CURATED COLLECTION

The Limits of Human Understanding

The wisest minds have always been the ones most willing to say: this is where my understanding ends.

39 quotes found

“
What is a self, if not a story told in a borrowed tongue?

—Meena AlexanderPoet & Memoirist

Late Modern ERA • South Asia

“
Sometimes, silence is the loudest sound. It speaks volumes of unspoken truths.

—Pham Thi HoaiNovelist & Essayist

Late Modern ERA • Southeast Asia

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You won't understand until you've lived it.

—Hanya YanagiharaNovelist & Editor

Digital Age ERA • North America

“
To write about these lives is to risk embellishment, sentimentality, projection.

—Saidiya HartmanScholar & Author

Digital Age ERA • North America

“
Grief does not change you. It reveals you.

—Bessie HeadNovelist

Post-War ERA • Southern Africa

“
I just sing about my life and what I feel. It has to be genuine.

—TemsScholar & Thinker

Digital Age ERA • West Africa

“
I write to create a space for understanding.

—Roxane GayWriter, Editor & Critic

Digital Age ERA • North America

“
Everyone has a secret, but that doesn't mean it should be told.

—Keri HulmeNovelist

Late Modern ERA • Oceania

“
Even if you dislike a woman, it is still possible to understand her.

—Zhang AilingWriter & Novelist

Early Modern ERA • East Asia

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Writing became a way of making sense of life.

—Bessie HeadNovelist

Late Modern ERA • Southern Africa

“
To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent.

—Czesław MiłoszPoet, Novelist & Essayist

Post-War ERA • Eastern Europe

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Escribir es una forma de exorcismo, de sacar los demonios de dentro.

—Luisa ValenzuelaNovelist & Journalist

Late Modern ERA • Latin America

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Writing is to dare to tell what others prefer not to hear.

—Assia DjebarNovelist & Historian

Late Modern ERA • North Africa

“
Fear is a mirror; it shows us what we most deeply dread within ourselves.

—Amparo DávilaWriter

Post-War ERA • Latin America

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Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think.

—Malcolm XActivist & Minister

Post-War ERA • North America

“
To survive trauma means to remember trauma.

—Jenny ZhangPoet & Writer

Digital Age ERA • East Asia

“
No one can be happy who has not been honest with herself.

—Henrik IbsenPlaywright

Industrial Age ERA • Nordic

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Words do not fall like rain. They fall like stones.

—Alejandra PizarnikPoet

Post-War ERA • Latin America

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Silence is not empty. It is full of unsaid things.

—K. Sello DuikerNovelist

Contemporary ERA • Southern Africa

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The monstrous always dwells in our innermost self.

—Armonía SomersNovelist

Post-War ERA • Latin America

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