Conversations Quotes
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The natural state of mammals is to be somewhat on guard. However, in order to feel emotionally close to another human being, our defensive system must temporarily shut down. In order to play, mate, and nurture our young, the brain needs to turn off its natural vigilance . . . Many traumatized individuals are too hypervigilant to enjoy the ordinary pleasures that life has to offer, while others are too numb to absorb new experiences — or to be alert to signs of real danger . . . Many people feel safe as long as they can limit their social contact to superficial conversations, but actual physical contact can trigger intense reactions. However … achieving any sort of deep intimacy — a close embrace, sleeping with a mate, and sex — requires allowing oneself to experience immobilization without fear. It is especially challenging for traumatized people to discern when they are actually safe and to be able to activate their defenses when they are in danger. This requires having experiences that can restore the sense of physical safety.
Bessel van der Kolk
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It's refreshing, if you ask me, to have lengthy conversations with clear, brilliant minds about books, art, and what ought to happen next and how. I love it.
Josh Malerman
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Me and my wife had somehow finally reached a moment in which our lives made sense, in which we were comfortable in certain material ways, and in that very moment we were faced with a medical situation that could only really be resolved with death or time. Suddenly we had become these people who didn't drink anything but kale, who ended many of our conversations with tears, and for whom no future was guaranteed. It was kind of funny.
Ben Doller
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That's the thing about sleepwalking . You can walk, eat, have conversations and even drive cars in perfect safety. The danger comes from waking up too quickly.
Erin Kelly
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I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the opposition would seek, and the chief executive would allow, the dissemination of his most private and personal conversations with his staff, which, to be honest, do not exactly confer sainthood on anyone concerned.
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr.
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I was starting to play the ukulele at the same time I was having all these conversations with [the late Ramones guitarist] Johnny Ramone, these intense tutorials staying up late and listening to the music he grew up on, and picking up what's a great song and what makes a great song. He was all about lists and dissecting songs, like what's a better song by Cheap Trick: "No Surrender" or "Dream Police"? Sometimes you'd be surprised by the answer. It was an interesting dichotomy between hanging out with the godfather of punk rock and starting to play the ukulele. They came together.
Eddie Vedder
Pearl Jam
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Twenty percent of meals in America are eaten in the car. What if we turn even three percent of meals into open, compassionate conversations with loved ones around topics we perceive to be hard - like death or addiction? A lot will change.
Angel Grant
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The general public have a warped view of the speed at which an investigation proceeds. They like to imagine tense conversations going on behind the venetian blinds and unshaven, but ruggedly handsome, detectives working themselves with single-minded devotion into the bottle and marital breakdown. The truth is that at the end of the day, unless you've generated some sort of lead, you go home and get on with the important things in life - like drinking and sleeping, and if you're lucky, a relationship with the gender and sexual orientation of your choice.
Ben Aaronovitch
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I think the best villains are ones that you can look at and say, 'Yeah, he's obviously going about this the wrong way or going too far or whatever, but I can see where he's coming from.' Magneto's a great example of that, and the reason he and Charles Xavier can have such great conversations is that they can both make some good points.
Ryan North
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We all more or less consciously note this. We cannot help observing that all serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy.
Ernest Dimnet
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Conversation, which is friendship's mode of expression, is a superficial digression which gives us nothing worth acquiring. We may talk for a lifetime without doing more than indefinitely repeat the vacuity of a minute.
Marcel Proust
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I tell my friends about my conversations with my father - conversations with an artist.
Ray Conniff
