Quotes About Perspective

Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind.

Maybe no one can know how it is for anyone else.

Men hear what they like and invent the rest.

I get why no one bothers with the usual rules," ... "I was in the war, too, you know. Nothing looks or feels the same anymore, so what's the point?" ... "Still, I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else.

Young writers, they're almost always autobiographical, even when they don't mean to be.

The worst events always have the thrust of accidents, as if they come out of nowhere. But that's just lack of perspective.

Oh." It seemed I'd surprised him. "There isn't a lot of that kind of thinking around here." "Of course there is," I told him, trying to draw a smile. "It's just usually a man who's doing it.

I can't see how I'll make it a year this way," he said. "It seems impossible, I know. But when we're old and doddering, this year will seem like a blink.

On safari, I saw Denys in sharper relief than I ever had. He had an infallible compass, and a way of seeing everything as if he knew it would never be there exactly the same again. More than anyone I'd known, Denys understood how nothing ever holds still for us, or should. The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistance or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend.

You know, we don't always understand what we're living inside of, or how it will matter. We can guess all we want and prepare, too, but we never know how it's going to turn out.

Maybe we are always all of our ages at once, like nesting matryoshka dolls?

My father died when I was young. We all thought it was rather fortunate at first. It simplified all sorts of things. But over time…well. Let's just say I've developed a theory that only the vanished truly leave their mark. And I still don't feel I've sorted it out. Maybe we never do survive our families.

But I'm not sure I believe in wars anymore. They only make ghosts and they don't change anything.

A week passes but it feels as if he's never been anywhere else. It's one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can't remember why any of it mattered.

How is it I'm the enemy when she's the other woman? That seems very unfair, doesn't it?

What was more exciting than that? I could love him like crazy and work very hard to understand and support him, but I couldn't be fresh eyes and a fresh smile after five years. I couldn't be new.

Only the day before, Cockie's dark joke wouldn't have included me, but now it did. "Is love always such a mess, do you suppose?

Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other.

He's never been a throwaway kid. Never experienced the world in a woman's body, or a girl's. Never had a reason to confuse love with suffering.

She wouldn't have seen any of the dinginess, because no one ever does until they're on he outside of a place, looking in.

reached behind me to adjust the stockings again. "Your mother doesn't like me." "She just doesn't want to lose me. That's how mothers are.

I came to see that Harrison wasn't my failed prince and I wasn't in his victim. He hadn't led me on at all; I'd led myself on.

I never travelled," I told her. "Oh, you absolutely should," she insisted, "if only so that you can come home and really see it for what it is. That's my favourite part.

I can't expect him to be as tuned in to Cameron's vulnerabilities as I am. He's never been a throwaway kid. Never experienced the world in a woman's body, or a girl's. Never had a reason to confuse love with suffering.