Knowing Someone Quotes

“A lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so if the romance is new, a thousand if we're married to him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs an entire person. What we each create, since whatever is missing is filled by our imagination, is the person we wish him to be. The less we know him, of course, the more we love him. And that's why we always remember that first rapturous night when he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only when he's dead.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, The Story of a Marriage

“Half of the time, the Holy Ghost tries to warn us about certain people that come into our life. The other half of the time he tries to tell us that the sick feeling we get in a situation is not the other person’s fault, rather it is our own hang-ups. A life filled with bias, hatred, judgment, insecurity, fear, delusion and self-righteousness can cloud the soul of anyone you meet. Our job is never to assume,instead it is to listen, communicate, ask questions then ask more, until we know the true depth of someone’s spirit.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“You know when you think you know someone? More than anyone in the world? You know you know them, because you've seen them, like, for real. And then you reach out, and suddenly they are just... gone. You though you belonged together. You thought they were yours, but they're not. You want to protect them, but you can't.”
― Ava Dellaira, Love Letters to the Dead

“Some people think they know who you are, when really they don't.”
― Cynthia Lord, Rules

“It’s amazing that relationships can form and last under the constraints of never fully knowing. Never knowing for sure what the other person is thinking. Never knowing for sure who a person is.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“Who we are is what comes out when shit goes bad. You can't tell anything about a person when things are great. If you want to really know someone, be there when everything goes to hell.”
― Eileen Cook, With Malice

“To know a very different person from ourselves is a great luck for us!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“I had found a woman whom I had not known, and who from day to day had grown stranger to me, yet closer. Now she seemed to be slipping away from me again, into a realm where all names are forgotten, where there is only darkness and perhaps certain unknown laws of darkness. She rejected that dark realm; she came back, but she no longer
belonged to me as I had tried to believe. Perhaps she had never belonged to me; who, after all, belongs to whom, and what is it to belong to someone, to belong to one another? Isn't it a forlorn illusion, a convention? Time and again she turned back, as she called it, for an hour, for the duration of a glance, for a night. And always I felt like a bookkeeper who is not allowed to audit. I could only accept without question whatever this unaccountable, unhappy, damned, and beloved creature chose to be and to tell me. ... Loneliness demands a companion and does not ask who it is. If you don't know that, you may have been alone, but you were never lonely.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon

“How well do we actually know ourselves? Can we dare to say that we really know someone, like really, really know them?”
― Nico J. Genes

“I think of all the good things that come from someone knowing you well enough to understand your hopes and fears.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“The king has great power, but he has no power to know me, except through what I say and what I do.”
― Hilary Mantel, The Mirror & the Light

“Guessing at the dead man too late.”
― Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

“Never tell all you know-not even to the person you know best.”
― Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary

“What's the number of times that someone tried to assassinate you?'

He gives a one-shouldered shrug, his attention on the tableau below. 'Hard to know, but I'd guess there were a few dozen attempts since my sister came to power.'

That would be more than twice a year for every year since I met him. And that scar on his neck suggests that someone got very, very close.

I think of him as he was in the woods at thirteen, wanting to run away. Angry and afraid. I think of him lying on the sled this morning.

I poison everything I touch.

Every time I feel as though I know him, it seems there is another Oak underneath.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Lucy said, looking at him now, “My point is that every person on this earth is so complicated. Bob, we’re also complicated, and we match up for a moment—or maybe a lifetime—with somebody because we feel that we are connected to them. And we are. But we’re not in a certain way because nobody can go into the crevices of another’s mind, even the person can’t go into the crevices of their own mind, and we live— all of us— as though we can.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything

“My confessions did nothing to alter this situation, but for the first time in my life I felt that somebody actually knew me. Three somebodies, to be exact. Two were roaming the highway in a Cadillac, doing God knows what with a CB radio, but the other was as close to me as my own skin, and I could now feel the undiluted pleasure of her company.”
― David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames

“Is it possible to ever know someone completely? To know all their thoughts and feelings, their hopes, their dreams, their sorrows and regrets, the parts of themselves they hide from public view? Only God can truly know us like that.”
― Sarah Haywood

“To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship.”
― Domenico Cieri Estrada

“Look at your hair!” she says, moving her hand toward my short hair but not actually touching it. “It’s so different.”

I am stronger than when I knew them. I stand straighter. I am more patient. I hold fewer grudges. I am more thankful for what I have, less resentful for what I don’t. I am less restless. I read a lot more books. I play the piano. I’m engaged.

But, of course, she can’t see all that. The only change she can see is my short, blond hair.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, One True Loves

“Intimacy could distort one's vantage, that much was true. Sometimes trying to see the whole of a person could be like describing a painting with your nose pressed to the canvas, though my husband would have argued that I hadn't wanted to see from a different angle, hadn't wanted to step back.”
― Laura van den Berg, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

“...I was thinking and thinking about how, in just the past year, I had just started to know her, but then I began to unknow her, getting farther and farther away like watching a boat drift from the shore and head out not to some other land but to an open water that never, never ends. And she did not even know this, that she was on the boat.

[Charles Lamosway, referring to Louise, his mother]”
― Morgan Talty, Fire Exit

“What do we know of our mothers? I thought I knew her. But I'd seen her as a child sees a good mother--pure, transparent, incapable of deception.”
― Rhonda Riley, The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope

“All those hours spent together, playing, talking, laughing, lovemaking... I should know him by now, surely. I should know the secret, vulnerable corners of his brain. Shouldn't I? But then, he did always keep part of himself hidden away, I remind myself. As though he couldn't trust it with anyone, not even me.”
― Sophie Kinsella, The Party Crasher

“The 'works' of a man is the transparency of the inner man. The fruits define him.”
― Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu

“She has known the tide and undertow of my feelings, my hurts, both small and large, for most of my life.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“It's weird, isn't it?'

'What is?'

His gaze met mine again, and I felt a hitch in my chest. I couldn't look away. I felt... ensnared. 'How it feels like I've known you longer. You feel that, too.'

I wanted to deny it, but he was right, and it was weird. I said none of that because I didn't want to acknowledge it. Doing so felt like a start down a road I couldn't travel. Knowing that caused a deep, twisting sensation in my chest, and I didn't want to acknowledge that either.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, From Blood and Ash

“Is it worth losing your position over and being ostracised for?'

He glared down at me. 'If you even have to ask that question, then you don't know me at all.'

'I hardly know you at all,' I whispered, irritated by the sting his words left behind.

'Well, now you know that I will never stand by and watch someone hit you or any person for no reason other than they feel they can,' he shot back.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, From Blood and Ash

“How could she know? We discover things about our spouses no one else ever will. Marriage is one long striptease of the soul.”
― Elizabeth Mckenzie, The Dog of the North

“It's a terrible thing to know everything about someone long after you want to.”
― Laura Dave, The Last Thing He Told Me

“Your favorite color is mint green. You like dramas and comedies. Can't stand gory movies. Hate carrot cakes but will never say no to brownies. You love all animals, except spiders. Your favorite candy is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. You can't stand bullies and attention seekers. You'll try everything in life once, because you want to prove that you can live as normal a life as everyone else." He stopped at the dazed look on my face. "What? Have I got it all wrong?"
That was the problem. He didn't.
He got all of them right.”
― Cynthia Timoti, Salty, Spiced, and a Little Bit Nice