Quotes About Introspection

I think if you have to think about anything very long, you've obviously done yourself an injury, as it were.

In this hard struggle I had little refreshment but from the fountains of my own soul. Had I not clung to myself, the atrocity of others had made me a demon.

He stood there for a very long time, and the longer he stood, the more he sank. All the heart he had for living in the world began to leave him. He could feel the life running down his chest, his arms and legs, doing something for the ground that it had never been able to do for him.

Why do I always have to want more?" he asked the river. And receiving no reply, he shook his head.

And to learn, he must be curious and also humble. For a proud man never learns anything.

Patrick asked him, not for the first time, but with renewed desperation, what it would mean to be free, to live beyond the tyranny of dependency and conditioning and resentment.

Was this the triumph of self-knowledge: to suffer more lucidly?

The shock of standing again under the wide pale sky, completely exposed. This must be what the oyster feels when the lemon juice falls.

People think they are individuals because they use the word ''I'' so often.

I find everything boring, therefore I'm fascinating.

Lying on a pile of pillows and smaller cushions, slurping her coffee and playing with her cigarette smoke, she felt briefly that her thoughts were growing more subtle and expansive.

As Anne watched her, she could not help thinking of the age-old question every woman asks herself at some time or other: do I have to swallow it?

Ninety per cent of the drugs were for him and ten per cent for Natasha, a woman who remained an impenetrable mystery to him during the six months they lived together. The only thing he felt certain about was that she irritated him; but then, who didn't?

made him more conscious of how little experience he had of saying what he meant.

People think they are individuals because they use the word I so often, Patrick commented.

Why was he in this state? Or perhaps the question was why had he not always been in this state? Why had he not always found life so disturbing and so poignant?

Unlike the riotous appetites of adolescence, his present cravings had a tragic tinge, they were cravings for the appetites, metacravings, wanting to want.

If they made a film of my inner life, it would be more than the public could take. Mothers would scream, Bring back The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so we can have some decent family entertainment!

He knew that she could not help him unravel the knot of inarticulacy that he carried inside him. Instead, he could feel it tightening, like a promise of suffocation that shadowed every breath he took.

forced to observe the fringes of unconsciousness and make darkness visible;

Patrick had a fervent desire to be left alone matched only by his fervent desire not to be left alone.

What state? A state of philosophical enquiry? I thought you would approve.

The question filled Patrick with the horror which assailed him when he was asked to consider another person's feelings. How was Debbie? How the fuck should he know? It was hard enough to rescue himself from the avalanche of his own feelings, without allowing the gloomy St Bernard of his attention to wander into other fields.

David listened to the swishing sound his yellow slippers made as he walked up the last flight of steps to the door that led from the terrace into the drawing room. Yvette had not yet opened the curtains, which saved him the trouble of closing them again. He liked the drawing room to look dim and valuable.