Quotes About Perspective

The former Catholic nun (who oughtta know about guilt, after all) wouldn't hear of it. "Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear.

The paradox that you need to comfortably inhabit, if you wish to live a contented creative life, goes something like this: "My creative expression must be the most important thing in the world to me (if I am to live artistically), and it also must not matter at all (if I am to live sanely)." Sometimes

We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we're so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don't give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won't be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth—nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow." They

It's a pity we cannot put an old head on young shoulders, or you could be wise, too. But someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering—no matter what you may think of them and their supposed good fortune.

When I was younger, I had wanted to be at the very center of all the action in New York, but I slowly came to realize that there is no one center. The center is everywhere—wherever people are living out their lives. It's a city with a million centers. Somehow that was even more magical to know.

Interesting outcomes, after all, are just awful outcomes with the volume of drama turned way down. I

And I do want to assure you: I'm aware that many things were not better in the 1940s. Underarm deodorants and air-conditioning were woefully inadequate, for instance, so everybody stank like crazy, especially in the summer, and also we had Hitler.

C. S. Lewis, when he wrote of his wife, "We both knew this: I had my miseries, not hers; she had hers, not mine.

I think that the difference between a tormented creative life and a tranquil creative life is nothing more than the difference between the word awful and the word interesting.

But this is a city that gets born anew in the fresh eyes of every young person who arrives here for the first time. So that city, that place—newly created for my eyes only—will never exist again. It is preserved forever in my memory like an orchid trapped in a paperweight. That city will always be my perfect New York.

As a creator, you can design any sort of jewelry that you like for the inside of other people's minds (or simply for the inside of your own mind). You can make work that's provocative, aggressive, sacred, edgy, traditional, earnest, devastating, entertaining, brutal, fanciful . . . but when all is said and done, it's still just intracranial jewelry-making. It's still just decoration. And that's glorious.

If you're going to live your life based on delusions (and you are, because we all do), then why not at least select a delusion that is helpful?

I wanted to be all Gandhi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Gandhi and Mandela were lawyers.

She loved it even more than ever, perhaps, because now, as an adult, she finally had the perspective to appreciate the value of her own joy.

I'm aware that many things were not better in the 1940s. Underarm deodorants and air-conditioning were woefully inadequate, for instance, so everybody stank like crazy, especially in the summer, and also we had Hitler.

someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering—no matter what you may think of them and their supposed good fortune.

sometimes the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else - Richard

Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for a giant squid, I cannot have a baby.

One can never know the state of another man's heart.

It matters./It doesn't matter. Build space in your head for this paradox. Build as much space for it as you can. Build even more space. You will need it. And then go deep within that space—as far in as you can possibly go—and make absolutely whatever you want to make. It's

Trust me, if you want to complain, you'll always find plenty to complain about, even when fortune appears to be shining her favor upon you.

That's right, you never cared about money, Billy, Olive said. Certainly not to the extent that those of us who forgot to be born into wealthy families care about it.

For me, at the age of twenty-five, to hear a ninety-year-old widow speak of having her life changed by passion (and so recently!) was a revelation. It was one of those moments where I could almost feel my perspective expanding, as if my mind were being ratcheted open several notches and was now welcoming in all sorts of new possibilities for what a woman's life could look like.

She's got this ability to shut me up when I start fretting over metaphysical questions, such as, "What is the nature of the universe?