Quotes About Understanding

I wanted to ask her if she meant to spend the night here as well, but I didn't want her to say yes. It could be that she was in some kind of mood and just wanted a nap and my question might force her to adopt a stance. She does that, I've noticed; she lashes out when she thinks she's been given a cue.

The situation improved once it occurred to them that they should also talk; as they came to understand each other they learned that what they'd been afraid of was running out of self. On the contrary the more they loved the more there was to love

I don't know anything about light, from where it comes, nor where it goes I only want the light to light up. . .

I was on my out and they thought they were helping me; instead they turned motion and intellible speech into a currency with which personhood is earned.

Do you think we'd still be standing here if he had shown up? What do you think we'd be doing here?' I asked. I got away with it because I put the question as if I was curious rather than just giving sass. But one of the boys told Louis, 'I guess your girlfriend likes to talk.

It was hard to keep a straight face, but Harriet didn't laugh. Everybody around her was living out a different story in which events had different causes and motivations according to how they were perceived.

Other things my best friend said to me: That two years was but a short span.

And in time, and by being a good woman, and a patient woman, she would have won a good and patient man.

Harriet read more voraciously than Simon and Margot ever had. They discouraged this; she'd be so bored once she ran out of texts that were new to her. She surprised them with the discovery that once an avid reader runs out of books, she reads people. Harriet read everybody she met, and when she met them again, she reread them.

I think they must have recognized something in each other, some poorly concealed intensity that other people find nerve-racking.

She knows her place, she sure does know her place. There's something ghostlike about this girl . . .

It is important to stress the ways that people are different from each other, because so much of the suffering that we experience in our relationships with other people is caused by the fact that we are blind to their point of view.

Marriage is the operation by which a woman's vanity and a man's egotism are extracted without an anaesthetic.

When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they "don't understand" one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.

After marriage, a woman's sight becomes so keen that she can see right through her husband without looking at him, and a man's so dull that he can look right through his wife without seeing her.

A man never knows how to say goodbye; a woman never knows when to say it.

After a few years of marriage, a man can look right at a woman without seeing her — and a woman can see right through a man without looking at him.

The hardest task in a girl's life is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious.

And verily, a woman need know but one man well, in order to understand all men; whereas a man may know all women and understand not one of them.

Failing to be there when a man wants her is a woman's greatest sin, except to be there when he doesn't want her.

English speakers' guide to learning languages, lesson #3: If in doubt, try saying the same thing again in a different accent (lesson #1 being 'say it louder' and lesson #2 being 'say it more slowly').

guided towards the writings of a 1930s Danish-Norwegian author, Aksel Sandemose, for a better understanding of how best to 'integrate' into the workplace in Denmark.

To take offense is to give offense.

Teach only love for that is what you are.