Quotes About Reflection

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I? Nobody but a defeated, deflated, pathetic testimony to a wrong way of living.

You do many things at once; you read, listen to the radio, talk, smoke, eat, drink. You are the consumer with the open mouth, eager and ready to swallow everything—pictures, liquor, knowledge. This lack of concentration is clearly shown in our difficulty in being alone with ourselves. To sit still, without talking, smoking, reading, drinking, is impossible for most people. They become nervous and fidgety, and must do something with their mouth or their hands.

Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled, to concentrate, to accept conflict and tension, to be born every day, to feel a sense of self.

Frances reflecting on sudden death of husband: It made her wish that humans could write the script for their own endings, so that they could be approached with grace and preparedness , like wedding anniversaries and christenings.

Some people, perhaps those with more dignity and less rage gnawing at the roots of their being, are nicer as failures, For me, it was like descending a deep pit that had no bottom

All age is a kind of tiredness, I think. When you're young, the lines never show. Every morning you wake unmarked, wiped clear by sleep. One day, though, you see lines that itch, as though some crumb of existence has been creased into your skin. They can never be smoothed away, and after a while you forget that this heavy, irritable feeling wasn't always there.

Somehow her later years had become a mirror of her lonely childhood.

as she walked back to her husband, lola thought about lying on her expensive sheets and holding a baby - their baby - to her breast. to the baby, lola would smell like a mother, and the ridiculous chandelier would look like stars.

Meditation is like sobriety in that it doesn't make everything perfect but helps us be okay with how everything is.

Charlotte sipped her coffee and gazed at the rocky coastline, the deep green hills, clouds like smoke. How lonely it was to have no witness to her life. No one to guard her passage into slumber, no one to know that she had made it through the night.

I feel I've done some things in life too late and others too early

I should have been out there having a wild time like all the other girls my age, but I wasn't. I was going home every night to what was, initially, a very happy marriage.

Sometimes you only get one chance at something. Sometimes that's a good thing too. When that door slams shut on the thing you couldn't live without, what happens next is when the read education begins. You have to figure out how to make some peace with it all, how to have an interior life you can live with. Digging down deep is really never a bad thing in the end, but it will flat-out kick your ass while it's happening.

Life is like a puzzle, sometimes you have to take a step back, look at it and see if you are missing any pieces.

You compose a question and then you just start walking. Concentrate on each step. Don't think too far ahead and don't think about where you have been. But consider closely how one step leads to another. Contemplate connections and links. Immerse yourself in the pattern.

it's only a mistake if it kills you or if you fail to learn from it

My task is teach my students how to ask the right questions.

One day you're young with all your fine plans for the future. The next you're in the future and it doesn't look at all the way you thought it would.

I have often sat in that chair behind my desk and wondered how you would look lying naked here on this sofa. It was a form of self-inflicted torture." "Good heavens

It is not good for the spirits to dwell on that which cannot be altered.

Some people find that reading novels is very therapeutic precisely because it does allow one to view reality from an entirely different perspective.

We all get stuck. We all lose ourselves a little bit in a fantasy or in our jobs and forget how we feel about other things. It's really important to check yourself, to spend some time alone.

People have the wrong idea about cemeteries. They're built for the living, not the dead. If ghosts do exist, I think they are much more likely to attach themselves to people than places.