Quotes About Perspective

But maybe every life looked wonderful if all you saw was the photo albums.

Perhaps nothing was ever "meant to be." There was just life, and right now, and doing your best. Being a bit "bendy.

It had never crossed her mind that sending your child to school would be like going back to school yourself.

You could try as hard as you could to imagine someone else's tragedy—drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall—but nothing truly hurts until it happens to you. Most of all, to your child.

We'd traveled, we'd been to lots of parties, lots of movies and concerts, we'd slept in. We'd done all those things that people with children seem to miss so passionately. We didn't want those things anymore. We wanted a baby.

It was good to remember that for every horrible memory from her marriage, there was also a happy one. She wanted to see it clearly, to understand that it wasn't all black, or all white. It was a million colors. And yes, ultimately it hadn't worked out, but that was okay. Just because a marriage ended didn't mean that it hadn't been happy at times. She thought about that

I have no right to be sad about anything. No right to have therapy from expensive doctors like you for losing children who never existed. There is real grief in the world. There are real mothers losing real children.

Every day is a gift, Jake. Of course sometimes it's a really horrible gift that you don't want.

the world, right this very moment people were suffering unimaginable atrocities and you couldn't close your heart completely, but you couldn't leave it wide open either, because otherwise how could you possibly live your life, when through pure, random luck you got to live in paradise? You had to register the existence of evil, do the little that you could, and then close your mind and think about new shoes.

I'll tell you something, something important. Write this down. You ready?' 'Yes, yes, I'm ready.' 'Love is a decision.' 'Love is a decision?' 'That's right. A decision. Not a feeling. That's what you young people don't realise.

It's easy to think the minefield wasn't that bad once you're safely watching other people get blown up.

You could try as hard as you could to imagine someone else's tragedy - but nothing truly hurts until it happens to you.

Now it seemed like she could twist the lens on her life and see it from two entirely different perspectives. The perspective of her younger self. Her younger, sillier, innocent self. And her older, wiser, more cynical and sensible self.

I'm the only one left holding a grudge. They say it's good to let your grudges go, but I don't know, I'm quite fond of my grudge. I tend it like a little pet.

It was good to remember that for every horrible memory from her marriage, there was also a happy one.

The house was literally perfect now. Instead of being thrilling, that suddenly seemed depressing.

If the counselor ever wrote a book about her experience as a marriage counselor she would probably mention it: I once had a patient who treated his car more tenderly than he treated his wife. (No need to mention the car was a Lamborghini, otherwise all the male readers would say, "Oh, well, then.")

But if the girls hadn't got their knickers in a knot, and that might sound sexist but it's not, it's just a fact of life, ask any man, not some new age, artsy-fartsy, I-wear-moisturiser type, I mean a real man, ask a real man, then he'll tell you that women are like the Olympic athletes of grudges.

It's like telling a blind person, "Oh, sure, you get to see mountains and sunsets, but there are also rubbish dumps and pollution!

Samantha: Parents do tend to judge each other. I don't know why. Maybe because none of us really know what we're doing? And I guess that can sometimes lead to conflict. Just not normally on this sort of scale.

She generally felt that the advice she offered was superior to the advice she received. Other people's problems were so simple; one's own problems tended to be so much more nuanced.

Parents take far too much notice of their children these days. Bring back the good old days of benign indifference, I reckon.

there is nothing more patronizing to an Infertile than to hear a new mother complaining,

It seems to make no difference that she still feels exactly the same person as when she was twenty-five, the birthdays just keep right on coming.