“There’s days when a little bit of talk with a female is worth any price. I figure the reason you don’t have much to say is you probably never met a man who liked to hear a woman talk. Listening to women ain’t the fashion in this part of the country. But I expect you got a life story like everybody else. If you’d like to tell it, I’m the one that’d like to hear it.”—Augustus McCrae (Larry McMurty), Lonesome Dove
…And so they grew. What she wished to share, he hoped to learn. Small things, big things, day-to-day, children, lived histories, forward thoughts: it didn’t matter. He wished to learn all, of her, she wanted known.
By this they grew, beginning as strangers, into something of a closeness: a friendship that became in listening.