Quotes About Understanding

The distance between us, and I had never thought of this before, was that they did not know this, and I now dared to realize that I loved them more than they loved me. And I do not mean that my love was greater: who dares judge the inexpressible expense another pays for his life? who knows how much one is loved, by whom, or what that love may be called on to do? No, the way the cards had fallen meant that I had to face more about them than they could know about me, knew

but the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain.

White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed. People

Then Leona surprised him. "You talking about that boy? He's just bored and lonely, don't know no better. You could probably make friends with him real easy if you tried." He laughed. "Well, that's what's the matter with most people," Leona insisted, plaintively, "ain't got nobody to be with. That's what makes them so evil. I'm telling you, boy, I know.

There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.

Judgment," she said, "has nothing to do with love.

We're going to sit down somewhere until this rush hour's over. You and me, we've got to talk anyway, before we talk to Mama and Daddy. They don't know yet. I haven't talked to them yet." And I realize how much Ernestine loves me, at the same time that I remember that she is, after all, only four years older than I.

people love different people in different ways—

One cannot argue with anyone's experience or decision or belief.

is galling indeed to have stood so long, hat in hand, waiting for Americans to grow up enough to realize that you do not threaten them.

what the very young inevitably undergo with their elders: I was beginning to judge him. And the very harshness of this judgment, which broke my heart, revealed, though I could not have said then, how much I had loved him, how that love, along with my innocence, was dying.

You must understand that your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people's pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less.

Tell me', he said, 'what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for? [...] 'I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel.' 'In order to make sure!' [...] 'And when you have waited - has it made you sure?

Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford, and you are not that young any more.

I ached abruptly, intolerably, with a longing to go home; not that hotel, in one of the alleys of Paris, where the concierge barred the way with my unpaid bill; but home, home across the ocean, to things and people I knew and understood; to those things, those places, those people which I would always helplessly, and in whatever bitterness of spirit, love above all else.

Women don't see men the way men want to be seen. They see all the tender places, all the places where they blood could flow.

I've known him all my life and I hope I always know him.

Perhaps he had supposed that my growing up would bring us closer together—whereas, now that he was trying to find out something about me, I was in full flight from him. I did not want him to know me. I did not want anyone to know me.

I have never reached you, said Giovanni. You have never really been here.

For I understood, at the bottom of my heart, that we had never talked, that now we never would.

When a dark face opens, light seems to go everywhere.

It I'd galling indeed to have stood so long, hat in hand, waiting for Americans to grow up enough to realize that you do not threaten them. (from The Fire Next Time)

Close up, you see the person's wrinkles, warts, and pimples; when close to you, the person has innumerable ways of driving you up the wall: but when far from you, these very same imperfections become irreplaceable and beautiful, testifying, after all, to how much each cared about the other. Close up, the person's imperfections matter, but from far away, you see your own. The questions then is not How did I stand her? but How did she stand me?

When two people have so much to say to each other that there's almost nothing they can say, and they just stare at each other. But that's saying something, too.