Quotes About Understanding

The encaged and suicidal have a really hard time imagining anyone caring passionately about anything.

Clichés earned their status as clichés because they're so obviously true

I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear.

Hal finds he rather envies a man who feels he has something to explain his being fucked up, parents to blame it on.

But I gotta tell you, I just think to look across this room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware than me, or that somehow their interior life is less rich and complicated and acutely perceived than mine, makes me not a good writer. Because that means I'm going to be performing for a faceless audience instead of trying to have a conversation with a person.

Believe what you want. I'm powerless over what you believe.

That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it.

Don't cry, Booboo. Remember the flag only halfway up the pole? Booboo, there are two ways to lower a flag to half-mast. Are you listening? Because no shit I really have to sleep here in a second. So listen - one way to lower the flag to half mast is just to lower the flag. There's another way though. You can also just raise the pole. You can raise the pole to like twice its original height. You get me? You understand what I mean, Mario?

That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.

That no matter how smart you thought you were, you are actually way less smart than that.

the drowned panic of not being able to ask questions or have any input into what somebody's saying is so awful it sort of dwarfs the pain.

sometimes words that seem to express really invoke.

Everybody who really wants to knows what's true. Most people just don't want to. It means listening from deep inside. Most people just don't want to. But the special people listen. You can hear what's true, inside. Listen.

Why is the truth usually not just un- but anti-interesting?

Poetry, you were talking about," Julie smiles, touching Faye's cheek. Faye lights a cigarette in the wind. "I've just never liked it. It beats around bushes. Even when I like it it's nothing more than a really oblique way of saying the obvious, it seems like." Julie grins. Her front teeth have a gap. "Olé," she says. "But consider how very, very few of us have the equipment to deal with the obvious.

In this instance, he was wise enough to be suspicious of his own desire to seem wise, and to refuse to indulge in it….my father understood that advice - even wise advice - actually does nothing for the advisee, changes nothing inside, and can actually cause confusion when the advisee is made to feel the wide gap between the comparative simplicity of the advice and the totally muddled complications of his own situation and path.

I guess a bit part of serious fiction's purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves.

The doctor gazed at her with a patience she was meant to see.

other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.

Naive people are, more or less by definition, unaware that they're naive.

Lenore, it's simply that I love you. You know that. Every fiber of your being is loved by every fiber of my being. The thought of things about you, concerning you, troubling you, that I don't know about, makes blood run from my eyes, on the inside.

Certe cose non solo non possono essere insegnate, ma possono essere ritardate da altre cose che invece possono essere insegnate

Ma poi si arriva al punto che... cioè, se quella persona arrivi ad amarla, allora è come se la faccenda si capovolgesse. Cioè non è più che apprezzi quella persona per via di certi aspetti di quella persona; piuttosto è che cominci ad apprezzare gli aspetti di quella persona perché apprezzi la persona. Tipo come una cosa centrifuga anziché centripeta.

He and Hal exchanged the very slight sorts of nods people use when they like each other past all need for politeness.