Quotes About Reflection

So , I said, now that we have our dead, what are we going to do with them?

Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart, says the heart. — Richard Siken, from "The Language of the Birds," War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015)

I looked at all the trees and didn't know what to do.

I woke up in the morning and I didn't want anything, didn't do anything, couldn't do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything.

Hello darling, sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known.

Look back on the good, look forward to the future.

The present is a bully, always making us think the molten moment we inhabit is the most alarming ever, while the past tends to slip into that specious category of "simpler times.

I have often lamented that we cannot close our ears with as much ease as we can our eyes.

A woman seldom writes her Mind, but in her Postscript.

I am come to a tavern alone to eat a steak, after which I shall return to the office.

I have often lamented that we cannot close our ears with as much ease as which we close our eyes.

I have often lamented that we cannot shut our ears with as much ease as we can our eyes.

By maturity, he meant that he learned to control those more youthful impulses, not that he was no longer stung or hurt or angry. It is not that you always know what to do or how to do it, it is that you are able to tamp down the emotions and anxieties that get in the way of seeing the world as it is. You can see through them, and that will see you through.

EVEN ON A REMOTE but beautiful island, Mandela needed a place apart. A place where he could lose himself to find himself.

Yes, bottle up your negative emotions in a neurotically unhealthy way. For my sake. Just off and on until spring. Your springtime emotions I like a lot." I took a long swig of beer. "I don't know, Timothy. I have to tell you, this is a bolt out of the blue. Your proposition is not something I ever dreamed I'd be faced with when we began sharing hearth and home and Vaseline jar. I'm going to have to give this one a lot of thought.

In the age of AIDS I had been making it a practice to imagine a skull and crossbones on the forehead of every possibly available comely gay man I found myself alone with, but Slonski's kept fading in, fading out.

The philosopher king said, "Everything stinks sometimes. Some of it can't be explained.

A day will dawn when you will laugh at all your past efforts." Ramana Maharshi

Try to see the past as a room separate from the one you live in now. You can go in there, but you don't live there anymore.

If it's dead, don't go digging it up every five minutes to check if there's a pulse. It's dead; walk away.

WISDOM ISN'T ABOUT NOT MAKING MISTAKES BUT ABOUT LEARNING TO ESCAPE AFTERWARD WITH OUR DIGNITY AND SANITY INTACT.

This has to be a Rule because there can be no choice here. We have to accept that we are the way we are—the result of everything that has happened. It all just is.

Wisdom isn't about not making mistakes, but about learning to escape afterwards with our dignity and sanity intact.

So do yourself a favour. Go away and hide somewhere while you lick your wounds. Enjoy your friends and your family, and wait until you've recovered a bit before you start looking for a new partner. And when you do, try to pick someone whose scars are relatively well-healed too – because of course this works the other way round as well. That way you can both see each other as you really are, and start your relationship the way you want to continue it.