Trying To Understand Why Quotes & Sayings

You'll be sorry some day. Why don't you ever understand what I'm trying to tell you: it's with your six sense that you're fooled into believing not only that you have six senses, but that you contact an actual outside world with them. If it wasn't for your eyes, you wouldn't see me. If it wasn't for your ears, you wouldn't hear that airplane. If it wasn't for your nose, you wouldn't smell that midnight mint. If it wasn't for your tongue taster, you wouldn't taste the difference between A and B. If it wasn't for your body, you wouldn't feel Princess. There is no me, no airplane, no mind, no Princess, no nothing, you for krissakes do you want to go on being fooled every damn minute of your life? — Jack Kerouac

I don't understand, then, why, in the midst of all this, pregnant women - women trying to make rational decisions about their futures and, usually, that of their families, too - should be subject to more pressure about preserving life than, say, Vladimir Putin, the World Bank, or the Catholic Church. — Caitlin Moran

What's wrong with actors?"
"They quote poetry. A girl has to be crazy to believe one," I told him. "It's far too easy for an actor to give you a good line."
"You're quick to judge."
"No," I argued. "I've had experience with theater types. After a while they can't tell real from unreal. They believe their own creation of themselves and can't understand why everyone else isn't convinced they're wonderful."
He jumped down from the limb, then stared up at me, his eyes sparking with anger. "It's efficient, I guess, judging an individual by a group. You don't waste any time trying to know somebody."
But I don't want to know you! I thought as I watched Mike walk away. I can't risk knowing you. — Elizabeth Chandler

I've laughed hysterically, just trying to hold it in, at every funeral I've been to, because everyone's so serious. And there are a lot of people speaking publicly, which makes you understand why it's people's number one fear - because everyone shouldn't do it. — Jerrod Carmichael

I am trying to get folks outside the hip-hop culture to understand why, despite the negatives, young people find hope and refuge in hip-hop. I'm hoping that young people immersed in the culture will work harder to capitalize on the possibilities for great social change that hip-hop represents as a national unified cultural youth movement. — Bakari Kitwana

I remember desperately trying to convince my wife that what I was believing was real - that I was being followed, that I was involved in some type of mind-control experiment. I couldn't understand why she couldn't believe me. — Scott Stapp

Ultimately, the reward is the process - the process of photographing and discovering and trying to understand why and what am I photographing. — Alex Webb

When they ask why we stayed together for so long I say, I don't know. I just know that we cried at the exact same time in every movie. I know we blushed everyday for the first two years. I know I always stole the covers and she never woke me up. I know the exact look on her face, the first night she used my toothbrush. The next day, I brushed my teeth like thirtysome times, 'cause I didn't want to let her go. You have to understand when it hurt to love her, it hurt the way the light hurts your eyes in the middle of the night, but I had to see, even through the ruin, if what we were burying were seeds. There were so many plants in our house, you could rake the leaves even through that winter when I was trying to make angels in the snow of her cold shoulder. She was still leaving love notes in my suitcase; I'd always find them. — Andrea Gibson

We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action. There are many things one doesn't understand and therefore, we ask them why don't you just go ahead and take action, try to do something? You realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you simply can correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you didn't like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement, or, should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise to the higher level of practice and knowledge. — Fujio Cho

I've been doing everything I can to reach out and understand why people voted against me. They were trying to send a message. I have to be more sensitive in the way I express myself, and I have to be more thoughtful in the positions I take. — James P. Moran

He doesn't understand why Harry is doing this to him, why Harry is trying to pull him apart. He doesn't understand how Harry has seen past his carefully crafted display. Louis has got smoke and mirrors down to a science, he knows how to deflect and he knows how to act and he's managed to keep people at arms length so nobody would ever question how the magic works. He's got his relationship with Zayn and Liam down to an art, how to give enough so that he doesn't have to lie to them, but able to keep them from knowing how close he is to the edge. Yet here is Harry, ready to unravel everything Louis has sewn together. — Tothemoonmydear

