Quotes About Perspective

But I had only known the absurd, and I think that made me profoundly different from them

You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.

Whatever anyone says or does is more about them than it is about me...

But if you see something that no one else sees, I can only tell you this: Believe what you see. And if it is the unseen that speaks to you, believe that too.

had told Rocky an odd version of this story; little truths had appeared, but the girl had deliberately left out the part that showed the true train wreck. She had deliberately orchestrated the tale for a purpose.

when you're young you think you'll always be young. Then one day you suddenly wake up and you're over fifty. And the names in the obituary columns are no longer anonymous old people. They're your contemporaries and friends.

Did money give people a blind spot? Rob them of their hearing?

me. I don't want to have to feel grateful all the time.

Dad said Aunty Sue was a godsend. If that was so, I wasn't surprised. God was probably happy to have got rid of her.

Grace isn't a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It's a way to live.

Never judge a journey by the distance...

This earth is seventy percent water. Hard not to walk into it.

Back then, we still all believed in happy endings. None of us knew yet how many endings and beginnings one story could have.

No one stops to think, though—that maybe there is a reason for the darkness. Maybe people have to be reminded of it—of its power. At night, we go to sleep against the darkness. And if we wake up before morning, a lot of times we're afraid. We need it all though—the darkness and the light.

Two steps to the left or right or back or front and you're standing outside your life.

Sometimes...it seems as though not a moment has moved, but then you look up and you're already old or you already have a household of kids or you look down and see your feet are miles and miles away from the rest of you—and you realize you've grown up.

Guess that's where the tears came from, knowing that there's so much in this great big world that you don't have a single ounce of control over.

When my mother comes home from the hospital with me, my older brother takes one look inside the pink blanket, says, Take her back. We already have one of those. Already

That's what up , Amari said. Read those poems in all kinds of American, son.

You know what, Daddy? What you got for me, Melody? This place feels like from a long time ago. It feels like it's in the past tense.

know now that what is tragic isn't the moment. It is the memory.

Iris didn't understand his happiness. How this was so absolutely enough for him.

People are so caught up in trying to force their own world onto everybody else's that they don't even get the fact that the other person doesn't care.

Once I asked Miah if he ever forgot he was black. No. I never forget, he said. But sometimes it doesn't matter-like I just am. Then he asked me if I ever forgot I was white. Sometimes, I said. And when you're forgetting, what color are you? No color. Then Miah looked away from me and said, We're different that way.