Quotes About Introspection

She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.

At that time in my life, no conclusion was a bad conclusion. Something ended, and you stopped wishing and worrying. You could consider your mistakes, and you might be embarrassed by them, but the box was sealed, the door was shut, you were no longer immersed in the confusing middle.

I love my sculptures, and I was lucky I had them for 50 years because no one would look at them and I really liked having them around.

Everybody could see when something was troubling Christine--the writers kept asking, 'What's wrong with her?' But she never came to me directly to say she wasn't happy. That was not her way.

If there was a free-floating feeling, I took it on and tried to work it out.

Having strong yet fluid relational boundaries is like wearing the zipper of our hearts on the inside rather than on the outside of us. Our true self is able to decide when to open our hearts and let someone in, or when we're open to stepping out and mingling. If we're tired or need a little time alone, we can close ourselves up a little bit or zip up entirely to get the rest we need.

Now commit to noticing, supporting, and following your own feelings and beliefs.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will kill you.

The other reason why the mind has been regarded with a certain amount of suspicion is its tendency to pull us into a smaller, mentally constructed sense of ourselves: to confuse being with thinking.

She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out of that particular divot. Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts.

She was open to love, but she was best at managing her own happiness; it was other people's happiness that sunk her.

True patriotism, Jack believed, would have been for his fellow Americans to look inward after 9/11 and accept a little blame, admit the attacks had happened, in part, because of who they were in the world, not in spite of it.

I you want people to judge you based on the inside, don't distract them from the outside.

It's not your job to be anyone's mirror.

Too often, she looked forward to the end of something—to beginning the remembering—more than the thing itself.

Everyone's always on the hunt for a mirror. It's basic psychology. You want to see yourself reflected in others.

She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out … Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts.

In the coming weeks, he would spend a lot of time trying to unpack that moment, not understanding himself how years of commitment and love and tolerance could just vanish. But they did.

She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out of that particular divot. Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts. On

True patriotism, Jack believed, would have been for his fellow Americans to look inward after 9/11 and accept a little blame, admit the attacks had happened, in part, because of who they were in the world, not in spite of it. But no. Suddenly at every public function his previously godless neighbors would stand with hands on heart to earnestly intone the Pledge of Allegiance and sing "God Bless America.

In some inexplicable way she'd been looking forward to it and all its attendant drama, because wasn't there something nearly lovely—when you were young enough—about guts churning and tear ducts being put to glorious overuse?

Sometimes, we can't go forward until we go back.

I know why he picked you. You were his mirror. His perfect, broken mirror.

Sometimes," she confessed as she stared at him, totally nude and vulnerable as she bared her darkest truth, "what I fear most is myself." Trusting the wrong man. Not going for what she wanted. Letting life pass her by.