Deborah Tannen Quotes
My writing is about connecting ways of talking to human relationships. My purpose is to show that linguistics has something to offer in understanding and improving relationships.
Quotes to Explore
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I'm a night owl for sure. I was born at 1 A.M., and that's the excuse I use.
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I love a real-life, movie moment in living color.
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The physician must give heed to the region in which the patient lives, that is to say, to its type and peculiarities.
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The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.
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From 1 till 7, when we moved to England, I spoke only Portuguese.
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I started off singing in church as a child. The sound of voices coming together, that was my first moment of touching something outside of myself.
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I love 'Chaplin'; I mean I really love 'Chaplin.' I just think there's a grace and an elegance that's almost never been matched.
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Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else's ideas of who you can or can't become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a 'Keep Out' sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.
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No matter how many times you say Social Security is broke, the reality is that Social Security's independent revenue stream and its Trust Fund's investments maintain the program's solvency until 2037, when it may begin to fall short.
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The spiritual reality of the Indian world is very evident, very highly developed. I think it affects the life of every Indian person in one way or another.
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Maybe entertainment is not supposed to be reality.
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It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer's life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer's works.
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Historically, the notes of scale systems anywhere have been based on these pure harmonics.
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I'm not cynical.
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I was writing from the age of 10, and I was never really into going to discos and dances and stuff. I never told anyone at school that I did that because I feared it would alienate me even more.
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I was one of those girls in class who always had her hair in plaits, was always with the boys, always playing football in the street.
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I've always loved film more than theater.
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For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information. It seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight, if it does nothing else, allows one the opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers.
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I don't think that's healthy for the country when anyone thinks their morals are better than anyone else's.
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Whatever be the motives which induce men to write,--whether avarice or fame,--the country becomes more wise and happy in which they most serve for instructors.
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I wish there were some photographic process by which one's mind could be struck off and transferred to that of the friend we wish to know it, without the medium of this confounded letter-writing!
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I really did have this powerful sense, when I was in New Orleans after the storm, of watching all these profiteers descend on Baton Rouge to lobby to get rid of the housing projects and privatise the school system - I thought I was in some science-fiction experiment.
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My parents are both musicians and made sure we all played music. My brothers and sisters all play instruments, so we'll get together whenever we can and play. We play a lot of classical music - you know, the good stuff.
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My writing is about connecting ways of talking to human relationships. My purpose is to show that linguistics has something to offer in understanding and improving relationships.
