Quotes About Understanding

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.

Everything that's innocent to us is crazy to them.

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after.

The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.

You never understand anybody that loves you.

He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget. But I did not know that then, although I learned it later.

I did not understand them but they did not have any mystery, and when I understood them they meant nothing to me. I was sorry about this but there was nothing I could do about it.

I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.

Now, feel. I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other. And feel now. Thou hast no heart but mine.

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can eliminate and it only strengthens your iceberg. It is the part that doesn't show. If a writer omits something because he does not know it then there is a hole in the story. (Interview with Paris Review , 1958)

During the night two porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing. He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female. 'They are good,' he said. 'They play and make jokes and love one another. They are our brothers like the flying fish.

This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.

Did I know him? Did I love him? You ask me that? I knew him like you know nobody in the world, and I loved him like you love God.

But I could tell thee of other things, Inglés , and do not doubt what thou simply cannot see nor cannot hear. Thou canst not hear what a dog hears. Nor canst thou smell what a dog smells. But already thou hast experienced a little of what can happen to man.

The writer's job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.

In that way they really were friends, understanding in their basic disagreement, trusting in their complete distrust and enjoying one another's company.

To understand is to forgive.

if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no time, unless you are very egotistical, which, of course, accounts for many books, will you be able to say: now I know all about this and will write about it.

You did not have to like it because you understood it. He could beat anything, he thought, because no thing could hurt him if he did not care

The things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist.

When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen.

I do not understand these things, he thought. But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.

We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others ... But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together.

You did not have to like it because you understood it.