Quotes About Perspective

But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective, to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.

all the fears with which I had grown up, and which were now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between the world and me...

But the Negro's experience of the white world cannot possibly create in him any respect for the standards by which the white world claims to live. His own condition is overwhelming proof that white people do not live by these standards.

I'm a big girl." "Honey," he said, "you ain't no bigger than a minute." She sighed. "Sometimes a minute can be a mighty powerful thing.

Black people, mainly, look down or look up but do not look at each other, not at you, and white people, mainly, look away.

The distance between us, and I had never thought of this before, was that they did not know this, and I now dared to realize that I loved them more than they loved me. And I do not mean that my love was greater: who dares judge the inexpressible expense another pays for his life? who knows how much one is loved, by whom, or what that love may be called on to do? No, the way the cards had fallen meant that I had to face more about them than they could know about me, knew

No,' he said, frankly, 'I don't. I don't believe all this female intuition shit. It's something women have dreamed up.' 'You can say that--and in such a tone!' she mimicked him: 'Something women have dreamed up. But I can't say that--what men have 'dreamed up' is all there is, the world they've dreamed up is the world.

Judgment," she said, "has nothing to do with love.

people love different people in different ways—

White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded. White people have managed to get through entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac.

One cannot argue with anyone's experience or decision or belief.

Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford, and you are not that young any more.

Women don't see men the way men want to be seen. They see all the tender places, all the places where they blood could flow.

But the Negro's experience of the white world cannot possibly create in him any respect for the standards by which the white world claims to live. His own condition is overwhelming proof that white people do not live by these standards.

men may be at the mercy of women - I think men like that idea, it strokes the misogynist in them.

She is a beautiful woman. She may not be beautiful to look at, whatever the fuck that means in this kingdom of the blind.

Lord, when you send the rain think about it, please, a little? Do not get carried away by the sound of falling water, the marvelous light on the falling water. I am beneath that water. It falls with great force and the light Blinds me to the light.

Ah! I am told that New York is very beautiful. Is it more beautiful than Paris?' 'Oh, no,' I said, 'no city is more beautiful than Paris'.

Men have to think about so many things. Women only have to think about men.

You are - how old? Twenty-six or seven? I am nearly twice that and, let me tell you, you are lucky. You are lucky that what is happening to you now is happening now and not when you are forty, or something like that, when there would be no hope for you and you would simply be destroyed.

ou think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read

Close up, you see the person's wrinkles, warts, and pimples; when close to you, the person has innumerable ways of driving you up the wall: but when far from you, these very same imperfections become irreplaceable and beautiful, testifying, after all, to how much each cared about the other. Close up, the person's imperfections matter, but from far away, you see your own. The questions then is not How did I stand her? but How did she stand me?

One writes out of one thing only — one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from the experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read