Quotes About Introspection

The woman offered her hand, and I shook it. She had a confident grip. She didn't tell me her name, though, and I couldn't tell if she simply forgot or she didn't want me to know.

I'd spent five minutes looking at Twitter once and felt I'd wandered into a poker game where everyone immediately displayed their hands against the cool green of the felt.

You are learning what you aren't writing, and this is helping you find out what you are writing. —Anne Lamott

As a software developer, you are your own worst enemy. The sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be.

The true defining situation for a person is what they do when they are alone and don't have to do anything else. What do they do? Do they do frivolous things? That's when you define what you are.

As Woods lay unconscious on the road at 2:25 a.m. on November 27, 2009, blood on his teeth and lips, he finally appeared as he truly was-a vulnerable, fragile, deeply wounded person.

My approach to criticism and what I teach and preach inside Amazon -- is when you're criticized, first look in a mirror and decide, are your critics right? If they're right, change. Don't resist.

I'm used to watching old movies of myself.

examination. "Sometimes

I'm convinced I got signed because of who I am. And it makes me sad.

I would be utterly emabarrassed to have others around me hear my half of what can only be described as pedestrian. "Yes, the elevator has just pulled up to the 16th floor." Do these people have the ability to go, for say, an eight- or ten-minute stretch without being in contact with someone else? What are they afraid of? Confronting their own thoughts?

And how easy this mechanism is to see in others! Can we see it in ourselves? That is the question. Who are your scapegoats? What do you reject in others that you secretly reject in yourself? Weakness? Failure? Fear? Homosexuality? Violence? What thoughts and feelings do you not admit in yourself, in order to hold up to the world an image of who you are?

the one who wrote this book is the one who is reading it

There are deeper reasons to travel—itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind. We go where we need to go, and then try to figure out what we're doing there.

As a kid who had geared much of his life around the concerns of others, he was neither accustomed to nor comfortable fielding inquiries about himself.

it was the nature of being a person, and everything they did—every single thing, in school or at home, with others or alone, conscious or unconscious, meaningful or nonsensical, every single thing—was geared toward discovering what exactly it meant to be a person. The meaning would always elude them, because elusiveness was in fact its very heart.

The best person I know is Myself.

Well, the problem is, it's not easy for me to think of ways to improve myself, because I'm pretty much one of the best people I know.

Back in those days it was just me swimming around in the dark, doing back flips and taking naps whenever I want.

Perhaps because I'll never be one, humans are interesting to me.

I am unlovable...I have tried to involve myself in other people, in relationships, and even - in my sillier moments - in love. But it doesn't work. Something in me is broken or missing and sooner or later the other person catches me Acting or one of Those Nights comes along.

Talking perceptions, people. Do we really see each other for what we really are, or do we just see what we want to see, the image distorted by our own personal lenses I lost someone today and the funny thing is, I don't even know who she was.

Instead of writing down what you're going to do (chances are you've been doing that your whole adult life anyway, and it doesn't make you any better at doing them), write down at the end of the day what you did do that day.

No, this time I needed to sit down and start carefully, methodically, systematically sorting through the mixed up pieces of my shattered life.