Quotes About Perspective

Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not. - Xenophon

The tales told by the dead are fundamentally different, because their stories are not told to conceal their wounds.

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!

It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.

I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?' Mr. Okamoto: 'That's an interesting question?' Mr. Chiba: 'The story with animals.' Mr. Okamoto: 'Yes. The story with animals is the better story.' Pi Patel: 'Thank you. And so it goes with God.

The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other.

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time. Page 212.

If you are pitched into misery, remember that your days on this earth are counted and you might as well make the best of those you have left.

When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.

If you stumble over mere believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater

I can only tell my story, what you believe is up to you.

I have a story that will make you believe in God.

It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enough to require a train to explore it, though it seemed to get smaler as I grew older, train included. Now it's so small it fits in my head.

The world isn't just the way it is. It's how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?

If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life.

You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!

So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?

Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention? The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?

Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story.

Kau mungkin tidak percaya pada kehidupan, tapi aku tidak percaya pada kematian.

We must do the same with death in our lives: resolve it, give it meaning, put it into context, however hard that might be.