191 Quotes by Deborah Tannen

Like most men, my father is interested in action. And this is why he disappoints my mother when she tells him she doesn’t feel well and he offers to take her to the doctor. He is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.

A perfectly tuned conversation is a vision of sanity – a ratification of one’s way of being human and one’s way in the world.

At every age, the girls and women sit closer to each other and look at each other directly. At every age, the boys and men sit at angles to each other – in one case, almost parallel – and never look directly into each other’s faces.

When people realize that in the long run you may be turning off the audiences more, even though they will look temporarily – in the end they turn away, we really need to develop other metaphors and not talk about two sides, but talk about all sides.

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other’s.

It is natural in interaction to assume that what you feel in reaction to others is what they wanted to make you feel. If you feel dominated, it’s because someone is dominating you. If you can’t find a way to get into a conversation, then someone is deliberately locking you out. Conversational style means that this may not be true. The most important lesson to be learned is not to jump to conclusions about others in terms of evaluations like “dominating” and “manipulative.

A woman will be inclined to repeat a request that doesn’t get a response because she is convinced that her husband would do what she asks, if he only understood that she really wants him to do it. But a man who wants to avoid feeling that he is following orders may instinctively wait before doing what she asked, in order to imagine that he is doing it of his own free will.

We all want, above all, to be heard. We want to be understood – heard for what we think we are saying, for what we know we meant.

Relationships are made of talk – and talk is for girls and women.