When you listen to your woman, listen to her as you would the ocean, or the wind in the leaves. The sounds you hear from her are sounds of the motion of her feeling-energy. Of course, there are times when she speaks in the masculine style of meaning exactly what she says, but more often, and almost always in emotional moments, what she says is the sound of her feelings. Her feminine speech is far more like poetry than like a clearcut agenda for action. In an emotional moment, what she says she is going to do is actually an expression of what she feels like doing in the moment. Her feelings, and therefore what she is actually going to do, could change in five minutes. It could change every five minutes.

Why do you consult [women's] words when it is not their mouths that speak? Consult their eyes, their colour, their breathing, their timid manner, their slight resistance, that is the language nature gave them for your answer. The lips always say 'No,' and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known? Her fate would be too cruel if she had no language in which to express her legitimate desires except the words which she dare not utter.

We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.

She kept watching the words.

Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think — -in a deeper voice.

She said this watching my eyes as if she were testing the edge of a blade on me. And so I made sure not to flinch.

Learn to listen when people are talking. First, it's a great art, and second, it's quite possible that when people say one thing they mean another.

Listen to her the way you would listen
to your own daughter
if she died too young
and tried to speak to you
across long distances.

You must listen to your woman more as an oracle than as an advisor

In the meantime: (1) be direct; (2) remember that, being smarter than men, women respond to courtesy and kindness; (3) if you want to know what kind of a wife someone will make, observe her around her father and mother; (4) as to who gets out of the elevator first, I just can't help you.

The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling.

Exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you is very important. Nothing else is so flattering as that.

What a woman says doesn't amount to shucks. It's the way she says it — that's what counts.