Top 100 Quotes About What You Don't Understand
#1. What you pretend to be is so complicated that I don't even bother to try to understand it.
Miguel Ruiz
#2. [...] it seems you don't understand that words are the labels we stick on things, not the things themselves, you'll never know what the things are really like, nor even what their real names are, because the names you gave them are just that, the names you gave them [...]
Jose Saramago
#3. And, anyway, friendship is different in another language; a foreign friend doesn't have to understand what you feel, and I don't expect it. It's enough if he understands what you just said.
Michael Chabon
#4. 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
#5. In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.
Anton Chekhov
#6. You see, the richest people I know don't always understand what is going on. They don't always like what they see. But they have a quiet confidence that God will put all things together for their good.
Phil Callaway
#8. The best advice I can give anybody is to try to understand who you are and what you want to do, and don't be afraid to go down that road and do whatever it takes and work as hard as you have to work to achieve that.
Sally Ride
#9. And tomorrow
who knows what happens? Do you get it? I don't know and no one knows
it's all unknown! You understand, that this is the end to the Known? This is the new, the improbable, the unpredictable.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
#10. I know I still affect you, and damn baby girl, you just don't understand what you still do to me.
Toni Aleo
#11. Don't expect a time in your life when you'll be free from change, free from struggle, free from worry. To be resilient, you must understand that your objective is not to come to rest, because there is no rest. Your objective is to use what hits you to change your trajectory in a positive direction.
Eric Greitens
#12. People don't understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.
Billie Holiday
#13. The biggest advice is being true to what you want to do. Don't worry if other people understand it or don't understand it. If what you're doing has merit, it will find its way.
Dean Koontz
#14. If you can't explain what you are doing to a nine-year-old, then either you still don't understand it very well, or it's not all that worthwile in the first place.
Albert Einstein
#15. I think [aging] has nothing to recommend it. You don't gain any wisdom as the years go by. You fall apart, is what happens. People try and put a nice varnish on it, and say, well, you mellow. You come to understand life and accept things. But you'd trade all of that for being 35 again.
Woody Allen
#16. I don't even understand why I have 1.7 million Twitter followers. Every day, I want to remind them and say, "Do you realize I'm an astrophysicist? Do you know what you're doing here?"
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
#17. Now I understand - how sleep allows you to forget, but your pain wakes with the dawn, worse because for a split second you don't remember what you've suffered.
Amy Engel
#18. What people don't understand is when punk started it was so innocent and not aware of being looked at or being a phenomenon and that's what everyone gets wrong. You can't consciously create something that's important, it's a combination of chemistry, conditions, the environment, everything.
Siouxsie Sioux
#19. 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
#20. John Maynard Keynes essentially said, don't try and figure out what the market is doing. Figure out a business you understand, and concentrate.
Warren Buffett
#21. Whatever your pleasure, I can facilitate. You need weed, you need meth- hey, you need Prozac, I'm your man. I know how you white boys always deal with that depression. I mean me personally, I don't understand what you white boys are all depressed about. Hey, you're white! Smile!
Chris Rock
#22. I don't think you understand what it means when a demon falls in love, Layla. It doesn't go away. It doesn't fade, even if we want to. We love until death. That's not just something we say. We love and we love once and it's forever.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#23. 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
#24. I don't understand people whose gratification is a BMW. You don't know what joy is until you see a kid who was tortured get adopted by a family.
Andrew Vachss
#25. What some people don't understand about new clothes is it's not about the clothes. It's the promise of how happy you'll be when you wear them, the wonderful things you'll be doing in them, how people will look at you and say, yes, there's a woman who really likes herself.
Kristan Higgins
#26. You always admire what you really don't understand.
Blaise Pascal
#27. Not everyone deals with what they don't like or understand in a positive way. Some people are going to judge you. Sometimes it's someone you really love and being rejected by them is incredibly painful.
Lauren Dane
#28. When you don't understand what is happening, you need to wait, trust God, and rest in His care. He is always faithful to His own.
