Quotes About Introspection

We're all terrible people. Eventually, we all become terrible, maybe around the middle of our lives, and then, if we're lucky, we have time to find a way to be good again.

Those who understand the true nature of humanity are always loners

Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom. Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace

There's just something unsettling about studying your reflection. It's not a matter of being dissatisfied with your face or of being embarrassed by your vanity. Maybe it's that when you gaze into your own eyes, you don't see what you wish to see—or glimpse something that you wish weren't there.

On those occasions when he had killed in the dark, he later needed to see his victims' faces because, in some unlit corner of his heart, he half expected to find his own face looking up at him, ice-white and dead-eyed. Deep down, the dream-victim had said, You know that you're already dead yourself, burnt out inside. You realize that you have far more in common with your victims after you've killed them than before.

Between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries. If you don't think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren't paying attention or you've anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology. And if you don't think life's a comedy - well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh.

Being alone can be good. It's easy to find peace alone. But sometimes, being alone is a king of death.

Every human being has appetites difficult to control but far fewer have humility, gentleness, and an awareness of their weaknesses.

We are not strangers to ourselves; we only try to be.

The only thing I know for sure is how much I do not know.

I believe our recognition of reality's complex dimensions is a consequence of our solitude.

Hell of a thing to have to experience, hell of a thing to have to see, to be reminded you're a human being and all it meant to be one.

These days, people spent too much time striving to understand their feelings - and then ended up with none that were genuine.

If you can spend enough time playing other people, you don't have to think too much about your own character motivations.

Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it.

There's more to me than you see, another me down inside somewhere, full of hate, ready to hurt, cut, smash, or if maybe there's no Other and there's just me alone, then I'm not the person I thought I was, I'm something twisted and terrible, terrible.

To me, religion is about our dignity, not our depravity. I stopped attending Mass at Our Lady of Immaculate Conception and went instead to Our Lady of Angels. I no longer lingered after Friday prayer among my brethren. I went to temple at crowded times when the Brahmins were too distracted to come between God and me.

One discovers weeping - one's weeping personality - only upon weeping. It is a strange discovery, not only to others but to oneself. p 49

I became aware of a voice inside my head. [...] It was only later that I realized that this voice was my own thinking, that this moment of anguish was my first inkling that I was a ceaseless monologue trapped within myself.

We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer...then surely we are also permitted doubt.

One discovers weeping—one's weeping personality—only upon weeping. It is a strange discovery, not only to others but to oneself

It was only later that I realized that this voice was my own thinking, that this moment of anguish was my first inkling that I was a ceaseless monologue trapped within myself.

To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if to constantly remind you of yourself? You can't. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn't want to be in the sun?

To me religion is about our dignity not our depravity