Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)
Variant: We have a similar problem. I can understand English, but I cannot understand Americans.
“If I can't picture it, I can't understand it.”
Attributed to Einstein by physicist John Archibald Wheeler in John Horgan's article "Profile: Physicist John A. Wheeler, Questioning the 'It from Bit'". Scientific American, pp. 36-37, June 1991. Reprinted here http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=pioneering-physicist-john-wheeler-dies after Wheeler's death.
Attributed in posthumous publications
Neil Hickey TV Guide interview http://www.punkhart.com/dylan/interviews/sep_1976.html (11 September 1976)
Interview, quoted in "Words from the Master" http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/apf/words-from-the-master.html in The Annotated Pratchett File http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/apf/index.html
General sources
Context: As for The Mapp... I suspect it'll never get a US publication. It seemed to frighten US publishers. They don't seem to understand it.
That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans:
A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?
I make no suggestion that one side or the other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true.
Quoted in profile by Martin Amis, "Mr. Vidal: Unpatriotic Gore" (1977) in The Moronic Inferno (1987)
1970s
“i can't understand her"
well son, you might as well try to understand the sun”
Source: The Fires of Heaven
“Understand me who can, for I understand myself.”
Canzone 105, st. 2
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life
