Quotes About Understanding

Her father left his questions unasked. But both knew, and for the same reason, that bad days go better without any questions at all.

Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged?

What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high.

I knew this, anyway: that my wish, indeed my continuing passion, would be not to point the finger in judgment but to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.

I have been told, both in approval and in accusation, that I seem to love all my characters. What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high.

If I tell these private thoughts of mine, it is because I know they are not mine alone, and that practically everyone is trying to say the same things and that the writer is only a man who says out loud what other people think or whisper.

Of course, not everything is unsayable in words, only the living truth.

Truth has only two sides, but it's the third side that's best.

It isn't what people think that's important, but the reason they think what they think.

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Megérteni annyi, mint megbocsátani.

PUPIL: I can count to . . . to infinity. PROFESSOR: That's not possible, miss. PUPIL: Well then, let's say to sixteen. PROFESSOR: That is enough. One must know one's limits. Count

PUPIL: Are the roots of words square? PROFESSOR: Square or cube. That depends. PUPIL: I've got a toothache.

There is no reason for anything. If I knew, if I could see, could understand, I should return to silence and night. I think that if what impels me to live could be explained to me I should stop living.

I'll recognize her by the way she's trying to recognize me. Lost memories will guide her.

only the truly detached can understand what is meant by "detachment"

No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.

When I was born, I was almost fourteen years old. That's why I was able to understand more easily than most what it was all about.

It is a disservice to any form to elevate it as the form.

Transforming our intuitions into articulate form is precisely the purpose of this book.

The plain fact was he knew how to do it intuitively, but he could not articulate what it was that he did.

He thinks money spent on a home is money wasted. He's lived too much in hotels. Never the best hotels, of course. Second-rate hotels. He doesn't understand a home. He doesn't feel at home in it. And yet, he wants a home. He's even proud of having this shabby place. He loves it here.

Fear is isolating for those that fear. And I have come to believe that fear is a cruelty to those who are feared.

The natural result of utilizing different perspectives is that people are more engaged because they feel their opinions are important.