Quotes About Understanding

Kathleen is not heartless, you see," Helen murmured. "She feels very deep sorrow. It's only that she can't show it." Devon wasn't certain whether to thank or curse Helen for the revelations. He didn't want to feel any compassion for Kathleen. But the rejection by her parents at such a tender age would have been devastating. He understood all about the desire to avoid painful memories and emotions... the compelling need to keep certain doors closed.

I don't think they'll judge you severely, so long as they believe that you're not judging them. Just try to be sincere, and you should have no difficulty." "I have no talent for sincerity," West muttered.

Love was about seeing through to the truth of a person, and accepting all their shades of light and dark. Love was an ability.

I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.

Most men don't seem to get that telling a pissed-off woman to calm down is like throwing gunpowder on a fire." ~ Liberty Jones

Everyone should know what it's like to get a C.

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind

boundary blindness

But some men can only read their internal weather report and have no concept that another human might not want the same things they want.

Luna nodded at Greg, who returned the look with an embarrassed smile. Greg always seemed confused by his wife's behavior, as if she were an alien with entirely different customs from his.

An old man who listens is better than a young woman who doesn't.

Owen, however, saw past Luna's ordinary armor. He recognized a feral quality in her. He saw a girl roiling with secrets. And he would have paid good money to know a few of them.

What year is it?" "It's 2019." "Who is president?" "No." "I'll accept that answer. What's your name?" "Luna Grey.

He tried to remember, to repeat, to imprint in his brain, Luna's parting words of advice: People don't know what you think they know.

Julia edged closer, wondering what kind of vocabulary dogs understood. Frederico Fellini, her cat, was an intellectual and she could talk about books and films to him, as long as it was after he'd been fed, and fed well. She had the vague notion that dogs preferred football and politics.

She'd gone into the glass booth of the station to pay and the young man behind the counter was reading Anna Karenina and he turned the book over on the counter regretfully. She saw the big Russian saga drain out of his eyes as he took her in...she had watched as the gas attendant dragged himself from a cold night in Russia, full of passion and big fireplaces and lust. Back into the cold, lonely night of St. John's to take Helen's debit card, and she had felt motherly.

If the death of his mother was behind the curtain, John realized he was unequal to it. He knew he was just a kid and that he should not understand about being unequal to anything. Most people don't have to face that kind of realization until they were well out of childhood; he knew all that. But he had learned too early that you could be unequal to your situation.

Conclusions were necessary and she had come up with them.

His experience: everybody is afraid of something. Find out what everybody else is afraid of and go into that.

While we may love each other and never stop loving each other, so often we stop "showing" each other love.

All the people in your life are truly doing the best they can with what they have. People can only love you to the capacity that they are able to love themselves. They can only forgive and embrace you to the capacity that they are able to forgive and embrace themselves. They can only give you what they have the capacity to give. You may think that you deserve more, and you may be correct. But that means nothing if a person simply doesn't have the ability to give it to you.

Don't make your community and loved ones guess what you need. It's not fair to them. Instead, proactively tell them—in an uplifting way—how to love you.

The very place in scripture where we so often stop reading is precisely the place we need to deeply listen.

Oh. So that's what that is. Huh. Problem solved, I guess.