Quotes About Perspective

they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.

I'm not saying there aren't bad mothers, she says. Just that you don't always know. What makes them do something, or not do something. Most of us, we're trying our best.

Everything, she had come to understand, was something like infinity. They might never come close, but they could approach a point where, for all intents and purposes, she knew all that she needed to know.

Up there- eighty-five miles high, ninety, ninety-five, the counter said- everything on earth would be invisible. Mothers who disappeared, fathers who didn't love you, kids who mocked you - everything would shrink to pinpoints and vanish. Up there : nothing but stars.

the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexities like scales.

Sadie eyed him, hands on hips. Bird, she said, with infuriating pity, you don't understand anything, so you?

Some pictures belong to the person who took them. And some belong to the person inside them.

When Pearl asked what his parents did all day, Moody had shrugged. "You know. They go to work." Work! When her mother said it, it reeked of drudgery: waiting tables, washing dishes, cleaning floors. But for the Richardsons, it seemed noble: they did important things.

My mom says kids only need one parent. She says if my dad doesn't care enough to see me, it's his loss, not mine.

Quando Pearl gli chiese cosa facessero i genitori tutto il giorno, Moody si strinse nelle spalle. «Be', vanno a lavorare». A lavorare! Quando lo diceva sua madre suonava come una sfacchinata: servire ai tavoli, lavare i piatti, pulire i pavimenti. Dai Richardson quella parola aveva un che di nobile: facevano cose importanti.

In her parents' house, things had been good or bad, right or wrong, useful or wasteful. There had been nothing in between. Here, she found, everything had nuance; everything had an unrevealed side or unexplored depths. Everything was worth looking at more closely.

You weren't wrong, Margaret said at last. You weren't wrong. But neither was Marie. A small tug at a complicated knot that would take generations to unpick.

Outside in the world, volcanoes erupted, governments rose and collapsed and bartered for hostages, rockets exploded, walls fell. But in Shaker Heights, things were peaceful, and riots and bombs and earthquakes were quiet thumps, muffled by distance.

Any act of writing is an act of empathy: you try to imagine yourself into another person's mind and skin. I tried to ask myself the questions the characters would have asked themselves. The

Everything that loomed so large close up—school, their parents, their lives—all you had to do was step away, and they shrank to nothing. You could stop taking their phone calls, tear up their letters, pretend they'd never existed. Start over as a new person with a new life. Just a problem of geography, he thought, with the confidence of someone who had never yet tried to free himself of family.

Na casa de Pauline e Mal, nada era simples. Na casa dos pais de Mia, as coisas eram boas ou ruins, certas ou erradas, úteis ou desnecessárias. Não havia meio-termo. Ali ela descobriu que tudo tinha nuance, um lado não revelado ou profundidades inexploradas. Tudo merecia ser analisado com mais atenção.

Mas o problema das regras (...) era que subentendiam um jeito errado e um jeito certo de fazer as coisas, quando, na verdade, na maior parte do tempo havia apenas jeitos, sendo que nenhum deles era exatamente certo ou errado e nada podia indicar com certeza de que lado da linha você estava.

He can't know what it was like, not the first time, not the last. He can guess, but he won't ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she'd never told him. Whether she thought he'd failed her, or whether she wanted him to let her go. This, more than anything, makes him feel that she is gone.

She's twenty-three, he thinks; she knows nothing about life, wasted or otherwise.

Cinderella' from the point of view of the stepsisters. Maybe they weren't so wicked after all. Maybe she was actually a bitch to them.

And then, as if the tears are telescopes, she begins to see more clearly:

They probably teach you that most plantation owners were kind to their slaves and that Columbus discovered America, don't they?

Mom," she said. "Dad. It's not what you think.

I realize that I am not happy with the life I lead. I always had one kind of life in mind and things have turned out very differently.