I Didn't Understand Quotes

#1. So I think, if September 11 taught us anything, it taught us that we're vulnerable, and vulnerable in ways that we didn't fully understand.

Condoleezza Rice

#2. I didn't know then what a sperm was, and so wouldn't understand his answer for several years. "My boy," he said, "you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles
champions every one.

Kurt Vonnegut

#3. Sigh. These were my people now that I was a writer, people who didn't understand anything. I mean, they understood perfectly the thing I cared most about - books - but basically were moron-level elsewhere.

Claire Dederer

#4. My name's Todd but I changed it in the first grade because there was another kid named Todd and I didn't understand that that was possible.

T. J. Miller

#5. As a kid, I saw that Dad lost a lot of money in casinos, and I didn't understand that. I thought this must be a great business. At the same time, I saw when I was with him - and I was with him a lot of the time - that this was a really cool business, and it was fun and glamorous.

James Packer

#6. I didn't know what was going on, didn't understand a bit of it, didn't like any of it. Maybe that's why the first thing I packed was my guns. If your brain won't work, wave a gun around. Sometimes that helps.

James Crumley

#7. Yeah, it had a blah, blah, blah, with its blahdity, blah, blah. Then there was the blah, blah blah." Of course, he used words for the "blah blahs", but I didn't understand a single one of them.

Kristen Ashley

#8. I have tried to understand what crucifixion must feel like. I just know that the pain must be beyond what I have ever experienced. I respect, love, and trust the One who endured all this when He didn't have to. I understand Jesus with my heart, and the rest of the world can think of Him as it will.

Marina Nemat

#9. I feel like people didn't understand where I was about to go. And a lot of people still don't.

Mike Posner

#10. Your key concerns at that stage?"

"Well, Miss LaRoux had a party she didn't want to miss, and I - "

"Major, you don't seem to understand the seriousness of your situation."

"Sure I do. What the hell do you think our key concerns were?

Amie Kaufman

#11. I figured Katie was likely swimming in blood. Ick. I looked at the moon and judged that the bloodletting took over two hours before Sabina called a halt by saying words I didn't understand, in French, or Latin, or Mandarin for all I knew.

Faith Hunter

#12. I didn't understand how someone could be God and the devil. How the same person could destroy you and save you."

- Sam Roth

Maggie Stiefvater

#13. Then he said, "Always follow your first instinct about a person, baby girl, and you won't go wrong." At first I didn't understand what he meant. So I asked him. He just told to me to be careful of whom I trust. Make sure that the people you keep close to you are worthy of the trust you give them.

Sha Cole

#14. Some people thought I was crazy to have let go of all the worldly things I had "achieved." They didn't understand that I didn't want or need any of that anymore.

Eckhart Tolle

#15. James Bond was an early favourite, although I didn't understand much of it. I read the Bible a lot, too. You might say that this was my favourite, since I seemed to read it so often.

Philip Kerr

#16. Whatever I experienced in the world that I didn't understand I'd invent a story and workout my understanding of something through the story.

Lisa Alther

#17. Is it crazy to say that I sometimes don't understand what I write but I write it anyway, because maybe someone, somewhere, somehow, would feel what I didn't?

Nema Al-Araby

#18. He didn't necessarily think that it was okay, but when a psychiatrist says 'okay', it just means 'I understand what you're saying.

Francois Lelord

#19. It seems you didn't understand me," Rakel said, adjusting her grip on his hand. She had to spit the words out around the pain that tore through her. "When I say that love is pure, I mean it stands unrivaled in its power.

K.M. Shea

#20. I was raised Christian after age 5, but I didn't really understand it until high school. A friend of mine invited me to his youth group. There I heard the gospel, understood it, and accepted it.

Francis Chan

#21. When I first got into technology I didn't really understand what open source was. Once I started writing software, I realized how important this would be.

Matt Mullenweg

#22. I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it'd take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn't want to retreat.

Dave Grohl

#23. I was late to the Internet. I didn't really understand what it was. I didn't know what an email was.

Bill Callahan

#24. And your excuse?' I asked.
'I'm a sociopath; I don't have to be nice,' Nicky said.
I gave him a look.
'You're mad at him.I can feel it; which means I really don't have to be nice to him.'
'I thought you were friends.'
'What part of sociopath didn't you understand?' he asked.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#25. I go to restaurants and the groups always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us "Yesterday." He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing "I Am The Walrus.

