Quotes About Understanding

We live with an almost superstitious belief in our own differences, she said, and Luis has shown that those differences are not the result of some divine mystery but are merely the consequence of our lack of empathy, which if we had it would enable us to see that in fact we are all the same.

Mothers are such liars,' he said. 'Language is all they have. They fill you up with language if you let them.

The interesting ones are like islands, he said: you don't bump into them on the street or at a party, you have to know where they are and go to them by arrangement.

Supongo, añadí, que esa es una definición del amor, creer en algo que solo dos personas pueden ver.

He had, he said, attended every single event at the conference, even those conducted in languages he didn't understand: he felt the organisers would have been disappointed in him otherwise.

so for most people the act of reading symbolised intelligence, quite possibly because in that formative time they had not enjoyed or understood the books that they were obliged to read.

although I've noticed that the people who love children the most often respect them the least.

The problem was, the more complex he allowed his vision of life to become, the further he removed himself from his own capacity to act.

Like love, I said, being understood creates the fear that you will never be understood again.

I feel like my heart is talking to you all the time.

no longer interested in socialising; in fact, increasingly he found other people positively bewildering. The interesting ones are like islands, he said: you don't bump into them on the street or at a party, you have to know where they are and go to them by arrangement

It was hard to listen while you were talking. I had found out more by listening than I had ever thought possible.

We live with an almost superstitious belief in our own differences, she said, and Luís has shown that those differences are not the result of some divine mystery but are merely the consequence of our lack of empathy, which if we had it would enable us to see that in fact we are all the same.

Como en el amor, continué, que te entiendan crea el temor a que no vuelvan a entenderte jamás.

She had sat there, she said, and thought about her own lifelong habit of explaining herself, and she thought about this power of silence, which put people out of one another's reach.

Sometimes it has seemed to me that life is a series of punishments for such moments of unawareness, that one forges one's own destiny by what one doesn't notice or feel compassion for; that what you don't know and don't make the effort to understand will become the very thing you are forced into knowledge of.

I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see.

She wondered whether the books she loved consoled her precisely because they were the manifestations of her own isolation.

Foi então que se lembrou de que, provavelmente, Vicente nunca lera o Machado... Nem nada do que ela lia.

Em arte a gente não quer astúcias intelectuais, mas vida pulsando, embora sem saber como pulsa e por que pulsa

That's the thing about me. I prefer things once they're already over and I'm working on understanding them. I wish I were faster at that - like, I could understand things while they're happening - but I always have to read the whole book and write the entire paper before I even know what the hell I'm thinking.

not one parent in a hundred realizes the premature pangs endured by thirteen, fourteen and fifteen. It gets called Outgrowing Their Strength and anaemia and The Awkward Age, but is usually an actor or a schoolmistress, and the fact that these untested devotions are laughable and essentially insatiable doesn't detract from their pathos, or from the tolls they take.

You never learn the first time. You always have to get hit twice before you see it coming." He was seeing now what he'd seen that first night at Pure. A bright shiny light he wanted to catch in his hands and hold forever. If she let him.

It was best not to ask too many questions. Especially since you'd get the answers. And the answers were usually followed by a tightening of Kate's forehead and a tick in her left eye. The tightening could cause wrinkles, the tick a tumor, and Kate didn't need to borrow that kind of trouble.