Malcolm D. Lee Quotes

You guys are both saying the same thing. The only reason you're arguing is because you're using different words.

There is always that age-old thing about England and America being divided by a common language. You think that because we speak English and you speak English that you're bound to understand and like everything that we do. And of course you don't.

When people don't understand my work, I don't feel like explaining.

[Richard M.] Nixon did not receive on the same wavelength I was at pains to broadcast on.

Do not forget that others won’t see the problems the way you look at or vice versa.

My sister, brother, and I are 180 degrees different. Having a conversation with them, you have to tread lightly.

People are always throwing things at me that I've said and I say that I didn't mean anything.

But you people do not understand me, and I am afraid you never will.

No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.

I find that socialism is often misunderstood by its least intelligent supporters and opponents to mean simply unrestrained indulgence of our natural propensity to heave bricks at respectable persons.

My sense of humor doesn't translate well into print, some of the things I say can be offensive or found offensive even though I don't mean them that way. So I have been told to try and censor myself here and there. I'm trying, but I'm not really succeeding at it.

I didn't relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn't relate well to people, period. Even my mother, who I was closer to than anyone else on the planet, was never in harmony with me, never on exactly the same page. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain.

People who read me seem to be divided into four groups: twenty-five percent like me for the right reasons; twenty-five percent like me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the right reasons. It's that last twenty-five percent that worries me.

The immigration system in America today has been misrepresented, misunderstood to mean: "Anybody who wants to come can come. The world is filled with oppression and tyranny, and we are your destination. If you don't want to stay where you are, you're free to come here - and our job and our duty is to accept you no matter what. And the more downtrodden you are, the better. And the poorer you are, the better." It is a total bastardization.

And I was -- this is just how I was afraid you'd take it. I knew it, that you'd think this means you were right to be afraid all the time and never feel secure or trust me. I knew it'd be "See, you're leaving after all when you promised you wouldn't." I knew it but I'm trying to explain anyway, okay? And I know you probably won't understand this either, but --wait-- just try to listen and maybe absorb this, okay? Ready? Me leaving is not the confirmation of all your fears about me. It is not. It's because of them.

As far as I was concerned, we'd come to a draw: I hadn't wanted to come, and she didn't want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn't see it that way. Lately, we didn't seem to see anything the same.

Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.

I had always assumed we had an unspoken understanding about these things: that she didn't really mean I was a failure, and I really meant I would try to respect her opinions more. But listening to Auntie Lin tonight reminds me once agian: My mother and I never really understood one another. We translated each other's meanings and I seemed to hear less than what was said, while my mother heard more. No doubt she told Auntie Lin I was going back to school to get a doctorate.

What happens between people is so misunderstood even between the people who are having the sex.

No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.

I hear the headlines on the radio, see them on TV and read them in the paper. When I hear from the men out there, I sometimes don't believe they are talking about the same situation.

"We speak different languages, as usual," responded Woland, "but this does not change the things we speak about. Well?..."

Don't keep telling your parents they don't understand you. Believe me it's much worse when they do. There's just a chance, you know - they really might.

I wasn't sure if the word boys should mean dim or incomprehensible. I was hovering between the two, with a healthy dose of testosterone-poisoned.

I stood there watching Phoebe arrange the pillows and the sheets. She isn't thinking that I... I mean, she doesn't think that she and I would... WHAT?