Difficult To Understand You Quotes & Sayings

You have been to hell, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he's been there.
What's it like in hell?"
Same like in heaven," he said.
He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."
He said. "To up, to down
all same, at end."
I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below.
I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"
Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.
Same-same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy in journey."
I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is.. "
Love, too," he said.
Ketut laughed again, "Always so difficult for young people to understand this! — Elizabeth Gilbert

You are not that kind of man Pekkala. You are not the monster that your enemies once believed you to be. If you were, you would never have been such a formidable opponent for people like myself. Monsters are easy to defeat. With such people, it is only a question of blood and time, since there only weapon is fear. But you-you won the hearts of the people and the respect of your enemies. I do not believe you understand how rare a thing that is, and those whose hearts you won are out there still." Stalin brushed his hand towards the window, and out across the pale blue autumn sky. " They know how difficult your job can be, and how few of those who walk your path can do what must be done and still hold on to their humanity. They have not forgotten you. And I don't believe you have forgotten them". — Sam Eastland

I have a problem with writer/directors, personal. I can't work well with both of them on the set, if both of them are giving instructions. Writers tend to be in love with what they wrote. You can't always translate the words into the meaning, sometimes the meaning is better served without the words, difficult to make a writer to try to understand that. It gets, sometimes, tense. — Morgan Freeman

Early on - certainly in acting - you really have to take whatever you can get. So I understand well how difficult it can be to be in this position where people are just not hearing what you're trying to say or are saying. I recognize that. — Oscar Isaac

Learn how to stay out of negativity. It will improve your health. Learn how to focus on meeting your needs. It will increase your wealth. Learn how to develop strength during difficult days. You will learn how to overcome. Learn how to confess your sins and do away with them. It will help you understand God's grace. Learn how to be patient. It will lead you to accomplish your goals and results. Learn how to give. It will open doors to your blessings. Learn how to become fearless. It will bring you peace. Learn how to trust God above all else and your life will never be the same. — Kemi Sogunle

Self-indulgence is something to watch, but anything that helps you understand situations that are difficult to understand is good. If you're having some sort of emotional trauma, you need to find a person to talk to about it who says, 'This is quite normal; it's fine.' — Lulu

Do as you must -- you are not a child. But understand that there are many people willing to make your life more difficult. It is up to you to find a way to make things easier for yourself. — Nadia Hashimi

You can't really appreciate a work of art until you can understand how difficult it was to create. And that's probably true of any work of art - a rock, a tree, a bird, a fish, a sunrise made of light and air. — Laurence Overmire

Do you know what happens to all the things we did together in the past? When I asked my daughter this, although it was you I wanted to ask, my daughter said, "It's so strange to hear you say something like this, Mom," and asked, "Wouldn't they have seeped into the present, not disappeared?" What difficult words! Do you understand what that means? She says that all the things that have happened are actually in the present, that old things are all mixed in with current things, and current things mingle with future things, and future things are combined with old things; it's just that we can't feel it. But now I can't go on. Do — Kyung-Sook Shin

Oh!" said the voice. "Well. How lovely to meet you. What did you say your name was? I'm Roger Malory."
He was doing something extremely complicated with his r's that made him difficult to understand.
"Blue. My name's Blue Sargent."
"Blair?"
"Blue."
"Blaize?"
Blue sighed. "Jane."
"Oh, Jane! I thought that you were saying Blue for some reason. It's nice to meet you, Jane. — Maggie Stiefvater

I mean, if you've ever been a governor of a state, you understand the vast potential of broadband technology, you understand how hard it is to make sure that physics, for example, is taught in every classroom in the state. It's difficult to do. It's, like, cost-prohibitive. — George W. Bush

The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passions are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. — Oscar Wilde

I'd been put into a box long before, after all. Each of us has. Are you the "difficult" child or the "histrionic" lover, the "argumentative" sibling or the "long-suffering" spouse? Boxes make us easier to understand, but they also imprison us because people don't see past them. — Martin Pistorius

My voice was a bare rasp of fear. "In the weaving room, the women say it's never been this bad before ... "
"They always say that when things get difficult," she answered softly. Then she sat up suddenly as though coming fully awake. Reaching down, she took my chin in her hand and tipped my face to look up at hers. "Remember, Gwen, no matter who says what, the important thing is to understand what needs to be done, and then do it. No matter how hard it is, or how much pain you feel. It's as simple as that, really. Once you know what you have to do, you just do it. — Persia Woolley