Jim George
#29. They were unwillingly to give 100 percent if they didn't personally think it was important. What you don't understand is the champions know it's all important.
Tony Dungy
#30. Inspecting? What do you mean? I don't understand. I'm collecting insects. My specialty is sand and insects.
What?
Collecting insects. Insects. Insects.I catch them like this!
Insects?
Kobo Abe
#31. I don't think you'll understand the true repercussions of what the 500 does for you until years down the road.
Buddy Rice
#32. A lot of students just don't understand what's out there," she told me, shaking her head. "You have the kids who plan on being baseball players but don't even play on the high school team because the coach is mean to them.
J.D. Vance
#33. I like bowling. I suck at it, but I like it. You know what's so funny? I have days when I'm absolutely great at doing it, and then I have days when I just don't understand it.
Lil' Kim
#34. I understand, certain scenes have to have a lot of takes. As an actor, I think it's quite nice to have a handful of takes, because you don't want to do it once or twice; I think once or twice sometimes is quite terrifying because you don't really feel like you've given them what you want.
Luke Evans
#35. It's still hard for me to understand, what is to me, the morbid fascination with celebrity. I just want to sing, I want to work on my music, I want to make my movies, that's all I want to do. I understand, you know, the interest but I really don't understand the fascination with it.
Marc Anthony
#36. I complain to one of my fellow servers that I don't understand how she can go so long without food. "Well, I don't understand how you can go so long without a cigarette," she responds in a tone of reproach. Because work is what you do for others; smoking is what you do for yourself.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#37. I think you can be the greatest orator of all time, the greatest motivator of all times, but if those players know that you don't care about them, and you don't try to understand them, then they're never going to hear what you have to say.
Mike Singletary
#38. Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.
[Ten rules for writing fiction (The Guardian, 20 February 2010)]
Helen Dunmore
#39. Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.
Umberto Eco
#40. Please," he said, "you don't understand. My first time on my won. I don't know what I'm doing, and I can't have it on me, and I don't know what's right when you know you can choose and it's turned out fine today, how do you do?
Lesley Howarth
#41. Don't shut yourself up in a band box because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and educate yourself to take part in the world's work, for it all affects you and yours.
Louisa May Alcott
#42. Every pore of you is crying and you don't even understand why or what. I actually kind of died and got born again as a result of taking the meds and having a chance to, you know, build a life.
Sinead O'Connor
#43. World is full of people so troubled they don't even understand themselves. You could offer them a thousand dollars to explain their motivations, but they can't tell you what they don't know.
Catherine Ryan Hyde
#44. I don't understand what people are talking about in different rhymes glorifying jail. If you like going to bed early, getting yelled at, seeing a fight, seeing somebody getting their head split open, or fighting over the TV then that's the place for you.
Sadat X
#45. Relax and give the play a chance to strut its stuff - relax, stop wondering what it's all 'about' - like many strange and familiar things, Life included, this Play isn't 'about,' it simply is. Don't try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. Don't try to understand it, let it try to understand you.
E. E. Cummings
#46. The stories that I want to tell, especially as a director, don't necessarily have a perfect ending because, the older you get, the more you appreciate a good day versus a happy ending. You understand that life continues on the next day; the reality of things is what happens tomorrow.
Drew Barrymore
#47. If you don't understand what al Qaeda was trying to do on 9/11, if you don't have a sense of who Osama bin Laden is as a person, if you don't have a sense of what al Qaeda, the organization, was on 9/11, 9/11 appears to be more or less inexplicable.
Peter Bergen
#48. It never pleases me to punish willful disobedience, Isabel. Having to punish you for that sort of thing means I've failed to communicate what it is I expect out of you. It means I'm failing you as a Dom if you don't understand what my wants and needs are, and I hate failing at anything.
Ella Dominguez
#49. best things in life are mad, you know, darling. Instinctive," he said. "You don't understand that yet . . . but, in time, you will. That's where the magic lies. And that, my darling, is what you are lacking in your life." "What?
