B. Lynn Goodwin

Here’s a collection of quotes I often use with writers before we listen to each other’s work. What resonates with you?

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. — Ralph Nichols

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.  ~Winston Churchill

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force…When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life…When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other…and it is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. …Well, it is when people really listen to us, with quiet fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way.  ~~Brenda Ueland

It is the province of knowledge to speak And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.  ~~Oliver Wendell Holmes

The first duty of love is to listen.  ~~Oliver Wendell Holmes

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.  ~~Henry David Thoreau

An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one’s own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker’s world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes.   ~~M. Scott Peck, MD