In the beginning, I would find a character I understood. That was my focus. Not now – but you basically get offered the exact same thing you just did. Which I find hilarious. I did ‘The Vow,’ and then I had every love story you can imagine thrown at me. And now I’m getting offers for comedies.
My departure from Hollywood was described as a walk-out. No one understood that I was cracking up.
Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket… the least understood and the least noticed.
My grandparents never understood why my mother Noreen chose such exotic names for her children: Damon and me. My granny insisted on calling my brother Dermot – a good Irish name – until she died; I was just known as ‘wee one.’
Nelson Mandela understood that social transformation and economic transformation go hand in hand.
Then as now, whatever disagreements over policies existed among Americans – and there were many such bitter policy disputes – the purposes and goals for which Americans fought were clearly understood.
When we speak the word ‘life,’ it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.
The tribal community lived in the totality of circular time; the farmers of God’s universe understood before and after; workers of the clockwork universe lived by the tick; and we creatures of the digital era must relate to the pulse.
Nero may have understood how to tune his cithern, but he disgraced his imperial office both by slackening and by tightening the strings.
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
As we mature through the years, we access more deeply information we had only abstractly understood before.
Laws are generally not understood by three sorts of persons, viz, by those who make them, by those who execute them, and by those who suffer if they break them.
My parents never understood why I didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer. They’re Cuban immigrants who wanted to give their children the American dream, and, to them, that was more of what ‘the dream’ entailed.
I had an issue with dyslexia before they understood what dyslexia was. One of my teachers, Mrs. Anderson, taught me to look at it like a curveball. The ball breaks the same way every time. Once you get used to it, you can handle it pretty well.
Just think, if I had understood my lawyer and if he and I had communicated properly in January 1958, this whole history would have been entirely different .
Well, let’s say we acknowledged the School of French Painting – the Paris School of painting as the leading force and vitality of the time. I think that was understood and felt and experienced.
I was always into music. And none of my friends were really into music the same way I was. So it was just different. It was really not very well understood by most of my friends. They didn’t tease me about it – they just didn’t really relate.
Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.
It was great working with Dhanush. Since we are married, it worked to my advantage because we were in sync and understood what we wanted from each other.
My first thought when I came here was that I understood why there are so many great Irish writers – because there is something mystical in the air. There’s always this cloudy, moody sky and it’s challenging.
It sounds really over the top to say you’re responsible for the city of New York, but I do feel responsibility to the city of New York, to this country, to people everywhere. So many people were affected by the events of September 11, and I feel this is one of the ways that that event will be understood and defined.
Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.
What I do find enormously gratifying is the reviews my books get from the American press. They are so on the ball compared to anywhere else. It’s so satisfying to get a review that conveys the reader understood precisely what I was trying to get at.
Metaphors, similes, puns – all manner of metonymy – I’m interested in language that cannot be parsed by a machine – language that can only be understood through acculturation.
We are victims of the post-Enlightenment view that the world functions like a sophisticated machine, to be understood like a textbook engineering problem and run by wonks. In other words, like a home appliance, not like the human body.
I’m a child of the sixties. I grew up with a president who was a crook, who put us into the most unpopular war in history, who had no communication with people under thirty. I had seen the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Panthers and the Diggers; I understood what they were about.
Do you know, Michael, he was – he touched the hearts of many people around the world. That’s important. That’s why the world cried when he passed because they understood him.
I felt such a deep connection with dolphins. I felt like they were the only ones who understood me.
Now, the language that had grown up and formed itself on those principles is what one is dealing with, and the problem is to bring a work of art in that medium into another medium formed on different principles and heard and understood in a different way.
Everyone talks about, ‘Get your foot in the door,’ but I never understood that mentality. Why would I want to go in that house? Why not build my own house? Why not take a chair and smash a window?
More countries have understood that women’s equality is a prerequisite for development.
I’ll meet someone on the street and blurt out my most intimate details. I think everybody secretly – or not so secretly – wants to be understood, and I just want to connect, you know?
I remember, after ‘Tumbleweeds,’ my friend and I wrote ‘Pride and Glory.’ I was just about to get it going. I had some really great actors attached, and New Line was going to make the movie, and 9/11 happened. And it was over. By September 12, it was over. And rightfully so. I understood that.
I never understood why anyone would do magazines. Like, why would someone put their face out there so much? It’s because those people reading magazines will go see the movie, so you do it.
Science fiction is something I never understood.
For those of us in the political business, generally, it’s been pretty much an unwritten but understood rule that family and children are out of bounds, that you don’t attack someone’s family.
I never understood the idea that you’re supposed to mellow as you get older. Slowing down isn’t something I relate to at all. The goal is to continue in good and bad, all of it.
I was a lot more cultured than the other kids in my high school. Because I traveled, I understood different cultures and had a more worldly view. Most of the people I went to high school with had never been outside of California.
Wanting to be understood by an audience that didn’t know Russian, I tried to paint musical pictures by emphasizing the phrasing, using voice color more boldly, and varying the shade and nuance.
The Soviet Union had only one party. You couldn’t express yourself freely; you couldn’t admit belief in God. And yet this terrible regime understood that human beings have to express themselves, through music, even at a bad level. All kids studied music automatically, just as they did maths or languages or sport.
I believe if people understood each other more, if people took the time and realize it’s not ‘all about me’ and I’m on a big planet with a lot of other people and concerns, maybe we can learn how to get along with each other.
We were great mates. We didn’t really go out together because we never really had the time to go out. But we were with each other all the time anyway because we were working all the time. We could sit down and talk for hours, and we still can. We just understood each other.
If scientists could communicate more in their own voices – in a familiar tone, with a less specialized vocabulary – would a wide range of people understand them better? Would their work be better understood by the general public, policy-makers, funders, and, even in some cases, other scientists?
A signal is comprehended if it serves to make us notice the object or situation it bespeaks. A symbol is understood when we conceive the idea it presents.
I think I grew up really fast; I grew up in this really fast-paced business, and I never understood what it meant to take a break or take time off or recover, and I paid for it.
The purpose of the mission must be thoroughly understood beforehand, and the men must be inspired with a sense of personal dedication that knows no limitations… In an age of high technology and Jedi Knights, we often overlook the need for personal involvement, but we do so at our own risk.
What makes revolutionary thought unique is its clarity and dignity, and its clear grasp of freedom and justice: simple, clear words that are understood without the need for any help from elite writers or thinkers.
Congress is functioning the way the Founding Fathers intended-not very well. They understood that if you move too quickly, our democracy will be less responsible to the majority.
Be it understood you are never rich when you get no advantage from it.