John Lennon

#26. Women are in a position now to voice their opinion ... women are getting empowered. The more power they get, the more voice they get to shift certain things around. Now I have a daughter, I understand. When I didn't have a daughter, I didn't understand.

Snoop Dogg

#27. I had done some flimflam movies, but I didn't understand what being an actor meant anymore.

Liam Neeson

#28. I loved all the parts of him, even the ones I didn't understand.

Judy Blundell

#29. I don't understand," Holden said. "If you didn't do this, then who did?"
"See now, that's a good question, on several levels. Depending on what you mean by 'this.

James S.A. Corey

#30. I didn't understand how funny this play Much Ado About Nothing truly was until I became an English teacher and had to teach it. There is no wittier dialogue anywhere.

Dan Brown

#31. There are many things I've written that I didn't really understand until a long time later.

Harry Mathews

#32. I head someone say once that passionate people live violent lives. At the time I didn't really get it but if what they meant was the way love waits in ambush traps your well trained sense of control and tortures you into a confession you'd just as soon not make I now understand.

Jay Kopelman

#33. I didn't understand the living fascination with a world of perfected dead.

Darin Bradley

#34. The way I remember it the tribe got paid some huge amount."
"That's what they said to him. He said, What can you pay for the way a man lives? He said, What can you pay for the way a man is? They didn't understand.

Ken Kesey

#35. Growing up, I just wanted to be like everyone else. I didn't value or understand the beauty in being different at the time in my life.

Marisol Nichols

#36. She became uncharacteristically silent, and I suppressed a chuckle. I knew exactly what Jax's body looked like. All of it. It didn't compare to Tristan's, but I could understand why Blossom would be impressed. The man-croc lacked nothing excpect hair

Kristie Cook

#37. I didn't understand that when I closed myself to her, I took a part of her bitterness inside me. It was green and unforgiving, and as it grew it made me more like her. It gave me my strength, but it gave me my weakness as well.

Alice Hoffman

#38. But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.

Haruki Murakami

#39. I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

Jamaica Kincaid

#40. Even though I am the daughter of a poet, and my stepmother is also a poet, growing up, I didn't think I could understand poetry; I didn't think that it had any relevance to my life, the feelings that I endured on a day-to-day basis, until I was introduced to the right poem.

Natasha Trethewey

#41. I didn't understand what it was about men - not all men, but a good portion of them - that turned a good, solid "NO" into an "I'm just playing coy; try harder.

Nenia Campbell

#42. I remember telling my friends I wish I had stayed in school and they didn't understand: "You've got all this money and everything you want." But it wasn't about the money. It was about how I felt right then.

Chris Bosh

#43. I liked his voice, rich and unself-conscious even when he forgot words and hummed to fill in the gap. What I didn't understand, I imagined, and thus it became a love song.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

#44. If I were to say that I grew up in East Los Angeles in the projects poor, I assumed that everybody understood that it came with its own reasons for being the way I am. I didn't get that people needed to understand where my comedy came from; I thought that they knew that. Now I tell people.

Carlos Mencia

#45. For that matter I didn't understand Civil War reenactments. Why would you celebrate the biggest thing you ever lost? I quickly learned not to give voice to such skepticisms, and when asked if I was a Yankee I said I didn't follow baseball closely. That usually shut the person up.

Patricia Cornwell

#46. The reason we did 'Land of a Thousand Dances' and 'Gloria' on 'Horses' was because I liked repetitious, three-chord rock songs, but I didn't understand that I could write my own. I didn't realize that you could use those chords a million times.

Patti Smith

#47. For years, despite having impeccable taste, I didn't understand how to convey that I had impeccable taste

Courtney Love

#48. I was quite convinced that I didn't want to be a lawyer. But I felt that law school would be a useful way to understand public policy and to understand business in this environment.

Kevin Warsh

#49. She didn't understand what it was like to be filled with a love so strong that it made your chest ache - a love you could only feel and not express. Keeping love buried was a lot like keeping anger pent up, I'd learned. It just ate you up inside until you wanted to scream or kick something.

