Quotes About Subjectivity

The world was indeed a kind of screen and did not manifest itself other than by passing me on and on—I was just the bouncing ball that objects played with!

We were inclined to believe that the nose was not for the snuff box but the snuff box for the nose.

The I, the I is what is deeplt mysterious.

Hell is other people's taste

To a human, the fall-colored leaves are gorgeous. To a red or yellow leaf, I can guarantee they find the green ones lovelier.

People believe what is important for them to believe, and each person has his or her own reason, sometimes not even known to them.

Soon-Yi and I had no interest in knowing about each other. I thought she was a quiet, boring kid, and she thought I was her mom's patsy.

The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals of the story without animals?

The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? (p. 302)

Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error. A book that is good for me would very likely be punk for you.

Tú no buscas la verdad. Tú fabricas tu propia verdad. - Memento

We know God by cultivating a relationship, not by understanding a concept. The relation constitutes the very subjectivity of of our existence. We participate in existence consciously and rationally, with subjective self-knowledge and identity, because the erotic drive of our nature is transformed into a personal relation when there arises in the space of the Other the first signifier of desire: the maternal presence. The subject is born with love's first leap of joy.

Life is rarely about what happened; it's mostly about what we think happened.

Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time.

What we don't understand we can make mean anything.

To each his own.

Naught is simple about the truth. There is the truth of what happened and the truth of what I believe happened and the truth of what I still remember to have happened. And that does not embrace the truths perceived and remembered by others, let alone whether any of us witnessed the fullness of the truth in the first place.

But I know how this romantic stuff works: one girl's perfect guy is another girl's reject. And right now I'm glad of it.

People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.

What happens to you doesn't belong to you, only half concerns you. It's not yours. Not yours only. - Claudia Rankine (cited near the title page of 'An American Marriage' by Tayari Jones)

A particular bear...sees a particular this

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.