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Life's Pleasures Quote by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after"

About this Quote

Good communication doesn’t merely transmit information in Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s line; it jolts the system. By pairing conversation with black coffee, she makes connection feel physical: a stimulant, not a balm. That’s the sly pivot. We tend to praise “good communication” as soothing, conflict-resolving, domestically responsible. Lindbergh frames it as something that keeps you awake - alert, alive, maybe even slightly wrecked. The compliment comes with a warning label.

The intent is both romantic and disciplined. “Good” here isn’t small talk or polished rhetoric; it’s the rare exchange that actually lands, where another mind presses back and changes your internal temperature. The subtext is that real understanding is not neutral. It produces aftereffects: mental replay, new angles, the inability to return to your old complacency. If you’ve ever had a late-night conversation that made your pulse race hours later, you know the feeling she’s naming. Communication, at its best, is chemistry.

Context matters with Lindbergh: a writer associated with interior life, solitude, and the hard-won clarity of reflection. Her work often asks what modern life does to attention and intimacy. In that light, the coffee metaphor reads like a defense of talk that refuses to be “well-adjusted.” It’s an argument for conversation as an event - exhilarating, disruptive, and worth the insomnia. The line flatters the listener while admitting the cost: connection can be energizing enough to steal your rest.

Quote Details

TopicWisdom
SourceAttributed to Anne Morrow Lindbergh; commonly cited in Gift from the Sea (1955). Often quoted as “Good conversation is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”
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Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after
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About the Author

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Anne Morrow Lindbergh (June 22, 1906 - February 7, 2001) was a Writer from USA.

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