Quotes About Perspective

You have to be colder. Then he will come to you. The more you pull, she said, the more he'll run. A boy, a man, he is like an untrained dog who thinks that because you don't allow him to sniff the pole over there, that pole is the most precious spot in the world. Let him go, she said. And he will come running back.

They saw the world in different ways. For him, life was like a story that had answers, or a conclusion that made sense. For her, the story was sinuous and unclear, and if there was happiness to be had, it might arrive announced, or it might land in the arms of another person.

They paint what they see and we paint what we are watching.

If everyone's perspective is equally right, she warned her husband, then there is no absolute right, and everything goes. It could leave you without bearings, adrift and lost.

Hey, do you want to end this right now?" Her eyes flared. "I wouldn't have asked you out if I'd wanted to end it. Sit back, eat and enjoy. Pretend I'm dead.

They tell you that you'll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don't tell you is that you won't miss it very much.

Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more nonsense in our 'sense' than we would care to believe.

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.

Some writers, no matter how good they are, can't speak to us. Something about the way they see the world, I think, string sentences together, alienates us as surely as the ramblings of a madman on a bus.

Another historian, Molly Greene, wearily describes the decline thesis as a meat-grinder, which converts all the facts into the homogenised elements of a single story rather than the distinct indicators of many different stories.

Creative people see Prometheus in a mirror, never Pandora.

Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as 'enlightenment.

Our own filters and biases cloud our abilities to understand and to communicate effectively. It

Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

When people remember the past, they don't only talk about happiness. It is often the ordeals that seem most significant. People shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering.

If you have realistically low expectations, you'll end up pleased in most circumstances.

Apparently, we have become such a hyper-individualized culture that it is impossible to develop an argument based on how individual cases fit into the fabric of the common good.

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

You can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.

There are two conversations going on at the same time: the story and a conversation about how the story is being told.

Facts just twist the truth around.

Music can get us through difficult patches in our lives by changing not only how we feel about ourselves, but also how we feel about everything outside ourselves.