Quotes About Understanding

He wished he knew what to say to make her feel better, but the truth was, he didn't feel all that great himself and he didn't know if there were even any words in the English language to take away this kind of stunning shock, this understanding that the world isn't the place you thought it was.

We sit for a few more moments, although there's really nothing left to say. This is new to me, too, an entire conversation that takes place in silence, because the heart has its own language. I will remember what Eric says even though he doesn't say a word. I will tell it to her.

For the first time in my life I begin to understand how a parent might hit a child ..it's because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn't.

To be fair, I am not the same man. The one who listened. The one who believed her.

It's not because I don't want to hurt Delia's feelings. It's because when she is bruised, I'm the one who aches.

So much of marriage was implicit and nonverbal. Had I gotten so complacent I'd forgotten to communicate?

I realize that I quite like this girl. It's not just that she's so pretty the words fly out of my mind before they can leave my mouth—it's that when we're chatting, I feel like I've known her all my life.

I write because it's a way of puzzling out answers to situations in the world that I don't understand. The act of writing a book gives me the same experience that I hope reading it gives readers. It forces me to sort through the various points of view on a given issue or situation and ultimately come to a conclusion. Doing that might not change my mind, but it almost always gives me a stronger sense of why my opinion is what it is—a question we rarely ask ourselves.

Teachers deserve respect, I explain. Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it? I blink at him, speechless. Because the world isn't fair, I think, but Jacob already knows that better than most of us.

Like Connor, Alex protected me -and he was the only person I let close enough to do it. Like Connor, Alex could finish my sentences before I did. But unlike Connor, for whom I had ultimately come too late, I was just in time to take care of Alex.

I sigh. "But if you'd talked to Jules—if she could hear you . . ." My voice trails off. "Then you wouldn't feel quite so crazy?" Oliver asks gently. "Can't you believe in me, if I believe in you?

transgender?" "I like to think about it in terms of handedness," Dr. Powers explains. "If I asked you to sign your name with your nondominant hand, it would feel weird. If I asked you to describe it to me, you'd probably say things like the pen doesn't fit comfortably in my hand; or it's awkward; or I have to try hard to make legible something that I can do with my other hand effortlessly. It feels forced.

Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.

Being a mother gives you a singular sort of vision, a prism through which you can see your child with many different faces all at once. It is the reason you can watch him shatter a ceramic lamp, and still remember him as an angel.

You don't have to say I love you to say I love you.

Joseph Obomsawin, the elder I lived with there, says that those who turn to animals do so because humans have let them down.

In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises.

Sometimes all it take to become human again is someone who can see you that way, no matter how you present on the surface.

But no one ever said yes to make sex consensual. You took hints from body language, from the way two people came together. Why...didn't a shake of the head or a hand pushing hard against a chest speak just as loudly? Why did you have to actually say the word no for it to be rape?

A lot of people have opinions, but I don't think they ever ask themselves why their opinions are what they are.

She lashed out because when you hurt someone else, you're less likely to feel your own pain.

But identification is not the same as knowing someone through and through—the man you fell in love with years ago might look the same and speak the same and smell the same yet be completely different.

That's overcompensating, and that's just as bad," I say. "Your say you don't see color … but that's all you see. You're so hyperaware of it, and trying to look like you aren't prejudiced, you can't even understand that when you say race doesn't matter all I hear is you dismissing what I've felt, what I've lived, what it's like to be put down because of the color of my skin.

Logically, I understand that it wasn't Edward's fault my family fell apart after he left. But when you're eleven years old, you don't give a flip about logic. You just really miss holding your big brother's hand.