Quotes About Introspection

What you're reading here is basically a person having a conversation with his own biography.

My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it's supposed to be. But on the cherry tree, there's this pitch oozing out – some black, some yellow – and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.

Cain wonders what his father had made of him at this age. The idea is startling, that he and his father might have such things in common as pleasures and annoyances of parenthood. Seldom has he let himself consider the world through his father's eyes.

You've nobody to blame but yourself, you know.

Now as I began to sort through his "effects" it occurred to me how little I had really known him … I had forced upon my father the character that fitted most easily with my image of myself; to have had to admit to any complexity in him would have compromised my own.

Enemies, like friends, told you who you were.

I pray you indulge me for a space, for I am going to set out on a speech which may have some duration, but whose theme may be gleaned from its opening phrase: how dare you.

However much our quotidian cares consume us, our dreamtime is too valuable, and will be devoted to problems not susceptible to rational consideration.

But shame, a breaking open of the heart before God, leads, so the Rabbis say, to that true self-knowledge necessary for change. For

The leaf of the camomile, parboiled in water, conduces to calm. And yet I do not worship it.

One never does solve what it is about watching fires, really.

Y tú quién eres? –dijo él. –No me confundas –dije yo. Dice Tristram Shandy VII 33.

Even if I had not been thinking about it, for that matter, certainly I would have had to begin to do so when I typed those last few sentences.

I find an empty page friendlier than speaking to another person.

self-awareness is increased much more rapidly by observing feelings rather than thoughts. The thoughts associated with even one feeling may literally run into the thousands. The understanding of the underlying emotion and its correct handling is, therefore, more rewarding and less time-consuming than dealing with one's thoughts.

Lying flat against the tile of the kitchen floor listening to someone else have sex is essentially my early twenties in a nutshell.

Artists are artists whether they produce or not. None of it requires much more than hanging out.

There is no better way to conceal oneself than by listening to others.

A solid sense of self develops from confronting yourself, challenging yourself to do what's right, and earning your own self-respect.

hatred and aggression—and carnivorous sexual intent—aren't our "dark" side. Our dark side is the side that denies its own existence.

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed.

It is funny the things that run through your mind when you're sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers.

Often I'd take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face.

What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.