Quotes About Perspective

People always said they wanted the truth, but really they were perfectly content with a facsimile.

As you got older and time went on, you realized that the distinction between truth and fiction didn't really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy, amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.

Fox Corner - that's what we should call the house. No one else has a house with that name and shouldn't that be the point?' 'Really?' Hugh said doubtfully. 'It's a little whimsical, isn't it? It sounds like a children's story. The House at Fox Corner .' 'A little whimsy never hurt anyone.' 'Strictly speaking, though,' Hugh said, 'can a house be a corner? Isn't it at one?' So this is marriage, Sylvie thought.

Did God get out of bed one morning and draw back the curtains (Reggie's imaginary God led a very domesticated life) and think, 'A drowning in a hotel swimming pool, I fancy. We haven't had that one in a while.

By the end of the war there was nothing about men and women that surprised him. Nothing about anything really. The whole edifice of civilization turned out to be constructed from an unstable mix of quicksand and imagination.

What a good husband you are,' Nancy said afterward, 'always taking your wife's side rather than your mother's.' 'It's the side of reason I am on,' Teddy said. 'It just so happens that that's where you're always to be found and my mother rarely.

the doors of perception are hanging crazily off their hinges these days.

There are some Buddhist philosophers (a branch referred to as Zen) who say that sometimes a bad thing happens to prevent a worse thing happening

How many times would he disappoint you in a day if you were married to him? Ursula wondered. It seemed to her that in the search for arguments against marriage the existence of Maurice presented the very best one of all.

Sylvie was surprised by the rabid patriotism of the women on the platform, surely war should make pacifists of all women?

Must you always see the dark side of everything?' Julia said. 'Someone has to,' Jackson said. 'Yes, but does it have to be you?' Apparently, yes. It did.

no book could ever be left in the condition you found it in because it was changed every time it was read by someone.

It just went to show, you never knew what you were going to feel until you felt it.

Mr. Carver hadn't been such a bad sort really. He had been very keen on Esperanto, which had seemed an absurd eccentricity at the time but now Ursula thought it might be a good thing to have a universal language, as Latin had once been. Oh, yes, Miss Woolf said, a common language was a wonderful idea, but utterly utopian. All good ideas were, she said sadly.

Vinny rarely leaves the house so when she does it's an occasion of some importance to her. She spends a lot of time looking forward to a glimpse of the outside world and then, when she returns, even more time complaining about it.

Why did people understand how precious each day was only once the doors to the grave had opened and they had looked inside? What was the point of that?

Bridget wouldn't let Trixie come to Mrs. Dodds's house, she said she would never hear the end of it. "She doesn't believe in dogs," Bridget said. "Dogs are hardly an article of faith," Sylvie said.

Another day where nothing has happened, he thought. That was a good thing, he reminded himself. What was the Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times.

Sometimes Teddy wondered if everyone had done well out of the war except for those who had fought in it.

Viola was a good reader, a bookworm—a phrase she hated. "How can a worm be a nice thing to be?" Viola said. I would be a worm, Nancy thought, if that was the only existence on offer, and then laughed at herself for having reached such a pass. "Without worms we wouldn't be able to grow food and everyone would starve," Nancy said reasonably.

Sylvie's children really only came into focus for her when in isolation. Together, they were an unwieldy flock, singly they had character.

Well, we all get on,' Sylvie said, 'one way or another. And in the end we all arrive at the same place. I hardly see that it matters how we get there.' It

We're all Bolsheviks now," Izzie said blithely. "And at my table!" Hugh said and laughed.

The ears of men are lesser agents of belief than their eyes.