Quotes About Introspection

I could point out that it isn't always easy knowing who you are and what you want, because then you have no excuse for not trying to get it.

If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.

Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Or is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else?

We switch to another language-- not our invented language or the language we've learned from our lives. As we walk further up the mountain, we speak the language of silence. This language gives us time to think and move. We can be here and elsewhere at the same time.

And maybe it is only by finding yourself that you can feel the true intensity of becoming close to another person.

I had gotten so used to being alone, but never entirely used to it. Never used to it enough to stop wanting the alternative.

We all contain mysteries, especially when seen from the inside.

I am starting to get tired of relying on words.

I had made it somewhere special, and I'd gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I'd climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself. That, I found, was what I needed.

aloof , adj . It has always been my habit, ever since junior high school, to ask that question: "What are you thinking?" It is always an act of desperation, and I keep on asking, even though I know it will never work the way I want it to.

If you start the day reading the obituaries, you live your day a little differently.

If there wasn't a word for it, would we realize our masochism as much?

healthy, adj. There are times when I'm alone that I think, This is it. This is actually the natural state. All I need are my thoughts and my small acts of creation and my ability to go or do whatever I want to go or do. I am myself, and that is the point. Pairing is a social construction. It is by no means necessary for everyone to do it. Maybe I'm better like this. Maybe I could live my life in my own world, and then simply leave it when it's time to go.

Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? why do we feel we need to disconnect in order to connect? If I wrote Dear Sofia or Dear Boomer or Dear Lily's Great-Aunt at the top of this postcard, wouldn't that change the words that followed? Of course it would. But the question is: When I wrote Dear Lily, was that just a version of Dear Myself? I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too

How can you spend hours every day trying in small ways to figure out who you are, then have a near-stranger give you a sentence of yourself that says it better than you ever could?

The unwarranted devotion. Putting up with the fear of being with the wrong person because you can't deal with the fear of being alone. The hope tinged with doubt, and the doubt tinged with hope. Every time I see these feelings in someone else's face, it weighs me down.

What I learned The well-documented difference Between alone and lonely The comfort of knowing

What a strange phrase — –not seeing other people. As if it's been constructed to be a lie. We see other people all the time. The question is what we do about it.

Every single answer starts with the phrase 'I don't know.' But most of the time she does know, if I give her the time and the space in which to answer.

And who am I to blow against the wind?

I'm sorry, he says. I don't usually like people. So when I do, part of me is really amused and the other part refuses to believe it's happening.

It wouldn't be fair to ask you to be around me when I'm so sick of being around me.

So what do you have to confess now? I don't know why I'm saying any of this, except that is the truth. I'm confessing that I don't know if I'm ready for this. What is 'this'? Being open. Being hurt. Liking. Not being liked. Seeing the flicker on. Seeing the flicker off. Leaping. Falling. Crashing.

I have no more idea now of who I am than I did before. But at least I know that. And I'm starting to figure out who I want to be.