Quotes about Understanding

Shallow believers prefer a shallow God.

It was lovely. Not to be stared at, not seen, but being pulled into view by the interested, uncritical eyes of the other.

And for a reason he still did not understand, he began to cry. Love plain, simple, and so fast it shattered him.

Not know it was hard;knowing it was harder

We will be judged by how well we love.

And then she knew. Her friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by excess.

She heard it as though it were what language was made for

The only way to own what I know is to write it and let you read it

Listen to me. You are about to find out what it takes, how the world is, how it works and how it changes when you are a parent.

At first the people in the town were frightened; they knew Shadrack was crazy but that did not mean that he didn't have any sense or, even more important, that he had no power. [...] Once the people understood the boundaries and nature of his madness, they could fit him, so to speak, into the scheme of things.

Wherever he was—on the porch, at the kitchen table, in the garden, in the living room reading—that's where the power and deference were. He didn't exert power; he assumed it. And it was in part from knowing him that I felt I could understand and create the men in Ruby—their easy assumption of uncontested authority.

Anna clung to him while he explained that the scorpion's tail was up because it was just as scared of her as she was of it. In Detroit, watching baby-faced police handling guns, she remembered the scorpion's rigid tail.