Quotes About Understanding

You don't feel a great deal of emotions for other people, do you? I was taken aback. What are you talking about? I said. Of course I do. Do you? He raised an eyebrow. I don't think so. It doesn't matter, he said, after a long, tense pause. I don't, either.

Maybe good luck was like bad luck in that it took a while to sink in.

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can never truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?

Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.

It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing.

But I didn't. And, in truth, it was maybe better that I didn't- I say that now, though it was something I regretted bitterly for a while. More than anything I was relieved that in my unfamiliar babbling-and-wanting-to-talk state I'd stopped myself from blurting the thing on the edge of my tongue, the thing I'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying it out loud to him in the street- which was, of course, I love you.

I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point. Are you happy here? I said at last. He considered this for a moment. Not particularly, he said. But you're not very happy where you are, either.

We stood looking at each other. It was raining. She looked at me with her rain-colored eyes.

then realized she wasn't there. Or—she was there and she wasn't. Part of her was there, but it was invisible. The invisible part was the important part. This was something I had never understood before. But when I tried to say this out loud the words came out in a muddle and I realized with a cold slap that I was wrong. Both parts had to be together. You couldn't have one part without the other.

And I'm hoping there's some larger truth about suffering here, or at least my understanding of it -- although I've come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand.

It's not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn't understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out. A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help.

Because: if our secret defines us, as opposed to the face we show the world: then the painting was the secret that raised me above the surface of life and enabled me to know who I am. And it's there: in my notebooks, every page, even though it's not. Dream and magic, magic and delirium. The Unified Field Theory. A secret about a secret.

It's not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn't understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out.

Deprendi miserum et

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.

I turned, painting in hand, to show it to her, and then realized she wasn't there. Or - she was there and she wasn't. Part of her was there, but it was invisible. The invisible part was the important part. This was something I hadn't understood before.

Boris shrugged. "Who cares? If he is good to you? None of us ever find enough kindness in the world, do we?

And—maybe it's ridiculous to go on in this vein, although it doesn't matter since no one's ever going to see this—but does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that we all lose everything that matters in the end—and yet to know as well, despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy?

Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?

great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.

I forgave him, a hundred times over, and never on the basis of anything more than this: a look, a gesture, a certain tilt of his head.

And I'm hoping there's some larger truth about suffering here, or at least my understanding of it – although I've come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand. What's

only truths that matter to me are the ones I don't, and can't, understand.

I felt I understood the secret grandeur of dying, all the knowledge held back from all humankind until the very end: