Deborah Tannen Quotes
In the past, great communicators were great orators, but great communicators today sound conversational, and interrupting is common in conversation. And public discourse is now more about entertainment than enlightenment.

Quotes to Explore
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I think why I was attracted to making something with Vice is that level of intimacy that you get as the viewer, getting to see some of that production element where we don't exactly know what we're doing, where we're going, or even if it's a good idea.
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Using phrases or mantras to encourage and comfort myself has been a powerful practice for me. For years, I would say to myself 'Remember the purple sky' when I was feeling anxious, which to me meant remember a sense of internal spaciousness and kindness toward myself.
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There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says, 'Don't worry - everything will be just fine,' and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.
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I never had plastic surgery. I had a nose procedure done because I had to. I had no cartilage in my nose; I have a piece of cartilage from my ear put into my nose. I had a medical procedure done. I have no plastic in my nose.
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I often will write a scene from three different points of view to find out which has the most tension and which way I'm able to conceal the information I'm trying to conceal. And that is, at the end of the day, what writing suspense is all about.
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But Roy Rockwood, it was science fiction for the sake of science fiction.
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It's nice to know about something as soon as it happens, and obviously a newspaper can't provide that.
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Medicine, you see, is my first love; whether I write fiction or nonfiction, and even when it has nothing to do with medicine, it's still about medicine. After all, what is medicine but life plus? So I write about life.
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The only people who never fail are those who never try.
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I have a great office.
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I'm lucky in some ways in that I really don't need more than five or so hours of sleep.
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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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When I was in drama school, I really got into a dark place. I went to a therapist - it was really helpful to have that dialogue with someone. So I understand anxiety.
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A bicycle has transformed my experience of London.
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I told her I wanted a plastic surgeon to sew me up, and I wanted her to freeze my ovaries, so I could harvest the eggs and have a biological child through a surrogate.
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We all have a way to contribute, to your community, to your family, whatever it is you can do.
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Doing Shakespeare in the Park has always been a dream. Everyone else says Hamlet, but I want to play Romeo.
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I appreciate the change associated with people's growth, but I don't like the changes in our lives. I came to Mumbai in 1945, so imagine my acceptance of the massive changes around. I have witnessed every kind of revolution.
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Our laws need to reflect the evolution of technology and the changing expectations of American society. This is why the Constitution is often called a 'living' document. But we have a long way to go to get our modern privacy laws in line with modern technology.
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Texas is really special in that we have our own music scene, our own music chart. It's almost a genre on its own. It feels like you can make a great living just touring the state because it's so big, but eventually, I wanted a new challenge.
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Today, everybody is always rushing. Designers have to make collections one after the other. Actresses have to make movies one after the other. They have to do all that in order to still be there - to still be out there. So to step away and be absent and to lose yourself completely and to really come back and find yourself again - that's something quite rare.
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Writing and telling are almost the same, the way I do it.
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The best thing about the Web is the sound of all the individual voices rising.
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In the past, great communicators were great orators, but great communicators today sound conversational, and interrupting is common in conversation. And public discourse is now more about entertainment than enlightenment.