Quotes About Understanding

If she had hurt me, I could have forgiven her without even having to think about it; but I couldn't forgive her for being hurt.

One of my da's tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life.

Mental' isn't a reason. It comes in an awful lot of flavors, most of them are non-violent, and every single one of them has some kind of logic, whether or not it makes sense to you and me.

I'm only talking to one person here. If that's you, then you need to shut up and listen. If it's not, then you need to shut up because no one's talking to you.

And I didn't need telepathy, either. Ask any woman you're ever had a relationship with: I guarantee she knew she was second best. A placeholder, till the one you actually wanted came home.

But that age; remember that age? They're not the same. They don't put things together. That's why half of what they do looks full-on certifiable, to you or me or any sane adult. Things don't make sense, when you're that age; you don't make sense. You stop expecting to.

You don't have to like your family, you don't even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone.

I had started trying—it for the first time, really—it to remember what had happened in that wood. I prodded tentatively around the edges of it, barely acknowledging even to myself what I was doing, like a kid picking at a scab but afraid to look.

I don't think there are any rules for how you're supposed to act when someone you care about dies, sweetheart. I think you just have to figure it out as you go along. Sometimes you'll feel like crying, sometimes you won't, sometimes you'll be raging at him for dying on you. You just have to remember that all of those are OK. So is whatever else your head comes up with.

Nobody knows you like people you grew up with.

They've had it spelled out a dozen times, in cringey classes, in cringey parent talks: when to tell an adult. The idea never comes near any of their minds. This thing opening in front of them is nothing to do with those careful speeches. This mix of roaring rage and a shame that stains every cell, this crawling understanding that now their bodies belong to other people's eyes and hands, not to them: this is something new.

His accent needs subtitles.

I thought of Mark's reckless eyes—The only things I believe in are out on that there dig—and then of revolutionaries waving ragged, gallant banners, of refugees swimming swift nighttime currents; of all those who hold life so light, or the stakes so dear, that they can walk steady and open-eyed to meet the thing that will take or transform their lives and whose high cold criteria are far beyond our understanding.

But you've seen plenty of her, from your

figure out what to do here.

People are complicated. When you're a little kid, you don't realize, you think people are just one thing; but then you get older, and you realize it's not that simple. Chris wasn't that simple. He was cruel and he was kind. And he didn't like realizing that. It bothered him, that he wasn't just one thing. I think it made him feel . . .

how the great pairs of detectives know each other's every thought as surely as lifelong ballet partners in a pas de deux. I never knew and never will whether either Cassie or I was a great detective, though I suspect not, but I know this: we made a team worthy of bard-songs and history books. This was our last and greatest dance together, danced in a tiny interview room with darkness outside and rain falling soft and relentless on the roof, for no audience but the doomed and the dead.

A man needs to know when to let things lie.

the session turned out to be all about what words they were and weren't allowed to use; nothing about what they were doing, underneath all the words, and how they could do it better. Everyone was always talking about talking, and the most moral person was the one who yelled at the most other people for doing the talking all wrong.

Girlfriends aren't allowed to care if you have Stilton socks. Friends are." All the same, she gave her hands a quick, professional shake and took hold of my foot. "Plus, you might be less of a pain in the arse if you got more action.

Faye had always been sweet, flaky but sweet, unlikely to ask about your problems but deeply concerned about them if you reminded her they existed.

We only waste energy to have horrible fights with the people we love the most.

Bernadette never said these things aloud like an evil stepmother in a fairy-tale, but she didn't have to. Letitia knew words were only part of who people were, and usually the least important part.

When you know someone in the flesh, you know that person only in part," he told her. "A man's teachings are more important than his flesh form. Flesh is an illusion.