Quotes About Understanding

All readers have reading in common.

1. Ask: "Do you want to talk about how you're feeling?" 2. Don't ask if there's anything you can do. Suggest things, or if it's not intrusive, just do them. 3. You don't have to talk all the time. Sometimes just being there is enough.

And reading all different kinds of books is not simply reading all different kinds of books; it's a way of becoming more fully human and more humane.

That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves.

The world is complicated," she added. "You don't have to have one emotion at a time.

That's one of the amazing things great books like this do—they don't just get you to see the world differently, they get you to look at people, the people all around you, differently.

Reading isn't the opposite of doing; it's the opposite of dying

Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words.

Why didn't this one say this, or tell someone that, or let anyone know she or he was so unhappy, so lonely, so scared? Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words. WHEN

How can you be lonely, Mom said, when there are always people who want to share their stories with you, to tell you about their lives and families and dreams and plans?

was just that she felt you were missing the main point—you were focused on one thing when you should have been focused on another.

That's one of the things books do. They help us talk. But they also give us something we all can talk about when we don't want to talk about ourselves." Mom

Halpern wants the reader to think about the difference between asking "How are you feeling?" and "Do you want me to ask how you're feeling?

I'm on a search—and have been, I now realize, all my life—to find books to help me make sense of the world, to help me become a better person, to help me get my head around the big questions that I have and answer some of the small ones while I'm at it.

3. You don't have to talk all the time. Sometimes just being there is enough.

one character thought, was that they'd never had love and patience at the same time.

We found ourselves discussing the three kinds of fateful choices that exist in the two books: the ones characters make knowing that they can never be undone; the ones they make thinking they can but learn they can't; and the ones they make thinking they can't and only later come to understand, when it's too late, when "nothing can be undone," that they could have.

I used to say that the greatest gift you could ever give anyone is a book. But I don't say that anymore because I no longer think it's true. I now say that a book is the second greatest gift. I've come to believe that the greatest gift you can give people is to take the time to talk with them about a book you've shared.

don't like being interrupted either—but I interrupt other people. I often forget that other people's stories aren't simply introductions to my own more engaging, more dramatic, more relevant, and better-told tales, but rather ends in themselves, tales I can learn from or repeat or dissect or savor.

I often forget that other people's stories aren't simply introductions to my own more engaging, more dramatic, more relevant, and better-told tales, but rather ends in themselves, tales I can learn from or repeat or dissect or savor.

The Etiquette of Illness

there's something you can always tell people who want to learn more about the world and who don't know how to find a cause to support. You can always tell them to read.

The poem begins, "About suffering they were never wrong, / The Old Masters: how well they understood / Its human position; how it takes place / While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

And there's something you can always tell people who want to learn more about the world and who don't know how to find a cause to support. You can always tell them to read.