Quotes About Perspective

Common sense is BETTER for one sphere of life, science for another, philosophic criticism for a third; but whether either be TRUER absolutely, Heaven only knows.

Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and opens a region though they fail to give a map.

What was bright and exciting becomes weary, flat, and unprofitable.

a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries

and what I know from my studies and from my life is that there is no such thing as a true event. We know dates and times and locations and participants but accounts of what happened depend upon the perspective from which the event is viewed.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Is it more childish and foolish to insist that there is a conspiracy or that there is not?

I differ with myself then agree, like the rock that was broken and cemented together. I change my opinion.

She was intelligent enough to realize that her excitement was childish, but not mature enough to care.

You can tell it any way you want, he said, you can be I or he or she or we or they or you and you won't be lying, though you might be telling two stories at once.

Well, sometimes," Dane said, "Just because someone uses something wrong doesn't mean it's useless.

Is it dangerous? Hmm. Well, define 'dangerous.' Is a knife 'dangerous'? Is Russian roulette 'dangerous'? Is arsenic 'dangerous'? ...It really depends on your perspective.

Strictly speaking, she thought, this place was a cross between a forest and a jungle. "This is a jorest," she said to Hemi. "Yeah," he said. "No, it's a fungle." They grinned.

Surrealism comes for us all, Thibaut thinks.

Yeah but," Collingswood said cautiously. "Only, it's not totally admirable, is it, given that it's total fucking bollocks." They stared some more. "Well," Vardy said. "That is true. I would have to concede that, unfortunately." Neither of them laughed, but they could have done.

I wanted to do a book that was extremely suspicious of storytelling... it ("Embassytown") is very skeptical of the liberating potential of narrative. [I present] the idea that narrative may just as well be a shackle as [well] as a key.

Oh, time," Dane said. "Time time time. Time's always a bit more fiddly than you reckon.

The thing is," Deeba said, eyeing Mr. Speaker, "you could only make words do what you want if it was just you deciding what they mean. But it isn't. It's everyone else, too. Which means you might want to give them orders, but you aren't in control. No one is.

Is it more foolish and childish to assume there is a conspiracy, or that there is not?

I think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books

Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I'm not reading Jane Eyre because it is a romance and I know romance is crap.

Art is something you choose to make... it's a bringing together of... of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.

A trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you know about it, it's a challenge.

But I do think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books.