Quotes About Introspection

must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. The

She remembered a line from Montaigne, something she had read years ago, which had always stayed with her, and which now felt horribly pertinent: "These are two things that I have always observed to be in singular accord: supercelestial thoughts and subterranean conduct.

It was during the war, too, that I learned how to be comfortable sitting alone in a bar or restaurant. For many women, this is a strangely difficult thing to do, but eventually I mastered it. (The trick is to bring a book or newspaper, to ask for the best table nearest to the window, and to order your drink just as soon as you sit down.) Once I got the hang of it, I found that eating alone by the window in a quiert restaurant is one of life's greatest secret pleasures.

writers like Jack Kerouac (who called himself an urban Thoreau) set forth to redefine and rediscover ways to live in America without slogging through what Kerouac called the endless system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume...

I can only assume that she was like all of us—a complicated being, composed of more than one man's impressions.

As a creator, you can design any sort of jewelry that you like for the inside of other people's minds (or simply for the inside of your own mind). You can make work that's provocative, aggressive, sacred, edgy, traditional, earnest, devastating, entertaining, brutal, fanciful . . . but when all is said and done, it's still just intracranial jewelry-making. It's still just decoration. And that's glorious.

I wanted to call a time out, to demand that everybody just STOP until I could understand everything.

So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.

We need courage to take ourselves seriously, to look closely and without flinching, to regard the things that frighten us in life and art with wonder.

Only through constant focus can you become independent. Only through independence can you know yourself. And only through knowing yourself will you be able to ask the key question of your life: What is is that I am destined to accomplish, and how can I make it happen?

I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my brain, and wondered how on earth I was ever going to master it.

Of course you are. I'm sorry for many of the things I've done, too. Everyone is sorry. It's good to be sorry—but don't make a fetish of it.

you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

Lõppude lõpuks on iga inimene just see, mida ta mõtleb. Sinu tunded on su mõtete orjad ja sa ise oled oma tunnete ori.

The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart.

Once I got the hang of it, I found that eating alone by the window in a quiet restaurant is one of life's greatest secret pleasures.

The other day in prayer I said to God, Look - I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday have an unexamined lunch?.

I've spent so much time these last years wondering what I'm supposed to be. A wife? A lover? A celibate? An Italian? A glutton? A traveler? An artist? A Yogi? But I'm not any of these things, at least not completely. And I'm not Crazy Aunt Liz, either. I'm just a slippery antevasin - betwixt and between - a student on the ever-shifting border near the wonderful, scary forest of the new.

One can never know the state of another man's heart.

That's right I was speaking to the creator of universe as though we had just been introduced at a cocktail party.

The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.

If you clear out all of that space in your mind you would have a door way.

It matters./It doesn't matter. Build space in your head for this paradox. Build as much space for it as you can. Build even more space. You will need it. And then go deep within that space—as far in as you can possibly go—and make absolutely whatever you want to make. It's

I wrote that book anyhow, because I needed to write it for my own intimate purposes - and also because I was curious to see if I could convey my emotional experiences adequately on paper.