Quotes About Perspective

In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader's recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth. —Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouvé

Every person is trapped in their own particular bubble of delusion, and it's every person's task in life to break free. Books can help. We can make the past into the present, take you back in time and help you remember. We can show you things, shift your realities and widen your world, but the work of waking up is up to you.

Nothing is simple. There are many answers, none of them right, but some of them most definitely wrong.

Am I crazy? she asked. I feel like I am sometimes. Maybe, he said, rubbing her forehead. But don't worry about it. You need to be a little bit crazy. Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination. It's your superpower. Tapping into the dream. It's a good thing, not a bad thing.

When up looks up, up is down. When down looks down, down is up. Not-one, not-two. Not same. Not different. Now do you see? It

Lulu writes: "When Mother, Mr. Jones and I were walking through those strange, crowded downtown streets, where people were sticking their hands into pickle barrels, pointing to smoked fish, and eating sliced herring, I saw the scene in a whole new way. They weren't buying food: They were finding their way home.

I feel as if there's a huge gulf separating me from all the lucky people in the world; they have so much to look forward to.

I got back into the car thinking how lucky I was to be aware of happiness. Most people don't recognize their own good fortune until it has departed. And then it is too late." "What about Remy? What

What I was learning, on those weekend walks, is how much you can find out about a person merely by watching what he eats. Food became my own private way of looking at the world.

The more stars in your itinerary, the less likely you are to find the real life of another country.

Everything here is true, but it might not be entirely factual.

In time, I came to understand that for people who really love it, food is a lens through which to view the world. For us, the way that people cook and eat, how they set their tables, and the utensils that they use all tell a story.

As in most cases when the truth becomes clear you wonder how you could ever have seen things differently.

After listening to a lot of these stories, I began to think that American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born Japanese. The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different from the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there.

American loneliness is a completely different creature from anything we experience in this country, and it made me glad I was born japanese.

They don't realize that they've changed; they think it's the world that changed.

Hey, take a good look, isn't the world still under your feet? I'm on this ground, and on this same ground are trees and grass and ants carrying sand to their nests, little girls chasing rolling balls, and puppies running. This ground runs under countless houses and mountains and rivers and seas, under everywhere. And I'm on it. Don't be scared, I'd told myself, the world is still under me.

I remembered a friend who'd died of a bad liver, and what he'd always said. Yeah, he'd said, maybe it's just my idea, but really it always hurts, the times it don't hurt is when we just forget, we just forget it hurts, you know, it's not just because my belly's all rotten, everybody always hurts. So when it really starts stabbing me, somehow I feel sort of peaceful, like I'm myself again. It's hard to take, sure, but I feel sort of peaceful. Because it's always hurt ever since I was born.

People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves

The death of someone close to you, he realized at that moment, was something you came to accept one concrete fact at a time.

What's good about Americans, if I can generalize a little, is that they have a kind of open-hearted innocence. And what's not so good is that they can't imagine any world outside the States, or any value system different than their own.

above, far above, We don't know where we'll fall. Far above, far above, What once was great is rendered small.

We stand in darkness, surrounded by light

Å»eby zrozumie? wspóÅ'czesny Å›wiat, nale?y posÅ'ugiwa? siÄ™ ruchomym globusem i przyglÄ…da? siÄ™ scenie, na której ?yjemy, z ró?nych punktów ziemi.