Quotes About Understanding

You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them wrong all again...That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that- well, lucky you.

Why can't Jews with their Jewish problems be human beings with their human problems?

In short, dozens of conflicting, truncated impressions were already teasing to be understood, but the wisest course seemed to me to keep them to myself so long as I didn't begin to know what they added up to.

You know what I've come to realize about you kindly rich liberals who own the world? Nothing is further from your understanding than the nature of reality.

È mai possibile che questi individui siano attrezzati di tutto il macchinario necessario, un cervello, una spina dorsale, e le quattro aperture per le orecchie e gli occhi - attrezzatura, Signora Nimkin, che può sbalordire quasi quanto la Tv a colori - eppure viversi tutta l'esistenza senza la minima idea di quelli che sono i sentimenti e i desideri di una persona qualsiasi al di fuori di loro stessi?

Why, emotionally, is a man of his type reciprocally connected to a woman of her type? The usual reason: their flaws fit.

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that--well, lucky you.

L'immagine che abbiamo l'uno dell'altro. Strati e strati d'incomprensione. L'immagine che abbiamo di noi stessi. Vana. Presuntuosa. Completamente distorta. Ma noi tiriamo dritto e viviamo di queste immagini. «Lei è così, lui è così, io sono così. È andata così per questi motivi…» Basta.

Now that he was no longer grounded in his hate, we were going to talk about women.

Simple is never that simple.

Un piccolissimo simbolo, se ce ne fosse stato bisogno, del milione di circostanze della vita altrui, di quella bufera di dettagli che formano il guazzabuglio di una biografia umana: un piccolissimo simbolo che mi ricordava perchè la nostra comprensione della gente dev'essere sempre, per forza, nel migliore dei casi, difettosa.

It was the end of all understanding.

Rimane il fatto che, in ogni modo, capire la gente non è vivere. Vivere è capirla male, capirla male e male e poi male e, dopo un attento riesame, ancora male. Ecco come sappiamo di essere vivi: sbagliando. Forse la cosa migliore sarebbe dimenticare di aver ragione o torto sulla gente e godersi semplicemente la gita. Ma se ci riuscite... Beh, siete fortunati.

He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach—that it makes no sense.

Actually, we did not have the feelings we said we had until we spoke them - at least I didn't; to phrase them was to invent them and own them

exformation, which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient.

David Foster Wallace

These ladies are not stupid, or ignorant. Mrs. Thompson can read both Latin and Spanish, and Ms. Voigtlander is a certified speech therapist who once explained to me that the strange gulping sound that makes NBC's Tom Brokaw so distracting to listen to is an actual speech impediment called a glottal L. It was one of the ladies out in the kitchen supporting Mrs. R—- who pointed out that 11 September is the anniversary of the Camp David Accords, which was certainly news to me. What

Everyone around us could see the way Lyndon hung on the sound of his wife's voice, saw the tiny curtsies, her social motions, as though each movement of Lady Bird gently burst a layer of impediment between her and him.

Helping them eliminate the error involves drumming into student writers two big injunctions: (1) Do not presume that the reader can read your mind — anything that you want the reader to visualize or consider or conclude, you must provide; (2) Do not presume that the reader feels the same way that you do about a given experience or issue — your argument cannot just assume as true the very things you're trying to argue for.

Julie ha detto a Faye che lei è convinta che due persone innamorate attraversano tre fasi distinte prima di arrivare a conoscersi davvero. All'inizio si raccontano aneddoti e gusti personali. Poi ciascuno dei due dice all'altro in che cosa crede. E poi ciascuno osserva la relazione che c'è fra quello in cui l'altro ha detto di credere e quello che in effetti fa .

Lo de «aprender a pensar» en realidad quiere decir ejercer cierto control sobre cómo y qué piensa uno.

David Foster Wallace

You're in love with a man, says Julie, who insists that he can love you only when you're standing in the exact center of whatever room you're in.