To lead you need to empathise, to empathise you need to genuinely understand, to understand you need to be willing to have difficult conversations.

Kyo, there’s something I need to talk to you about. I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and I realized why I came up to you

“Some men are crazy,” I said, moving toward the door.
“What do wou mean?”
“I mean, some men are in love with their wives.”

“Hell, I can’t write. That’s just conversation. It makes the landlady feel better. What I need is a job, any kind of job.”
“Can’t you contribute twenty-five cents? Twenty-five cents wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Honey, I need the twenty-five cents more than Mr. Adams does.”
“Honor the dead, young man.”
“Why not honor the living? I’m lonely and desperate and you look very lovely in your green dress.” She turned, walked out, walked down the hall, opened the door to her room, went in, closed the door, and I never saw her again.

Remembered how my father used to come home each night and talk about his job to my mother. The job talk began when he entered the door, continued over the dinner table, and ended in the bedroom where my father would scream “Lights Out!” at 8 p.m., so he could get his rest and his full strength for the job the next day. There was no other subject except the job.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

…and we’re just chatting and then I’m in the middle of a sentence about analogies or something and like a hawk he reaches down and he honks my boob. HONK. A much-too-firm, two- to three-second HONK. And the first thing I thought was Okay, how do I extricate this claw from my boob before it leaves permanent marks? and the second thing I thought was God, I can’t wait to tell Takumi and the Colonel.

Sarah: I don’t know what to say.
Rambo: Then you shouldn’t say anything, should you?

Sarah: The man you were talking to…
Rambo: I wasn’t talking to anybody.
Sarah: All right. The man who was talking to you asked if we could hire you to take us upriver. You said no. Why?
Rambo: Can’t help you out.
Sarah: Well, if you have good reasons, would you mind if I heard them?
Rambo: Go home.

I do not like the human race. I don’t like their heads, I don’t like their faces, I don’t like their feet, I don’t like their conversations, I don’t like their hairdos, I don’t like their automobiles.

I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. […] My part is to live this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to His will. This seems to be all I need to think about.

Somehow, it always worked. Kneeling at the side of my bed and talking to the Lord made everything okay.

You’re like one of those Chatty Cathy dolls except I’m not pulling the string, you are. Blah! Blah! Blah!

My daily conversation, it consists of hustle. Grinding from the bottom sick and tired of struggle.

Trautman: What are you doing? Do you know what the hell you’ve done?
Murdock: Don’t act so innocent, Colonel. You had your suspicions, and if you suspected then you’re sort of an accessory aren’t ya?
Trautman: Don’t ever count me with you and your scum! It was a lie wasn’t it? Just like the whole damn war, it was a lie!
Murdock: What are you talking about?
Trautman: That camp… was supposed to be empty. Rambo goes in, a decorated vet, he finds no POWs, the Congress buys it – case closed! And if he happens to get caught, nobody knows he’s alive except you and your computers… and you can reprogram that can’t you?
Murdock: Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, Trautman?
Trautman: A stinkin’ bureaucrat who’s tryin to cover his ass!
Murdock: No, not just mine Trautman. We’re talkin’ about a nation here! Besides, it was your hero’s fault. Now if your warrior had gone in and done what the hell he was supposed to do, we’d be out of this clean and simple. He was just supposed to take pictures!
Trautman: And if those pictures showed something they would have been… lost… wouldn’t they?
Murdock: Oh Trautman, I still don’t think you understand what this is all about.
Trautman: The same as it always is! Money! In ’72 we were supposed to pay the Cong four-and-a-half billion in war reparations. We reneged, they kept the POWs… and you’re doing the same thing all over again.
Murdock: And what the hell would you do, Trautman? Pay blackmail money to ransom our own men and finance the war effort against our allies? What if some burn-out POW shows up on the six o-clock news? What do you want to do… start the war all over again? You wanna bomb Hanoi? You want everybody screaming for armed invasion? Do you honestly think somebody’s gonna get up on the floor of the United States Senate, and ask for billions of dollars for a couple of forgotten ghosts?
Trautman: Men, Goddamn it! Men… who fought for their country!
Murdock: That’s enough! Trautman, I’m gonna forget this conversation ever took place.
Trautman: You bastard!
Murdock: And if I were you… I’d never make the mistake of bringing this subject up again.
Trautman: Oh you’re the one who’s making the mistake.
Murdock: Yeah? What mistake?
Trautman: Rambo.

Funny thing, talking to ghosts. You can’t tell if you’re making up their answers or if they are really talking to you.

