Quotes About Understanding

I was so unaccustomed to such emotions it took some time before I realized I was happy.

We know what we need when we get it, Brock Stewart had once said. Elinor understood this to be true whenever she heard Jenny in the hallway, when she looked up from her work in the garden to see a light burning in the kitchen. She knew it when the kettle on the back burner of the stove whistled, when the back door opened and shut, when the house she lived in wasn't empty. She hadn't understood how alone she'd been until she was no longer alone. She had cut herself off...

As Gary understands it, the greatest portion of grief is the one you dish out for yourself, and he and Sally have both served themselves from the same table tonight, the only difference being that he knows what he's missing, and she has no idea what is causing her to cry as she drives down the Turnpike.

When a person accepted a gift from someone, she was accepting the way the giver felt about her as well, any fool knew that.

The truth is, some of your closest friends may disappear during your most difficult times. These people have their own history and traumas; they may not be able to deal with yours. They may belong to the before .

And what of monsters? Can they love too? We know quite well they can. For we know that they do.

You are the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all we needed.

All I want for you is a normal life. Mother, what makes you think that's what I want?

I had been blind to the pain of others until I had my own burden to carry.

unless you allowed them to mean something.

A familiar is such a creature, an animal or bird that sees inside to the very soul of its human companion, and knows what others might not. What fears there might be, and what joys, for it shares the emotions of its human partner.

he saw love inside her. It looked like a dove, he said, but appearances could fool you. Some people mistakenly believed it was peaceful and calm, but that wasn't what love was. It was a wolf. If you open the door and call it inside, you must sink to your knees and say its name, you must do so whether you are cursed or not. That was the mystery Abraham had come to understand. Always and everywhere, love was the answer.

there was a distance between us. Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.

To love someone so complicated you had to be committed to a single emotion—the way you loved him—no matter what. In that way, it was indeed simple.

A lot of people don't know what to do about grief. I don't blame you for a thing.

To friendship," she agreed, although for the longest time they didn't let go of each other and she knew exactly what he was thinking—This must be fate—for that was what she was thinking as well.

Franny stood up with the intention of leaving. When Hay took her arm, she glared at him. But he was looking at her the way he used to, when he was the only person in the world who really knew her.

Let my burden be your burden, and yours be mine.

Maybe he understands that saying thank you can be just as hard as saying good-bye.

Who would have guessed you'd be crying over that old hay bag." But that wasn't it at all, Elinor saw that from the look on his face when he turned to her. That was the attachment, that was the way he held on to her.

That just goes to show that you never can tell about a person by guessing," Frances informs her niece. "That's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.

Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow.

When men were interested, they had a faraway look, as if they were trying to figure out their attraction. Was it a dream, or was it real? Did they want a woman, body and soul, or was it only the body that appealed to them? Sometimes it took them a while to figure it out, sometimes only minutes.

Elv felt consoled. She'd done such terrible things no one could forgive her, except perhaps for another sorrowful creature who understood the effects of human cruelty, who could lie down beside her and know she hadn't meant any harm.