Quotes About Introspection

Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones?»

even if we're not always so glad to be here, it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open.

To me, the hallmark of the modern mind is that it loves to wander from its subject.

Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet—for me, anyway—all that's worth living for lies in that charm?

Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair.

He's always up in the clouds with Plato or something.

And it may be a superhuman effort to lose oneself so completely, but that's nothing compared to the effort of getting oneself back again.

Probably I'll be dead soon.

I was fascinated by strangers, wanted to know what food they ate and what dishes they ate it from, what movies they watched and what music they listened to, wanted to look under their beds and in their secret drawers and night tables and inside the pockets of their coats. Often I saw interesting-looking people on the street and thought about them restlessly for days, imagining their lives, making up stories about them on the subway or the crosstown bus.

All of the above.

the place where words didn't work.

I felt disincarnate, cut loose from myself. How it would feel to be back in my body again I couldn't imagine.

Forgive me for all the things I did, but mostly for the things I didn't

Rain tapped and dripped at the skylight, casting watery shadows that streamed down the wall. Too shy to say anything, I waited for him to pick up the thread again- and when he didn't, we sat there peacefully, while I sipped my cooling tea (Lapsang Souchong, smoky and peculiar) and felt the strangeness of my life, and where I was.

as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very different from what I actually did. But of course I didn't see this crucial moment then for what it was; I suppose we never do.

Are you tired?" he said, looking at me closely. Was I? I was wide awake, and yet part of me was so glassed-off and numb I was practically in a coma. "If you'd rather have company? Perhaps if I build a fire in the other room? Tell me what you want." At this question, I felt a sharp rush of despair—for as bad as I felt there was nothing he could do for me, and from his face, I realized he knew that, too.

Then why aren't you happy?" "I don't want to talk about it." "And

What I did experience when alone was a sort of general neurotic horror, a common attack of nerves and self-loathing magnified to the power of ten

The only way that I will ever be great to myself is not what I do to my body but what I do to my mind.

I think I have something growing inside of me.

Everyone believes there are horrible people doing horrible things; things we would never, ever do. But we do those same horrible things. There is no us and them. Only we.

Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost." DANTE ALIGHIERI, The Divine Comedy

Each of us is the hero in the movie of our life. The only difference is that some of us are better at justifying our actions to ourselves, while others beat themselves up for every mistake they make.

Let us never measure our religion by that of others, and think we are doing enough if we have gone beyond our neighbors.