"'The Book for Dastardly Dogs.'"
"That's stupid.  How can a fucking book read a dog?"

Early twenties, to a group of her friends on the train platform...
"He was really tall.  And kinda big, like his muscles, you know?  And the way he chopped carrots was amazing."

"I've got the doctor coming back around soon to take off all these heart monitors."
"Oh, that doesn't sound too good.  Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I've just got all these things wrong with me.  It's funny, I was down at the servo the other day and I gave an old woman a scare.  She got out of the car and was like, 'you don't look old enough to have all those things on,' and I was like, 'yeah, I'm thirty-one.'  The old woman wanted to know what was wrong with me and I was like, 'I've had a hard life, get off my back.'  Then when I light up a smoke, she sneers and says, 'well, there's the problem.'
"What?!"
"Yeah, I was just like, 'don't you dare tell me what I shouldn't do.'  I mean, I might be dying anyway, what difference does it make whether or not I decide I might like a smoke?"

The small boy with a box too big for him...
"Excuse me, would you like to buy a chocolate?"
"Sure buddy, how much are they?"
"Um, they're $2.  I'm helping my friend.  I've already sold all mine."

"That would be the most awesome movie ever: Kung Fu Dinosaurs!"

College friends around a table...
"The older I get, the more I realise that growing up is all about learning to cope with a broken heart."
"Yeah, I find growing up is so depressing.  I'm still hopeful, but it's a bitter kind of hopeful.  Like there's cracks all through me and I can see the light shining through but I still don't fall apart."
"You know, it seems like everyone I speak to leads me to think that growing up is a development of the process of holding yourself together, that everyone is getting by just trying to hold it together."

"I love blow jobs, they're the best."

"I'm so sorry, I'm a bit distracted.  I'm trying to think of ways to save money.  My partner proposed to me on the weekend."
"Oh, how exciting, congratulations!"
"Oh, thanks.  Don't even ask me about it though.  It's only been a week and it's stressing me out!"

"I studied politics which is useless."

"We're one of the only towns that voted out town water."
"Really, why's that?"
"Most of your rates go towards paying for a bit of water to trickle by your house.  Why pay for something you can get from the sky for free?"

Phone call to an internet provider...
"What's the weather like in the Philippines?"
"Um, I don't know.  We're in Sydney."

"I'm cut now, because you don't want to hug me."
"That's because I've got a boyfriend."
"Aw, well, hugging is not technically cheating."
"No, but I'm not really a huggy person.  I don't really like hugging men."
"I'm not really a man, I'm more of a child."
"Well, you're a child with a penis, and I don't like hugging penises."

"My nine year-old daughter is doing her homework on insects and did you know, she's just told me about an ant that grows up to 65 inches long?"
"Oh my gosh, that's huge!"
"When you think about it, a normal ruler is 12 inches, so that's a pretty big ant."

Winter, two lovers in the sun...
"Come on, get up.  Sitting on the ground like that'll give you piles."
"What's piles?"
"I don't know, some kinda shit disease."

"Typical, always the way."
"What happened?"
"I had to use the disabled toilet cause the other one was full.  I come out and there's a guy with crutches waiting to go in."
 
"It was my last day in China, do you think I was going to spend it on the internet?  I'm with my girlfriend, it's the last time we're going to see each other in a while, I'm not going to be wasting my time, you know?  I was obviously out going to dinner and things that people get up to, you understand what I'm saying?"

"It's so hard to get people to talk to you when they're shopping."

"They're in hot water because of their complete lack of ethics."
"I know, I know, Africa right?"
"Damn right, Africa.  They basically go out to impoverished areas and convince the mothers that breast milk is bad, you know, that it might kill their babies.  Then they give them free formula, so they feed the kids the formula until their bodies stop producing milk, and then they take away the free formula and force them to pay for it and they've got no way to pay and their natural supplies are gone."
"They can't get away with that!"
"They're not.  Everyone knows about it.  There's an international boycott."

