The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
That's part of the requirement for me to be an artist is that you're trying to share your personal existence with others and trying to illuminate modern life, trying to understand life.
Nobody could understand why a guy would love his guitar, then all of a sudden turn around and try to destroy it. Jimi was just different.
All I care is that my family, and my loved ones, understand me. Or that they understand me to a degree - I don't understand me very much. And I don't need the world to understand me. That is the most egocentric thing.
I used to make fun of my friends who had BlackBerries. And I know that the expression CrackBerry has been going around, but now I fully understand it. I'm actually addicted to a piece of machinery, and that's really embarrassing.
I could sing in English before I could understand it because I phonetically learned it from the musicals.
Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its elements are hunger, envy, and death.
In that sense, I became politicized because the people in the coal mining villages who were involved in the struggle knew why they were there. But they couldn't understand why some pop star from London would want to be there.
I understand the dignity that comes from work and caring for one's family.
I'm drawn in some strangely natural way to immersing myself in a milieu whose rules I don't understand, where there are things you can't access simply by being intelligent or doing well in school.
But I think the global economy will understand that the United States has the ability to meet its obligations. But it's not going to be able to do it over the long term if we can't control the growth of government.
There are amazing schools and amazing educators that are doing a wonderful job. And then there are a lot of educators that are not prepared to deal with inclusive education. They haven't been trained. It's really quite lovely and easy when you understand how to do it.
My overall message for labor members is... that we understand that the benefits of trade are clear, but the disruption and the dislocation are painfully concentrated and we can't ignore them.
Both SOPA and PIPA are toxic. My view is that anyone who supports these bills either doesn't understand what they are supporting or is simply no friend of innovation. And, if you are no friend of innovation, I can't support you in any way, as innovation is the lifeblood of our economy, our country, and what I've dedicated my life to.
What the public needs to understand is that these new technologies, especially in recombinant DNA technology, allow scientists to bypass biological boundaries altogether.
One thing I want you to understand is if I make a decision, it's my decision.
You don't have to be Jewish to understand the history of Europe in the 20th century, but it helps.
I don't fully understand my wife's emotions - and I'm supposed to write an excellent female character and unravel the secret of women?
If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.
I think purpose is the most important thing because once you understand that, everything else becomes easy.
I understand that in some industries, the input cost of energy is a major factor in whether an industry is going to locate in the United States or go elsewhere.
At the beginning of my career, my desire to understand was associated with a profound desire to act, with the wish to influence opinion and policy; but, over the years, this motivation has come to be of secondary importance, far behind my desire to understand.
Today, I'd like to talk to Bob Marley. I'd just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don't know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from 'Redemption Song' to 'Is This Love?' and 'I Shot the Sheriff.'
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
You gotta understand, there are two different kinds of Asians - the kind who are good at school, obey their parents, go to college - that kind of stuff. And then you have my family - me, my brother, all of my cousins - we're just wretched people.
As you know, I am a novelist, and I really want to write novels. But I knew enough about the Dreyfus case to understand immediately why what happened to Dreyfus was not merely a cause celebre from the end of the 19th century, but an event that could be shown to teach us lessons of the greatest importance for our own time.
I have a very open mind. I believe that there's a spirit world. I believe that there's a lot of stuff out there that we don't know about, don't want to understand, and sometimes we don't want to understand it.
The most important aspect of the relationship between the president and the secretary of state is that they both understand who is president.
I understand that we cannot make other people happy when they are unhappy.
Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.
The sheer complexity of writing a play always had dazzled me. In an effort to understand it, I became a critic.
They don't think we're in touch with modern Britain, or understand modern Britain or like modern Britain.
Quantum theory also tells us that the world is not simply objective; somehow it's something more subtle than that. In some sense it is veiled from us, but it has a structure that we can understand.
What many economists fail to understand is that poor people are no less concerned about improving their lot and that of their children than rich people are.
Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.
When man learns to understand and control his own behavior as well as he is learning to understand and control the behavior of crop plants and domestic animals, he may be justified in believing that he has become civilized.
