Quotes About Understanding

He'd learned many years ago that the loud and overemotional meant loud and overemotional, not right.

That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.

It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn't drama.

Funny the only two times we use the phrase "seeing someone" are when we are referring to being in a a relationship or getting psychological help.

But, finally, I had to open my eyes. I had to stop keeping secrets. The truth, thankfully, is insistent. What I saw then made action necessary. I had to see people for who they were. I had to understand why I made the choices I did. Why I had given them my loyalty. I had to make changed. I had to stop allowing love to be dangerous. I had to learn how to protect myself. But first… I had to look

Sometimes you're sure dogs have some secret, superior intelligence, and other times you know they're only their simple, goofy selves.

The most basic and somehow forgettable thing is this: Love is not pain. Love is goodness.

My subconscious speaks in a foreign language.

I began to learn the importance of lifting things up and looking underneath.

Maybe we all just wanted someone to believe in. That's all each of us wanted, and it should be so simple, but it never was simple.

You could try and understand people, you could read books and understand words and concepts and ideas, but you could never understand enough or have enough knowledge to keep away the surprises that both fate and human beings had in store.

I tended to give a book a chance and another chance and another, sometimes seeing it all the way to the end, still hoping for for it turn out different. Maybe I was confused about what you owed a book. What you owed people, for that matter, real or fictional.

Most of our parents wanted the best for us, I knew, but we also wanted the best for them.

Another person is, at the heart of it, unknowable. And if you cannot know a person enough to always guess what they're capable of, you certainly cannot know them enough to hold them in your hands, to control their behavior, to fight, manipulate, cajole or nurse or soothe them into doing what they should or shouldn't. People will do what they will do. The trick is admitting your own helplessness about that little fact.

I am beginning to think there are two kinds of people," she said. I waited. "Those who forgive themselves too easily but will not forgive others." "And?" I asked. "Those that forgive others too easily but will not forgive themselves.

Hannah and Kayla are talking without saying anything. Their conversation goes like this: Hannah: Uh-huh. Kayla: It was like, ugh! Hannah: I know. Kayla: Shit. Come on! Hannah: Well, you know, whatever. Kayla: I guess, but still. Hannah: Yeah. Kayla: You know? Hannah: Yeah.

Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up.

This is not to say I don't feel my own grief, which can hit powerfully at unexpected times. It's just that the telling does not automatically bring on my own upset, as people assume. I deal more with their reaction than they do with mine, and so you have to choose your timing.

She doesn't bother to tell him that he should not be sorry, that he is not responsible for any of those things. She doesn't bother because they are both chronic apologizers, and chronic apologizers know that sorry is also just sorrow for the general state of the world.

More than anything, I like just being there while he works, doing what he knows to do, in his own place.

You have the ability to just go on and forget people and how much they are meant, but I don't. You can people in their own little boxes and leave them there. So much for love. So much for soul mates. I'm sorry you don't want to believe the best or how I can change. You put a stake through the heart. I'm the only one who cared enough to suffer like this.

Us frogs understand this.

There's a Reasonable Explanation' is definitely a place you can go, a destination.

You knew me. You KNOW me. I can't imagine my life without you, without someone who knows me that well.