Quotes About Reflection

Perhaps memory is not merely the preservation of a moment in the mind, but the process of repeatedly returning to it, carefully breaking it up in parts and assembling them again until we can make sense of what we remember.

Nothing new has ever happened to a son of Adam, she said. Everything has already been lived and everything has already been told. If only we listened to the stories.

The present could never be untethered from the past, you couldn't understand one without the other.

As the days passed, I began to look upon my fate with new eyes. I often lamented the wicked turns my life had taken, but I rarely considered how much I had to be thankful for, how I had survived so long where so many others had perished, how I had seen wonders that no other Zamori had... I had been so intent on counting all the miseries and humiliations I had endured that I neglected to thank the Almighty for the blessings he had bestowed upon me.

Maybe there is no true story, only imagined stories, vague reflections of what we saw and what we heard, what we felt and what we thought.

I was preoccupied only with the price of things and neglected to consider their value.

I was a thirty-eight-year-old man, so I had plenty of time to consider the world through the eyes of someone else: yet that someone had rarely been a woman.

I often lamented the wicked turns my life had taken, but I rarely considered how much I had to be thankful for, how I had survived so long where so many others had perished

Lamar Underwood

am also thinking about the woman with the ponytail who slammed the door in my face. This dog-eating story is a lightning rod. It has nothing to do with the Chao

the gallery takes this in, Katherine briefly imagines the article in the pages of the Sioux City Journal: How is it possible their former high school debate champion, who has succeeded in the world and achieved so much, could allow herself to be bamboozled by a dog eater? How is it possible she could be the unquestioning fiancée of a murderer for twelve years? What kind of a character witness will she make? Obviously, she lost perspective on Dagou's character long ago.

The sincere reaction to making meaningful art is often speechlessness. We make art about what we cannot understand through any other method. The finished product is like a pearl, complete and beautiful, but mute about itself. The writer has given us this piece of his interior and there is frequently no explanation, nothing to be said about it. Often, the writer himself has very little idea of what he has created.

What losing does is, it restores the perspective.

Made plenty of mistakes along the way - all of which I am truly sorry.

Some things you can't win, though I don't like to admit it. I'm not used to losing much of anything, whether its a race or a debate, but among the things that I nearly lost are my life, my neck, and my good name, and I've gained a realization: a life of unbroken success is not only impossible, it's probably not even good for you...

What will you do with your wild & precious self?

Your past forms you, whether you like it or not.

The old fellow gazed out at the empty tent, painted a soft green by the carbide lamps, and at the tables, now missing their tablecloths, and felt utterly desolate, imagining that this is what his funeral would be like: the tent would become a place of mourning, but there would be no dutiful sons or grandsons in mourning attire kneeling before his coffin, nothing but a few casual acquaintances playing mahjong through the night

I read this book for the first time in almost ten years to prepare this introduction. On one level I am pleased to see that it holds up. On another level, I was appalled. I found myself wondering if the current administration had read it and used it as an instruction manual.

even when we stop typing and leave the house, we remain writers.

I believe that we take every memory and every moment with us, and that whatever those memories are become our heaven or our hell.

Nobody moves toward real Christlikeness without humility. Humility is not a bad self-image or a nonassertive personality. Humility is an eager willingness to see where you are wrong in order to experience the power of God that has already made you fit for His presence.

I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening. I never learned anything while I was talking.

A penis has never been something that you pick up and put down and put away idly without consideration.