Quotes About Reflection

when my cat died I had to go out and borrow all these Simon and Garfunkel records.

Yet even in death, my dad was ineradicable, no matter how hard I tried to wish him out of the picture– for there he always was, in my hands and my voice and my walk, in my darting sideways glance as I left the restaurant with Hobie, the very set of my head recalling his old, preening habit of checking himself out in any mirror-like surface.

Maybe, I thought- reaching in the bag, taking out a stack of money and looking it over- maybe good luck was like bad luck in that it took a while to sink in. You didn't feel anything at first.

something about the place inspired a magnificent laziness I hadn't known since childhood.

It was one of the reasons I loved him: for that flattering light in which he saw me, for the person I was when I was with him, for what it was he allowed me to be.

strange to find that the present contained such a bright shard of the living past, damaged and eroded but not destroyed.

Suddenly, I was struck by a horrible thought: is this what it's like? Is this the way it's going to be from now on?

It's crazy," she'd said, "but I'd be perfectly happy if I could sit looking at the same half dozen paintings for the rest of my life. I can't think of a better

And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I had taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings: hey manito! For I had thought that this last touchstone of the past, at least, would be where I'd left it.

Todos los grandes cuadros son en realidad autorretratos.

one prisoner looking at another

That life—whatever else it is—is short. That fate is

That's what he would have wanted. The parting glimpse, the death haiku—he wouldn't have liked to leave without stopping to speak to someone along the way. 'A teahouse amid the cherry blossoms, on the way to death.

When you're worried about something," said Henry abruptly, "have you ever tried thinking in a different language?

It's funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very different from what I actually did. But of course I didn't see this crucial moment then for what is was; I suppose we never do.

Um—" I turned to the shop window to compose myself, and my transparent ghost turned to meet me, crowds passing behind me in the glass.

If they do, I certainly want to have an excuse for having been here. And pick up that match," he said sourly to Francis

every great painting is really a self-portrait

When I got to my room it was silver and alien with moonlight

Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think? Remember

She really was older, not the glancing-eyed girl I had fallen in love with but no less beautiful for that; beautiful now in a way less excited my senses than tore at my very heart.

my shoes squelching on the dewy grass

Intentionally or no: I had extinguished a light at the heart of the world.

But walking through it all was one thing; walking away, unfortunately, has proved to be quite another, and though once I thought I had left that ravine forever on an April afternoon long ago, now I am not so sure.