11"This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you to understand, and it is not beyond your reach. + 12It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, 'Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?' + 13It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, 'Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?' 14No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it. — Anonymous

Our practice should be based on the ideal of selflessness. Selflessness is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already a selfish idea. Selflessness will be there when you do not try anything. — Shunryu Suzuki

Maybe after I saved everyone we could all take a ride on the fucking Ferris wheel ... Fuck was now added to my vocabulary. It was an outstanding word that could basically mean just about anything. It could be used as a noun, verb and adverb. It rolled off the tongue with ease and even if you spoke a foreign language it was difficult not to understand fuck off or off you fuck or fuck you. — Robyn Peterman

When I was a young man, I understood that poetry was two things - it was difficult to understand, but you could understand that the poet was miserable. So for a while there, I wrote poems that were hard to understand, even by me, but gave off whiffs of misery. — Billy Collins

The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time. And this is a most difficult thing to do: whether you are ugly or beautiful, whether you are envious or jealous, always to be what you are, but understand it. To be yourself is very difficult, because you think that what you are is ignoble, and that if you could only change what you are into something noble it would be marvellous; but that never happens. Whereas, if you look at what you actually are and understand it, then in that very understanding there is a transformation. So freedom lies, not in trying to become something different, nor in doing whatever you happen to feel like doing, nor in following the authority of tradition, of your parents, of your guru, but in understanding what you are from moment to moment. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,' said Mrs. Smiling.
It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized. — Stella Gibbons

It is difficult to understand the universe if you only study one planet — Miyamoto Musashi

It was difficult for me to understand that, when you're kind to someone in a big city, a lot of the time, they think that you want something. I didn't understand that, all of a sudden, niceness meant that you were trying to get something out of somebody. — Jaime King

Why do the easy expected thing? It takes guts to follow your dreams. Courage. Many people, even those who love you, don't understand how compelling that can be, and will try to keep you in the "safety zone". But f*#! that. Half the fun is venturing into the unknown, taking on the difficult task that yields new knowledge, doing more and testing your limits. — Marshall Ulrich

At difficult times of my life, books have been an incredible comfort. When I was 12, I changed schools and my parents split up. It was then that I became addicted to reading. A great writer can attach themselves to your mind and heart, and you feel you understand the world better. As long as you have the capacity to read, you needn't be alone any more. I remember thinking as a child, "If I could give one person the comfort I keep getting from books, then I want to write." — Elliot Perlman

A lot of people hate my skepticism, and I think I understand why. The psychics offer wonders and endless possibilities in a world that often seems difficult and mundane. They promise health, wealth, wisdom, eternal life. But if you examine the record, it's not the psychics but the hard-nosed scientists who have actually delivered the things that improve human life. And, to me, science describes a world far more interesting than any psychic fantasy. It's a good world
not perfect
but it's ours. So we'd better learn to live with it, the way it is. — James Randi

I think it's important for those of us in a position of responsibility to be firm in sharing our experiences, to understand that the babies out of wedlock is a very difficult chore for mom and baby alike ... I believe we ought to say there is a different alternative than the culture that is proposed by people like Miss Wolf in society ... And, you know, hopefully, condoms will work, but it hasn't worked. — George W. Bush

What I learned is, we have to listen to each other, even when we don't agree, even when we think we hate each other. We have to listen to each others narratives. Not interrupt defensively, or with hostility, but really try to open our hearts and listen with empathy. I learned so much from that meeting. It was a very difficult thing to do and it was one of the best things that I ever did in my life. Look what scares you in the face, and try to understand it. Empathy, I have learned, is revolutionary. — Jane Fonda

Because we put ourselves in a movie or on TV, then it must mean we want to be completely open to the world. Sometimes, people will run up to you as if this is Disneyland and I'm a character. I understand their point of view, but it's difficult to explain how terrified it makes me. I'm so nervous. — Brie Larson

If you want to understand a difficult or trying person, begin by asking the question: 'What is the wound they are trying to heal?' — Mardy Grothe

I understand it's difficult but you've got to think about yourself, you know, and not just follow the crowd. — Jermain Defoe

Silence is one of worst, most vocal enemies, yet people go through many bouts of depression not sharing what is happening. People don't understand that, but as someone who suffers from it, I can tell you that it's difficult to be objective about the gray.
I described depression to my therapist as a misty fog that surrounds me, heavy on my shoulders, pervading everything and nothing at all. I liken depression to a bird stealing into the depths of your soul, pecking at your disposition until nothing is left.
And that is when you break into pieces. — Rachel Thompson