Heather Vandergeld: Look who just flew in from the slums of Beverly Hills.
Megan Vandergeld: It’s the Beverly Ho-Billies.
Marcus Copeland: [as Tiffany Wilson] Squeeze me?
Kevin Copeland: [as Brittany Wilson] Oh, no, you didn’t?
Marcus Copeland: [as Tiffany Wilson] I’m sorry, but um… we just saw your new video. Yeah, they had a screening over at Saks Fifth Avenue in the security office. A klept-ho-maniac!
Megan Vandergeld: Your mother shops at Saks.
Marcus Copeland: [as Tiffany Wilson] What?
Kevin Copeland: [as Brittany Wilson] Oh, my God. You want to talk about mothers? You wanna talk about mothers! It’s mother time, OK? Your mother’s so dumb she went to Dr Dre for a Pap smear! “Something’s wrong, Dr Dre! My coochie’s doing a beatbox!”
Heather Vandergeld: Well, yeah? Your mother’s so stupid she exercises when she could just get, like, liposuction or something!
Marcus Copeland: [as Tiffany Wilson] Your mother’s so old that her breast milk is powdered. You breast-feed like this.
Heather Vandergeld: Your mother is so, like… She’s so… Megan, you go!
Megan Vandergeld: Your mother is so stupid that she goes to Barney’s Rooftop Deck Restaurant for lunch and orders a niçoise salad and calls it a ‘ni-coise’ salad. ‘Ni-coise’ salad, right?
Marcus Copeland: [as Tiffany Wilson] Your mother’s ass is so hairy, it looks like Don King’s about to pop out and say, “Only in America!”

Prayer is the most important conversation of the day. Take it to God before you take it to anyone else. Good morning.

Insomnia

I wonder
If those talks matter
Few done in the clarity of day
Or the many
Done at 3 a.m. in the morning.

Insomnia is just another word for chit chat with the demons during bedtime.

Neal: Eh, look, I don’t want to be rude, but I’m not much of a conversationalist, and I really want to finish this article, a friend of mine wrote it, so…
Del: Don’t let me stand in your way, please don’t let me stand in your way. The last thing I want to be remembered as is an annoying blabbermouth… You know, nothing grinds my gears worse than some chowderhead that doesn’t know when to keep his big trap shut… If you catch me running off with my mouth, just give me a poke on the chubbs…

Neal: Let me close this conversation by saying that you are one unique individual.
Del: Unique… what’s that, Latin for “asshole”?

The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Sophie sat in her alcove and stitched and heard […] that Wizard Howl’s castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper… The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, […] Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste. Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together.

The third encounter came towards the end of the afternoon when Sophie had worked her way quite high into the hills. A countryman came whistling down the lane towards her. A shepherd, Sophie thought, going home after seeing to his sheep. He was a well set up young fellow of forty or so. “Gracious!” Sophie said to herself. “This morning I’d have seen him as an old man. How one’s point of view does alter!”
When the shepherd saw Sophie mumbling to herself, he moved rather carefully over to the other side of the lane and called out with great heartiness, “Good evening to you, Mother! Where are you off to?”
“Mother?” said Sophie. “I’m not your mother, young man!”
“A manner of speaking,” the shepherd said, edging along against the opposite hedge. “I was only meaning a polite inquiry, seeing you walking into the hills at the end of the day. You won’t get down into Upper Folding before nightfall, will you?”
Sophie had not considered this. She stood in the road and thought about it. “It doesn’t matter really,” she said, half to herself. “You can’t be fussy when you’re off to seek your fortune.”
“Can’t you indeed, Mother?” said the shepherd. He had now edged himself downhill of Sophie and seemed to feel better for it. “Then I wish you luck, Mother, provided your fortune don’t have nothing to do with charming folks’ cattle.” And he took off down the road in great strides, almost running, but not quite.
Sophie stared after him indignantly. “He thought I was a witch!” she said to her stick. She had half a mind to scare the shepherd by shouting nasty things after him, but that seemed a little unkind.

The barbershop is about the man’s sanctum where he can discuss anything and escape from it all.

Barbershop conversations are irrefutable proof that heads exist for the sake of hair.

There’s something special about the barbershop. It’s a space where conversations and connections happen, where stories are shared over hot towels and cold cuts. Barber culture is something to celebrate and I want to capture that feeling in my.

I’ve been going to the same barber the last few years, and we have great chats whenever I’m in the chair. He’ll ask: ‘How you doing? How’s the training going?’ Just ordinary, obvious things, but then, like you do with your barber, you start talking about personal stuff.

Barbers are social in nature.

A barber can’t stay quiet while cutting someone’s hair.

It’s hard to find a barber who doesn’t talk when cutting your hair.

When one barber cuts another barber’s hair, which one does the talking?

It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.

With everything going on in my life—going on in my head—I wanted to talk with you. Really talk. Just once. A chance we never seemed to get at school. Or at work. A chance to ask, Who are you?’
We didn’t get that chance because I was afraid. Afraid that I had no chance with you.
That’s what I thought. And I was fine with that. Because whit if I got to know you and you turned out to be just like they said? What if you weren’t the person I hoped you were?
That, more than anything, would have hurt the most.

I tried to find it but there was no answer at the end of the last conversation – closure.

Silence can be defined as conversation with an Englishman.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.