Deborah Tannen quote: "It was just so obvious that everyone wanted to talk about the mother-daughter relationship. I think it's because women really are struggling, because it's a very important relationship in your life."

For most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport: a way of establishi...
DEBORAH TANNEN

We all feel wistfulness or regret about roads not taken.
DEBORAH TANNEN

The word 'sister' evokes an ideal of connection and support, like the friendships that made ...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.
DEBORAH TANNEN

Women as mothers grapple with corresponding contradictions. The adoration they feel for their grown ...
DEBORAH TANNEN

For girls and women, talk is the glue that holds a relationship together - and the explosive that ca...
DEBORAH TANNEN

There is more excitement, more amazement when a first is born. No subsequent babies can have that im...
DEBORAH TANNEN

I would say 'woman' used to be a noun, and now it is a noun and also an adjective. And words...
DEBORAH TANNEN

A sister is someone who owns part of what you own: a house, perhaps, or a less tangible legacy, like...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Many mothers and daughters are as close as any two people can be, but closeness always carries with ...
DEBORAH TANNEN

In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give con...
DEBORAH TANNEN

For each other, at each other: Sisters can be either or both. The same could be said of people in an...
DEBORAH TANNEN

An assumption underlying almost all comments on interruptions is that they are aggressive, but the l...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Asian cultures... place great value on avoiding open expression of disagreement and conflict because...
DEBORAH TANNEN

For many women, and a fair number of men, saying 'I'm sorry' isn't literally an apol...
DEBORAH TANNEN

If you understand gender differences in what I call 'conversational style', you may not be a...
DEBORAH TANNEN

My interest in the linguistic differences between women and men grew from research I conducted early...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independ...
DEBORAH TANNEN

This idea that we should be best friends with our partner of the opposite gender leads toward tremen...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Everything we say has metamessages indicating how our words are to be interpreted: Is this a serious...
DEBORAH TANNEN

When daughters react with annoyance or even anger at the smallest, seemingly innocent remarks, mothe...
DEBORAH TANNEN

The death of compromise has become a threat to our nation as we confront crucial issues such as the ...
DEBORAH TANNEN

American popular culture, like individuals in daily life, tends to either romanticize or demonize mo...
DEBORAH TANNEN

The effect of dominance is not always the result of an intention to dominate.
DEBORAH TANNEN

In the past, great communicators were great orators, but great communicators today sound conversatio...
DEBORAH TANNEN

In a world of status, independence is key, because a primary means of establishing status is to tell...
DEBORAH TANNEN

If women talk in ways expected of them or project a feminine demeanor, it's seen as weak. But if...
DEBORAH TANNEN

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation -...
DEBORAH TANNEN

While the requirements of a good leader and a good man are similar, the requirements of a good leade...
DEBORAH TANNEN

We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups.
DEBORAH TANNEN

I believe the switch from 'lady' to 'woman' was part of the women's movement. &#...
DEBORAH TANNEN

We tend to assume that we have a baseline of speech that's going to be normal in all contexts, b...
DEBORAH TANNEN

My writing is about connecting ways of talking to human relationships. My purpose is to show that li...
DEBORAH TANNEN

In some ways, siblings, and especially sisters, are more influential in your childhood than your par...
DEBORAH TANNEN

There is probably no such thing as a level playing field in political campaigns.
DEBORAH TANNEN

One of the nice things about the United States is that, wherever you go, people speak the same langu...
DEBORAH TANNEN

I am the youngest of three girls. My first linguistics book was a study of 'New York Jewish conv...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Mothers subject their daughters to a level of scrutiny people usually reserve for themselves. A moth...
DEBORAH TANNEN

It's a particularly modern myth that married people are best friends. The best-friend concept is...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Everything you say in a family carries meaning from all that was said before. So with friends, there...
DEBORAH TANNEN

For women, detailed conversation is our lifeblood, while for men it's just not as critical.
DEBORAH TANNEN

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation -...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that mean...
DEBORAH TANNEN

We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has.
DEBORAH TANNEN

Relationships are made of talk - and talk is for girls and women.
DEBORAH TANNEN

The repercussions are so deep because our responses are emotional. When you think you're being snubb...
DEBORAH TANNEN

The study of gender and language might seem at first to be a narrowly focused field, but it is actua...
DEBORAH TANNEN

A double bind is far worse than a straightforward damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't dilemma....
DEBORAH TANNEN

When people realize that in the long run you may be turning off the audiences more, even though they...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as sa...
DEBORAH TANNEN

When you feel that the people you are dealing with day to day don't have manners, it gives you the f...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Many of us dismiss talk that does not convey important information as worthless - meaningless small ...
DEBORAH TANNEN