"And I have to do it, because I work there."
"No man, you gotta be your own man.  Bring down the corporations!"

"I work in defence, mate, and I gotta tell ya, there's some pretty scary stuff going on out there."
"Yeah?  Like what's going on in the Middle East, or something else?"
"Nah, man, oh, well, yeah, it's all over the place.  I mean, I can't tell ya, but the things we know... it'd make you not sleep at night.  We keep a lot of secrets to make people think they're safe."

Sunny day, one young man passes another on the sidewalk...
"That faggot plays alliance."

"This lady calls me one day and says, 'my spirit guide is the wolf, what journey do you recommend,' because I worked for a spa right, and for whatever reason, I don't know, they called the spa packages 'journeys'.  So she calls and says, 'my spirit animal is the wolf, what journey should I take?'  And I'm just thinking, any journey that gets you as far the fuck away from me as possible."

"Don't you think sometimes the best feeling in the world is just after you pee?"

As she barks into her mobile phone...
"No, mum wont give me my money!...
I'm having a shit morning.  I slept through my alarm and then mum called and said she spent my money...
I probably woke up the whole house with my yelling...
Oh, well I got woken up so I don't care...
No, she's so selfish..."

"I had a very relaxing weekend actually.  I saw someone get hit by a car."
"Oh my god, how is that relaxing?"
"Apart from that.  It was weird, you know, because I think they might have died."
"How do you know?"
"Well, it's the second time I've seen it.  There was this horrible sound, like a thud, and then there was this crowd.  Gathering.  And I saw him.  He had blood running from his head down the street.  It was awful."

"I couldn't even fight with him because he is too weak.  It's the worst defense, a coward's defense, hiding inside a broken down fortress."

The boy with his HSC english text...
"This book reads so slowly!  It's supposed to be a story but it's full of people having meetings.  I'm taking this book to the toilet.  I don't know how many pages might accidentally fall in."

"Hey do you have a hairdryer?"
"No."
"Oh."
"Why?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Yeah, I do, but I think it's broken."
"Oh."
"What?"
"I don't have any socks."
"Oh."
"I left them in the washing machine, I was going to dry them with the hairdryer."

Soccer mums sitting by the oval...
"Bad luck, bad luck.  You're doing well darlin'!  She's playing well today isn't she?"

"They have to fight, it's so freaking cold.  Fighting makes you warm."

"It was Abu Ghraib.  They were torturing prisoners with Barney at Abu Ghraib, not Guantanamo."
"No, I'm pretty sure it was at Gitmo too.  They were using Barney at Gitmo as well."
"Really?  I only heard about the reports of it happening in Iraq.  Still, it's probably worse for the Iraqis because they don't know the song.  It would just be awful noise non-stop around their heads."
"I don't know.  I think it would be worse if you actually knew the song.  If you didn't understand it, you could just ignore it."
"I suppose that's true.  It's still pretty fucked up though."
"They were waterboarding at Guantanamo, which is a lot worse."
"True that.  Meanwhile, this is depressing.  I'll see you tomorrow, I'm going home."


Two women stepping onto a train.  The first unlatches the open door so that it closes on the second.  The second re-latches the door...
"That was unnecessary."
"Excuse me, could you please close that door?  I closed it for a reason."
"Excuse me, you just closed that door in my face.  I was right behind you."


"She told me she loved me last night, on the phone."
"Really?  That's wonderful!  No wonder you are so happy today."
"Yes.  She's starring in a porno on the weekend.  She'll be all over the net."
"Liar."
"No, I'm serious.  It's fantastic!"

The young woman to the Cityrail bus driver...
"Is this the all stations?"
"I hope so."
"You hope so?  I hope so."
"I'm from the North Shore, so I've got no idea.  We might get lost, do you fancy going for an adventure?"
"I wouldn't mind an adventure."
"Well, if you don't mind a detour to Perth, hop on."


