Quotes About Perspective

There are those who say that heaven and hell are not so far apart. They are not at opposite ends of the world beyond ours, only a step away from one another.

History is personal . . . All that you are seeing is what's before you, the rest is guesswork.

Is there more to the story?" Vincent asked. "There's more to every story," his aunt told him.

I hope you're happy, she said to Mrs. James. Happiness is for fools. Helena James shrugged. So I wish that for you.

In the last few months, she'd had a lot of time to consider the state of mankind, and she'd decided that people actually had very few choices in their lives. Most things happened to you. Most things rolled right over you and then kept on going.

The fields were rifle with clouds of Queen Anne's lace, which would make a billowy wreath. Her father had always said there people who saw Queen Anne's lace as a weed, and those who considered it a flower, and he belonged to the latter group. If you think it's beautiful it is, he had told her.

As Gary understands it, the greatest portion of grief is the one you dish out for yourself, and he and Sally have both served themselves from the same table tonight, the only difference being that he knows what he's missing, and she has no idea what is causing her to cry as she drives down the Turnpike.

All I want for you is a normal life. Mother, what makes you think that's what I want?

Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever.

I had been blind to the pain of others until I had my own burden to carry.

Love could do that to some people and they wouldn't even know much they'd missed out on; they simply remained in the place where love had left them, while the whole world spun around.

There is the outside of a story, and the inside of a story... One is the fruit and may be delicious, but the other is the seed.

You don't need wealth to appreciate something beautiful.

It's pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red lead may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. (180)

It was so much easier to see another person's future than it was to understand your own. Even when you kept your eyes wide open, the world would surprise you.

sometimes the right thing felt all wrong until it was over and done with.

Love is a false construct. It's how people convince themselves that life is worth living.

I thought perhaps it was more important to listen than to be heard.

Love could do that to some people, and they wouldn't even know how much they'd missed out on; they simply remained in place where love had left them, while the whole world spun around.

Oh, how Vincent wished he could tell his sisters how unexpected everything was. He wished they could sit down at the table, today, in the sunlight, so that he could tell them everything. Once, a long time ago, before we knew who we were, we thought we wanted to be like everyone else. How lucky to be exactly who we were.

Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what actually existed in the natural world often were contradictory. The human eye was not capable of true sight, for it was constrained by its own humanness, clouded by regret, and opinion, and faith.

Did you not think this was what the world was like? the Man from the Valley said to me.

Elizabeth is suddenly reminded that she can walk down that road anytime she wants to. There are better things to be afraid of than a country road bordered with scrub pine and oaks.

I could tell people anything I wanted to and whatever I told them, that would be the truth as far as they were concerned. Whoever I said I was, well, then that's who I'd be.