Deborah Tannen

Sisters, to me, are fascinating because it is a unique connection of the coming together of connection and competition. The fact that you have these age differences is a built-in power struggle, and the fact that you're all trying to get attention and resources from the same parents creates competition. ”

You're not from Puerto Rico, so you should say Puerto Rico like all the other people from the place that you come from. ”

Back when the powerful 19th-century senator Henry Clay was called 'the great compromiser,' achieving a compromise really was considered great. ”

The political Right is particularly vehement when it comes to compromise. Conservatives are now strongly swayed by the Tea Party movement, whose clarion call is a refusal to compromise regardless of the practical consequences. ”

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

I think it is important to remember that there are so many different ways to be sisters. ”

Much of my work over the years has developed the premise that women's styles of friendship and conversation aren't inherently better than men's, simply different. ”

I am the youngest of three girls. My first linguistics book was a study of 'New York Jewish conversational style'. That was my dissertation. ”

Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone. ”

There's the bond of a connection and the bond of bondage... When you are connected to somebody, everything each one does affects the other, and it's a kind of bondage. You're not as free as you would be if that person wasn't in your life. ”