Quotes About Introspection

And why do I often meet your visage here,Your eyes like agate lanterns—on and onBelow the toothpaste and the dandruff ads?And did their riding eyes right through your side,And did their eyes like unwashed platters ride?And Death, aloft—gigantically downProbing through you—toward me, O evermore!

Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o'clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.

I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.

We live not in the world outside, but in a world inside ourselves.

A leader has to have the emotional capacity to tolerate uncertainty, frustration, and pain. He has to be able to raise tough questions without getting too anxious himself.

I wake up every morning in a cold sweat, regardless of how well things went the day before. And put that I said that in a somewhat but not completely tongue-in-cheek way.

I wanted to write literature that pushed people into their lives rather than helping people escape from them.

He who knows others is wise; He who knows himself is enlightened. TAO TE CHING (600 B.C.E.)

Generally we study too much and think too little.

Everyone should carefully observe which way his heart draws him, and then choose that way with all his strength.

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

Men who know themselves are no longer fools. They stand on the threshold of the door of Wisdom.

It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.

But I think that what you'll discover more and more as you get older is that most people aren't thinking about you at all.

The greatness of a mind is determined by the depth of its suffering.

I try to dig deep into the well of my subconscious. At a certain moment in that process, the lid is opened and very different ideas and visions are liberated. With those I can start making a film. But maybe it's better that you don't open that lid completely, because if you release your subconscious it becomes really hard to live a social or family life.

Indeed poetry is bounded by silence on all sides, is almost defined by silence. from "Fallacies of Silence

Sometimes it takes a good fall to really know where you stand

Silence is golden, but sometimes invisibility is golder.

The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.

To a soul which is wide awake, the Judgment Day does not come after death. For that soul every day is a Judgment Day. The Judgment Day is every day, and one realizes this as one's sight becomes more keen. Every hour, every moment in life has its judgment.

There is no end to one's faults. To think of them makes one humble.