Wouldn't we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that's why men have invented God -- a being capable of understanding. Perhaps if I wanted to be understood or to understand I would bam-boozle myself into belief, but I am a reporter; God exists only for leader-writers. — Graham Greene

I veer away from trying to understand why I act. I just know I need to do it. — Ralph Fiennes

Call it dysphoric mania, agitated depression, or a mixed state: nobody will understand anyway. Mania and depression at once mean the will to die and the motivation to make it happen. This is why mixed states are the most dangerous periods of mood disorders. Tearfulness and racing thoughts happen. So do agitation and guilt, fatigue and morbidity and dread. Walking late at night, trying to get murdered, happens. Trying to explain a bipolar mixed state is like trying to explain the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God: you just have to take it on faith when I tell you that the poles bend, cross, never snapping. — Elissa Washuta

I love being around kids. I couldn't figure out why all these 70-year-olds wanted to hang out with me when I was 27. Now I understand, and I'm trying to steal their energy from them like they stole from me at the time. — Stanley Druckenmiller

I do understand why women started to reject the word "feminism." It ended up being invoked in so many bafflingly inappropriate contexts that - if you weren't actually aware of the core aims of feminism and were trying to work it out simply from the surrounding conversation - you'd presume it was some spectacularly unappealing combination of misandry, misery, and hypocrisy, which stood for ugly clothes, constant anger, and, let's face it, no fucking. — Caitlin Moran

I can't
I can't think about anything or anyone else," he whispered. A hand drifted up, dragging back through his hair. "I can't think straight when you're around. I can't sleep. It feels like I can't breathe
I just
"
"Liam, please," I begged. "You're tired. You're barely over being sick. Let's just ... Can we just go back to the others?"
"I love you." He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. "I love you every second of everyday, and I don't understand why, or how to make it stop
"
He looked wild with pain; it pinned me in place, even before what he had said registered in my mind.
"I know it's wrong; I know it down to my damn bones. And I feel like I'm sick. I'm trying to be a good person, but I can't. I can't do this anymore. — Alexandra Bracken

I am sorry too," said Lupin. "Sorry I will never know [my son] ... but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life. — J.K. Rowling

Violent action is unclear to most of those who get caught up in it. Experience is fragmentary; cause and effect,why and how, are torn apart. Only sequence exists. First this then that. And afterward, for those who survived, a lifetime of trying to understand — Salman Rushdie

With murder, the victim is gone, and not forced to deal with what happened to her. The family must deal with it, but not the victim. But rape is much worse. The victim has a lifetime of coping, trying to understand, of asking questions, and the worst part, of knowing the rapist is still alive and may someday escape or be released. Every hour of every day, the victim thinks of the rape and asks herself a thousand questions. She relives it, step by step, minute by minute, and it hurts just as bad.
Perhaps the most horrible crime of all is the violent rape of a child. A woman who is raped has a pretty good idea why it happened. Some animal was filled with hatred, anger and violence. But a child? A ten-year-old child? Suppose you're a parent. Imagine yourself trying to explain to your child why she was raped. Imagine yourself trying to explain why she cannot bear children. — John Grisham

I truly understand that there is a lesson in everything that happens to us. So I tried not to spend my time asking "Why did this happen to me?" but trying to figure out why I had chosen this. — Oprah Winfrey

Harry - I think I've just understood something! I've got to go to the library!"
And she sprinted away, up the stairs.
"What does she understand?" said Harry distractedly, still looking around, trying to tell where the voice had come from.
"Loads more than I do," said Ron, shaking his head.
"But why's she got to go to the library?"
"Because that's what Hermione does," said Ron, shrugging. "When in doubt, go to the library. — J.K. Rowling

I knew I was lost inside the world, watching it and trying to understand why too often I felt like I was standing just beyond the frame - of everything. — Jacqueline Woodson

Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect. — Freeman Dyson

Why shouldn't Mom trust me, Dad" Why are you so determined to make me out to be the bad guy all the time?" I stared at the side of his face, willing him to make eye contact. He didn't. "I've been doing really good late and you don't even care."
"Yet you still managed to get into trouble tonight," he said.
"You have no idea what happened tonight," I said, my voice ratcheting up a notch. "All you know is that, because I was involved, I'm somehow guilty of something. You could at least pretend to care, you know. You could at least try to understand."
Dad gave a sardonic little laugh. "I'll tell you what I understand," he said. "I understand that when you're left to your own devices you get into trouble, that's what I understand. I understand I was trying to have a happy, restful evening with Briley and once again you screwed it up. — Jennifer Brown

In the silence, the boy understood that the desert, the wind, and the sun were also trying to understand the signs written by the hand, and were seeking to follow their paths, and to understand what had been written on a single emerald. He saw that omens were scattered throughout the earth and in space, and that there was no reason or significance attached to their appearance; he could see that not the deserts, nor the winds, nor the sun, nor people knew why they had been created. But that the hand had a reason for all of this, and that only the hand could perform miracles, or transform the sea into a desert . . . or a man into the wind. — Paulo Coelho

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree. — Pablo Picasso

I just don't understand why you're trying so hard. It was really a long time ago."
"Because, when I was nineteen years old, I fell in love with a girl who changed my life by showing me that even the darkest nights still had stars and it didn't matter one bit that you had to lie in the weeds to see them. We were kids and I barely knew her, but I loved her. I should have been there while she grew up, but I was a fool. Now, I have the woman back and I have every intention of making her fall in love with me again, and this time ...I'm never letting go. — Aly Martinez

I don't understand why they trippin',
If you ask me,
Flow is just as nice as,
I admit the propane,
I just spit, probably,
Just raise the gas prices,
Everybody in the club,
Try and get as fresh as me,
What you want dog,
Trying to stay recession free,
And spit, refreshly, — Kanye West

As I got older, I got craftier and less obvious, but I've always put a lot of energy and effort into people liking me. That's why I've never understood the compliment "effortless." People love to say: "She just walked into the party, charming people with her effortless beauty." I don't understand that at all. What's so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care. What about the girl who "walked into the party, her determination to please apparent on her eager face"? Sure, she might seem a little crazy, and, yes, maybe everything she says sounds like conversation starters she found on a website, but at least she's trying. Let's give her a shot! — Mindy Kaling

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

The key is really just saying my brain isn't big enough to figure out why everything happens. It would be like an ant trying to understand the internet. — Rick Warren

Suppose a top politician, entertainment figure, or sports star said it didn't really matter who shot Lincoln or why, who attacked Pearl Harbor, the Alamo or the USS Liberty. Imagine the derision. Imagine the ridicule. Imagine the loss in credibility and marketing revenue. Now imagine if a well-respected academic 'who should know better' said exactly the same thing. It doesn't really matter who committed a great crime; history had nothing to teach us; we should never waste precious time trying to apprehend the perpetrators, nor understand their motives but focus only on the outcome of their foul deeds.

Well, that is exactly what Noam Chomsky appears to believe. Do not focus on the plot or the plotters or the clever planning of any crime but only the aftermath. Strangely, I had always thought linguistics was the scientific study of language rather than a lame attempt at disinformation. — Douglas Herman

I love the game, it's the greatest game on earth, that's why I can't understand all of this talk about trying to make the game better. People talk about the high strike zone and changing this and that. Why? To speed up the game? That's the beauty of baseball. There is no time element. — Eric Davis

I'm trying to understand cosmology, why the Big Bang had the properties it did. And it's interesting to think that connects directly to our kitchens and how we can make eggs, how we can remember one direction of time, why causes precede effects, why we are born young and grow older. It's all because of entropy increasing. — Sean M. Carroll

Kyoto protocol is not a simple environmental issue, where you can say scientists are not unanimous. This is about international relations, this is about the economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world. You have to understand what is at stake, and that is why it is serious, ... — Margot Wallstrom

The reason why China forecasting has such a poor track record is that Westerners constantly invoke the model and experience of the West to explain China, and it is a false prophet. Until we start trying to understand China on its own terms, rather than as a Western-style nation in the making, we will continue to get it wrong. — Martin Jacques

