Quotes About Conflict

As far as I was concerned, we'd come to a draw: I hadn't wanted to come, and she didn't want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn't see it that way. Lately, we didn't seem to see anything the same.

And so we stood there in the kitchen, my mother and I, facing off over everything that had built up since June, when I was willing to hand myself over free and clear. Now I needed her to return it all to me, with the faith that I could make my own way.

Like so many before them, they didn't care that my dad was only the messenger. They still wanted to shoot him.

You didn't have to take a punch for me, you know,' he said. 'I'm a lover, not a fighter.' 'You're a freak is what you are,' I said.

I mean, at least with an argument, you know what's happening. Or have some idea. Silence is...it could be anything.

A united front announcing a split.

The World, she said, is chock full of bitchy girls.

I'd said I didn't always tell the truth, that I didn't handle conflict well, that anger scared me, that I was used to people just disappearing when they were mad.

Peor que los gritos? ?Mucho peor ?dijo, asintiendo con la cabeza?. Mira, en una discusión, al menos, sabes qué es lo que está pasando. O tienes una idea. El silencio es... Puede ser cualquier cosa. Es tan... ?Tan ensordecedor... ?terminé por él [...]. ?Exactamente.

Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.

I sat quiet, silent, angry, refusing to grieve, because it seemed like to do so would be giving everyone what the wanted.

It was easier to just be mad at my mom; sympathy and empathy are complicated things.

Make enemies if you have to- and you will- but always make sure the most powerful stay your friends.

Lucus? She found him on the bed in the master suite, lying with his arms crossed behind his head, glaring at the ceiling as though it had done him wrong in some way.

the enemy of our enemy our friend?

My thesis is that at many levels of human interaction there is the opportunity to conflate discomfort with threat, to mistake internal anxiety for exterior danger, and in turn to escalate rather than resolve.

If a person cannot solve a conflict with a friend, how can they possibly contribute to larger efforts for peace? If we refuse to speak to a friend because we project our anxieties onto an email they wrote, how are we going to welcome refugees, immigrants, and the homeless into our communities? The values required for social repair are the same values required for personal repair.

The title of this book, Conflict Is Not Abuse, recommends mutual accountability in a culture of underreaction to abuse and overreaction to conflict.

After Dickinson and Adams had it out over the Olive Branch Petition, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that he and Dickinson "are not to be on speaking terms." How sad is it that this tiff sort of cheers me up? If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along?

History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

While technically Maryland remained in the Union during the Civil War, it was the border state, a schizophrenic no-man's-land with the North at its door and the South in its heart.

If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along?

All those adorable towheaded kids in the promotional film are going to turn thirteen. Once a family member hits puberty, odds are that everybody is not going to have the same ideals. Unless everybody gets together and agrees that the new ideals involve turning the front yard into a skate ramp and officially changing Dad's name to Fuckhead.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.