Hannah Kent Quotes

As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.

You were trying to tell me something and I was trying to tell you something else. We didn't trust each other and that was reason enough to make each of us right.

There is not so good an understanding between any two, but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.

Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.

I said, "Do you think she thinks it's me?" Jas said, "Well, it's pretty conclusive, isn't it? She said 'the most sniveling idiot I have ever come across.'" I said, "I didn't know that YOU have been seeing Masimo. Tom the Slug King is going to be very upset.

I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this.

A mutual misunderstanding.

It's dreadful what little things lead people to misunderstand each other.

Parents just don't understand.

The disconnect lasted too long. I think people got the idea I was sullen and couldn't communicate, which wasn't true.

Here’s how a child listens: you tell him something, and he puts his own interpretation on what you said. That’s what he hears. No one has ever heard you.

Criticism is the forerunner of divorce, the cultivator of rebellion, sometimes an agent that leads to failure.

I don't know if you have noticed this, but it is quite possible for two human beings to have a conversation in which one or both parties involved has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

THE FATHER: But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here? In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

There are crucial things that cause fractures, breaks, whatever in relationships. But no one throws a life away.

I find myself having these conversations where I go...You know, the guy, in that place. The guy in the place with the thing, you know. And it becomes this game of charades. And then finally, we realize that I mean the Pope.

The truth is, sometimes too much can happen in a relationship, and then there's nothing anyone can do or say. It's broken.

Some couples divorce because of a misunderstandin g; others, because they understand each other too well.

It's not my dreams that get me in trouble, it's what my wife dreams I did. My wife punched me in the middle of the night; I woke up and went Oww! What was that for?, and she goes I dreamt you were making out with Faith Hill. I said I wasn't dreaming anything! Send her over to my dreams, and we'll both be happy.

I told Zollie Volchok we needed an ultrasound machine and he asked me why we needed music in the locker room.

Sometimes people mishear my lyrics and think a song's about something it isn't.

I thought we talked things out!' 'Yes, and you listened very carefully to every word you had to say.

My companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation, until all is said that words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious assumption.

And we went our separate ways without having understood each other. As in this world nobody understands the other easily.

I like that confusion when people are speaking in the same language but still can't understand each other. It's also usually my experience of being in America - when I speak no one can understand what I'm saying.