Quotes About Introspection

The road has its own reasons and no two travelers will have the same understanding of those reasons. If indeed they come to an understanding of them at all.

The hundred nights they'd sat up arguing the pros and cons of self destruction with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall

He tried to read her heart in her handclasp but he knew nothing.

Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world out there had been altered or made suspect by what he'd seen of it elsewhere. As if he might never see it right again. Or worse did see it right at last. See it as it had always been, would forever be.

If we do not know ourselves in the waking world, what chance in dreams?

By the time I was sixteen I had read many books and I had become a freethinker.

He walked to the top of a rise and crouched and watched the day accrue. The chary dawn, the cold illucid world.

No, Professor, it aint nothin like that. You dont have to be virtuous. You just has to be quiet. I cant speak for the Lord but the experience I've had leads me to believe that he'll speak to anybody that'll listen. You damn sure aint got to be virtuous.

Who is it? said the boy. I dont know. Who is anybody?

The judge watched him. He began to point out various men in the room and to ask if these men were here for a good time or if indeed they knew why they were here at all. Everybody dont have to have a reason to be someplace. That's so, said the judge. They do not have to have a reason. But order is not set aside because of their indifference.

What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything?

It's a life's work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong.

I gave up apologizing for myself a long time ago. What should I say? That I'm sorry to be that which I am? I'd very little to do with it.

If you're sane enough to know that you're crazy then you're not as crazy as if you thought you were sane.

The razorous shoulder blades sawing under the pale skin.

At the farther edge of the town they came upon a solitary house in a field and they crossed and entered and walked through the rooms. They came upon themselves in a mirror and he almost raised the pistol. It's us, Papa, the boy whispered. It's us.

I think that if there was a reason then that would just be one more thing to inquire about. My notion is you probably make up reasons after you've decided what it is you're goin to do. Or not do.

Do you think you can learn all there is to know about yourself from yourself?

He sat leaning forward in the seat with his elbows on the empty seatback in front of him and his chin on his forearms and he watched the play with great intensity. He'd notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not. There was nothing in it at all.

That there is little joy in the world is not just a view of things. Every benevolence is suspect. You finally figure out that the world does not have you in mind. It never did.

The uncle lit up and blew smoke in a thin blue viper's breath toward the window. It coiled and diffused in the yellow light. He smiled. I'd like to have a dollar for every time I quit, he said.

And it may even be that in the end all problems are spiritual problems.

He looked at her. After a while he said: It's not about knowin where you are. It's about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. Or anybody's. You don't start over. That's what it's about. Ever step you take is forever. You can't make it go away. None of it. You understand what I'm sayin?

I don't mean to upset you, but reflective men often find themselves at a certain remove from the realities of life.