Quotes About Understanding

How did you know it was me?' I have to ask. 'The way you looked at me,' she says, 'It couldn't have been anyone else.

If act one in life is about finding yourself, then act two is about finding everyone else.

Love means never having to lose your limbs.

You shouldn't have to venture deep down in order to get to love.

You never told me what you saw in him, not convincingly.

But there are people you know, and there are people you have a connection with. ... Wasn't that what make us feel responsible-not for what happened, but responsible for you? We always felt responsible for you. That's the nature of connection-not just the attachment, but the responsibility.

And being best friends is always about the benefit of the doubt.

I had forgotten this about love: how the simple things- the turn away, the turn towards- could be so complicated, and how the complicated things- the stolen night, the right words- could be so simple.

How could this happen? some of our parents asked us near the end. We knew what they were really asking, and some of us found the grace to say, It was nothing you did.

At least I'd learn the lesson that friends can make up for the failings of your family.

It takes a traveler, not a tourist, to search for something deeper. Travelers want to find the wavelength on which they and the city connect.

Along the way, they didn't say much, but their relationship has reached that stage where silence is comfortable, not threatening. Silence only harms when there are things that aren't being said, or when there's the fear that the well is empty and there's nothing left to say. Neither is the case here. They still have plenty to say to each other, just not anything right now.

Reading is not life. Reading is creating LIFE in your head. And that can only help you so much in a storm...

I find it hard to look at her. I know from experience that beneath every peripheral girl is a central truth.

We all have about 98 percent in common with each other. For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.

Not everything needs to be said at once. Sharing truth is not the kind of gift that comes in wrapping paper—ripped open once and, there, you're done. No, this is a gift that must be unfolded. It is enough to start the telling. It's enough to have the beginning and feel like it's a beginning.

They still have plenty to say to each other, just not anything right now.

With that right person, you can have a late-night conversation at any time of the day.

We're going to get through this. Every relationship has a hard part at the beginning. This is our hard part. It's not like a puzzle piece where there's an instant fit. With relationships, you have to shape the pieces on each end before they go perfectly together.

I don't know how this works. Or why. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago. I'm never going to figure it out, any more than a normal person figure out his or her own existence. After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why. You can have theories, but there will never be proof.

To do this—to understand the full extent to which people can define themselves beyond their bodies—I have had to learn and learn and learn, and then learn some more. And by learn I mean unlearn…and then learn and unlearn and learn some more.

Maybe Dana loved you for your pain. I loved you for everything.

You are leaving me messages, but I haven't gotten the message yet.

If he said anything to me, I would gather the sentences like a shell seeker.