For, like desire, regret seeks not to be analysed but to be satisfied. When one begins to love, one spends one's time, not in getting to know what one's love really is, but in making it possible to meet next day. When one abandons love one seeks not to know one's grief but to offer to her who is causing it that expression of it which seems to one the most moving. One says the things which one feels the need of saying, and which the other will not understand, one speaks for oneself alone. I wrote: 'I had thought that it would not be possible. Alas, I see now that it is not so difficult.' I said also: 'I shall probably not see you again;' I said it while I continued to avoid shewing a coldness which she might think affected, and the words, as I wrote them, made me weep because I felt that they expressed not what I should have liked to believe but what was probably going to happen. — Marcel Proust

It's so hard when sincere prayer about something you desire very much is not answered the way you want. It is difficult to understand why your exercise of deep and sincere faith from an obedient life does not grant the desired result. At times it is difficult to recognize what is best or expedient for you over time. Your life will be easier when you accept that what God does in your life is for your eternal good. — Richard G. Scott

Friendship is definitely the most difficult detail on the globe to elucidate. It is really not something you understand at school. But if you have not realized the which means of friendship, you truly have not realized anything. — Muhammad Ali

You are going through difficult moments of life. Times when you do not understand the ways of our world or the ways of our people. Hold on to yourself in these moments. These times will change. Calm will return to your being. Hold on to yourself. Please. — Avijeet Das

I was seeing this girl and she wanted to get more serious. But I wasn't ready to, I had just gotten out of a difficult relationship before that. So I said to her, 'Listen, you have to understand something. Relationships are like eyebrows. It's better when there's a space between them.' And that's coming from a Greek guy. — Demetri Martin

Sometimes you can defuse a difficult situation simply by being willing to understand the other person. Often all that people need is to know that someone else cares about how they feel and it attempting to understand their position. — Brian Tracy

It is very easy for you to say what I ought to do, there is nothing to prevent you; but if you had felt how much it hurts to see the grief of a person one loves, how his joy becomes yours, and how difficult it is to say No when you want to say Yes, you would not be surprised at anything; I felt it myself, I felt it very keenly, I do not yet understand it. — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

FATHER, no matter how difficult the words of the Bible seem to be, help me to make decisions that are in accordance with your Word. Help me, Holy Spirit, to understand how your Word applies to every aspect of my life so that I will not be tempted to turn away as others have done. Remind me daily that you alone have the words that give eternal life. — Cheri Fuller

Our bodies, speeches and minds need to be trained so that they will do anything we want. We can cry or laugh at once when we want to. Then it will be a natural response; we will cry when it is time to cry, and laugh when we should laugh. Do you understand? We can get angry when necessary; we can be gentle if we have to. We will completely become our own master. Then, no matter what we want to do, it will benefit the world. It is not difficult to attain this stage; all we need to do is to mediate. — Ching Hai

I believe we were discussing your dissatisfaction with life as the most popular man in London.'
Her voice rose on the last four words, and Colin realized he'd been scolded. Soundly.
Which he found extraordinarily irritating. 'I don't know why I thought you'd understand,' he bit off, hating the childish tinge in his voice but completely unable to edit it out.
'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but it's a little difficult for me to sit here and listen to you complain that your life is nothing.'
'I didn't say that.'
'You most certainly did!'
'I said I *have* nothing,' he corrected, trying not to wince as he realized how stupid that sounded.
'You have more than anyone I know,' she said, jabbing him in the shoulder. 'But if you don't realize that, then maybe you are correct - your life is nothing. — Julia Quinn

Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?' enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.
'One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,' says Sugar. 'It saves time and paper.' Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, 'If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?'
Sophie answers without hesitation.
'I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand. — Michel Faber

I believe really strongly in imitation, actually: I think it's the first place you need to go to if you're going to be able to understand how something works. True mimicry is actually quite difficult. — Eleanor Catton

It is true that dispossession carries this double valence and that as a result it is difficult to understand until we see that we value it in one of its modalities and abhor and resist it in another. As you say, dispossession can be a term that marks the limits of self-sufficiency and that establishes us as relational and interdependent beings. Yet dispossession is precisely what happens when populations lose their land, their citizenship, their means of livelihood, and become subject to military and legal violence. We oppose this latter form of dispossession because it is both forcible and privative. — Judith Butler