[T]he seeds of [the Argument Culture] can be found our classrooms, where a teacher will introduce an...
DEBORAH TANNEN

It's our tendency to approach every problem as if it were a fight between two sides. We see it in he...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Where the daughter sees power, the mother feels powerless. Daughters and mothers, I found, both over...
DEBORAH TANNEN

The contrasting focus on connection versus hierarchy also sheds light on innumerable adult conversat...
DEBORAH TANNEN

The political Right is particularly vehement when it comes to compromise. Conservatives are now stro...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Birth order is fascinating, and it is forever.
DEBORAH TANNEN

Conflict can't be avoided in our public lives any more than we can avoid conflict with people we...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Sister relationships span a huge range, from best friends to worst enemies. From 'I adore her; I...
DEBORAH TANNEN

A sister is the one person you can call in the middle of the night when you can't sleep or the o...
DEBORAH TANNEN

Each person's life is lived as a series of conversations.
DEBORAH TANNEN

Each underestimates her own power and overestimates the other's.
DEBORAH TANNEN

A sister is like yourself in a different movie, a movie that stars you in a different life.
DEBORAH TANNEN

One of the amazing things about writing fiction is that you do get to be other people.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I always need huge amounts of time to do anything.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

To be interested in short stories, you have to be interested in fiction as an art form.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

For me, most writing consists of siphoning out useless pre-story matter, cutting and cutting and cut...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I had written a story. I wrote the story out of some desperation, really, and I didn't know I wa...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I had no thought of being a writer. I never wanted to do anything. I'm tremendously lazy.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I'm not used to interviews. People don't generally interview waitresses.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I'm a very spoiled writer. I need to be indolent, to waste a lot of paper. I'm inefficient.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

We're all walking around trying to deal with a certain amount of shame, to repress it. And we re...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I just want to be on my own branch twittering.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I've never really thought of writing books. I've never thought about stories as a part of a ...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I find I often just fall into a stone-like sleep, right in the middle of the day, just sort of clonk...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

It's much easier to read the stories that have a lot of dialogue; of course, they flow much more...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I'm a bit of an expert on anger, having suffered from it all through my youth, when I was both b...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I find it endlessly interesting, endlessly funny, the fact that we're rather arbitrarily divided...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

The first story I wrote was called 'Days,' and I have very little affection for it.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I like the eclipses, the synaptic jumps of short stories. The reader has to participate very activel...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I actually came to New York because it was very tolerant. You know, it seems preposterous, ludicrous...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

Writing does change you, and of course it feels good to do things, so you could say writing is de fa...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I suppose I'm always looking for a sort of acuity of perception either in my characters or about...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

I would like to never ever think about any political issues.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

The world we live in has been and is being increasingly politicised so that our daily experience is ...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

Politics is a matter of human transaction. I consider absolutely everything political, because all f...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

Fiction is a report from the interior.
DEBORAH EISENBERG

Wrought upon at length, you may say, by an enthusiasm and frenzy that could brook no control - I bur...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

Everything will be alright in the end so if it is not alright it is not the end.
DEBORAH MOGGACH

It's a very rich brew that's in your psyche by the time you're in your 60s, and I think ...
DEBORAH MOGGACH

Cycling is the only way to free ourselves from the misery of the Tube, the wall-to-wall buses that l...
DEBORAH MOGGACH

It's not about weight, it's about fitness, and one component of being fit is to have relativ...
DEBORAH BULL

I did have a go with Botox, but I couldn't move my eyebrows. I also, at one point, had that fill...
DEBORAH MOGGACH

Letting go doesn't mean that you don't care about someone anymore. It's just realizing that the only...
DEBORAH REBER

Encourage, lift and strenthen one another. For the positive energy spread to one will be felt by us ...
DEBORAH DAY

Build me up and I with you. For we are more one than two.
DEBORAH DAY

Encourage, lift and strengthen one another. For the positive energy spread to one will be felt by us...
DEBORAH DAY

Personally, I think if a women hasn't met the right man by the time she's 24, she may be lucky
DEBORAH KERR

When you're true to who you are, amazing things happen.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

I'm a professional non-fiction reader, that's what I do. But in my 20s we had our own vampir...
DEBORAH HARKNESS

I've been blessed, acne never knocked on my door. I think I look pretty darn good.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

I became an actor in that important drama with an inflexible resolution to persevere through the las...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

I am indeed willing to acknowledge what I have done, an error and presumption. I will call it an err...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

I believe the wedding vows are sacred and precious, and it's been one of my goals as a writer to...
DEBORAH RANEY

