Quotes About Perspective

People who read Anne Lamott, like people who read Anne Rice, believe that tragedy is romantic, but the people who read Anne Lamott believe it ironically.

Tip for the day: never eat a bible when you're starving to death.

But explanations don't change anything, do they? They don't make you feel any better. You either like something or you don't, and if you don't like it, then knowing why it happens doesn't make any difference—it's still going to happen and you're still not going to like it, so what's the point?

Ir pagalvojau, kas j? daro tok? graž? - proporcijos, bruožai, oda, kaulai po oda?.. O gal tik aš? Mano akys, mano vizija, mano ?sitikinimas... Mano mintys.

I don't feel the need to direct. I tried to get other people to direct Dances, but they wouldn't do it. They all thought it was too long. One director wanted to cut the Civil War sequence. Another thought the white woman was very cliched.

I know I have this level of celebrity, of fame, international, national, whatever you want to call it, but it's a pretty surreal thing to think sometimes that you're in the middle of another famous person's life and you think to yourself, 'How the hell did I get famous? What is this some weird club that we're in?'

The stone is not what I say it is. It's what you see in it.

if you believe you can, or believe you can't - either way you're right

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. —HERMAN MELVILLE

If we need to press creases in reality to make sense of the world around us - turn grey into black and white - then how, precisely, do we know where to run our irons?

Cine poate spune cu exactitate unde se termina culoarea violet si unde incepe cea portocalie intr-un curcubeu? Vedem deslusit diferentele dintre culori, dar unde anume incep ele dintr-una, in cealalta? La fel se intampla si cu luciditatea si nebunia.

In 1651, in Leviathan, it was Thomas Hobbes who first advanced the contention that without top-down state controls we'd turn, rather effortlessly, into a bunch of brutish savages. And there's more than a grain of truth in such a notion. But Pinker argues from a more bottom-up perspective, and while certainly not denying the importance of legal restraints, also insinuates a gradual process of cultural and psychological maturation.

Then I realized that I was falling victim to one of the fallacies of the bad reviewer (whose habits we already discussed at length in yesterday's commentary). I was wishing that Hamid had written a different book than he had. How I might have written this story is completely irrelevant. It would be like dismissing The Godfather because I wished it were a musical. The novel needs to be considered on its own terms.

The problem with history is that every story has multiple witnesses, but no witness ever has the entire truth.

I don't think it's ever fair for a reader to criticize an author for writing the book the novelist wanted to write, as opposed to the book the reader wished he had written.

What do you do when you are really, really sad?" When you are full of dread, is what she really meant. Godbee exhaled through her nose, making a whistling sound. "Hmm. When I`m genuinely suffering I try to think of someone worse off than I am. And then, if it happens to be someone I know and I`m feeling particularly saintly, I try to do something nice for him or her.

Home was the same as when Martha had left it, but because *she* had changed, her world seemed slightly different, as though she were seeing everything in sharper focus.

Sometimes I think as adults we think of them as — because they're small in size that they're small in all ways — and they're not. They have big feelings, and they have big eyes, they see things, they hear things, they're living life just the way an adult does and I think sometimes as adults we forget that.

All television is educational television. The question is merely, 'What is it teaching?

I had my boy in Boston on Easter Sunday. That kills me, from a sports perspective. He's a Boston baby and I'm a New York guy.

You know, when you're a fat guy you don't need a reason to sweat. Guys come up to me and go "Jeez... what have you been doing - jumping rope in the attic or something?"..."Umm, no... I peeled an orange about an hour ago, why?

Learn how to learn from those you disagree with or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.

Anger is not the proper response to anger. When you see someone angry you are seeing their pain. Compassion is the proper response to anger.

You can reduce the annoyance of someone's stupid belief by increasing your understanding of why they believe it.