Quotes About Perspective

I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape.

Usted ve lo que es, mientras que la mayor parte de la gente ve lo que espera ver

I try to write what seems to me true. If it isn't true for other people, then it isn't good art. But I've only my own eyes to see with. I won't use the eyes of other people.

If only I wouldn't take this book so seriously. It is just a book after all, and a book is very dead in a very short time. And I'll be dead in a very short time too. So the hell with it. Let's slow down, not in pace or wordage but in nerves.

Peut-être le savoir est-il trop grand, mais peut-être aussi l'homme devient-il trop petit. Peut-être qu'à force de s'agenouiller devant les atomes il finit par avoir une âme de la taille de ce qu'il adore. Peut-être le spécialiste n'est-il qu'un lâche qui a peur de regarder le monde extérieur à sa petite cage. Pensez à ce qu'il perd, votre spécialiste : le monde entier qui palpite de l'autre côté de sa clôture.

The earth contributed a light to the evening. The front of the gray, paintless house, facing the west, was luminous as the moon is. The gray dusty truck, in the yard before the door, stood out magically in this light, in the overdrawn perspective of a stereopticon. The

Samuel's funeral and the talk with Kate should have made Adam sad and bitter, but they did not.

Goddam it, whenever a person wants reassurance he tells a friend to think what he wants to be true. It's like asking a waiter what's good tonight.

For I truly believe that people call their lives to them the way you'd whistle up a dog. I seem to thrive in small frustrations and make them up when I don't have them. This is not abnormal. In fact it is very supernormal.

most readers responded to the "surface story," trusting the tale rather than the teller. It is indeed this surface story that is the source of the novel's power

There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders. The

Neden beklemiyorsun ki? Ä°leriye bak! Denizde daha iyi bal?klar var!' diyeceksiniz. Ama d??ar?dan bak?yorsunuz. Size ÅŸunu söyleyeyim ki, benim için daha iyi bal?k yok, hatta denizde baÅŸka bal?k yok. Bu bal?k olmazsa deniz ?ss?zla??r. Bunu kafan?za sokun!

A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. As a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cats, dogs, butterflies and people.

A woman who knows all about men usually knows one part very well and can't conceive the other parts, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.

Woman can change better'n man,'' ''Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.

That's not the way it happened, asshole," I said, gently correcting him.

It wasn't my fault. I'm innocent. Why won't these dogs believe me?

There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.

We were all brought up to want things and maybe the world isn't big enough for all that wanting. I don't know. I don't know anything

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't—whichever seems likelier to win an effect.

One does not go to Moscow to get fat.

Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.

Oh,' she says, 'the Vat prints nothing but rapes. You know what a rape usually is? It's a woman who changed her mind afterward.