Quotes About Perspective

The fact of the matter is that readers and audiences are never blank slates: individuals see in a work whatever they need to see at that moment.

A writer who can't use his firsthand experience must turn to secondhand experience, which can lead to thirdhand clichés.

Trust the tale, not the teller.

when they hear hooves they look for zebras instead of horses

They say we all have a child within, but that didn't necessarily mean some soul of innocence and lost dreams. Having borne two, Simone knew there was nothing more selfish in the world than a child, until that child is forced to learn that it must share the place with everyone else.

That's the beauty of argument, if you argue correctly, you're never wrong.

Women might just have something to contribute to civilization other than their vaginas".

There is no point in arguing if you are not susceptible to reason. Embrace your cynicism. Hug it.

Mddle Eastern history is filled with minefields, not because of what actually happened in the past, but because of how people read back the present into the past.

It was possible to love life, without loving your life.

Algunas veces se ha dicho que el acentuar el carácter cristiano de la cultura occidental nos vuelve ciegos a los valores de otras civilizaciones. Por mi parte, considero que sucede todo lo contrario. En efecto, mientras más entendamos el cristianismo, mejor entenderemos el Islam, y mientras más subestimemos el elemento religioso en nuestra propia cultura, menos apreciaremos las culturas del mundo no europeo.

You're only as tall as your heart will let you be and you're only as small as the world will make you seem.

Life is a very beautiful dream. I'm so glad I chose not to wake up from it just yet

There may always be another reality to make fiction of the truth we think we've arrived at.

I must tell you I've just been reborn." "Nicholas, you always think you can do things better than your mother. You can be sure you were born quite adequately on the first occasion.

In the past I wanted to be hung. It was worth while being hung to be a hero, seeing that life was not really worth living.

Thais have a saying about a frog living inside a coconut shell. The frog believes that the world inside the shell is the whole universe. In the private investigation business, Vincent Calvino had clients who like the frog. What they saw from inside their shell blinded them, made them unable to solve a problem. So they hired Calvino. He knew the drill. Shells offered comfort and security. Leaving could be a dangerous business.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

She was yet another proof to me that nothing limits a person more than what was then called "a clearly-defined world view.

I'm most interested in that moment when my entire perspective changes, and I have to reconsider everything.

I have not been that wise. Health I have taken for granted. Love I have demanded, perhaps too much and too often. As for money, I have only realized its true worth when I didn't have it.

This story is meant to make you realize that your chances of happiness in this world are terribly slim if you lack a fine imagination.

We are multiple beings having a dubious experience

Life, my dear, is not about romance. The sooner you learn that, the less of a disappointment yours will prove to be.