Quotes About Perspective

Al Hickey: It's not about anything. Frank Boggs: Yeah, it's about four hundred grand

It is impossible for a Westerner to imagine the deadening torpor of a protected life under house arrest. Eventually, one is grateful for the smallest outing outdoors -- a lovely picnic in a burqa, being allowed to watch the men and boys fly kites or swim.

I wanted my children and grandchildren to know that no matter when you are born or where you live, happiness and disappointments have the same flavors the world over.

You know, Jean, maybe it's a good thing we had all girls. If those Hatford boys belonged to us, we'd be in a mental ward.

Caroline did not ask the boys if they were thinking about the time she threw their mother's chocolate chiffon cake in the river because she thought it was a trick. And the Hatfords certainly did not say anything to the girls about what they had done to Mrs. Malloy's pumpkin chiffon pie that the girls had delivered at their mother's instruction. Both mothers seemed to take to chiffon, that was certain.

Peter was leaning his elbows on the end of the table, a piece of bread smeared with peanut butter in his hands, chewing wide eyed with his mouth open. Wally tried not to look. Whenever Wally was really hungry at school and didn't think he could hold out until noon, he thought about the way half-chewed bread and peanut butter looked in Peter's mouth, and he wasn't hungry anymore.

What is a face really? It's own photo? It's makeup? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.

it's not our experiences that form us but the ways in which we respond to them;

Perhaps the greatest danger of our global community is that the person in LA thinks he knows Cambodia because he's seen The Killing Fields on-screen, and the newcomer from Cambodia thinks he knows LA because he's seen City of Angels on video.

One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory.

Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen would later emphasize for me, isn't about turning your back on the world; it's about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply. •

Et puis quoi, qu'importe la culture ? Quand il a écrit Hamlet, Molière avait-il lu Rostand ? Non.

Je n'aimais pas poser les questions qui poussaient mes interlocuteurs à se moquer en soupirant de notre crédulité d'Occidentaux survitaminés et sous-informés. (p. 18)

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

How many people similarly spent their lives searching for their own spells—some gratuitous benefit such as a silver tree or political power or undeserved acclaim—when all they really needed was to be satisfied with what they already had? Sometimes what they had was better than what they thought they wanted.

One day you'll discover that the opinions of worthless people are worthless

Speeches of self-justification were seldom worthwhile for any but the speaker.

Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

Ciascuno vuole imporre agli altri quel mondo che ha dentro, come se fosse fuori, e che tutti debbano vederlo a suo modo, e che gli altri non possano esservi se non come li vede lui.

The cruelest prison of all is the prison of the mind.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder

How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

No human thing is of serious importance.