The most important thing a writer can do after completing a sentence is to stay in the room. The great temptation is to leave the room to celebrate the completion of the sentence or to go out in the den where the television lies like a dormant monster and rest up for a few days for the next sentence or to go wander the seductive possibilities of the kitchen. But. It's simple. The writer is the person who stays in the room. The writer wants to read what she is in the process of creating with such passion and devotion that she will not leave the room. The writer understand that to stand up from the desk is to fail, and to leave the room is so radical and thorough a failure as to not be reversible. Who is not in the room writing? Everybody. Is it difficult to stay in the room, especially when you are not sure of what you're doing, where you're going? Yes. It's impossible. Who can do it? The writer. — Ron Carlson

People always want to know how you know. And knowing in your heart is very hard to describe. I think so often, we're trying to understand something with our mind. But, actually, the Bible teaches us that much of what God does in our life will be difficult to understand with the mind. — Joyce Meyer

It is very difficult to follow your own method all the time because you may crash against some directors who want from you something different. Trying to understand the material, who you're working with, and how can you fit in there. That is my approach. — Antonio Banderas

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we
are. They are different. — F Scott Fitzgerald

And I came away from that experience, and it was a very difficult experience - I came to understand that you have to practice at being a good father and practice at being a good husband, just as you have to practice at being a good journalist. — Bob Schieffer

Who are you?" the woman said at last.
"Lyra Silver - "
"No, where d'you come from? What are you? How do you know things like this?" Wearily Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand. — Philip Pullman

Changing words isn't so hard. Recognizing a particular sound, swapping it for another - that was easy even for your ancestors. Reading what happens in your head and the heads of all the beings around you, now that is difficult. Finding equivalents in one culture for the basic concepts of another - that is really difficult. I say the word vegetable and the translator tells you something like 'edible moss'. So, yes, it's a miracle, but it's a dangerous miracle. It makes you think you understand beasts and you never do. When it comes down to it, you can't even understand your own species. — Peadar O'Guilin

Believe that your dreams are possible! The most difficult phase of life is not when no-one understands you, but when you don't understand yourself. Believe in YOU. Trust your instincts and listen to your soul. When you do what you are afraid of and capable of, your strengths will reveal themselves. So follow your vision. Anything IS possible and yes, you CAN! — Anonymous

Listening Without Thought I do not know whether you have listened to a bird. To listen to something demands that your mind be quiet - not a mystical quietness, but just quietness. I am telling you something, and to listen to me you have to be quiet, not have all kinds of ideas buzzing in your mind. When you look at a flower, you look at it, not naming it, not classifying it, not saying that it belongs to a certain species - when you do these, you cease to look at it. Therefore, I am saying that it is one of the most difficult things to listen - to listen to the communist, to the socialist, to the congressman, to the capitalist, to anybody, to your wife, to your children, to your neighbor, to the bus conductor, to the bird - just to listen. It is only when you listen without the idea, without thought, that you are directly in contact; and being in contact, you will understand whether what he is saying is true or false; you do not have to discuss. JANUARY 4 — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I'd learned that you couldn't talk to kids about death or show them music videos of of men who sing in eyeliner. I possibly had turned one kid into an obsessive-compulsive with the urge to murder, and another kid gay. I'm not equating being a murderer with being gay, but from what I understand, either can be a difficult thing to admit to your family. — Jen Kirkman

One of the things that's difficult for people to understand is when you join the military, you don't sign up as an endorsement of any particular policy of the moment. — Phil Klay

I don't understand why people make me want to make music that's a join-the-dots thing by numbers. I find it really difficult when people say, 'Aw, you should have made a really big hip hop record, that would have been really good for you' or, 'You should have made a song like Lily Allen, that would have been so great.' — M.I.A.