He heard a soft voice calling him and turned towards it, trying to focus the vision before him. It wasn't his mother. If he weren't so tired, he would have smiled. He hadn't expected to find an angel in Hell.
The angel, her image blurred, a whiteness surrounding her, would understand. The angel would know.
"Why couldn't she love me?" he asked. The angel's answer was garbled. He strained to understand the words, not all his senses failed him as he slipped back into the abyss on the edge of Hell.
And the angel knelt down beside the bed and wept. — Lorraine Heath

When I find too many puzzles about the way explanations are given about why there is inequality - why people who work the hardest in the world end up being the poorest - I can't just sit back and not try to understand why the gaps between people are increasing, or why there are so many homeless and hungry people in the world. — Vandana Shiva

They are so beautiful - your eyes. And so different." I sighed, trying to laugh it off. Emilia's intensity was unusual but not surprising. It didn't take a genius to understand why she'd be feeling somber tonight. "Men don't like being called beautiful ... " She grimaced at me and I saw a glimpse of my Mia return. "Whatever. Deal with it. Your eyes are beautiful. In a totally manly way, of course. — Brenna Aubrey

The human animal is a fascinating beast. Watching people and trying to learn how and why they do things, and to engage in the somewhat futile attempt to explain them ... it's my reason for living I guess ... to ask 'why?'. I don't know what else to do with myself. In some strange way it's probably an attempt to understand myself and my own relationship to the world. — Andrew Neel

The act of writing ... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately, I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books. — Jodi Picoult

It is not easy for a man to be as great as a mountain or a forest. But that is why the Creator gave them to us as teachers. Now that I am old I look once more toward them for lessons, instead of trying to understand the ways of men. — Kent Nerburn

I couldn't understand what the Taliban were trying to do. "They are abusing our religion," I said in interviews. "How will you accept Islam if I put a gun to your head and say Islam is the true religion? If they want every person in the world to be Muslim, why don't they show themselves to be good Muslims first? — Malala Yousafzai

I try to not overthink anything. I don't understand why nipples are nudity. Who cares? Men can show their nipples but if we have breasts we can't show them? — Chelsea Handler

Her three children, she saw, had been staring at the horizon with the alert, tensed stillness of explorers at the ocean's edge, poised to begin their journeys. And Delia, shading her eyes in the distance, had been trying to understand why they were leaving.
Where they were going without her.
How to say goodbye. — Anne Tyler

There's just a feeling, when you're just an actor - I have great admiration for people who are just actors. I don't understand it, the idea of waiting to get cast, being at the whim of others. I find it incredibly powerless and frightening, so that's why I've been constantly trying to create my own content. — Nick Kroll

I think fiction, for me, is a way of trying to understand why people do the things they do - and trying to explain what is, at heart, illogical. — Tess Gerritsen

People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become. — Dan Chaon

You do not his will, and so you cannot understand him; you do not know him, that is why you cannot trust in him. You think your common sense enough to let you know what he means? Your common sense ought to be enough to know itself unequal to the task. It is the heart of the child that alone can understand the Father. Would you have me think you guilty of the sin against the Holy Ghost - that you understand Jesus Christ and yet will not obey him? That were too dreadful. I believe you do not understand him. No man can do yet what he tells him aright - but are you trying? Obedience is not perfection, but trying. — George MacDonald

I believe there's more than this-that maybe when we die our brains conjure up some kind of shutdown experience, and that's what people try to sum up as the afterlife. Something else is going to happen and it's going to be crazy and confusing and weird, and we probably won't know what it's all about. It'll just be another place where we're trying to understand why we exist at all. — Flying Lotus

Most beginning writers - and I was the same - are like chefs trying to cook great dishes that they've never tasted themselves. How can you make a great - or even an adequate - bouillabaisse if you've never had any? If you don't really understand why people read mysteries - or romances or literary novels or thrillers or whatever - then there's no way in the world you're going to write one that anyone wants to publish. This is the meaning of the well-known expression "Write what you know." — Daniel Quinn

Like other Americans, U.S. journalists have often neglected the study of history; they have much remedial work to do in trying to understand who did what to whom, why and when - and who did it first. — Henry Grunwald

