Quotes About Perspective

I assumed," Ai-ming told me, "that when Big Mother's stories finished, life would continue and I would go back to being myself. But it wasn't true. The stories got longer and longer, and I got smaller and smaller. When I told my grandmother this, she laughed her head off. She said, 'But that's how the world is, isn't it? Or did you think you were bigger than the world?

What happens when a hundred thousand people memorize the same poem? Does anything change?

I assumed that when the story finished, life would continue and I would go back to being myself. But it wasn't true. The stories got longer and longer, and I got smaller and smaller. When I told Big Mother this, she laughed her head off. "But that's how the world is, isn't it?

did I yearn for a new eye as a window to the outside world, or for the world to look in on me?

Five years of hard labour, Sparrow always reminded her, watching people who had done no wrong disappear, could not be wiped away so quickly, yet still Zhuli wanted to shake her mother, drag her mind back from the camps and make her present. What mattered was the here and now and not the life before, what mattered were the changeable things of today and tomorrow and not the ever, infinitely, unbearably unchanging yesterday.

Powersnoop," as one of my wry young patients calls it,

Empathy is the accurate understanding of another person'ts internal experience. It has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with that experience. Unlike sympathy, it makes no assumptions about how the other person is feeling.

Empathy is the accurate understanding of another person's internal experience. It has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with that experience. Unlike sympathy, it makes no assumptions about how the other person is feeling.

But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.

Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.

What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another. We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory… We are men only, a brief flare of the torch.

He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

He liked the way the obsidian reflected his light, the way its slick surfaces caught fire as he passed. Of course, he did not consider how black it would be when he was gone. My father has never been able to imagine the world without himself in it.

I do not think anyone can say what is in someone else.

It's not fair," I said. "It cannot be." "Those are two different things," my grandmother said.

Name one hero who was happy. You can't.

This was the cruelty of adults. Do you understand?

It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on a table and see what you would put on it. But he surprised me by continuing.

No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from." "But what if he is your friend?" Achilles had asked him, ... [o]r your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?" "You ask a question that philosophers argue over," Chiron had said. "He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

But I say this so that you understand what I was up against: that I was worth more to her sick than I was well.

I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.

It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on a table and see what you would put on it.

There is no one like you," I said, at last. He regarded me a moment, in silence. "So?" Something in the way he spoke it drained the last of my anger from me. I had minded, once. But who was I now, to begrudge such a thing? As if he heard me, he smiled, and his face was like the sun.