It's difficult sometimes when you have somebody who is of a different culture trying to make light of something that is maybe not quite something that they understand. — Michael Chang

To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. — Richard Feynman

It's difficult to do a genre film well, and it doesn't matter if you're talking vampire movies or 'Dawn of the Dead' or 'The Thing' or 'Escape From New York.' Those kind of movies, they understand what the old-school B-movie is supposed to be, they get the throwback of it. — Ethan Hawke

Actions have consequences, I have told you that. Why is that difficult for you to understand? — Aleatha Romig

whatever you're learning, see whether you can make a metaphor to help yourself understand the most difficult topic - you'll be surprised at how much it can bring the key idea to life. — Barbara Oakley

It's difficult, sometimes, for me to understand that I have the power to hurt someone. You see, it requires me to accept that somebody might like me in the first place. — Alexis Hall

Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I understand that sometimes when you're young it's difficult to remember the difference between real life and what is part of fantasy. — Dakota Blue Richards

Words are power. The more words you know and can recognize, use, define, understand, the more power you will have as a human being ... The more language you know, the more likely it is that no one can get over on you.
selection from book: Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy & Social Justice in Classroom & Community — Quraysh Ali Lansana & Georgia A. Popoff

I do know that if you can name certain things and understand them, it allows you to make better choices. Unfortunately, there's so much misinformation that towers over a person's head, it's really difficult to make the right decisions. Consequently, we just go along because it's way too hard to sift through the information. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

It's very difficult, I think, for people to be around you when you're getting lots of attention. It's very difficult for young people to understand what that's about when people start treating you differently when you've been doing the same thing you were doing the day before. — Julian Schnabel

You can understand Tunisia revolution as a failure to censor the internet. And Libya had that failure too. It's very difficult for governments that are autocratic and don't have broad popular support to be in power when a lot of people have these devices. That was what Arab Spring was about, that people could express this and lead to revolution. — Eric Schmidt

I never meet a church that wishes they didn't do it. I never meet a leader that wishes they didn't do it. They will all say, to the person, it's hard. It's difficult. It comes with complexities and confusion as you're trying to go across cultures, and you don't understand, you didn't mean to offend somebody but you've offended somebody. But they will all say it just does something. — Michael Emerson

So you see how difficult it is to understand one another, my dear angel, how incommunicable thought is, even between two people in love. — Charles Baudelaire

Playing those one-dimensional characters is actually really difficult because you're not dealing with somebody you would ever really know. I don't think anybody here could imagine actually knowing Cindy Campbell from Scary Movies. So, in a way, your job is so much easier when you're playing a person that you really understand and that seems very relatable. I think I was coming to a place in my career where I was like, "I'd like to do something a little more rewarding." — Anna Faris

Spiritual matters are difficult to explain
because you must live with them in order
to fully understand them. — Thomas Yellowtail

But chains made out of blood and memory were a thousand times more difficult to sever than those made of steel, and the past could overtake a person if she wasn't careful"
"The day had begun, cool and clear and absolutely impossible to avoid"
"Being a physician is like working on a machine that keeps breaking down, time after time"
"Honesty was like a stone, dropped and irretrievable once it was spoken aloud"
"Love was like that, like a dream you didn't quite understand, one in which you didn't necessarily know what you were looking at until it was right in front of you"
"adolescence is what makes the person — Alice Hoffman

Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would not be deterred by your lack of interest in literature from reading the best books on bridge or boat-sailing. We must, therefore, distinguish between literature, and books treating of subjects not literary. — Arnold Bennett

Great leadership can be a difficult thing to pin down and understand. You know a great leader when you're working for one, but even they can have a hard time articulating what it is that makes their leadership so effective. — Travis Bradberry

Most of the Bible is a history told by people living in lands occupied by conquering superpowers. It is a book written from the underside of power. It's an oppression narrative. The majority of the Bible was written by a minority people living under the rule and reign of massive, mighty empires, from the Egyptian Empire to the Babylonian Empire to the Persian Empire to the Assyrian Empire to the Roman Empire.
This can make the Bible a very difficult book to understand if you are reading it as a citizen of the the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. Without careful study and reflection, and humility, it may even be possible to miss central themes of the Scriptures. — Rob Bell

You can have the rest of your life with her," St. Just said gently. "What if she won't have me?" Emmie asked softly. "What if she can't understand? She's six years old, St. Just. I've let her think she's had no mother for half her years on earth, and I was ready to turn my back on her completely." His fingers closed over hers, and this time he didn't simply pat her hand and let go. "You were trying to do the best you could in difficult circumstances. You wanted what was best for Winnie, and she will eventually understand that. It will work out. I know it will." "I can only hope so, and I can only continue to try my best." "Winnie — Grace Burrowes

Damn you! Just ask me to wait and I will, ask me to understand that things will be difficult but that when this period is over, we'll be happy and in love and together. Please stop with the dreaded respect line. I don't want you to respect me. I want you to want me. — Lauren Weisberger

The manlier you are, the harder it is to understand what a woman wants: there is not a hint of female brain in you. — Criss Jami