"I got attacked by a huge bat on the way down here."
"Bullshit."
"I'm serious!  I think he didn't like my music.  I had it full ball so he could probably hear it across the street.  Poor guy, it was probably playing a frequency that hurt his ears."


Two young women on the train...
"Oh, you're on your greens?  It's going to take me ages to get my greens."
"Oh, are you still on your reds?"
"Yeah, it sucks."
"Nah, it's good.  You look younger on your reds."


"I paint doors.  I'm painting these ones all white.  It's a lovely colour.  Quite uplifting really."


As she creeps up to his bedroom door...
"God dammit, come on!  What the fuck?"
"Knock knock."
"Yeah, what do you want?"
"I'm lol'ing at your angry gaming."


"God, I need a drink.  Where's my water?"
"Thirsty much?"
"Yeah, I smoked weed for the first time in nine months last night.  It was fantastic, but, gosh, so intense."


The salesgirl to the elderly gentleman...
"Are you having a good day today, Sir?"
"I'm a stroke survivor, love.  Every day is a good day."

As he steps from a bathroom full of steam, he sees her clutching tight to her towel...
"I'm sorry.  You look cold"
"It's okay.  I have my slippers on."


"I left the group.  I left them because they left me behind so I went off to collect mushrooms.  They were killing big dragons and I was collecting mushrooms."


On a rainy night to the girl he knows he cannot have...
"I realized I don't care much for one night stands."
"Really?  Why's that?"
"I felt dirty.  I felt as though I could have had about as much satisfaction going outside and drinking a can of Coke."


"Hey tits!"


The fifteen year-old to the sixteen year-old...
"How can you eat that in front of him?"
"Because it's my lunch and I'm hungry."
"I could never eat in front of my boyfriend.  I'm scared I'll look ugly and he'll think I'm a pig."


The young man who just spent his first weekend away with a girl...
"It was a festival but it was very small, like a market.  There were people selling jewelry.  Interesting jewelry, and I danced.  You know, I've never danced like that before in my life.  The beat went all night and I just let go.  It was great.  It felt very liberating."

"I absolutely refuse to talk to anybody on public transport.  It's okay to talk outside of the bus, but on the bus things just get awkward.  If someone tries to talk to me on public transport I pretend I speak another language."


"No one works quickly in Mexico.  They're relaxed.  You maybe get upset because you wait too long for your coffee, you maybe wanna complain to the boss?  Boss don't care, cos you're in Meh-hico."
"I'd love to live so relaxed."
"You nice girl.  Maybe you fit nice in Meh-hico."


"Australian Red Cross, help save lives..."
"Not today.  Maybe later."


Two school boys...
"Oh no, my lunchbox!"
"What?"
"I just broke it, look."
"Where?"
"It's cracked, see?
I wouldn't break things if the world wasn't so brittle."

Welcome to the Dialogue Experiment

It is almost certain that at some point in our lives we have all wondered what other people might think if they took the time to listen in to our conversations.  We say thousands of things a day, conversations that are often mundane, sometimes funny, occasionally shocking and that have the power to make us cry, shake our worlds and leave us lost.  The things we say make up so much of who we are, and yet we don't even notice the millions of words that pass our lips.  We rarely consider the ways in which our words shape our lives.  Wars have been fought over conversations.  Hearts have been made and broken through the careless tossing of a few simple words.  It can be frightening when you realize how much a simple conversation can change the world.
   It is for this reason that I have decided to create The Dialogue Experiment.  The aim is simple:  to collate ten short snatches of real life conversation captured out of context, and to narrate a vision of the world using the fragmented things that everyday people say.  There is only one rule:  the pieces of conversation used in this blog must originate from true spoken conversation.  No text messages, online conversations or Twitter updates allowed.  The reason for this is that, with so much of what we say now reserved for the disconnection of online and digital media, we are losing the power of our personal voice.  The purpose of this experiment is to draw out the beauty of our words.  To demonstrate that what we say does matter, and that ordinary people can have the power to say things that can change the world.