Some addicts do not even have basic parenting and instead are beaten, sexually abused, left to be looked after by a dysfunctional 'carer', put in orphan homes or rejected by their community. If you calculate the millions of emotionally neglected children and observe them growing up together trying to 'get by in life', you will understand why many adults (adult children) have addictive personalities. — Christopher Dines

I feel that people are basically trying to do their best in the world. Even when you see people making mistakes, you understand why they're making a mistake. Everybody has flaws, everybody has demons, everybody has ghosts, but I think you watch people and you see everybody trying to do their best. — Jason Katims

So when we're told to "move on" or "let go," we should take a look at who is saying it and why, and when we see repetition happening it's worth trying to understand it before attempting to shut it down. — Laura Mullen

I'm fascinated by the new iPhone. I bought it and kept trying to use it in France. "Siri, what is a good restaurant?" (In a robotic voice.) "I'm sorry, Robin. I can't give locations in France." "Why, Siri?" "I don't know." It's like she was upset with the French or something. "They seem to have an attitude I can't understand. Should I look for Germans, Robin?" — Robin Williams

For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it's not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It's not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It's no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he'd doing - that isn't important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself 'My flower's up there somewhere ... ' But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important? — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

But why does it matter what we call it, as long as there is concerted action to respond to and prevent such crimes? It matters because if we really want to fix something that is broken, if we want to heal these fractures in our society, then we need to understand their causes. If we do not, then we will forever continue to place giant sticking plasters over the wounds left by this violence, trying to bandage over losses that can never be replaced. As long as this violence continues, it is obviously the case that we do have to address the symptoms, but my argument is that we must also address the causes if we want a long-term reduction or even, perhaps, the eventual eradication of male violence against women. — Finn Mackay

I should just stop trying to control what's coming out of my mouth. I'm always going to keep what's important to me in mind and I completely understand considering that we're playing characters that are so coveted by so many people so I get why they want to know more about us. I just sort of have to not think about it. — Kristen Stewart

I don't believe in "original sin." I don't believe in "guilt." I don't believe in villains or heroes - only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.
This is so simple I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm sure it's true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that's why I don't understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in. — Tennessee Williams

Do you understand the real reason why your customers choose your products or services? Or why they choose something else instead? How do your products or services help your customers to make progress in their lives? In which circumstances are they trying to make that progress? What are the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of this progress? What is competing with your products and services to address these jobs? Are there competitors outside of those included in the traditional view of your industry? — Clayton M Christensen

When our society lost this communal network, many aspects of our culture died, including the fact that we lost contact with older family members who could give us perspective on our lives. Without that perspective, we've become overscheduled, hyperstimulated, and culturally grumpy. We are so burdened by the pace of our lives that when we must interact with older people who cannot keep up, we run out of patience trying to fit them into our schedules. We have forgotten - or never learned - how to value our senior adults' advice. As they begin to slow down, we push them aside so they don't impede our progress. While we may accomplish a lot every day, we don't necessarily feel good about our achievements because no one is there to tell us about the longer-term implications of choices we make. Many of us assume some things about senior adults that aren't true, and then can't understand why we aren't getting along better with this aging population. — David Solie

Tao is so important because it is connected to all the life forms - it's related to the whole universe. Nobody can say, "Tao has nothing to do with me. Why should I try to understand it?" because actually, Tao has everything to do with us. — Henry Chang

She frowned, thinking of going down there and explaining herself all over again, reliving the horror of finding Mimi's body and trying not to think of how she'd looked when they'd dragged her up and out of the ravine. No sooner had she thought it than she heard Mimi's voice, chastising her over a year ago.

"You hide from life, Catherine. Even when you're in the middle of it, standing toe to toe with all the bad guys you bring in, you manage to keep an emotional distance. I understand why you do it, but ultimately, you're the one who will suffer. You're the one who's going to grow old alone."

Cat blinked back tears, remembering what she'd told her.

I won't be alone, Mimi. I'll always have you.