Ella Carey
#50. But it's interesting being directed by someone who is a very good actor. There's nothing like it. It might sound like a territorial thing about what I do, but I don't think you can understand what it is until you've done it. I know that to be a fact.
Colin Firth
#51. You are not designing for yourself, and shouldn't be. Most people using the Web don't understand (most of) what makes it work and don't want to. Design for those people. There are many more of them than you.
Max Levchin
#52. Look," he said. "We'd like you to return the salary." "Oh, is that all?" I said. "Heck. That's easy. The answer is no." "What?" "No." "No?" "What part of that two-letter word don't you understand, Brad?" I asked. "Was it the vowel that threw you, or the consonant ?
John Scalzi
#53. You will learn soon how not to be faint-hearted. A man has got to learn everything
and that's what so many of them youngsters don't understand.
Joseph Conrad
#54. People can portray me anyway they want because I don't give a damn ... But don't you analyze me and don't you tell me what I am until you get close enough to understand what I am. Then you can make an analysis of me. But don't you dare do it until then.
Lyle Alzado
#55. Now here is what you need to understand: If you don't turn your adversity into a ministry, then your pain remains your pain. But if you allow God to translate your adversity into a ministry, then your pain becomes someone else's gain.
Mark Batterson
#56. I'd go onstage doing this thing, trying to fill this arena that I can't fill because I don't understand what this is. It's like you're given a job that's beyond you. And it's taken me years to realize what works in those big situations.
Thom Yorke
#57. A lot of guys really I get the feeling don't care whether you like their show or not, you know. I want people to enjoy what I do, and understand what I'm doing is for their enjoyment, it's all I can ask for.
Regis Philbin
#58. What people who don't create don't understand, is that once you take money from the machine, the machine [movie industry] owns you.
Tucker Max
#59. I definitely understand what it's like not having family around when you want them there, but you don't live in the same city.
Vanessa Morgan
#60. For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.
Tom Waits
#61. What is it you don't understand about the universe?" Jobs replied, "I don't understand why all of a sudden my dad is so broke.
Walter Isaacson
#62. What you newspaper and magazine writers, who work in rabbit time, don't understand is that the practice of architecture has to be measured in elephant time.
Eero Saarinen
#63. Communication feels like it should be the simplest thing, but it's not. Sometimes you don't even understand what you're feeling. You don't know how to put that into words, so how are you suppose to tell the person you love that you're upset.
Taissa Farmiga
#64. If you're a human being, you can attempt to do what other human beings have done. We don't understand talent any more than we understand electricity.
Maya Angelou
#65. I don't understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians ...
it's a concept I honestly cannot grasp. To me, it's not who you love ...
a man, a woman, what have you ...
it's the fact that you love. That is all that truly matters.
Al Pacino
#67. We all understand what we signed up for, but then again, you don't want this to be a game that puts people in wheelchairs at age 40.
Drew Brees
#68. People should be able to tell stories that are important to them to try and understand what they mean. I don't think you figure anything out on your own. Certainly not war stories.
Phil Klay
#69. I don't understand', I say,'why they care what I think, as long as I'm acting how they want me to.'
'You're acting how they want you to now', he says,'but what happens when your Abnegation-wired brain tells you to do something else, something they don't want?
Veronica Roth
#70. [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
#71. You just cry if you want to." Eustacia's voice was kind but firm. "Women cry. Men don't understand it, but crying is what we do.
Melanie Dickerson
#72. Hard work makes for what I reckon you like in a man, but don't understand. As I look back over my life--an' let me say, young fellar, it's been a tough one--what I remember most an' feel best over are the hardest jobs I ever did, an' those that cost the most sweat an' blood." As
Zane Grey
#73. I don't understand,' said Despereaux.
'And you will not understand until you lose what you love ...
Kate DiCamillo
#74. There is so much you don't know or understand ... So don't claim to know what I really want or what I would do to protect it.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
#75. No you don't understand. I've been afraid my whole life.
So Sorry, but may I ask of what?
Of the future ... of my path..I've..I've been afraid of so many things.
Perhaps..Perhaps your days of being afraid are done.
