Quotes About Perspective

The glass dwellers were terrified of the cloche being lifted. They treated the suffering of others as something exceptional, something that required treatment, when what was exceptional was all this.

My name is Attila.' ah-til-ha. 'That's an unusual name,' Jean said. 'to whom?' replied Attila cheerfully. 'Well . . . everyone,' said Jean. 'not to the Hungarians or the Turks,' said Attila. 'your parents named you after Attila the Hun?' Attila smiled. 'Some people,' he said, 'name their baby girls Victoria.

Julius and Raffia were like the sun and the moon. Everything revolved around Julius, or he behaved as though it did, you were drawn into his orbit. But Saffia was the moon, emanating her own clear, magnetic energy. The one to whom all our stories were told.

Once, standing in an open space, he'd seen a commercial airliner pass overhead, on its way from one country to another, the sun golden upon its wings. It seemed incredible to him that there were people inside, drinking wine and eating from plastic trays, pressing a button for the hostess. Did they have any idea what was going on directly below them, a nation devouring itself? He felt like a drowning man watching a ship sail by.

In other words, if geometry was top-down mathematics, the method of indivisibles was bottom-up mathematics.

History is not the annals; it's what happens around us when we're unaware it's history.

Internationalism' is a way of reading, and not a demography of readership.

Photographers are the new Brahmins: we have no volition when they rule us.

A map is not the territory and is not as interesting as the territory.

You want to know of Death? Well, I shall save my breath. When you know Life, why then, We'll talk of Death again. Confucius

To use the past to justify the present is bad enough—but it's just as bad to use the present to justify the past.

Complaining is a form of taking.

We're just a hyphen between our parents and our kids. That's what you learn in middle age. Mostly this is something a mature person can live with. But every once in a while you just want to send up a flare. I too am here! Everybody is sympathetic until you try and make your minuscule life interesting and then they're like, What's wrong with you? You think you're special?

You think this will solve all our problems. It's magical thinking, Michael. It's the way a child thinks.

We argue, but we never change each other's minds. We only get farther apart.

There can be funny moments during sad stories

I once met an economist who believed that everything was fungible for money, so I suggested he enclose himself in a large bell-jar with as much money as he wanted and see how long he lasted.

Debate is masculine, conversation is feminine.

The traveled mind is the catholic mind educated from exclusiveness and egotism.

The cool thing about being a songwriter, or a writer, I guess, in general, you can take on a lot of different things, experience a lot of different things, just by writing about them.

The best way to know the soul of another country is to read its literature.

A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops.

Facts have a tendency to obscure the truth.

When we take our social role too seriously the first thing we lose is our sense of humor.