Quotes About Misunderstanding

Women thought me charmingly shy, and sometimes stopped at nothing to "penetrate the disdainful shell of my fear," as one of their number put it. Often as not, it was they who got penetrated.

Why a sooty-faced negro from a distant land should be an element of disturbance between white brothers was a puzzle to me.

She wasn't sure what he meant by 'surquedry', other than probably meaning he thought she was a lippy bitch

Bruno: We're not supposed to be friends, you and me. We're meant to be enemies. Did you know that?

Bruno: Why do you wear pajamas all day? Shmuel: The soldiers. They took all our clothes away. Bruno: My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away.

The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.

And the ignorant, as always, will be wrong.

How do you explain to someone who thinks you're the devil incarnate, that you're really not?

Divorced?' 'Separated.' He tested his thumb against the pricks of the rose. 'Women. They say you got all the freedom. Then you give them their freedom, and they don't want it.' ("Novelty")

She had understood all that he had said, with no way of knowing what he meant. It was as though he himself existed here in this town in this state in translation, ambiguous, slightly wrong, too highly colored or wrongly nuanced. Within him was the original, which no one could read.

tacenda Now what? She advanced the paper, and wrote: they mean no good to us She thought about this for a moment, and then directly under it, she added: they mean us no harm either.

It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.

People thought I was this doll that came to life, so I would have different people just treating me very strangely as far as I was concerned. They wanted to see if I was real.

Never create anything, it will be misinterpreted, it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life.

I never called a balk in my life. I didn't understand the rule.

People ask without wanting to know.

Offended vanity is the great separator in social life.

Many people one meets in life somehow think they know you simply because they're hanging out at the same counter-but they really don't know a thing about you.

Everybody tends to think I'm crazy, which is the biggest problem in my life.

Other potentially misleading terms include "cosmology" and "psychology." In

Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.

If he [Pound] is not careful he will take to meaning what he says instead of saying what he means.

To envy a man is to misunderstand him or yourself (pp 111).

The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. If you want your child, spouse, client, or boss to shape up, stay connected while changing yourself rather than trying to fix them.