Refusing To Understand Quotes & Sayings

Do you go see her?"
"No," I said, refusing to acknowledge that I'd just seen Lissa last night. "That's not my life anymore."
"Right. Your life is all about dangerous vigilante missions."
"You wouldn't understand anything that isn't drinking, smoking, or womanizing."
He shook his head. "You're the only one I want, Rose."
"Well, you can keep feeling that way, but you're going to have to keep waiting."
"Much longer?" He asked me.
"I don't know."
Hope blossomed on Adrian's face. "That's the most optimistic thing you've told me so far. — Richelle Mead

To my mind, this embracing of what were unambiguously children's characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence. It looks to me very much like a significant section of the public, having given up on attempting to understand the reality they are actually living in, have instead reasoned that they might at least be able to comprehend the sprawling, meaningless, but at-least-still-finite 'universes' presented by DC or Marvel Comics. I would also observe that it is, potentially, culturally catastrophic to have the ephemera of a previous century squatting possessively on the cultural stage and refusing to allow this surely unprecedented era to develop a culture of its own, relevant and sufficient to its times. — Alan Moore

There comes a time when you have to decide whether to change yourself to fit the story, or change the story itself. The decision gets a little easier if you understand that refusing to shape your life and personality to the contours of an unjust world is the best way to start creating a new one. There — Laurie Penny

I told you what I wanted from you. If you're refusing, fine. I'll pull out and finish on my own. But you'll be wearing cum on your dress for the rest of the day. Either way those men are going to know you were in here being the dirty little slut that you are. Your choice. Do you understand? — Laurelin Paige

I like relativity and quantum theories because I don't understand them and they make me feel as if space shifted about like a swan that can't settle, refusing to sit still and be measured; and as if the atom were an impulsive thing always changing its mind. — D.H. Lawrence

Retain your peace by refusing to respond to rude, judgemental, or prying people. They won't understand anyway. — Manprit Kaur

I'm really disturbed by the degree to which I don't hear people saying, "Are we leaving the world better than we found it?" I think we are a generation that perhaps could not answer in the affirmative, and it is the evasion of the larger responsibility of being only one generation in what one hopes will be an infinite series of fruitful generations. There is a selfishness in refusing to understand that we are passing through; others will come, and they deserve certain courtesies and certain considerations from us. — Marilynne Robinson

That you hold your own interests above the interests of the public?" "I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals." "What ... what do you mean?" "I hold that there is no clash of interests among men who do not demand the unearned and do not practice human sacrifices." "Are we to understand that if the public deems it necessary to curtail your profits, you do not recognize its right to do so?" "Why, yes, I do. The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes - by refusing to buy my product." "We are speaking of ... other methods." "Any other method of curtailing profits is the method of looters - and I recognize it as such. — Ayn Rand

Most people who are struck by lightning learn to keep their heads down. It's only people like you who grit your teeth and then come out again, refusing to cower. That's what I can't understand about you. You've been struck by lightning, again and again, and still you stand up. I don't see how you are possible. — Courtney Milan

Party tactics?" "People like your wife are dangerous." "Why?" Hamilton asked. "They don't belong to any group. They fool around with everything. As soon as we turn our back - " "So you destroy them. You turn them over to the lunatic patriots." "The lunatic patriots," McFeyffe said, "we can understand. But not your wife. She signs Party peace petitions and she reads the Chicago Tribune. People like her - they're more of a menace to Party discipline than any other bunch. The cult of individualism. The idealist with his own law, his own ethics. Refusing to accept authority. It undermines society. It topples the whole structure. Nothing lasting can be built on it. People like your wife just won't take orders." "McFeyffe, — Philip K. Dick

She was beginning to stir questions in me that I'd spent all my life refusing to ask, since the day I had looked down from the window at the broken body of the schoolboy on the flagstones a long way below, while a master hurried from the cloisters with his black gown flapping in the winter wind, to see what had happened: the day when I was suddenly old enough to understand that I had a choice. I could either do what that other boy had done, or I could spend the rest of my life outside society, where it was safe — Adam Hall

I can't say I forgive her for refusing to indulge the perhapsness of what we might have been, but I understand why she chose to do it, and she never asked for my forgiveness. — Robyn Schneider

It takes six million grains of pollen to seed one peony, and salmon need a lifetime of swimming to find their way home, so we mustn't be alarmed or discouraged when it takes us years to find love or years to understand our calling in life. Everything in nature is given some form of resilience by which it can rehearse finding its way, so that, when it does, it is practiced and ready to seize its moment. This includes us. When things don't work out - when loves unexpectedly end or careers stop unfolding - it can be painful and sad, but refusing this larger picture keeps us from finding our resilience. — Mark Nepo

I know there is a lot of concern about plans that Iran might have to develop nuclear weapons which arises from positions that Iran took in the past when in fact it did not disclose things to the IAEA. And therefore the conclusion that the reason that they are refusing to do it is because they are hiding something - I can understand that. — Thabo Mbeki

People ask me what my predictions are for publishing and how digital is changing things and I tell them my only real prediction is that is it's all changing. Amazon, Google and all of those things probably aren't the enemy. The enemy right now is simply refusing to understand that the world is changing. — Neil Gaiman

tactical refusal of confrontation is itself only a stratagem of warfare. It's easy to understand, for example, why the Oaxaca Commune immediately declared itself peaceful. It wasn't a matter of refuting war, but of refusing to be defeated in a confrontation with the Mexican state and its henchmen. As some Cairo comrades explained it, "One mustn't mistake the tactic we employ when we chant 'nonviolence' for a fetishizing of non-violence — Anonymous

A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it. — Chinua Achebe

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