Quotes About Understanding

What does sensitive mean exactly? he asked, and I tried to explain it to him as best I could: Let's say you see someone crying, and you don't even know them, but you kind of catch their sadness, it somehow jumped into your heart, and this makes you understand a bit how they feel.

It doesn't take objectivity to know what you want, and you're not objective enough to know what you need.

He had no interest in another person, in imagining what it might be like to be on the other side.

When my daughter looks at me, she sees a small old lady. That is because she sees only with her outside eyes. She has no chuming , no inside knowing of things. If she had chuming , she would see a tiger lady. And she would have careful fear.

I saw a girl complaining that the pain of not being seen was unbearable... Now I have perfect understanding. I have already experienced the worst. After this, there is no worse possible thing.

In this matter, you should not concern yourself for my sake.

You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally--that's the worst, I think, deficient morals. (Saving Fish From Drowning)

My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.

Seeing her this last time, I threw myself on her body. And she opened her eyes slowly. I was not scared. I knew she could see me and what she had finally done. So i shut her eyes with my fingers and told her with my heart: I cah see the truth, too. I am strong, too.

These are the things I know are true ...

I am ashamed she is ashamed. Because she is my daughter and I am proud of her, and I am her mother but she is not proud of me.

Even though I did not understand her entire story, I understood her grief.

Auntie Yang is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening.

I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things: that she didn't really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more.

Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls

How can I argue with someone who makes no sense?

Even though I did not understand her entire story, I understood her grief. In one small moment we had both lost the world, and there was no way to get it back.

And then I see my mother sitting by the open window, her dark silhouette against the night sky. She turns around in her chair, but I can't see her face. "Fallen down," she says simply. She doesn't apologize. "It doesn't matter," I say, and I start to pick up the broken glass shards. "I knew it would happen." "Then why you don't stop it?" asks my mother. And it's such a simple question.

In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.

We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more.

Jane Eyre taught me that loneliness had more to do with being misunderstood than being alone.

I am crying now, sobbing and laughing at the same time, seeing but not understanding this loyalty to my mother.

When you read about the lives of other people, people of different circumstances or similar circumstances, you are part of their lives for that moment. You inhabit their lives, and you feel what they're feeling, and that is compassion. If we see that reading does allow us that, we see how absolutely essential reading is.

I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.