Brittany (Britt's Book Blurbs) > Brittany's Quotes

“Paco had one of his books I think, and I didn't much like the writers Paco did, men who wrote tender, poetic sentences that tried to hide the narcissism and misogyny of their stories.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“Ah, Lanny, my friend, look at these blank pages.
Don't you feel like God at the start of the ages?
You could do anything,”
― Max Porter, Lanny

“He was telling her that there was a lot to remembering the past, to having stories, to knowing your history, your childhood, but there is something to forgetting it too...There exists a sort of torture of memory if you let it come, if you invite the past to huddle beside you, comforting like a leech...a footprint in history has a thousand repercussions, that there are a thousand battles being fought every day because people couldn't forget something that happened before they were born. There are few worse things than memory, yet few things better.”
― Tara June Winch, The Yield

“She looks embarrassed, sitting on that stool, to be who she is now. She seems pained by all the compliments Muriel's colleagues are giving her. Success rests more easily on men.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“Lanny would be thrilled to be compared to a March hare, leaping in the long grass, boxing his own reflection. A bringer of strange dreams, skipping about the wide open village.”
― Max Porter, Lanny

“The type of person who is that little bit more akin to the weather than most people, more obviously made of the same atoms as the earth than most people these days seem to be.”
― Max Porter, Lanny

“Then Dead Papa Toothwort leaves his spot and wanders off...tingling with thoughts of how one thing leads to another again and again, time and again, with no such thing as an ending.”
― Max Porter, Lanny

“After I met my beautiful wife, although beauty was the least of her, strong and fearless was the most of her - well she taught me lots of things.”
― Tara June Winch, The Yield

“So, because they say it is urgent, because I've got the church time against me - I'm taking pen to paper to pass on everything that was ever remembered.
All the words I found on the wind.”
― Tara June Winch, The Yield

“In the company of women like this— sharp-edged as raw diamonds but with soft hands and hearts, not strong in spite of anything but powerful because of everything— I feel invincible. Every chink and rut and battering wind has made us tough and brave and impossible to strike down. We are mountains— or perhaps temples, with foundations that could outlast time itself.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

“Done well and with deliberation, listening can transform your understanding of the people and the world around you, which inevitably enriches and elevates your experience and existence. It is how you develop wisdom and form meaningful relationships.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“The ability to listen to anyone has been replaced by the capacity to shut out everyone, particularly those who disagree with us or don't get to the point fast enough.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“The blowhard factor is in part responsible for ongoing political upheaval and divisiveness both in the United States and abroad, as people feel increasingly disconnected from and unheard by those in power.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Polling proved a poor substitute for actually listening to people in their communities and understanding the realities of their everyday lives and the values that drive their decisions. Had political forecasters listened more carefully, critically, and expansively, the election results would have come as little surprise.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Seen as efficient and data driven, looking at what's trending on social media or conducting online surveys is largely how listening is done in the twenty-first century but the press, politicians, lobbyists, activists, and business interests. But it's questionable that social media activity reflects society at large.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Listening is about the experience of being experienced. It's when someone takes an interest in who you are and what you are doing. The lack of being known and accepted in this way leads to feelings of inadequacy and emptiness. What makes us feel most lonely and isolated in life is less often the result of a devastating traumatic event than the accumulation of occasions when nothing happened but something profitably could have. It's the missed opportunity to connect when you weren't listening or someone wasn't really listening to you.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Everybody is interesting if you ask the right questions. If someone is dull or uninteresting, it's on you.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“To listen is to be interested, and the result is more interesting conversations. The goal is to leave the exchange having learned something. You already know about you. You don't know about the person with whom you are speaking or what you can learn from that person's experience.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Thinking you already know how a conversation will go down kills curiosity and subverts listening, as does anxiety about the interaction.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“In our increasingly disconnected society, people have gotten notably more conspicuous and vocal about their affiliations, particularly their political and ideological affiliations, in an effort to quickly establish loyalties and rapport. These affiliations provide a sense of belonging, and also the kind of guiding principles once provided by organized religions, which have correspondingly been losing adherence. Moreover, when people feel insecure or isolated, they tend to overdramatize and espouse more extreme views to get attention.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Listening can be particularly challenging for introverts because they have so much busyness going on in their own heads that it's hard to make room for additional input. Because they tend to be sensitive, they may also reach saturation sooner. Listening can feel like an onslaught, making it difficult to continue listening, particularly when the speech-thought differential gives their minds occasion to drift.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Good listeners have negative capability. They are able to cope with contradictory ideas and gray areas. Good listeners know there is usually more to the story than first appears and are not so eager for tidy reasoning and immediate answers, which is perhaps the opposite to being narrow-minded...In the psychological literature, negative capability is known as cognitive complexity, which research shows is positively related to self-compassion and negatively related to dogmatism.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means you accept the legitimacy of the other person's point of view and that you might have something to learn from it. It also means that you embrace the possibility that there might be multiple truths and understanding them all might lead to a larger truth. Good listeners know understanding is not binary.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Inner dialogue fosters and supports cognitive complexity, that valuable ability to tolerate a range of views, make associations, and come up with new ideas...our inner dialogue influences and distorts what other people say and thus how we behave in relationships.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Research suggests that after people listen regularly to faster-paced speech, they have greater difficulty maintaining their attention when addressed by someone who is talking normally - sort of like the feeling you get when you come off an expressway and have to go through a school zone. Moreover, you lose your ability to perceive and appreciate nuance in conversation because things like tonal shifts, subtle sighs, foreign accents, and even voices made raspy by whiskey and cigarettes all but disappear when heard in double time.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“A study by psychologists at the University of Essex found that the mere presence of a phone on the table—even if it’s silent—makes those sitting around the table feel more disconnected and disinclined to talk about anything important or meaningful, knowing if they do, they will probably be interrupted.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Sometimes you need to make the call to stop listening. While you can learn something from everyone, that doesn't mean you have to listen to everyone until they run out of breath.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“British language philosopher and theorist Paul Grice...summarised our conversational expectations in four maxims:
1. Maxim of Quality - we expect the truth.
2. Maxim of Quantity - we expect to get information we don't already know and not so much that we feel overwhelmed.
3. Maxim of Relation - we expect relevance and logical flow.
4. Maxim of Manner - we expect the speaker to be reasonably brief, orderly, and unambiguous.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Not listening because you don't agree with someone, you are self-absorbed, or you think you already know what someone will say makes you a bad listener. But not listening because you don't have the intellectual or emotional energy to listen at that moment makes you human. At that point, it's probably best to exit the conversation and circle back later.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters

“Listening can continue even when you are no longer in the presence of the speaker as you reflect on what the person said and gain added insight.”
― Kate Murphy, You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters