Quotes About Introspection

De fiecare dat? aceste rug?minÈ›i pentru prezenÈ›a lui nu au f?cut decât s?-mi înt?reasc? conÈ™tiinÈ›a t?cerii definitive care ne-a desp?rÈ›it.

Why, if those were my images of death, did I remain so unable to accept the fact that he had died? Was it because I was failing to understand it as something that had happened to him? Was it because I was still understanding it as something that had happened to me?

I suppose almost everyone who writes is afflicted some of the time by the suspicion that nobody out there is listening

Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.

To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that details one's failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening.

Devi avere sempre ragione? , ricordai che John diceva. Era una lamentela, un'accusa, parte di una contesa. Non aveva mai capito che dentro di me non avevo mai ragione.

What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace.

Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. ...... Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss

there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

Who is the director of dreams, would he care? Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself...Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means…. What is going on in these pictures in my mind?

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear…. What is going on in these pictures in my mind?

Some time later there was a song on all the jukeboxes on the Upper East Side that went but where is the school-girl who used to be me, and if it was late enough at night I used to wonder that.

Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss

people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be "interesting" to know which.

Or was it even a dream? Who is the director of dreams, would he care? Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought.

but spend the afternoon in total silence, which involves not only not talking but also not reading, not writing, and not smoking. Even on discussion days, this silence is invoked for regular twenty-minute or hour intervals, a regimen described by one student as "invaluable for clearing your mind of personal hangups" and by Miss Baez as "just about the most important thing about the school.

My brother refers to my husband, in his presence, as "Joan's husband." Marriage is the classic betrayal.

The very language we use when we think about self-pity betrays the deep abhorrence in which we hold it: self-pity is feeling sorry for yourself, self-pity is thumb-sucking, self-pity is boo hoo poor me, self-pity is the condition in which those feeling sorry for themselves indulge, or even wallow. Self-pity remains both the most common and universally reviled of our character defects, its pestilential destructiveness accepted as given.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear>

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.