“Good conversation is not a matter of mutuality of interests or commonly held ideals, it’s a matter of temperament: the thing that makes someone respond instinctively with an appreciative ‘I know just what you mean,’ rather than the argumentative ‘Whaddaya mean by that?’ In the presence of shared temperament, conversation almost never loses its free, unguarded flow; in its absence one is always walking on eggshells.”
Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City, a Memoir
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This really crystallizes where the problems lie.
Glad you liked the quote, Regina. She’s a wonderful essayist. I told Jo-Ann that I also recommend her memoir “Fierce Attachments,” because there are sections in it that remind me of how she (Jo-Ann, and I guess you) grew up early-on in Pittsburgh.