Quotes About Understanding

Somebody said, 'We are real only in moments of kindness.

Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll probably not remember. Involve me and I'll understand.

Dr. Kübler-Ross expanded on this theme in her 1961 book, On Death and Dying

Most people are only doing the best that they know how to do.Blaming and holding grudges only brings more pain.

Trump knew that he was being told something he did not fully comprehend, and instead of acknowledging that, he shouted down the teachers.

When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.

Words change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure.

130. We cannot read the darkness. We cannot read it. It is a form of madness, albeit a common one, that we try.

95. But please don't write again to tell me how you have woken up weeping. I already know how you are in love with your weeping.

WHAT IT IS It is what it is. But what is it? What it is— Some soft tautology whose terms are touch Time to give, time to give it up.

We ought to say a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by, quite as readily as we say a feeling of blue or a feeling of cold. We ought to, but we don't—or at least, we don't quite as readily. But the more you do, the more quickly you can recognize the feeling when it comes around again, and hopefully you won't need to stare as long.

When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light.

Exasperated, you finally said, 'You think I'm not worried too? Of course I'm worried. What I don't need is your worry on top of mine. I need your support

Psychology forces everything we call love into the pathological or the delusional or the biologically explicable, that if that I was feeling wasn't love then I am forced to admit that I don't know what love is, or, more simply, that I loved a bad man.

How does one get across the fact that the best way to find out how people fell about their gender or sexuality - or anything else, really - is to listen to what they tell you, and to try to treat them accordingly, without shellacking over their version of reality with yours?

In other words, she wanted it both ways. There is much to be learned from wanting something both ways.

Even identical genital acts mean very different things to different people. This is a crucial point to remember, and also a difficult one. It reminds us that there is difference right where we may be looking for, and expecting, communion.

The point wasn't that if the outer world were schooled appropriately re: the characters' preferred pronouns, everything would be right as rain. Because if the outsiders called the characters "he", it would be a different kind of he. Words change depending on who speaks them; there is no cure.

Once we name something, you said, we can never see it the same way again. All that is unnameable falls away, gets lost, is murdered. You called this the cookie-cutter function of our minds. You said that you knew this not from shunning language but from immersion in it, on the screen, in conversation, onstage, on the page.

How does one get across the fact that the best way to find out how people feel about their gender or their sexuality - or anything else, really - is to listen to what they tell you, and to try to treat them accordingly, without shellacking over their version of reality with yours?

Love is not consolation," she wrote. "It is light." All right then, let me try to rephrase. When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light.

How does one get across the fact that the best way to find out how people feel about their gender or sexuality - or anything else, really - is to listen to what they tell you, and to try to treat them accordingly, without shellacking over their version of reality with yours?

218. As her witness, I can testify to no reason, no lesson. But I can say this: in watching her, sitting with her, helping her, weeping with her, touching her, and talking with her, I have seen the bright pith of her soul. I cannot tell you what it looks like, exactly, but I can say that I have seen it.

We cannot read the darkness. We cannot read it. It is a form of madness, albeit a common one, that we try.