Quotes About Introspection

Tell me about yourself - your struggles, your dreams, your telephone number.

How do you know when you're God?" "When I pray to him I find I am talking to myself.

I know I am God because when I pray to him I find I'm talking to myself.

for all of their accomplishments, Americans should not fall in love with their own virtue, and should not expect non-Americans to take that virtue on faith.

It's too easy to be stupid, and too easy to wake up in the morning with the feeling you said something that had more to do with want and despair than need.

OW: Well, you see, I'm not like you. I'm not judgmental. With me, it's, "Here I am, not going to Africa." I don't say to myself, "Why don't you go to Africa?" I don't discuss it with myself. Because if I did, I would go to Africa. So it is the self-indulgent devil in me that stops the dialogue.

No woman, believe me, will want to rub elbows with the dead woman you keep in your heart." (CG 254/P 9:1127) Félix, she understands, cannot detach himself from the dead Henriette. And also from himself: she accuses him of an incurable egotism. If he continues to unburden himself to other women as he has to her, they will perceive "the aridity of your heart, and you will always be unhappy

We need novels in order to enter the minds of others. But that project can run up against the opacities of other minds and spirits. When a man tells us of a woman's desiring, we should beware of blindness.

Humans do not give greater credence to an objective record of a past event than to their subjective remembering of it, and we are surprisingly insensitive to the ways our particular construals of a situation are unique to ourselves. Thus the narrative of memory becomes central to our intuitions regarding the judgments we make and the actions we take. 5

The stories we create to understand ourselves become the narratives of our lives, explaining the accidents and choices that have brought us where we are: what I'm good at, what I care about most, and where I'm headed.

I wish the whole day were like breakfast, when people are still connected to their dreams, focused inward, and not yet ready to engage with the world around them. I realized this is how I am all day; for me, unlike other people, there doesn't come a moment after a cup of coffee or a shower or whatever when I suddenly feel alive and awake and connected to the world. If it were always breakfast, I would be fine.

I only feel like myself when I am alone.

Are you okay?' she asked me. Of course,' I said. 'Why wouldn't I be okay?' There are lots of reasons why you might not be okay.' There are lots of reasons why anyone might not be okay,' I said.

I'm not a sociopath or a freak (although I don't suppose people who are sociopaths or freaks self-identify as such); I just don't enjoy being with people. People, at least in my experience, rarely say anything interesting to each other. They always talk about their lives and they don't have very interesting lives. So I get impatient. For some reason I think you should only say something if it's interesting or absolutely has to be said.

It seemed that everyone else could mate, could fit their parts together in pleasant and productive ways, but that some almost indistinguishable difference in my anatomy and psyche set me slightly, yet irrevocably, apart.

Io mi sento me stesso solamente quando sono solo. Il rapporto con gli altri non mi viene naturale: mi richiede uno sforzo.

Credo che nel mio cervello ci sia una specie di setaccio che impedisce un rapido (e tanto meno simultaneo) travaso dei pensieri in parole. Un po' come il filtro nello scarico della vasca da bagno; c'è qualcosa che trattiene i miei pensieri nel cervello, e così bisogna cavarli a forza, come quegli schifosi grovigli di capelli bagnati.

Being alone is a basic need of mine like food and water, but I realize it is not so for others.

The main problem was I don't like people in general and people my age in particular, and people my age are the ones who go to college.

No quería pensar en esto y procuraba no pensar. Probablemente ese era el motivo de que me sintiera tan aturdido. Cada vez que notaba la formación de un pensamiento, me decía: "No pienses eso, no pienses eso, no pienses eso". Aquello era como liquidar a un montón de moscas con un matamoscas

I have written a memoir here and there, and that takes its own form of selfishness and courage. However, generally speaking, I have no interest in writing about my own life or intruding in the privacy of those around me.

To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.

Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose also the first announcement of death.

When we find fault in others, it's often because of the concerns we have about our own abilities.