Quotes About Clarity

I suppose I'm always looking for a sort of acuity of perception either in my characters or about my characters.

Most of us live in a fog. It's like life is a movie we arrived to 20 minutes late. You know something important seems to be going on. But we can't figure out the story. We don't know what part we're supposed to play or what the plot is.

I was very sorry when I found out that your intentions were good and not what I supposed they were.

I still don't know quite what I'm supposed to do or be.

I'm trying to shut up and let my angels speak to me and tell me what I'm supposed to do.

Certainly from the rehearsal process with Elizabeth I think it was very clear. Well let me start again. We were initially supposed to be more combative.

I'm always distressed by the supposedly bright people who don't know what they are.

On the whole, we think of our consumers - other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it's better to have it clearer than confusing.

A Supreme Court ruling is supposed to provide clarity to contentious legal issues, but in the case of reproductive rights, it was just the beginning of a long, heated, and grueling debate.

I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.

What I would like to say is make sure you know what you really want to do and do it. And also I want to say, if not now then when?

There's nothing like making a decision when you're a football referee. It really pushes you to be very clear - to make that decision and to sell it to everybody who's there. You believe in it, but you have to make sure other people believe in it, too.

I'd rather be by myself than be spending any time or energy on somebody that I didn't feel sure about.

I gratefully look forward to oblivion, but I must be sure of it.

The most difficult thing in any negotiation, almost, is making sure that you strip it of the emotion and deal with the facts. And there was a considerable challenge to that here and understandably so.

In truth, opinion may be taken for understanding; understanding cannot be taken for opinion. How so? Surely because opinion may be deceived; understanding cannot be. If it could, it would not be understanding but opinion. For true understanding has not only certain truth, but the knowledge of truth.

We apply our effort to be mindful, to be aware in this very moment, right here and now, and we bring a very wholehearted effort to it. This brings concentration. It is this power of concentration that we use to cut through the world of surface appearances to get to a much deeper reality.

I was never really sure what I wanted to do - I'm in awe of these people who knew at age 10 or 12 they wanted to be a brain surgeon, and they did it, and they still are.

Like the old Italian saying goes, 'It ain't rocket surgery.'

Let's have days and days of brilliant clarity, etched and limpid, cool and surgical.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

I must have been one of the least surprised people on earth on September 11. I felt very braced for that. I knew something like that was going to come.

What surprised me most while writing 'The Monogram Murders' was that everything I needed seemed to arrive in my head exactly when I needed it.

What I value in books is lucidity. I want the language to be rich; I love lexical fireworks on the page, but I have to know what it means. I want to be surprised and delighted, not merely baffled.