Quotes About Misunderstanding

throughout human history farmers have tended to despise hunter-gatherers as primitive, hunter-gatherers have despised farmers as ignorant, and herders have despised both.

Are you married? Yes, I mumbled, that is to say - no. Come, come, said Havisham angrily. It is a simple enough question. I was married, I answered. Died? No, I mumbled, that is to say - yes. I'll try harder questions in future, announced Havisham, for you are obviously not adept at the easy ones.

Why does everyone think I've been in prison?" "Because you were heading towards either death or prison when we last met—and you are not dead.

En cuanto a la otra mitad del país, no se enteraba, o no se quería enterar. La mayoría eran inmigrantes del resto de España y, mientras les estaban vaciando la cartera, creían que el asunto no iba con ellos, que esto de la Generalitat era cosa de los catalanes de pura cepa, que ellos sólo estaban de paso aquí. Menuda cagada...

The meds don't make the pain go away, they just take you to a different place. But everyone around you thinks you're no longer in pain so they feel better.

As wonderful as dogs can be, they are famous for missing the point.

The Italians are said to be noisy and to gesticulate, but that is a libel dreamed up by the English.

The desire to be better understood has been extinguished from my heart.

A frown creased Ayla's forehead. She remembered he had used that word to describe her when she used her sling, and she wasn't sure if she understood the word the way he used it. "Are you artist?" she asked. He made a wry grimace. Her question had touched at the heart of an issue about which he had strong feelings.

I have just related the story of a missed vocation: I needed God, He was given to me, I received Him without realizing that I was seeking Him. Failing to take root in my heart, He vegetated in me for a while, then He died. Whenever anyone speaks to me about Him today, I say, with the easy amusement of an old beau who meets a former belle: Fifty years ago, had it not been for that misunderstanding, that mistake, the accident that separated us, there might have been something between us.

Está muy disgustado porque nunca le das un beso. La contradije: —Pues no pone cara de disgustado. —Es un grave error juzgar por la cara, en uno u otro sentido.

Yet I understood the poetry of such mind games one day when, attempting to ask for my glasses (lunettes), I was asked what I wanted to do with the moon (lune).

I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other. The probability of seperate worlds meeting is very small. The lure is immense. We send starships. We fall in love

I don't know which is worse: to be wrongfully accused or mistakenly understood.

I did upset the children. Not intentionally, but effectively.

when I was successful, but accused of arrogance, I wanted to drag every journalist who misunderstood to this place, and make them see that for a woman, a working-class woman, to want to be a writer, to want to be a good writer, and to believe that you were good enough, that was not arrogance; that was politics. (Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? p. 103)

I thought no one was talking to me and the others thought I wasn't talking to them.

About her life to come, when she'd have a mansion and no neighbors. All she ever wanted was for everyone to go away. And when I did she never forgave me. She loved miracle stories, probably because her life was a far away from a miracle as Jupiter is from the Earth. She believed in miracles, even though she never got one-- well, maybe she did get one, but that was me, and she didn't know that miracles often come in disguise.

What could I do? My needlework teacher suffered from a problem of vision. She recognised things according to expectation and environment. If you were in a particular place, you expected to see particular things. Sheep and hills, sea and fish; if there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs Jones and talk about fishcakes. But most likely, she'd do what most people do when confronted with something they don't understand: Panic.

I know how it is. Saying too much. Saying too little. Who says enough? Just enough? My closest conversations are bad translations. That's not what I meant--not what I meant at all.

My needlework teacher suffered from a problem of vision. She recognised things according to expectation and environment. If you were in a particular place, you expected to see particular things. Sheep and hills, sea and fish; if there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs Jones and talk about fishcakes. But most likely, she'd do what most people do when confronted with something they don't understand: Panic.

Resentment increased on both sides, until any little accident could flare up into a fight.

You turned a crazy old guy into an enemy in less than two minutes. YOU did it. You've done it over and over, I've seen you: you approach people like an enemy and bam!, they turn into one, whether they were to begin with or now -Maddy

Everyone assumed I was a normal person, she said. It was weird.