Quotes About Understanding

The truth was, she had never been able to understand how a woman could be capable of passionately adoring her husband while simultaneously despising her children. No, that wasn't right. Mom didn't despise Meredith and Nina. She just didn't care about them.

Johnny looked at her. "I think we can't make people love us." "Including our parents?" Especially our parents.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD

We've lived weird lives," she said. "Maybe everyone does," he said, sitting down beside her, and then lying down, pulling her into his arms.

I went in search of my mother's life, and found my own.

Mama takes Vera in her arms, holding her so hard that neither can breathe. There is only silence between them; in that silence, memories pass back and forth like dye in water, moving and fluid, and when they pull back and look at each other, Vera understands. They will not speak of Olga again, not for a long time, not until the sharp pain rounds into something that can be handled.

I'd always believed that the truth of a person was easily spotted, a line drawn in dark ink on white paper. Now, I wonder. Maybe the truth of who we are lies hidden in all those shades of gray that everyone talks about.

Conlan: "She's not Sophia." Angie: "She's somebody's Sophia.

I see the incredulity in my son's eyes and it makes me smile. Our children see us so imperfectly.

Maybe she'd thought time was more elastic, or love more forgiving.

If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?" —LILY TOMLIN

She was angry at him--she knew that, felt it--but as he came toward her, that anger dried up and blew away like dust beneath the longing that mattered so much more.

All her life she had waited—longed for—people to love her, but now she saw what really mattered. She had known love, been blessed by it.

There was something she hadn't known when she went into marriage and became a mother that she knew now: it was only possible to live without love when you'd never known it.

Mama had called Leni the great love of her life and Leni thought maybe that was always true for parents and their children.

In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are. Today's young people want to know everything about everyone. They think talking about a problem will solve it. I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.

Guys would come and go; girlfriends were forever. They knew that.

Girls like you can't understand," Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn't know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime. The

Love is what remains when everything else is gone. This is what I should have told my children when we left Texas. What I will tell them tonight. Not that they will understand yet. How could they? I am forty years old, and I only just learned this fundamental truth myself. Love. In the best of times, it is a dream. In the worst of times, a salvation. I

If nothing else, this pause has given me that: a lens through which to view my previous life. It's not forgiveness. Not even near that yet, but it is … acceptance, and that's better than nothing.

She had gone to him then, taken him in her arms and held him until he could breathe again. To her, it had been second nature, caring for him when he was hurting. But now she saw what she had never dared to see before: this love of hers was one-sided. She was the one who took care; he was the one who took.

He pulled back and slowly got to his feet. We've all been carrying this baggage for too long. Some of us have tried to go on. He looked at her. And some of us have refused to. But all of us are hurting. I'm your father. She's your mother - whatever she's done or hasn't done, or said or hasn't said - she a part of you and you're a part of her. Don't you see that you can't be whole without her?

even years from now—when the missing will be so sharp it takes your breath away. But there will be good days, too; months and years of them. In one way or another, you'll be searching for her all your life. You'll find her, too. As you grow up, you'll understand her more and more. I promise you that.

It's not forgetting that we need Vianne, it's remembering.