Quotes About Understanding

I decided then and there never to become someone who told jokes when explanations were impossible.

I couldn't explain my need to myself, and that's why it was such a beautiful need

Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is.

I did not feel that he owed it to me. And I did not feel like I owed it to him. We owed it to each other, which is something different.

She always saw through him, as if he were just another window. She always felt that she knew everything about him that could be known. Not that he was simple, but that he was knowable, like a list of errands, like an encyclopedia.

Everyone has a pipeline through which he pushes what he is willing and able to share of himself out into the world, and through which he takes in all of the world that he is willing and able to bear. Max's conduit wasn't bigger than anyone else's, it was simply unclogged. What

I asked her why she was getting so upset about such a small thing. She said, 'It doesn't feel small to me.

I knew that we were sharing something with our eyes, but I didn't know what, and I didn't know if it mattered.

Is this why you think you are chosen by God, because only you can understand the funnies that you make about yourself?

Before you rush off trying to see everything you can, educate yourself.

I couldn't tell what he was feeling, because I couldn't speak the language of his feelings.

I went to my grandmother... and asked her to write a letter. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me. What kind of letter? my grandmother asked. I told her to write whatever she wanted to write. You want a letter from me? she asked. I told her yes. Oh, God bless you, she said.

I have witnessed Grandfather cry, and I implore myself to say that I desire to never witness him cry again. If this signifies that I must do things for him so that he will not cry, then I will do those things. If this signifies that I must not look when he cries, then I will not look.

There are only so many times that you can utter 'It does not hurt' before it begins to hurt more than the hurt. You become enlightened of the feeling of hurt, which is worse, I am certain, than the existent hurt.

Most people behave badly when wounded. If you can remember the wounds, it is far more possible to forgive the behavior.

Fish are divided from us by surfaces and silence.

Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person

I invented a book that listed every word in every language. It wouldn't be a very useful book, but you could hold it and know that everything you could possibly say was in your hands.

What's it about? she asked. It's about love. She laughed. They're all about love.

I said, not knowing what the next words out of my mouth would be, but wanting them to be mine, wanting, more than I'd ever wanted anything, to express the center of me to and be understood.

None of my pets know their own names, what kind of person am I?

Do you know that I am the Gypsy girl and you are Safran, and that I am Kolker and you are Brod, and that I am your grandmother and you are Grandfather, and that I am Alex and you are you, and that I am you and you are me? Do you not comprehend that we can bring each other safety and peace? When we were under the stars in Trachimbrod, did you not feel it then? Do not present not-truths to me. Not to me.

At first I thought I'd walked into a tree, but then that tree became a person, who was also recovering on the ground, and then I saw that it was her and she saw that it was me...

Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children and children are always smarter than their parents.