The scripture is God's plan on how we are to live our lives here and what we are to do to have e...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

I think our job as parents is to give our kids roots to grow and wings to fly.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

There is something in even the darkest situations that we can make a positive in our lives.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

There is a comfort in rituals, and rituals provide a framework for stability when you are trying to ...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

So for years I kept mum about my passion for needle arts.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

Children may not notice the positive moments in life unless we point them out to them.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

It is hard to get in the habit of forcing yourself to find three things on a regular basis that you ...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

Religious people are happier.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

What I've learned is there's a scientifically proven phenomenon that's attached to grati...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

I sensed that my life was better when I focused on things that were working as opposed to focusing o...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

I want my kids to be curious, to be interested in a lot of things, to be confident, and to feel they...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

If I have time to exercise, I do it, but I don't fixate on numbers like weight or waist size. Nu...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

Certainly the research shows that grateful people are more innovative thinkers.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

My job as a television anchor or television reporter is not to proselytize.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

There is no dramatic difference in happiness on the part of people who are wealthy.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

'Thank you power' is writing down the moments that are good in your life so that you can go ...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

When my mother passed away I was 20.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

I was brought up Methodist, christened as a little baby and went to church every Sunday.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

I now find magic in the mundane. I'm also more creative - better able to look beyond the obvious...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

So many self-help ideas are like meringue - you take a big bite, and there's nothing there.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

It is important for women to know who they are, and to know what makes their hearts sing.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

Grateful people may recover faster from trauma.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

Motherhood is wonderful, but it's also hard work. It's the logistics more than anything. You...
DEBORAH MAILMAN

The world belongs to no one. There are very few people who fit into the world. And part of the strug...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

My school friends thought I was outgoing and bubbly, but that masked a lot of insecurities, and mayb...
DEBORAH MAILMAN

As I was born to be unfortunate, my sun soon clouded.
DEBORAH SAMPSON

The club shows are really intense and powerful, but for a shorter time, and the audiences are in clo...
DEBORAH COX

I've done that I was touring a couple of years ago with R. Kelly and the Lillith Fair, I would d...
DEBORAH COX

I like solitude. I'm very good at being disconnected. I do a lot of disappearing. People who kno...
DEBORAH MAILMAN

Telling stories with visuals is an ancient art. We've been drawing pictures on cave walls for ce...
DEBORAH WILES

God has blessed me with the gift of cheerfulness.
DEBORAH RANEY

Letting go is the hardest part... but you have to look at it through their eyes and realize the pain...
DEBORAH REBER

Your choice is to be active or passive in your responses.
DEBORAH DAY

If you put out acceptance and warmth, you tend to attract the same.
DEBORAH DAY

True beauty radiates not from outer cosmetics, but from the simple joy of making a difference for th...
DEBORAH BARNES

The traditional writer is a sensitive only child, asthmatic, who sits on the window seat watching th...
DEBORAH MOGGACH

The Australian film industry is a small industry, so you have to really be flexible within working i...
DEBORAH MAILMAN

I do believe that we baby-boomers are reinventing ageing as we enter it. We're living longer and...
DEBORAH MOGGACH

Repentance is a sweet solace to conscience as well as the most complete atonement to the Supreme Jud...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

On the whole, as we readily acquiesce in the acknowledgment that the field and the cabinet are the p...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

November 11, 1802, I arrived at Judge Patterson's at Lisle. This respectable family treated me w...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

Body language is a very powerful tool. We had body language before we had speech, and apparently, 80...
DEBORAH BULL

Appropriation was the language of my generation in many ways. It came out of Duchamp, Warhol, Johns,...
DEBORAH KASS

I'm about as straight an arrow as you'll find out there.
DEBORAH NORVILLE

When I first heard that song, it was a ballad but it had a lot more. It felt like a gospel song when...
DEBORAH COX

It's almost uncanny to receive a prize named in honor of Bernard Malamud. I must have been in my...
DEBORAH EISENBERG

Happy for America, happy for Europe, perhaps for the world when, on the delivery of Cornwallis's...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

The secret to not being afraid is to understand what scares you
DEBORAH WILES

There were no vampires of note in Western literature until about the 18th century. But they tell us ...
DEBORAH HARKNESS

What shall I say further? Shall I not stop short and leave to your imaginations to portray the tragi...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

I was really bored, pretty antisocial, and not much of a joiner, and people thought that was a probl...
DEBORAH ELLIS

When the Taliban took over in 1996, the news of their crimes hit the Toronto papers. As a feminist a...
DEBORAH ELLIS

Help me Lord be a Light and not a shadow in the darkness of my fears.
DEBORAH BRODIE