You cannot embark on life, that one-off coach ride, once again when it is over,
but if you have a book in your hand, no matter how complex or difficult, when you have finished it, you can, if you wish, go back to the beginning, read it again, and thus understand that which is difficult and, with it, understand life as well. — Orhan Pamuk

To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days. — George Tenet

Love is very difficult to understand. And do you know why? Because love is the most idiotic thing in the universe, Tommy, but also the most important. That's why it's so hard to understand.
-pg 151 — Albert Sanchez Pinol

You are young, so you may not understand what it feels like to be offered a second chance at my age, especially after so ... so difficult a time, when one has seen his own death and accepted it. — G. Willow Wilson

The more different you and I are, the less we will be able to identify with each other, and the more difficult it will to understand each other. If we can't see ourselves in another person at all - if his beliefs and background and reactions and emotions conflict too radically with our own - we often just withdraw the assumption that he is like us in any important way. That kind of dehumanization generally leads nowhere good. — Kathryn Schulz

Would you consider a man or a woman to be complicated? Is it that difficult to understand both the sexes? We say that we know what the other sex is all about, but is that really true? Perhaps the following witty, funny quotes and sayings can help simplify things down about men. — Indira Gandhi

It's funny how you can't ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize nothing that is happening to you is normal. The trouble with you and me is we are used to what is happening to us. We grew into our lives like a kernel beneath the earth, never able to process the enigma of our composition ... Nothing is normal. It is all rather odd, isn't it, our eyes in our heads, our hands with five fingers, the capacity to understand beauty, to feel love, to feel pain. — Donald Miller

We play your part in order to understand you, but you each seem to play a thousand parts. It makes things difficult for an honest, hard-working bug-eyed monster. — Larry Niven

Is there any of the usual social occasions which it is not difficult to avoid? But if you decide that you cannot very well ignore your worldly obligations, and that you will therefore carry them out properly, the demands on your time will multiply, bringing physical hardship and mental tension; in the end, you will spend your whole life pointlessly entangled in petty obligations.
'The day is ending, the way is long; my life already begins to stumble on its journey.' The time has come to abandon all ties. I shall not keep promises, nor consider decorum. Let anyone who cannot understand my feelings feel free to call me mad, let him think I am out of my senses, that I am devoid of human warmth. Abuse will not bother me; I shall not listen if praised. — Yoshida Kenko

Not in the least," I said. "I understand everything you've said. But - oh, Simon, I feel so resentful! Why should father make things so difficult? Why can't he say what he means plainly?" "Because there's so much that just can't be said plainly. Try describing what beauty is - plainly - and you'll see what I mean." Then he said that art could state very little - that its whole business was to evoke responses. And that without innovations and experiments - such as father's - all art would stagnate. "That's why one ought not to let oneself resent them - though I believe it's a normal instinct, probably due to subconscious fear of what we don't understand. — Dodie Smith

Zee replies grimly, 'I understand that problem ... Buns is a force of nature.'
'She is,' I say with a reluctant smile, 'you're kind of screwed, dude. She's definitely got her own ideas.'
Zee grins too. 'Do not laugh too hard, playa, yours is a Throne..karma ... ' he says, noddin' his head before grimacin' and addin', 'ouch'.
My smile broadens involuntarily. 'Zee, when did you become funny?' I ask.
'It is difficult to be funny in Human,' he says, before lookin' at his watch and than graspin' the cover of the portal computer. 'Learn my language and you will think I am hysterical. — Amy A. Bartol

It is difficult to reconstruct what it was that took us years, long hours of discussion, endless exchanges of drafts and hundreds of e-mails negotiating over words, and more than once almost giving up. But this is what always happens when a project ends reasonably well: once you understand the main conclusion, it seems it was always obvious. — Daniel Kahneman

To say exactly what one means, even to one's own private satisfaction, is difficult. To say exactly what one means and to involve another person is harder still. Communication between you and me relies on assumptions, associations, commonalities and a kind of agreed shorthand, which no-one could precisely define but which everyone would admit exists. That is one reason why it is an effort to have a proper conversation in a foreign language. Even if I am quite fluent, even if I understand the dictionary definitions of words and phrases, I cannot rely on a shorthand with the other party, whose habit of mind is subtly different from my own. Nevertheless, all of us know of times when we have not been able to communicate in words a deep emotion and yet we know we have been understood. This can happen in the most foreign of foreign parts and it can happen in our own homes. It would seem that for most of us, most of the time, communication depends on more than words. — Jeanette Winterson

