Quotes About Understanding

Everyone is doing what they have to do, and everyone is doing the best they can. And soon you will be going home.

At some point I asked her if she was at peace with the idea of dying. She looked at me like I was stupid and insane. "No," she said. "I want to live." You idiot! would have finished the sentence nicely. It was one of the only times she seemed really disappointed in me. I realized I had learned everything I know about death from movies. There is no peace in dying.

these moments you wonder what you are teaching their kids, and your own. Then you realize you are teaching them the truth about America.

The emotional garbage I had carried all of those years - the prejudice and the denial, the shame and the guilt - was dissolved by understanding that the Other is not other at all.

The delusion lies in the fact that no matter how well we think we know the Other, we still judge from within the imprisoning framework of our own limited cultural criteria, we still speak within the cliché of the stereotype." That

Eventually, some black thinkers believe, this separation may be the shortest route to an authentic communication at some future date when blacks and whites can enter into encounters in which they truly speak as equals and in which the white man will no longer load every phrase with unconscious suggestions that he has something to concede to black men or that he wants to help black men overcome their blackness.

Some whites, who had never really understood, were offended by this sudden death of their role as the "good white leading the poor black out of the jungle." Many of these were among the saddest people of our time, good-hearted whites who had dedicated themselves to helping black people become imitation whites, to "bringing them up to our level," without ever realizing what a deep insult this attitude can be.

He showed me the lowest. I had to surmise the highest.

If we could only put ourselves in the shoes of others to see how we would react, then we might become aware of the injustice of discrimination and the tragic inhumanity of every kind of prejudice.

I told them good night and returned to my room, less lonely and warmed by the brief contact with others like me who felt the need to be reassured that an eye could show something besides suspicion or hate

You don't spell it, son. You eat it.

Logic is relative.

How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.

If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?

I think about you more and more, but I don't waste my time - or yours - thinking about who you were before I knew you.

there is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old…

It's natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you can't interfere with people you love anymore than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know.

Don't you understand?" he would say, "You imagine the story better than I remember it.

You're nice,' Cushie told him, squeezing his hand. 'And you're my oldest friend.' But they both must have known that you can know someone all your life and never quite be friends.

My dear boy, Miss Frost said sharply. My dear boy, please don't put a label on me - don't make a category before you get to know me!

Don't get your balls crossed about it.

All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior to them - don't put them down.

Women know when men don't desire them: ghosts and witches, deities and demons, angels of death—even virgins, even ordinary women. They always know; women can tell when you have stopped desiring them.

He wanted to take Homer Wells in his arms, and hug him, and kiss him, but he could only hope that Homer understood how much Dr. Larch's self-esteem was dependent on his self-control.