Richelle Mead

#50. I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it's really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, 'Well, I didn't like the love story,' but it was probably just too long.

Louis Leterrier

#51. Is not seeing any ugly parts in myself an ugly part? Is not wanting to forgive someone's ugly parts an ugly part in oneself?
Yeah. I didn't understand a word you said, but yeah.

Francisco X Stork

#52. Obviously this was one of those stupid guy moments and he didn't understand what I wanted. I was going to explain it to him very, very soon.
-Abbey

Jessica Verday

#53. When my family fell apart, it was such a troubled part of my life ... I think I could understand what I was going through, but I didn't have the vocabulary for it.

Walter Dean Myers

#54. In many Asian households, to not go on to higher education, that's like a big no-no. I know my parents' discouragement was for my own protection, and I'm really close to them now, but they didn't understand that there is value in this. That's because they didn't know.

Sandra Oh

#55. What do you love, Ari? What do you really love?"
"I love the desert. God, I love the desert."
"It's so lonely."
"Is it?"
Dante didn't understand. I was unknowable.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#56. There was something I couldn't do and something I didn't understand. There were secrets and there was darkness, there were shady dealings and there was laughter that jeered at everything. Oh, I sensed it, but I knew nothing about it. Nothing.

Karl Ove Knausgard

#57. He was a mystery that - for reasons I didn't quite understand - I felt desperate to solve.

Jennifer E. Smith

#58. At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience," confounded me.
I didn't understand why we couldn't just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then

Alison Bechdel

#59. I didn't understand how you could be an actor if you didn't also study philosophy and study political science, astronomy. And also just go out and live life and have experiences.

Brit Marling

#60. Do you understand the difference between dying for something and dying for nothing? The only reason I fought so hard to stay alive in China was because I didn't want to die for nothing. Today I can die for something - my way, my choice.

Jack Bauer

#61. I love Taxi Driver. When I saw it the first time, I didn't understand it, but I loved it because I thought the guy was really cool when he's talking to himself in the mirror.

Vincent Paronnaud

#62. William made an ejaculation in his own language that I didn't understand, nor did the abbot understand it, and perhaps it was best for us both, because the word William uttered had an obscene hissing sound.

Umberto Eco

#63. Look, whenever I hear or read I'm beautiful, I simply don't understand it ... I'm certainly not beautiful in any conventional way. I didn't make my career on beauty.

Audrey Hepburn

#64. When I first tried to get a record deal for my original music, labels didn't understand what these instruments were meant to be doing

Suzanne Ciani

#65. There were too many things suddenly that I didn't understand, and I didn't know what to do about it. I knew that I needed to be older, but that's not enough. You have to have some basic information that was not yet available to me.

Fred Chappell

#66. No. You hurt people because you didn't have any idea what love really was. You were trying to understand it in the only way you knew how. It's horrible, yes. But it's forgivable. I forgive you. I forgive a thousand worse things you may have done. I can forgive anything.

Laurelin Paige

#67. I was very confused. I didn't understand the difference between rebellion against God and rebellion against the system that's not God.

Lauryn Hill

#68. Ivan gabbled something in Shu that I didn't understand. The giant just laughed.
"You speak Shu like a tourist," he said.

Leigh Bardugo

#69. I was struck by - Einstein's a fascinating figure who didn't have any instruments that he used, he didn't use telescopes, he used his mind to try to understand the universe.

Jonathan Nolan

#70. For years, I believed that God had been in motion on rare occasions and during biblical times, but I didn't understand that God never stops working on my behalf.

Jeff Leake

#71. I didn't understand at all that the memories accumulated during years of happiness could weigh enough to balance so large a loss, or that the mind will sometimes find a way to free the heart from pain.

Eric Kraft

#72. Me being in my grandmother's yard in Brooklyn. I must have been about 3. I had this red balloon. I let go of it, and it went up into the sky and just kept going and going. I completely flipped out, because I didn't understand why.

Lenny Kravitz

#73. Until I went to rehab, I didn't understand what it did.

Aaron Neville

#74. What I didn't understand, all those years when I was waiting for my life to start, was that it had already started. I was already living it! Those were the most important years, and I didn't even know it.

