Quotes About Clarity

know. I get it. Because when I knew but they didn't know I knew, that was good. But when they knew that I knew but I didn't know they knew, that was bad. But now that I know they know that I know, and they don't know it, it's good again.

Barry Eisler

In Mississippi it is difficult to achieve a vista.

the world is ever so slightly but uncorrectably out of focus, that there are no absolutely precise answers. Whatever

A loud voice cannot compete with a clear voice, even if it's a whisper.

But by restricting our options, we will be able to choose less and feel better.

The discrepancy between logic and memory suggests that we don't always know what we want.

people won't ignore alternatives if they don't realize that too many alternatives can create a problem.

we have too many choices, too many decisions, too little time to do what is really important.

Afterward I remembered these things very clearly, with that longing we feel sometimes to recover a state of life that we have lost for ever, though it is perhaps that we have lost it is all its value.

drink alcoholic beverages ("Be ye not drunk with wine

The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance.

When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.

Nerves, he thought, were for people who hadn't entirely made up their minds.

Nope, nothing wrong here.

But stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.

There's really no just about it, is there?

When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

Here's something else I believe: if you're going into a very dark place—like Wilf James's Nebraska farmhouse in "1922"—then you should take a bright light, and shine it on everything. If you don't want to see, why in God's name would you dare the dark at all?

Don't let your good nature cloud your critical eye. The critical eye should always be cold and clear.

When I say truth, I mean beauty.

I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my mind.

When the mind's filter disappeared, the big picture disappeared with it. There was no forest, only trees. At its worst, there were no trees, either. Just bark.

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.