Quotes About Perspective

A novel is a mirror walking down a road

The aphorism that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem is usually true. And remember, changing one's mind in midair rarely works out.

The aphorism that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem is usually true.

Looking back, Eddy still couldn't see what was so awful about what he'd done. He'd gone to camp to have fun, but every time he tried, it just got him deeper into trouble.

The trouble with travelling back later on is that you can never repeat the same experience.

Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside. -Gabe Singleton remembering his counselor's first advice-

You must have me confused with myself

though we belong to this country as much as this country belongs to us, we only move through its rooms as momentary visitors, projecting our ideas on its walls, that the best we can do is live a good life, perhaps add a couple replicas of ourselves...

No, if you squinted a little bit, maybe what seemed like wasted time was, in fact, true happiness.

In the end, it wasn't so much that there was an alternative narrative--there always was--but it came down to belief: Which one did you want to believe. Which one suited you best? Or, perhaps more to the point: Which one told the story you were already telling yourself?

Mark, she now could see, was destined for a life of absolute logic [...], while she, the Etch a Sketcher, thought herself destined for a life of squiggly lines.

Here's how you think about it: Together you constructed many things throughout your life. Then her body disappeared, but the constructions still remain. Human beings die: That's natural. But to accept her death is to lose all hope.

Talk of you or me,' he told her, 'but never of 'us.

Let there be no mistake. A gay man alone could never begin to replicate the inner workings of the female mind.

he seemed as right as rain when I saw him yesterday!" And that's what Pete and Joe said, too. Right as rain! And then I got to thinking. "That's how he was then," I said. "What's in your mind, Terry?" said Pete. "If he was fit as a fiddle one day, how come he was dead as a doornail the next?

This is my 20th year in the sport. I've known swimming and that's it. I don't want to swim past age 30 if I continue after this Olympics, and come back in 2016, I'll be 31. I'm looking forward to being able to see the other side of the fence.

Looking at the world from other species' points of view is a cure for the disease of human self-importance.

Fairness forces you - even when you're writing a piece highly critical of, say, genetically modified food, as I have done - to make sure you represent the other side as extensively and as accurately as you possibly can.

He showed the words "chocolate cake" to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. "Guilt" was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: "celebration.

They don't get any skinnier after you marry them.

But the ledger had two sides. It was a relief not to worry any longer about puffing up his chest for the benefit of others. He found himself treasuring small glimpses of life that as a younger man he might have galloped right past. And there were still plenty of ridgelines to keep him wondering.

Take away the idea of dark times and ruin and you begin to hear other voices. Women were not always silent, or without the power to make choices – we may just have been listening in the wrong places;

Falling in love is different for everyone.

In any relationship that comes to an end, there's never just a baseline reason why. You say, 'Oh, I broke up with my girlfriend.' Someone says, 'Why?' You say, 'Well, you got three hours? And then maybe after I tell you my version, you've got to talk to her.'