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

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

My interest in the linguistic differences between women and men grew from research I conducted early in my career on conversations between speakers of different ethnic and regional backgrounds.

In this world, conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus. They try to protect themselves from others' attempts to push them away.

Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations.

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