Quotes About Understanding

It's the reward of the business, to look history in the eye and say, 'I know who you are. You can't fool me.

How quickly I judge, and therefore diminish their humanity.

If all we do is immerse ourselves in the stories of bad people doing bad things to each other and the planet, we will sink under the weight of a lopsided story.

Does that mean you

Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.

truthfully, this is the fabric of all my fantasies: love shown not by a kiss or a wild look or a careful hand but by a willingness for research. i don't dream of someone who understands me immediately, who seems to have known me my entire life, who says, i know me too. i want someone keen to learn my own strange organization, amazed at what's revealed; someone who asks, and then what, and then what?

but you can't spend your whole life hoping people will ask you the right questions. you must learn to love and answer the questions they already ask.

This is why you need everyone you know after a disaster, because there is not one right response. It's what paralyzes people around the grief-stricken, of course, the idea that there are right things to say and wrong things and it's better to say nothing than something clumsy.

Despite popular theories, I believe people fall in love based not on good looks or fate but on knowledge. Either they are amazed by something a beloved knows that they themselves do not know; or they discover a common rare knowledge; or they can supply knowledge to someone who's lacking. Hasn't everyone found a strange ignorance in someone beguiling? . . .Nowadays, trendy librarians, wanting to be important, say, Knowledge is power. I know better. Knowledge is love.

I didn't know what it was I was feeling. Then I realized it was seeing someone and knowing immediately that you love him.

but a library is a gorgeous language that you will never speak fluently.

But people do not always want peace as much as they want their own way.

The things that were so bad, that hurt so. If I forget them, if I forget such things still happen, how can I help others? My scars prove that I know myself what others suffer.

If you cannot read it, how could you catalog it?

I sorrow for your suffering, and I am sorry for my early arrogance, that assumed no one else had also suffered

knows you're beyond yeoman level in your knowledge

And so we were friends of a sort once more. We began to talk, stiltedly at first, but then with more ease. We had, after all, many interests in common. And if there was still a deep reserve, if fingers about to brush moved hastily apart, and if our eyes did not linger but met and winced away from hurt, outwardly, at least, there was tranquillity. I slept the better for it.

ed. now. picking at the scab that was starting to heal over. why did guys do that? too little too late?

but i was young, and i got so cross. in the early days we made up easily. had fun making up, in fact.

i'm not sure either of them had a great capacity for love, that was all. it's funny - mine feels bottomless.

Men are so easy to manipulate, poor things.

His lips parted, but long years of experience with Ramses, and to some extent, Emerson, had taught me how to turn a conversation into a monologue.

Don't sound so surprised. I have sensible moments, you know.

I knew the answer, and--of course--so did Ramses. He has superb breath control and always gets in ahead of me.