Quotes About Perspective

You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception...you see what is, where most people see what they expect.

when you've seen different things you want to be sure you're adjusting to the right thing.

The poet John Ciardi pointed out, "Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at women and persuade themselves they have a better idea.

credit, youre jewish, your best friend is black, and your girlfriend is a cheating whore. Even if I wore gay, I'd still have it better than you.

Of course, I'm not a doctor; I just watch a lot of ER and House.

If there are loud and angry people on only one side of a debate, it probably means the other side simply does not have a spokesperson.

It's harder to get outside your own head than you think.

It's so easy for people that aren't there to say, 'I wouldn't have done that,' " Francona says. "Well, you know what? You didn't earn the right to make that decision. He did.

The reason [Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts] doesn't believe in the Bible is because he didn't write it himself.

Boys enjoy the misery of their companions, at least village boys in that day did, and in later life I have found that all adults are not free from the peculiarity.

After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?

A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.

I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe to recognize it, we have to believe in it.

Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.

Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.

For two years I have refused to answer idle questions on the order of Is your novel an open work or not? How should I know? That is your business, not mine. Or With which of your characters do you identify? For God's sake, with whom does an author identify? With the adverbs, obviously.

To make them forget how bad human beings are, they were taught too insistently that bears are good. Instead of being told honestly what humans are and what bears are.

Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion? Thus wisdom creates cowards. And thus you miss Opportunity while spending your life on the lookout for it.

But Paris, all in all, isn't what it used o be, ever since that pencil sharpener, the Eiffel Tower, has been sticking up in the distance, visible from every angle.

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer isn't aware of.

Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion?

Oggi i libri sono i nostri vecchi. Non ce ne rendiamo conto, ma la nostra ricchezza rispetto all'analfabeta (o di chi, alfabeto, non legge) è che lui sta vivendo e vivrà solo la sua vita e noi ne abbiamo vissute moltissime.

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.

Counterfactual conditionals are always true, because the premise is false. But I was there that day, so now I am where I am.