Quotes About Perspective

objectivity doesn't matter when you're talking about your own child.

This isn't about you. Oh, it is, you coldhearted bastard. It is.

We have been troubled about the world, and had almost lost faith in man; it helps to think about the long history of the earth, and of how life came to be. And when we think in terms of millions of years, we are not so impatient that our own problems be solved tomorrow.

Baldwin told the story again and again of standing on Broadway and being told by Delaney to look down. Delaney asked him what he saw, and Baldwin said a puddle. Delaney said, 'Look again,' and then Baldwin saw the reflections of the buildings, distorted and radiant in the oil on the puddle. He taught me to see, Baldwin said, and that 'what one cannot or will not see, says something about you.

No--when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it, because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life. (Nick, page 156)

Life is funny, baby, and that's no joke

The only use she has for the word fun is to make the word funeral.

It's over when you decide it's over, Norah says. When you call it a night. The rest is just a matter of where the sun is in the sky. That has nothing to do with us.

It still might be a shock. To realize you are just one story walking among millions.

We're better off. But I don't know if the world's better off. I don't know if the two are the same thing.

So much is happening and yet nothing at all.

I mean, what if love isn't a yes-or-no question? It's not either you're in love or you're not. I mean, aren't these different levels? And maybe these things, like words and expectations and whatever, don't go on top of the love. Maybe it's like a map, and they have all their own place, and when you see it from the sky - whoa.

His absence is time gained to spool my un-truths.

We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things.

Sofia was miffed. And if American girls make being miffed a sweet-and-sour emotion, European girls always manage to add an undercurrent of murder to it.

My brother, Langston, said, "Lily, you don't understand because you've never been in love. If you had a boyfriend, you'd understand." Langston has a new boyfriend and all I understand from that is a sorry state of co-dependence.

The Strand proudly proclaims itself as home to eighteen miles of books. I have no idea how this is calculated. Does one stack all the books on top of each other to get the eighteen miles? Or do you put them end to end, to create a bridge between Manhattan and, say, Short Hills, New Jersey, eighteen miles away? Were there eighteen miles of shelves? No one knew. We all just took the bookstore at its word, because if you couldn't trust a bookstore, what could you trust? Whatever

We are reading the story of our lives As though we were in it, As though we had written it.

Nick is right, the Olsen twins do have a worrisome co-dependent relationship. I understand those bitches, though, I really do.

I had a hard time picturing my father in high school. My father never gave any indication that he'd once been young. Gem, on the other hand, wore all of the ages she'd ever been at the same time. I could trust that.

And I honestly like her about twenty times more now than I did when we were dating. But love needs to have a future.

and discover that family, like arsenic, works best in small doses . . . unless you prefer to die.

I mean, what if love isn't a yes-or-no question? It's not either you're in love or you're not. I mean, aren't there different levels? And maybe these things, like words and expectations and whatever, don't go on top of the love. Maybe it's like a map, and they all have their own place, and then when you see it from the sky--whoa.

And I find myself saying, "It wasn't really about her." And finding it's true. "What do you mean?" Norah asks. "It was about the feeling, you know? She caused it in me, but it wasn't about her. It was about my reaction, what I wanted to feel and then convinced myself that I felt, because I wanted it that bad. That illusion. It was love because I created it as love." Norah