Obviously she had been wrong. — Sharon Sala

I keep trying to understand the phenomenon of why adults are so literal when children are so imaginative. Toys are a caricature of reality. — Brian Sutton-Smith

If I die tonight it will be with every single thing unfinished (like, I suppose, any other night), and yet, what a gift to die on the verge of tears. I have spent my life trying to understand the way this rock and this ache go together, why a granite peak is more dramatic half dressed in clouds ... ,why sunlight under fog is better than the sum of its parts, why my best days and my worst days are always the same days, why (often) leaving seems like the only solution to the predicament of loving (each other) the world. — Pam Houston

Questioner: How can we become integrated without conflict? KRISHNAMURTI: Why do you object to conflict? You all seem to think conflict is a dreadful thing. At present you and I are in conflict, are we not? I am trying to tell you something, and you don't understand; so there is a sense of friction, conflict. And what is wrong with friction, conflict, — Jiddu Krishnamurti

So [Polaroid's Dr. Edwin] Land, at 75, went off to spend the remainder of his life doing pure science, trying to crack the code of color vision. The man is a national treasure. I don't understand why people like that can't be held up as models: This is the most incredible thing to be - not an astronaut, not a football player - but this. — Steve Jobs

Empowered Women 101: Forgive yourself for having chosen to expose yourself to people who don't care about your feelings and help others to do the same. Enjoy life! It is as simple as changing your focus or perspective when you start thinking about people from the past who hurt your feelings. Eventually, you will forget about those types of people because your time and attention will be taken up by more positive things/people/events/activities etc. When you understand how much time is wasted trying to make people see you, understand you, respect you, value you, like you or agree with you ... life becomes a pointless negative fight for validation that will drain your happiness. You are worth more than the indifference, inattention or crumbs people throw you. You are a queen that demands respect and God will bring the right person into your life to make you forget why you ever wasted your time on nothing important. — Shannon L. Alder

It was heartfelt, it was heartbreaking. It was extreme joy, it was bone-crushing grief. It was fiery hot, it was icy-cold. It was true love sprouting ... it was true love dying.
It's like we were both trying to hold onto something that was slipping through our fingers, and we didn't understand why. — S.C. Stephens

Either you're lying again or you're as stupid as you look. You ditch me first year for him when you were a girl. You ditch me second year for him when you were a boy. You lie and cheat and steal for him while he treats you like crap, and I help you and care for you and worship you like a queen while you treat me like crap! What does that guy have that I don't? What makes him so lovable and me so unworthy? Know how many times I've asked myself that question, Sophie? How many times I've studied him like a book or sat in the dark picturing every last shred of him, trying to understand why he's more of a person than me? Or why the moment he's gone, you take a ring from the School Master - or Raphael or Michelangelo or Donatello or whatever you want to call him to make yourself feel better - just because he looks like you want him to look and says what you want to hear? When you could have had someone who's honest and kind and real? — Soman Chainani

Justin wandered over to the big fir between the coach house and his studio, and began freeing the new growth from their rust colored casings.
"Why do you do that?" I walked around kitten's nose, and came up behind him.
"So they have a few more days in the sun."
"Is that why you keep trying to save me? So I have a few more days in the sun?"
He shook his head and glanced back at me. "No. You still don't understand do you? You are my sun."
From;Trey Grey Out of The Dark — Tara Spears

OK, so my parents were married in 1955 and my mom knew my dad was gay and my dad knew he was gay and so I was, like, 'Why in the heck did you get married?' Like, what was going on? What was that time? It's like this crazy paradox that my whole life is based on, or my family's based on. So I spent a lot of time trying to understand '55. — Mike Mills

Do you know how crazy that made me? I'm trying to concentrate on my fucking fucking ball baseball game and all I can think about is why the hell the girl I'm in love with is ignoring me. I knewsomething was wrong when you never called. I tried to shake it off, but I couldn't. You can't do that tome. Don't you understand? You can't fucking do that to me when I'm trying to play ball! — J. Sterling

