Quotes About Understanding

How can you do that to a person? Hate them when they haven't even done anything to you?

does it seem to you like she's right around here somewhere?" I watched his forehead furrow. I think he knew what I was asking. That I was talking about some kind of sixth sense knowing. Which made my question nearly impossible to answer.

Until you get it that's he's only what his experience has shaped him to be, you're seeing him as subhuman. As 'other' somehow. And the danger in the meantime is that he'll see that. He'll know how you view him. When you see a child as 'less than,' it's not long before self-fulfilling prophecy comes into play.

Ben prioritizes my sorrow over his own.

The 'J' is for 'Jackie,' " he said. "But why don't you just call her 'Mom'?" "Oh. So I don't get her mixed up with my other mom. P-Mom. The 'P' is for 'Paula.

We all go around saying we don't know where we stand with other people, because we don't know what they're thinking. Which is true. But we can feel where we stand with them. But then we get back into our heads and start second-guessing what we feel and get ourselves all confused and tangled up again.

It means feelings come through loud and clear whether you express them in words or not.

What the hell is wrong with people?

When somebody holds a view that seems to make no sense, know that it makes sense to them, but for reasons you don't know anything about yet.

was something contagious. "I'm not sure what you're

Let me go!" Seth shot out. "Tell me what's going on." "Not with you holding me prisoner." "I'm not holding you prisoner. I'm trying to hold you. I'm trying to put my arms around you and give you a hug, but you're fighting so hard you can't tell.

Most big life events are like that. You think they'll be emotionally one-sided, but when you actually get into them, it's always more complex.

It suddenly occurs to me that happy families probably don't repeatedly say out loud how happy they are. They probably think it goes without saying. They probably figure they all already know.

Shades of me, he thought. Did other people react so violently to the overwhelm of their emotion? News to him. He'd lived his life quite sure he was the only one. Billy

he slings me up to Yozzy's back. I ease gently down onto her. After all, it is her back. Not a motorcycle seat, or a bale of straw, but the fine vertebrae of a sentient being.

So if you run around putting a pillow under people to cushion their fall . . . well, I'm just not sure it's quite the favor we think it is." They stood quietly a moment,

I almost said I was never mad, I just sort of didn't care. But I didn't say it, because I started to know that it probably wasn't true. I was probably plenty mad without really knowing. And I probably did care. It takes me a long time, sometimes, to figure out how something is supposed to feel.

Unlike Ed, she listened. But then she forgot.

But some of my favorite parts of me are the parts you don't understand. I don't mean to be hurtful. I'm not saying it in an angry way. I wish we fit together better, too. But I'm not going to change the best of me just because you don't get it.

Here's what I do. I say to my creator, 'I'm

The longer you live, the more you'll see that the inside of everybody is a lot like the inside of everybody else. If you're feeling something, more likely than not it's just what anyone would feel.

I think it makes not one bit of difference if those words came from the soul of Annaliese Schmidt or from the inside of my own brain.

this was his single greatest quality: he made everybody feel dear. And the sad truth of this world is that not many people feel that way, and not much of the time.

Then he said, "I just sort of finally got used to the idea that you didn't like me much." "No, I do. It just takes me a long time, sometimes. To figure out how I feel about something.