Lee Smith

#75. I was bullied every day at school because I carried a briefcase. I could have left it at home. But I thought it looked great! I didn't understand why anyone else didn't think so.

Tom Ford

#76. You know, you're too pretty for me to leave you on the couch like that," he said, pulling me toward him. I didn't know that, but I did understand then that there was no such thing as safe, only safer; that this, if it didn't happen now, would happen later but not better.

Danielle Evans

#77. I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn't understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls.

Beth Ditto

#78. I think a successful adaptation rises or falls on the work presented. If people need to read the book to understand the play, I didn't complete the job.

Jeff Britting

#79. They weren't tears of sadness or even tears of joy. I was just overflowing. Like so many things since I'd been here, I didn't yet understand it, but I felt it.

Elizabeth Bard

#80. Only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn't unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn't want to.

John Green

#81. Adam had chosen me, and this I didn't understand. Why had he fallen for me? It didn't make sense.

Gayle Forman

#82. I could add her to the long list of people I didn't understand.

Charlaine Harris

#83. I didn't understand why I could not control myself despite my best intentions.

Rachel Reiland

#84. I love to think. I once considered taking drugs as an attempt to better understand an altered state of mind; however, I decided not to. I didn't want to chance ruining the machine.

Richard Feynman

#85. You have to understand - I grew up being told by my parents that the best way to get out of a sticky situation was to assume it didn't exist," he said. "Let the rumors fly ... if the family isn't bothered, why should anyone else be?

Jodi Picoult

#86. We unify. We include."
"But humans like being individuals."
"We know," Rue said. He pushes off the ground with his foot, starting the swing into a slow sway. "We didn't understand-individuals like being lonely."
"It's not lonely." Hopefully he can't tell I'm lying.

Josin L. McQuein

#87. I did Star 80, which was a magnificent experience as well, but still, I was at the height of my career at the beginning. Then I had to jump down the ladder and climb back up again, which I didn't understand. That was very hard.

Mariel Hemingway

#88. I'm sorry, Sera. I never understood before. Not really."
"I wish you didn't have to understand now.

Jennifer A. Nielsen

#89. The only time I did not know how to be, physically, was when I lost a lot of weight. That was the only time I didn't understand my body.

Dawn French

#90. I didn't understand him. I mean, he was speaking English, and I understood the words, but I was confused. "What do you mean? What are you doing?

Gayla Twist

#91. I didn't truly understand the depth of my roots until I was old enough to wonder and care.

Aeriel Miranda

#92. I could understand a world where she was in Nepal, though I couldn't figure out why she didn't text me back. I could understand a world where she was distant but not lost. I couldn't understand a world without her.

Amy Zhang

#93. When I used to theorize about a nuclear standoff, I didn't really have to understand what was happening inside the Soviet Union. It is a lot harder now to build a theory that can encompass all the complications of today's conflicts.

Thomas Schelling

#94. I think it would be very scary and very confusing if I didn't understand where people are coming from, but I've felt the exact same way for so many other bands, growing up. It's not really a big deal.

Jon Crosby

#95. People talk about games and loneliness - it's a lonely activity. I didn't understand that. 'Gears of War' was the first multiplayer game for me that I enjoyed. But I wasn't sad. I liked being alone. I liked playing games by myself. I had lots of companionship at the house.

Tim Schafer

#96. For a long time ... I've been asking myself this question ... Am I a memory? Are you ... a memory? Are we just ... a collection of memories? I've always been waiting ... for the person who disappeared beyond those rails. Now I understand. It didn't end here. This place ... was just the beginning.

Yuuki Obata

#97. They didn't understand what they were doing.
I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.

Michael Crichton

#98. [Hilary] ... after you left, I didn't understand what had happened. David, I don't hate you and I don't blame you. I don't think you were happy, and I wasn't that happy either. We were just coasting, seeing what would happen, and then you pulled the plug. Right?

Janice Y.K. Lee

#99. Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
prostitute
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, whores don't want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that's why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn't understand
much
else.

Charles Bukowski

#100. I was able to go from stage hand to floor manager to assistant director to director in a year because there was just no one else to do it and what I didn't realise and what people don't understand now about television is that we used to do about five shows a day.

Richard Lester