There isn't much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren't really living without it.
—Gordon Atkinson
I don't know how to have casual conversation. You think you're talking about one thing, and either you are and it's incredibly boring, or you're not because it's subtext and you need a decoder ring.
—Sir Anthony Hawkins
Your ignorance, cramps my conversation.
—Sydney Smith
He had occasional flashes of silence, that made his conversation perfectly delightful.
—Tom Blair
Silence is one of the great arts of conversation, as allowed by Cicero himself, who says, 'there is not only an art, but an eloquence in it.' A well bred woman may easily and effectually promote the most useful and elegant conversation without speaking a word. The modes of speech are scarcely more variable than the modes of silence.
—W. Somerset Maugham
It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
—William Shakespeare
Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.
—Unknown
All I'm telling you to do is to be smart about it. Know that if this man isn't looking for a serious relationship, you're not going to change his mind just because you two are going on dates and being intimate. You could be the most perfect woman on the green earth—you're capable of interesting conversation, you cook a mean breakfast, you hand out backrubs like sandwiches, you're independent—but if he's not ready for a serious relationship, he's going to treat you like sports fish.
—Steve Harvey in Think Like a Man
Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.
—André Maurois
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
—Rebecca West
No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
—Christopher Morley
Just because I'm quiet doesn't mean I'm aloof. Maybe I just want to be alone. Maybe I'm not good at conversation. We all can't be cool and gregarious and 'Hey, bro what up?' like he apparently is. Some of us aren't wired for that.
—Jenn Bennett in Approximately
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
—William Hazlitt