"Listening is terribly important if you want to understand anything about people. You listen to what they say and how they say it, what they share and what they are reticent about, what they tell truthfully and what they lie about, what they hope for and what they fear, what they are proud of, what they are ashamed of. If you don't pay attention to other people, how can you understand their choices through time and how their stories come out?"
About this Quote
Piercy makes listening sound less like a virtue and more like an investigative method: a way to read people in 3D, including the parts they’d rather keep in shadow. The repeated pairs - say/how they say it, share/reticent, truth/lie, hope/fear, pride/shame - turn conversation into a diagnostic tool. She’s not romanticizing empathy; she’s arguing for attentiveness as craft. For a writer, that matters. Characters don’t reveal themselves by delivering neat monologues. They leak information through tone, evasion, performance, and contradiction.
The subtext is slightly accusatory: most of us believe we’re paying attention when we’re actually waiting to talk. Piercy sketches listening as a refusal of that narcissism. What’s “terribly important” isn’t politeness; it’s precision. People are legible in what they omit, in the sudden speed-up when a topic threatens, in the carefully curated lie meant to protect a self-image. In other words, the truth of a life is often located in the edits.
Her final question pushes the idea beyond the moment of conversation into narrative and consequence. “Choices through time” signals a long view: understanding someone means tracking the pressures, compromises, and small reinventions that accumulate into a storyline. Piercy, a feminist writer attuned to how power shapes what can be said safely, also implies that reticence isn’t just personal quirk; it’s often learned survival. Listening becomes an ethical act because it grants people the dignity of being complex, not merely explained away.
The subtext is slightly accusatory: most of us believe we’re paying attention when we’re actually waiting to talk. Piercy sketches listening as a refusal of that narcissism. What’s “terribly important” isn’t politeness; it’s precision. People are legible in what they omit, in the sudden speed-up when a topic threatens, in the carefully curated lie meant to protect a self-image. In other words, the truth of a life is often located in the edits.
Her final question pushes the idea beyond the moment of conversation into narrative and consequence. “Choices through time” signals a long view: understanding someone means tracking the pressures, compromises, and small reinventions that accumulate into a storyline. Piercy, a feminist writer attuned to how power shapes what can be said safely, also implies that reticence isn’t just personal quirk; it’s often learned survival. Listening becomes an ethical act because it grants people the dignity of being complex, not merely explained away.
Quote Details
| Topic | Respect |
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