For years I've been interested in a fundamental question concerning what I call the psychology of evil: Why is it that good people do evil deeds? I've been interested in that question since I was a little kid. Growing up in the ghetto in the South Bronx, I had lots of friends who I thought were good kids, but for one reason or another they ended up in serious trouble. They went to jail, they took drugs, or they did terrible things to other people. My whole upbringing was focused on trying to understand what could have made them go wrong. — Philip Zimbardo

And then they would have the shoe removers on one side, and the non-shoe removers on the other side until they could work through coming to understand why we might both be trying to worship authentically, and because of our cultural background we have these different ideas. But it took a while. — Michael Emerson

Before water generates steam, it must register two hundred and twelve degrees of heat. Two hundred degrees will not do it; two hundred and ten will not do it. The water must boil before it will generate enough steam to move an engine, to run a train. Lukewarm water will not run anything.
A great many people are trying to move their life trains with lukewarm water - or water that is almost boiling - and they are wondering why they are stalled, why they cannot get ahead. They are trying to run a boiler with two hundred or two hundred and ten degrees of heat, and they cannot understand why they do not get anywhere.
Lukewarmness in his work stands in the same relation to man's achievement as lukewarm water does to the locomotive boiler. No man can hope to accomplish anything great in this world until he throws his whole soul, flings his force to his whole life, into it. — Orison Swett Marden

And then, when it was pointed out that the only way to pay for the idea would be for the government to take 10 percent or reinstitute taxes, the reaction turned violent. And so, many an earnest and rich dilettante got the crap kicked out of him while failing to understand why the people he was trying to help the most tended to be the very ones who most wanted to kick the crap out of him. — Dani Kollin

In a fragment of a second you can understand: Things you know, things you don't know, things you don't know that you don't know, conscious, unconscious, things which in a fragrant of a second you can react to: we can all imagine why this capacity was given to us as human beings - I guess to survive. Architecture to me has the same kind of capacity. It takes longer to capture, but the essence to me is the same. I call this atmosphere. When you experience a building and it gets to you. It sticks in your memory and your feelings. I guess thats what I am trying to do. — Peter Zumthor

One reason why people are unable to understand great Christian classics is that they are trying to understand without any intention of obeying them. — J. Oswald Sanders

I don't want to die without at least trying to understand why I've lived." Beatrice — Michael Goorjian

Hearts everywhere bear scars of one form of hurt or the other, and it is necessary to keep this in mind when trying to understand why a person is the way he or she is. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

I like to say, when asked why I pursue science, that it is to satisfy my curiosity, that I am by nature a searcher trying to understand. If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day. — John Archibald Wheeler

I didn't understand at the time why Vince was so interested in teaching me life lessons when all I was trying to do was get my video played. But now I think it's because he saw a little bit of himself in me. Just like me, he was a rebel who listened to no one and did whatever it took to get the job done, pissing people off with his stubbornness and drive in the process. Therefore, he was trying to teach me how to better myself instead of repeatedly getting into trouble by rubbing people the wrong way. — Chris Jericho

Why am I feeling guilty? Why is he so mad? I peek up at him. "Well, you know a lot more about me now," he snaps, his mouth presses into a hard line. "I knew you were inexperienced, but a virgin!" He says it like it's a really dirty word. "Hell, Ana, I just showed you ... " he groans. "May God forgive me. Have you ever been kissed, apart from by me?" "Of course I have." I try my best to look affronted. Okay ... maybe twice. "And a nice young man hasn't swept you off your feet? I just don't understand. You're twenty-one, nearly twenty-two. You're beautiful." He runs his hand through his hair again. Beautiful. I flush with pleasure. Christian Grey thinks I'm beautiful. I knot my fingers together, staring at them hard, trying to conceal my goofy grin. — E.L. James

Why couldn't anybody understand that he was not really a freak but a normal, lonely adult trying to lead a normal, lonely adult life? If they pricked him, didn't he bleed? And if he was tickled, didn't he laugh? It — Joseph Heller

It's [Into the Badlands] something that's very, very different and I think that's why it divided critics initially because they didn't understand it or get it. They didn't understand or have a knowledge of what we were trying to do. Bringing in the Asian martial arts aesthetic to American television. For us, these are the people who will make the show a hit or a failure in future seasons. So it's for us to respect them and interact and see what they have to say. — Miles Millar

