people talk. You can cure your loneliness only by doing the talking yourself and - most important - being heard. ~ Scott Adams

Weirdly also listening to a lot of Aphex Twin again, I loved Syro. ~ Ralph Lawson

It is the language of nature to which one has to listen. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I don't like no fancy chords. Just the boogie. The drive. The feeling. A lot of people play fancy but they don't have no style. It's a deep feeling-you just can't stop listening to that sad blues sound. My sound. ~ John Lee Hooker

I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal. I play basketball and try to go diving at least once a year. I don't really have hobbies in the traditional sense ... I engage in too many activities already through the actions of my characters. ~ Alan Dean Foster

Nothing teaches you as much about writing dialogue as listening to it. ~ Judy Blume

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. ... It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see. ~ Ann Patchett

What are you
listening to?"
"I picked up a DVD for Luke while I was
out. Something with Mozart and sock
puppets."
A grin rose to my lips. "At this stage I
don't think Luke can see more than ten
inches beyond his face."
"That explains his lack of interest. I
thought maybe he preferred Beethoven. ~ Lisa Kleypas