Quotes About Introspection

I realized that, as a songwriter, the only thing I really do is make jewelry for the inside of other people's minds.

So this was the Ashram's final joke on me? Once I had learned to accept my loud, chatty, social nature and fully embrace my inner Key Hostess - only then could I become The Quiet Girl in the Back of the Temple, after all?

as a songwriter, the only thing I really do is make jewelry for the inside of other people's minds.

I would like never to travel again. I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent—and working at a pace so slow—that I would be able to hear myself living.

Oh, Lord—responsibility. That word worked on me until I worked on it, until I looked at it carefully and broke it down into the two words that make its true definition: the ability to respond.

I'm not interested in the insurance industry. I'm tired of being a skeptic, I'm irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don't want to hear it anymore. I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

the Zen masters always say that you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

I recently read a fabulous blog by a writer named Mark Manson, who said that the secret to finding your purpose in life is to answer this question in total honesty: What's your favorite flavor of shit sandwich?

It makes me satisfied, Frank," I finally replied. "It's like this: I believe I have a certain darkness within me, that nobody can see. It's always in there, far out of reach. And being with all those different men—it satisfies that darkness.

Om Namah Shivaya. I honor the divinity that resides within me. ...I repeat it again. Again. And again. It's not so much that I'm meditating as unpacking the mantra carefully, the way you would unpack your grandmother's best china if it had been stored in a box for a long time, unused.

excited, I want to pause for a moment and ask you to consider all the negative conclusions that I could have drawn about this incident

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 quiet restaurant is one of life's greatest secret pleasures.

I realized as a songwriter that all I really do is make jewelry for the inside of other people's minds.

Of course God already knows what I need. The question is - do I know?

I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of *reaching* his highest potential. … Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.

as Walt Whitman once wrote, stand 'apart from the pulling and hauling…amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary… both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it all.

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?

Sometimes it's just true that other people have better ideas for your life than you do.

I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life–so why did I feel like none of it resembled me?

Oh, Jesus. How do you get out of this one? You don't. You can't get out of this one. Unless you're able to be honest, which of course I could not do.

Or, as Sextus, the ancient Pythagorian philosopher, said, "The wise man is always similar to himself.

I don't know what I think until I write about it (Joan Didion).

It should have been unbearable to face this sorry inventory, yet for some reason it was not.

I believe I have a certain darkness within me, that nobody can see. It's always in there, far out of reach. And being with all those different men - it satisfies that darkness.