John Shors
#76. Do you know what I don't understand about that ball game? I don't understand why I wanted to kill you.
Chaim Potok
#77. In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know.
David McCullough
#78. I don't understand why the accent you speak in has to indicate what level of intellect you have.
Paloma Faith
#79. You have to stick within what I call your circle of competence. You have to know what you understand and what you don't understand. It's not terribly important how big the circle is. But it is terribly important that you know where the perimeter is.
Rolf Dobelli
#80. In terms of growing as a songwriter, I'm just a guy who understands the craft better. I understand what I want to do with it. I think that's where I've grown. Have I fully achieved that? No, but I don't think you ever do. There's always room to grow.
Albert Hammond Jr.
#81. I don't understand you, darling!
That's what I'm talking about, dear!
Toba Beta
#82. I always practise penalties, but what people don't understand is that you can never recreate that pressure situation that you're under.
Alan Shearer
#83. You don't get it, Clary. You don't understand what it's like to live always at war, to grow up with battle and sacrifice. I guess it's not your fault. It's just how you were brought up-
Cassandra Clare
#84. Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is that you don't need anyone, you can take care of yourself.
Gail Honeyman
#85. It's very important for people to know themselves and understand what their value system is, because if you don't know what your value system is, then you don't know what risks are worth taking and which ones are worth avoiding.
Ben Carson
#87. The airline business is crazy. I've not been enamored with the industry in general. You can't depend on anybody and anything. It's dog-eat-dog and one thing or another from one minute to the next. What I understand about it, I don't like what I see.
Robert Brooks
#88. It's your job to make sure your younger brother is safe. Do you understand?"
"What about when he's all grown up?"
"Boys don't ever grow up, my darling," her mother replied. "Not ever.
Lauren B Mangiaforte
#89. Well, suppose intelligent people don't believe, but that's from intelligence, and you, I say, squirt that you are, what do you understand about God? You were taught by some student, and if he'd taught you to light icon lamps, you'd do it.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#90. I have to try. I can't leave him there. You don't understand, Vik. I love him, and I can't let him pay for something I did. I don't care what it takes, we have to save him. (Alix)
Those words, little girl, just saved your life. (Shahara)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#91. Bang bang bang. I understand now why so many horror movies use that device-the mysterious knock on the door-because it has the weight of a nightmare. You don't know what's out there, yet you know you'll open it. You'll think what I think: No one bad ever knocks.
Gillian Flynn
#92. The beauty of the ragamuffin gospel lies in the insight it offers into Jesus: the essential tenderness of His heart, His way of looking at the world, His mode of relating to you and me. 'If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says, but watch what he does.
Brennan Manning
#93. I don't need to hear all of society's rationalizations. I've heard them all before and the fact remains that what is, is. You don't understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it.
Richard Ramirez
#94. Really, darling, it's a no-brainer. You know, I understand not everybody is for gay marriage. But if you're not for gay marriage, don't marry a gay person. That's what I say
Whoopi Goldberg
#95. You can't rise as a class. You have to rise individually. It's what many of the civil rights-era people don't understand.
Alphonso Jackson
#96. You cannot tell what a puzzle is by looking at a single piece; understand people are the same way; don't define them by singular action, but their pattern of behavior.
Steve C. Roberts
#97. It would have to stand on the basis of what somebody had done to it and that would be the basis on which it would be judged. So it's a funny art form. You gain a great deal when you have good collaborators and sometimes people just don't understand what you've done.
Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal
#98. How is that weird?" Dark the First asked incredulously. "Literally everyone does it. Literally."
"I really wish you'd stop saying literally," Dark the Second said. "I literally don't think you understand what that word means.
T.J. Klune
#99. I don't hate you. I don't know that I understand you yet. I may never. But I will try. But I'm not sure what my next step is.
Jeff Abbott
#100. I think it's because we both understand what it's like. It's not easy to talk like this with other people because they don't know. They don't know what it's like to be hated by the people who are supposed to love you. - Emma
Rebecca Donovan
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