Quotes About Self-awareness

Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.

loneliness is not a function of solitude.

It's all very confusing. I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am -- so where does that put me?

We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.

My worst character flaw that I'm conscious of is that I tend to think my way into circles instead of resolving anything. It's paralyzing and boring for people around me.

She took a sort of abject pride in her mecilessness toward herself.

It is extremely difficult to stay alert & attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monolog inside your head.

If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it.

It never once occurs to him, though, that the reason he's so unhappy is that he's an asshole.

My own terror of appearing sentimental is so strong that I've decided to fight against it, some; but the terror is still there. . . . Do you identify with a distaste/fear about sentimentality? Do you agree that, past a certain line, such distaste can turn everything arch and sneering and too ironic? Or do you have your own set of abstract questions to drive yourself nuts with?

T]he worst kind of nihilist—the kind who isn't even aware he's a nihilist.

That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.

Defining yourself in opposition to something is still being anaclitic on that thing, isn't it?

I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is more like confused.

That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.

The fraud part of me was always there, just as a puzzle piece, objectively speaking, is a true piece of the puzzle even before you see how it fits.

This is what happens: you imagine the things I will say and then say them for me and then become angry with them. Without my mouth; it never opens. You speak to yourself, inventing sides. This itself is the habit of children: lazy, lonely, self. I am not even here, possibly, for listening to.

In this instance, he was wise enough to be suspicious of his own desire to seem wise, and to refuse to indulge in it….my father understood that advice - even wise advice - actually does nothing for the advisee, changes nothing inside, and can actually cause confusion when the advisee is made to feel the wide gap between the comparative simplicity of the advice and the totally muddled complications of his own situation and path.

That most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.

I go through a loop in which I notice all the ways I am...self-centered and careerist and not true to standards and values that transcend my own petty interests...but then I countenance the fact here at least here I am worrying about it; so then I feel better about myself...but this soon becomes a vehicle for feeling superior to imagined Others...I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am--so where does that put me.

THE MAN WHO KNOWS HIS LIMITATIONS HAS NONE.

As most adults know, the distinctions between one's essential character and value and people's perceptions of that character/value are fuzzy and hard to delineate, especially in adolescence.

Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.

So if we think about ourselves with respect to the game, we're thinking about our thinking. And we decided the one thing we couldn't think about was our thinking, because the object has to be Other. We can think only the things that can't think themselves. So if we think ourselves, see for instance conceiving ourselves as thought, we can't ourselves be the object of our thinking.