H. Jackson Brown Jr. Quotes

I wasn't smart enough to read relationship books when I was coming up. I learned everything the hard way.

All relationships are a learning experience, even ones you continue to be in. If you don't see them as that, then that's a problem.

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding.

The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our circle of influence, our own character.

Every relationship you have, you're learning and growing and taking something from that.

I'm a private person by nature. I live in my brain half the time, not the world, and I'm not a natural negotiator. But I've learned to negotiate.

For me, becoming a man had a lot to do with learning communication, and I learned about that by acting.

I've learned so much as both a writer and a human.

I'm sensitive, you know, about some things, and as some of my partners could attest to, incredibly insensitive.

Dating someone on the opposite end of the happy spectrum teaches you an incredible amount of patience.

Some relationships get easier as you get older, depending on what sort of person you are. I don't think I've got any better at them.

Sensitivity, awareness, and conflict - these have catalysed my creative growth.

I'm good at many, many things, but the one thing I've never been good at is relationships.

After my divorce, I took some time off from having a romantic life to begin the tough work of figuring out where I'd gone wrong and what on Earth I could do to understand how to be a whole person in a relationship.

I think when I was younger, I was struggling to kind of differentiating love from a personal love or a tennis love or whatever else. There was time that I wasn't sure how to deal with both things in the same time. But you learn. I guess we grow. I mean, I don't want to say I've learned from my mistakes, but I've learned myself a little bit better.

We all fall into biological and mental habits. It's an easy way for us to navigate day-to-day work and life, but it also doesn't do us any favours in terms of growing into wisdom, growing into a greater understanding of each other, growing into a deeper relationship - all the things that we really crave.

Sensitivity training is a fine idea but isn't taken seriously by those who need it most.

Once we begin to question our thoughts, our partners-alive, dead or divorced-are always our greatest teachers. There's no mistake about the person you're with; he or she is the perfect teacher for you, whether or not the relationship works out, and once you enter inquiry, you come to see that clearly.

If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.

I don't know how you can understand other people or yourself if you haven't read a lot of books. I just don't think you're equipped to deal with the demands and decisions of life, particularly in your dealings with other people.

I'm not a terrible person, I know that, but sometimes in a relationship, I can be crappy.

After years of doing it, you learn the difference between your ego and your opinion. When you're married you have to cut through that.

Each relationship nurtures a strength or weakness within you.

I think almost everything in life is life-experience, personality-driven.

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.