Quotes About Understanding

People doing something that seems to them natural and necessary. At least, one of them is doing what seems natural and necessary, and the other believes that the important thing is for that person to be free, to go ahead. They understand that other people

Now I no longer believe that people's secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize. I don't believe so.

She smiled at me with such merriment of recognition, and such a yearning to be recognised in return, that you would think this was a moment granted to her when she was let out of the shadows for one day in a thousand.

Y Doree se preguntó por qué tenía que importarle lo que Maggie pensara. Maggie era una extraña, ni siquiera se sentía a gusto con ella. Fue Lloyd quien lo dijo, y tenía razón.

Mi spiegò che, essendo possibile soffrire solo guardando indietro al proprio passato, oppure avanti, al futuro, lei aveva risolto il problema isolando l'esperienza di ogni istante: ogni singolo istante, disse, era carico di un silenzio assoluto. Ci ho provato, sono disposta a provare di tutto, ma non ho capito come funziona.

I had the feeling that if she could have moved all around me, been in front and behind and on both sides at once, that was what she would do. She would close me off, she would peer into me until she found whatever she wanted, and got it rearranged.

I don't take up the story and follow it as if it were a road, taking me somewhere... I go into it, and move back and forth and settle here and there, and stay in it for a while. It is more like a house.

even if she's faking, it shows she wants to feel something, doesn't it, oughtn't decent people to help her?

Le truc, dans la vie, avait expliqué Harry à Lauren, était de vivre avec intérêt. D'ouvrir l'oeil pour voir les possibilités - voir l'humanité - qui existait chez chacun de ceux qu'on rencontrait. Être à l'écoute. S'il avait quoi que ce soit à lui apprendre, c'était cela. Être à l'écoute. (p.212)

Ora non credo piú che la gente abbia segreti precisi e comunicabili, né sentimenti esuberanti e facili da riconoscere. Non ci credo piú.

I understood what a mysterious and oppressive obligation I had, to be happy, and how I had almost failed it, and would be likely to fail it, every time, and she would not know.

for me to say." He smiled; he shook his head. "I don't

Folks that don't understand that our safety is born of their not seeing who we are and what we are, as long as we see ourselves clearly and understand that their chatter about us is fully ignorant and not to be considered.

There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.

Do you miss Susie? Because it was dark, because Ruth was facing away from her,because Ruth was almost a stranger, Lindsey said what she felt. More than anyone will ever know.

I watched my brother and my father. The truth was very different from what we learned in school. The truth was the line between the living and the dead could be, it seemed, murky and blurred.

So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything.

By the time I was eighteen, she had sat me down and detailed her alcoholism, its onset and aftermath. She believed that by sharing such things I might be able to avoid them or, if need be, recognize them when they occurred. By talking about them to her children, she was also acknowledging that they were real and that they had an effect on us too, that things like this shaped a family, not just the person they happened to.

I knew my mother's limitations because they formed the marrow of my bones.

our heartache poured into one another like water from cup to cup.

When was it all right to let go not only of the dead but of the living—to learn to accept?

She listened for the pain in my words, not to the narrative itself. She was intuiting what it meant to me, what was most important, what, in that confused mass of experience and yearning she heard in my voice, she could single out to give back.

If you chose to go into someone else's reality, you had to be willing to walk. There were no shortcuts.

Only by thinking I had freedom had I come to understand how imprisoned I was.