Not understanding something must not turn us away from God, his ways, or purposes; rather it must be...
DEBORAH BRODIE

What the edge of Truth cuts, the edge of Grace mends.
DEBORAH BRODIE

Count the cost of everything.
Rather than asking someone, "How much does this cost?" Ask yourse...
DEBORAH BRODIE

Start today like a new beginning, and not a repeat.
DEBORAH BRODIE

It was very liberating, living in a foreign country, a place where everything was new and strange - ...
DEBORAH MOGGACH

He doesn't make it so complicated but just really allows the lyric to come through even though t...
DEBORAH COX

There is that idea of seeming crazy when you're seeing spirits or you're seeing dead people,...
DEBORAH MAILMAN

Social issues have been used to distract Americans from their own self interests since Nixon's s...
DEBORAH KASS

I prefer Princess. I would love to be known as a diva later on in life when I've had far more ex...
DEBORAH COX

The catheter allows us to bathe the entire abdominal area with a high concentration of chemotherapy ...
DEBORAH ARMSTRONG

It's the kind of thing you sort of always hope you're going to see.
DEBORAH ARMSTRONG

It's very good news. A lot of larger institutions have already adopted this approach. At least for t...
DEBORAH ARMSTRONG

This is a significant improvement in survival for women with this disease, which is most often diagn...
DEBORAH ARMSTRONG

IP therapy is not a new treatment approach, but it has not been widely accepted as the gold standard...
DEBORAH ARMSTRONG

We want to make this a model for other communities in the future.
DEBORAH ABBOTT

The heritage of the state is very agricultural. Re-energizing agriculture is the key to Indiana's ec...
DEBORAH ABBOTT

The goal is to create a new use for the manure that's surrounding the town ? as a biofuel.
DEBORAH ABBOTT

The goal is to create a new use for the manure that's surrounding the town ? as a biofuel,
DEBORAH ABBOTT

My problem is that I want to smoke the cigar and for someone else to light it. I want to blow out sm...
DEBORAH LEVY

I think differently, I think it's about reaching everybody on every different plane and every di...
DEBORAH COX

I take it to be from the greatest extremes, both in virtue and in vice, that the uniformly virtuous ...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

One sees more and more people who are miserable and demented and you feel it would be both kind and ...
DEBORAH MOGGACH

The best way to insure you achieve the greatest satisfaction out of life is to behave intentionally.
DEBORAH DAY

I would love to be bilingual. I think having a second or third language at my bidding would open up ...
DEBORAH RANEY

The biggest surprise, which is also the best, is that I didn't know I would love motherhood as m...
DEBORAH NORVILLE

Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, I thought maybe I could write a mystery series about a midwife...
DEBORAH HARKNESS

A government that operates under the guise of capitalism does not necessarily mean it is free of the...
DEBORAH SIMPSON

Ninety percent of board members said they were there to make a difference in the organization.
DEBORAH HECHINGER

Accessories in general add warmth to a room, but you can switch out your accessories to showcase onl...
DEBORAH CARPENTER

I teach 18- to 21-year-olds - the 'Harry Potter' generation. They grew up as voracious reade...
DEBORAH HARKNESS

In choosing where to live or vacation, we may be setting the stage for the play of ourselves, treati...
DEBORAH TALL

We always see a few orders for wedding invitations with wedding dates around college graduation time...
DEBORAH GOMIA

My mind became agitated with the enquiry - why a nation, separated from us by an ocean more than thr...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

U.S. gasoline may be rattling people's cages. We're going to see another steep draw. That, Nigeria a...
DEBORAH WHITE

I always thought that it was every performer's dream. That's the epitome of being an artist,...
DEBORAH COX

'Tulip Fever' did change my life. It did that thing that sometimes happens when a book takes...
DEBORAH MOGGACH

It's not a failure if a marriage or partnership ends after a certain number of years. I think, i...
DEBORAH MOGGACH

It's a very quick place to come in. I'm not going on 21 at lunchtime for anything unless it's a dire...
DEBORAH DURHAM

They said the wreath is still on the door.
DEBORAH ROBERTS

In whatever I may be thought to have been unnatural, unwise and indelicate, it is now my most ferven...
DEBORAH SAMPSON

The song came out to be a gem, just came out to be a really, really interesting rendition of it.
DEBORAH COX

It was just so obvious that everyone wanted to talk about the mother-daughter relationship. I think it's because women really are struggling, because it's a very important relationship in your life.

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Deborah Tannen

It was just so obvious that everyone wanted to talk about the mother-daughter relationship. I think it's because women really are struggling, because it's a very important relationship in your life.

Deborah Tannen

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