You couldn't just leave her?"
"No," he says. "She's going through some shit right now. I'm just trying to be there for her. As a friend. That's it!"
"Gosh, she really knows how to work you, Peter!"
"It's not like that."
"It's always like that. She pulls the strings and you just ... " I dangle my arms and head like a marionette doll.
Peter frowns. "That was mean."
"Well, I feel mean right now. So watch out."
"You're not mean, though. Not usually."
"Why can't you just tell me? You know I won't tell anyone. I really want to understand it, Peter."
"Because it's not for me to say. Don't try to make me tell you, because I can't."
"She's just doing this to manipulate you. It's what she does." I hear the jealousy in my voice, and I hate it, I hate it. This isn't me. — Jenny Han

They must talk to each other directly, Ender, mind to mind. What one thinks, another can also think; what one remembers, another can also re-member. Why would they ever develop language? Why would they ever learn to read and write? How would they know what reading and writing were if they saw them? Or signals? Or numbers? Or anything that we use to communicate? This isn't just a matter of translating from one language to another. They don't have a language at all. We used every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don't even have the machinery to know we're signaling. And maybe they've been trying to think to us, and they can't understand why we don't respond. — Orson Scott Card

Needless to say, I personally don't believe fighting should be banned. I don't understand why a relatively small segment of the hockey world feels obligated to ban extracurricular combat when it's so popular elsewhere in American sports. Additionally, the league shouldn't be trying to ban fighting to save the enforcers from hurting themselves. Fighters realize the risks associated with what they do, and they are bound to accept these risks. — Brian D'Ambrosio

People are always trying to understand.
There is only one way to do that.
It is to discover < + i + >why< + i + > you want to understand. — Idries Shah

Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels. [Reply to the government bureaucrat of one Asian country who told him that, reason why there were workers with shovels instead of modern tractors and earth movers at a worksite of a new canal, was that: "You don't understand. This is a jobs program."] — Milton Friedman

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self's own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self. — Jonathan Franzen

I was trying to understand my grandmother feelings. Why, when I looked at and held the baby, I felt I was floating, that I was on a high.... I keep wanting to burst into song!
So I wasn't crazy, & I wasn't alone. When a grandmother holds the baby, her brain, like a new mother's, can also be drenched in the bonding hormone oxytocin.
Aha! There it was. We grandmas literally, actually fall in love. — Lesley Stahl

It was like we were both trying to hold onto something that was slipping through our fingers, and we didn't understand why. I understood more than him, of course, but just barely. I would never fully understand how I could have ever strayed from such a warm, sensitive and caring soul. — S.C. Stephens

The attempt of trying to solve a problem without analyzing responsibilities is like trying to understand why a gun was shot without talking to the one using it. — Robin Sacredfire

I watched the gorilla's eyes again, wise and knowing eyes, and wondered about this business of trying to teach apes language. Our language. Why? There are many members of our own species who live in and with the forest and know it and understand it. We don't listen to them. What is there to suggest we would listen to anything an ape could tell us? Or that it would be able to tell us of its life in a language that hasn't been born of that life? I thought, maybe it is not that they have yet to gain a language, it is that we have lost one. — Douglas Adams

The community in Utah was very religious. I was a typical teenage girl trying to find my sexuality. Unfortunately, girls do use their sexuality to find attention. I also understand why parents want to protect their kids. — Julianne Hough

Damn, Josie. Are you trying to kill me?"
She glanced back my way. "Not particularly right now. Why?"
I didn't even try to stop staring. It would have been a wasted effort. "Because that dress is enough to give a man a heart attack if you come any closer, or break a man's heart if you walk away."
"Now lines like that help me understand why you've got a reputation for being such a ladies man."
"That wasn't even my best one."
( ... )
That kind of dress could bring a man to his knee to propose, even if that had been the furthest thing from his mind when he woke up that morning. Hell, it was bringing me close to a proposal, and I was dead set against anything marriage related. — Nicole Williams