Quotes About Misunderstanding

I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.

I don't know if you have noticed this, but it is quite possible for two human beings to have a conversation in which one or both parties involved has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

She really did like me, the idiot.

Because she had formed an image of me as a ravening monster?

I knew I was supposed to understand that Rita was actually saying something very specific, that her pauses and stutters added up to a great and marvelous thing that a human male would intuitively grasp. But I had not a single clue as to what it might be, nor how to figure it out. Should I count the breaths? Time the pauses and convert the numbers to Bible verses to arrive at the secret code? What was she trying to tell me? And why, for that matter, was she trying to tell me anything at all?

So I wanted to make you a nice French meal," she said. "Coq au vin." She said it with her best Bad French accent, caca van, and a very small lightbulb came on in my head. "Caca van?" I said, and I looked at Astor. She nodded. "Poop van," she said.

Is that what you call it now?" she said, and although her words might as well have been in Estonian, for all the sense they made, her tone was very clear, and it did not hold even the memory of anything pleasant. I

For some quixotic reason, Deborah had studied French in high school, and for a few seconds she apparently thought it was going to help her understand the man. She watched him as he raced through several paragraphs, and then finally shook her head. "Je nais comprend—Goddamn it, I can't remember how to say it. Dexter, get somebody up here to translate." The

But from the way she was looking at me now, I began to think that perhaps that had been a mistake. Human relationships, especially the whole Being Married Thing, were foreign territory for me. It was clear I should have called to say I would be late—but could the consequences really be this calamitous? Was

I'm. Not. Stupid." "I never thought you were," I said, which was actually true: amazingly scatterbrained, yes, but not stupid. "Is that why you're crying?" She

the English and the Americans were divided by a common language.

Up until recently, Milton thought of Tessie as his prim cousin. Whenever one of his friends expressed interest in her, Milton told them to give up the idea. That's honey from the icebox, he said, As Artie Shaw might have. Cold sweets don't spread.

Thinking back, we decided the girls had been trying to talk to us all along, to elicit our help, but we had been to infatuated to see it.

yesterday in the airport I spent ten minutes expounding on the virtues of Bethenny Frankel from the New York season of the Real Housewives until I realized the person next to me had been talking about a book by Viktor Frankl.

Anderson sent me to give you this he said. I believe the subtext was kiss and makeup. This time I was sure I made a face. I rather kiss a copperhead. I grabbed the envelop from his hand. He laughed and held up his hands in surrender. Don't worry. It was only a figure of speech.

The term bisexual has ended up as the ugly stepchild of sexuality, in both name and meaning. Its fate is symptomatic of the bisexual's own lot in life: to be as common as can be, but unacknowledged.

The thing about women is that they got liberated too fast. They never learned to be straightforward about life because they had to sneak around for about a thousand years tricking men into doing things they wanted. So they manipulate you instead of telling you what they want, so you never know where the hell you are. And then they get mad at you and bitch.

was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning.

if my name was on a serious work like this it would never get fair treatment. They would all say I had tried to be funny and failed.

Now I'm really not getting it." "That's why you should talk to my mom. We've both received Christ and—" "Received Christ? You're not gonna be like those people that go around knocking on everybody's door, are you?

What else would you expect? Whites never go inside black's homes. Much less inside their thoughts and feelings. And blacks are just as ignorant of whites. What white kid could hate blacks after spending five minutes in the Beale's house? And what bleak kid could hat whites after answering Mrs. Pickwell's dinner whistle? But the East Enders stayed in the east and the West Enders stayed in the west, and the less they knew about each other, the more they invented.

I did not mean to sodomize Dick Cheney.

She protected herself by making herself believe no-one else could ever really understand her.

What is meant by 'nut bag'? Is that a testicular reference or merely the identification of a satchel of cashews or pecans?