Quotes About Perspective

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast.

Sometimes I think we only recollect what we have remembered before. What we recall is having recalled something already, so our strongest and truest memories come from a chain of often recalled things, and in that chain, over the years, events get adjusted and sorted around and stretched to fit the way we see things along the way.

The dreams of youth seem silly later

We pray for the bifocals of faith—that see the despair and the need of the hour but also see, further on, the patience of our God working out his plan in the world he has made.

I wondered what a man I had encountered the day before on the plane en route to Chicago's O'Hare airport would have made of this. As he tried to push through a crowded aisle, he said loudly: "Life is never easy. And it's never pleasant." I couldn't let this go. I looked up at him from my seat and said, "I do hope life gives you cause to change that opinion. Otherwise you may find that opinion walking ahead of you, giving you more and more reasons to believe it.

How would something the size of a Mini get out of a dinosaur's arsehole?' 'How big was a dinosaur's arsehole?' Theo asked, as he grabbed a fourth champagne and passed a second to Eve. 'Are you some kind of arsehole expert, Jay?

I can't stand old people," Nicole said bluntly. "You'll be old one day," James said. "Nah," Nicole said. "Live fast, die young, that's my motto.

There'll be differences of opinion in just about every intelligence analysis that you make.

We are not hungry... Why foist this food upon us? We don't want to be choked. We have enough.

The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective.

The difference between a normal person and an insane one is precisely that the normal person has all the diseases of the mind, while the madman has only one!

Knowledge may be power, but the reverse is not necessarily true.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, men thought that the earth was flat, and that where earth and heaven met, the world ended. Yet when they finally set sail for that tremendous place, they sailed right through it, and found themselves back again where they had started from. It taught them only that the earth was round. It might have taught them more.

We know so little", I said, "and there's so much to know. We live by taste and touch; we see only what is under our noses. There are solar systems up there above us, greater than our own; and whole universes in a drop of water. And time stretches out endlessly on every side. This earth, this ocean, this little moment of living, has no meaning by itself. . . Yesterday is just as true as today; only we forget.

As usual the truth lies midway between these two extremes.

When I was a child, I spoke like child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, when I became a man, I went on the internet, and spoke like a child, and thought like a child, and reasoned like child.

But at least I am in a place larger than a teacup. I once dwelt in a cup of tea, and on that occasion, I sensed the constraints of the space.

Quit worrying about your health. It will go away.

I'm at that age where if you flattened out all the wrinkles I'd be seven feet tall.

Sometimes I get the feeling the whole world is against me, but deep down I know that's not true. Some smaller countries are neutral.

This landmark book shines new light on things we thought we understood. —Charles Swencionis

Our visual system does not simply reflect external reality but rather actively constructs it.

Conviction, Nietzsche said, is a greater enemy of truth than lies.)