Millions of people have tried meditation and dropped out of it because they took it very seriously. Religion has been thought to be a very serious affair - it is not. One has to understand - at least those who are with me - that religion is a playfulness, a laughter. Take it easy; then things blossom without any tension. You are not taking it easy, you are making it difficult. — Rajneesh

Each being is simply what it is and it is a serious mistake to treat your world as though it existed for you, as if what you value in each thing is its value. In a sense, the Buddha argued, all things are "empty," in that they simply do not possess the "soul" that a grasping, craving person invests them with. Pile all your expectations onto some person or object as though you truly hope it will deliver what you want, and you are making the fundamental mistake. The notion of non-soul (anatman) is difficult to understand, but it is one of the Buddha's most provocative teachings. — John Renard

It's too late," she whispered.
He whirled her around. "Don't say that! We are no better than animals if we cannot learn from our mistakes and move forward."
She lifted her chin. "It isn't that. I don't want to marry you anymore." And she didn't, she realized ...
He paled and whispered, "You're just saying that."
"I mean what I say, Robert. I don't want to marry you."
"You're angry," he reasoned. "You're angry, and you want to hurt me, and you have every right to feel that way."
"I'm not angry." She paused. "Well, yes, I am, but that's not why I'm refusing you."
He crossed his arms. "Why, then? Why won't you even listen to me?"
"Because I'm happy now! Is that so difficult for you to understand? I like my position and I love my independence. — Julia Quinn

Marriage is difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing you can ever do, besides being a parent, but I think these two fine young people are up to the challenge. Here are two steady, responsible people who, I believe, understand the dire commitment they are about to make and will choose to keep that commitment. Because it turns out to be a choice, commitment-not some done deal. When you leave the alter tomorrow, there will still be a lifetime of choice and temptation and doubt and uncertainty in front of you. I didn't know that at my wedding. Getting married doesn't change you. Marriage changes you. — Maggie Shipstead

But it would have made me a whore to leave it incomplete. It would have made it easier to leave future work incomplete. It would have made it more and more difficult to draw upon that additional aching surge of effort that is always the difference between integrity and deceit in a created work. I would not be the whore to my own existence. Can you understand that? I would not be the whore to my own existence. — Chaim Potok

I'm wondering whether I can explain," said Lee. "Where there is no likeness of experience it's very difficult. I understand you were not born in America."
"No, in Ireland."
"And in a few years you can almost disappear; while I, who was born in Grass Valley, went to school and several years to the University of California, have no chance of mixing."
"If you cut your queue, dressed and talked like other people?"
"No. I tried it. To the so-called whites I was still a Chinese, but an untrustworthy one; and at the same time my Chinese friends steered clear of me. I had to give it up. — John Steinbeck

My name is Lev," said Lev.
"My name is Lydia," said the woman. And they shook hands, Lev's hand holding the scrunched-up kerchief and Lydia's hand rough with salt and smelling of egg, and then Lev asked, "What are you planning to do in En gland?" and Lydia said, "I have some interviews in London for jobs as a translator."
"That sounds promising."
"I hope so. I was a teacher of English at School 237 in Yarbl, so my language is very colloquial."
Lev looked at Lydia. It wasn't difficult to imagine her standing in front of a class and writing words on a blackboard. He said, "I wonder why you're leaving our country when you had a good job at School 237 in Yarbl?"
"Well," said Lydia, "I became very tired of the view from my window. Every day, summer and winter, I looked out at the schoolyard and the high fence and the apartment block beyond, and I began to imagine I would die seeing these things, and I didn't want this. I expect you understand what I mean? — Rose Tremain

The capacity of the brain to forsee the future has much to do with the fear of death.
For when the body is worn out and the brain is tired, the whole organism welcomes death. But it is difficult to understand how death can be welcome when you are young and strong, so that you come to regard it as a dread and terrible event. For the brain, in its immaterial way, looks into the future and conceives it a good to go on and on and on forever - not realizing that its own material would at last find the process intolerably tiresome. Not taking this into account, the brain fails to see that, being itself material and subject to change, its desires will change, and a time will come when death will be good. On a bright morning, after a good night's rest, you do not want to go to sleep. But after a hard day's work the sensation of dropping into unconsciousness is extraordinarily pleasant. — Alan W. Watts