Quotes About Misunderstanding

My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.

Of cicadas, she would say that they looked like dead leaves fluttering, felt like paper crackling, sounded like fire roaring, smelled like dust rising, and tasted like the devil frying in oil.... You see, in five ways she could sense the world... But it was always the sixth way, her ... sense of importance, that later caused troubles between us. Because her senses led to opinions, and her opinions led to conclusions, and sometimes they were different from mine.

The Doppler Effect of Communication": There is always distortion between what a speaker says and what a listener wants it to mean. "The

Absolutely. I remember." "Funny, I thought you did." "Ah, you assumed!" He laughed. "Your mother isn't the only one with memory problems. Well, if I said it, then I was wrong, because I do think it's important to have certain assumptions—for one thing, that the person who's with you is there for the long haul, that he'll take care of you and what comes with you, the whole package, mother and

I have raged at the wall growing between myself and others. I expect intuitive, miraculous understanding, or else I'm disillusioned and don't want to struggle to make things clear.

I have come to the conclusion that the use and knowledge of words acts sometimes as a stumbling block rather than a clarifier.

Goethe—it's amusing how we agree about Goethe. The man who sought out serenity and sanity. I hardly know him, and I hate him.

I talked to your maid over the telephone and she didn't understand me very well, so I said," Vous étes espagnole, n'est-ce pas?" Alors, je suis M. Miller. Bon! Crazy, crazy. [. . .]

Those who complimented me were those who understood me the least.

Be careful--with quotations, you can damn anything.

Mi chiamo Davide Griffo e sono mortificato per avere alzato la voce, ma non capivo quello che il suo agente mi andava dicendo. È straniero?». Montalbano preferì sorvolare.

I didn't like that look, and I didn't want it. But you can't just tell someone to knock off her look because she'll only give you another. And if you happen to raise your voice too much while asking her to stop looking, she'll hurry off to tell a friend about your behavior the second you walk out of earshot. And then that friend will come find you under some kind of pretense, wanting to decipher what's up your ass today.

The fact that in the twentieth century a greater proportion of the people in the world could communicate with one another, using English or just a few other languages, appears not to have stopped any wars, nor to have reduced the frequency with which wars have broken out, nor to have made the wars that have broken out less brutal. In fact, several murderous wars have been fought recently among people who speak 'the same language' in real terms.

On the basis of this information, it would be possible to argue that if everybody spoke English (or Chinese or Esperanto for that matter) everybody would be at war even more often.

If God is given to be misunderstood then he is also given to be re-understood.

It's just that, you know how it is in some relationships, how one of them is a little more in love. Well, it's like that with friendships. Sometimes one of them thinks they're really close, closer than they are. And the other doesn't feel that way.

How does Less get the world so wrong? Over and over again. Where is the exit for moments like this?

In the twentieth century, homosexuality was said to be caused by overbearing mothers and passive fathers; schizophrenia reflected the parents' unconscious wish that their child did not exist; and autism was the result of "refrigerator mothers," whose coldness doomed their children to a fortress of silence. We've now realized that such complex and overdetermined conditions are not the result of parental attitude or behavior.

When an illness is viewed as inexplicable and impenetrable, people tend to react to it with one of two extremes: either they stigmatize it or they romanticize it.

Everybody has a different idea of love. One girl I know said, I knew he loved me when de didn't come in my mouth.

Most people in America think Art is a man's name.

The nicer I am, the more people think I'm lying.

Women love me for the man I'm not.

Shy" was the sympathetic interpretation she got from older people. "Snotty" was the interpretation she got from people her own age.