Quotes About Understanding

You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want.

Give me your pain, love,' he said holding her against the steady beat of his heart. 'Let me take it for you.

A man who believes he's nothing more to learn about women is a damn fool.

You heard me. You ain't blind.

Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business. He told me.how surprised y'all is goin' tuh be if you ever find out you don't know half as much 'bout us as you think yo do. It's so easy to make yo'self out God Almighty when you ain't got nothin' tuh strain against but women and chickens.

De wife she de eyes to de man's soul. How kin I see now, when I ain' gottee de eyes no mo'?

Somebody got to think for women and chillun and cows. I god, they sho don't think none theirselves… When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don't understand one.

Maybe if she had known some other way to try, she might have made his face different. But what the other way could be, she had no idea.

She must talk to a man who was ten immensities away.

It's uh known fact...you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo' papa and yo' mama and nobody else can't tell yuh and show yuh.

Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking.

For the first time she could see a man's head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through the tunnel of his mouth.

Husbands and wives always loved each other, and that was what marriage meant. It was just so. Janie felt glad of the thought, for then it wouldn't seem so destructive and mouldy. She wouldn't be lonely anymore.

There's two things everybody got to find out for theyselves; they got to find out about love, and they got to find out about living.

Aw, git reconciled!.. You can't git her wid no fish sandwich.

He has only heard what I felt.

Mouths don't empty themselves unless ears are sympathetic and knowing.

He done taught me de maiden language all over.

She knew because she looked.

Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.

They, the men, were saving with the mind what they lost with the eye.

Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don't think none theirselves. Ah knows a few things, and womenfolks thinks sometimes too! Aw naw they don't. They just think they's thinkin'. When Ah see one thing Ah understands ten. You see ten things and don't understand one.

Sometimes God gits familiar wid us womenfolks too and talks His inside business. He told me how surprised He was 'bout y'all turning out so smart after Him makin' yuh different; and how surprised y'all is goin' tuh be if you ever find out you don't know half as much 'bout us as you think you do. It's so easy to make yo'self out God Almighty when you ain't got nothin' tuh strain against but women and chickens.

But we see something else: the nobility of a soul that has suffered to the point almost of erasure, and still it struggles to be whole, present, giving. Growing in love, deepening in understanding. Cudjo's wisdom becomes so apparent, toward the end of his life, that neighbors ask him to speak to them in parables. Which he does. Offering peace.