Even though standup seems like one-way conversation, if you're doing it right, it's actually a two-way discussion between the comic and the audience... the audience just happens to be communicating through laughter.
Talking about Apple v. Microsoft without mentioning the Internet and the browser is like talking about WWII without talking about the nuke. Framing the conversation just in terms of open v. closed operating systems, the quality of the hardware or software or who the CEO was, is silly.
Purple - I mean, the music and the influence and the subliminal touches range from orchestral conversation to jazz to blues and soul and God knows what. It's a vast range of expressions.
I have a contract but it's not a commitment in the ordinary sense. It's our ongoing conversation.
Class is something that I think seriously about and try to organise my politics around. I think there are lots of novels that don't really engage with questions of class at all, and they get less conversation about issues of social privilege than I do. But it's better to try and talk about it and maybe fail.
The original idea of blog publishing was that writer and reader would be on the same level. That it would be a conversation - not a lecture. People lost sight of that. We didn't. Kinja is designed to break down the walls of the ghettos. So that everybody - editor, writer, source, subject, expert, fan - can be a contributor.
Personally, I'd be really glad to have a national conversation about whether to outlaw most forms of birth control. For once, the kids and their grandparents would find themselves on the same side.
E-mails, phone calls, Web sites, videos. They're still all letters, basically, and they've come to outnumber old-fashioned conversations. They are the conversation now.
When you hear someone talking in a restaurant or overhear someone talking on the street, there are very different patterns of conversation than you would hear in a conventional movie.
Sometimes, we writers find the perfect research material. I can't overstate how how precious that feels - it's as though you're having an intimate conversation with someone who has the key to unlock your project.
It's such an overused phrase: 'to be part of the conversation.' But it's true. It is nice to be part of the conversation - just be sure they are talking about you in the right way.
Just as Parkinson's isn't a big topic of conversation in my house, neither is my career.
We would like doctors to listen, but the fact is, we better be ready to be able to talk to them. You're going to have to be an active participant in that conversation, so I'd say the American people are going to need ways of stepping up to the conversation.
By all means, if you have a chemical imbalance, use medication. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be allowed to have a broader conversation about the pharmaceutical industry and the deep structural flaws in our economic system.
Congress's definition of torture in those laws - the infliction of severe mental or physical pain - leaves room for interrogation methods that go beyond polite conversation.
I like raconteurs; I like conversation. I liked the 'Tonight Show' when it was 90 minutes, I like when people aren't plugging things per se, and they're just in the moment being interesting.
We have to have a national conversation about how police forces should interact with the African-American community, who happens to be paying their salary, who want to be served and protected, who these officers are take an oath to do so.
The creative tension with spirituality vs. practicality in the world of politics is a vital conversation.
When we filmed the premiere episode of 'United Shades of America,' it was like we were turning over a rock in the woods. The KKK was not part of the national conversation. They were really just a punchline for comedians when you needed to let the audience know something was really, really, really racist.
I'm encouraging other people, whether they're professionals or not, to use their creativity to express themselves, to get a conversation going, to get the party started, really.