Quotes About Introspection

Each person's self has become his principal burden; to know oneself has become an end, instead of a means through which one knows the world.

I mean here to propound a paradox, that people can actively enter into their own passivity.

I'm not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better. But please, isn't this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies?

Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.

Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, these soapy flanks

Something's not right about what I'm doing but I'm still doing it— living in the worst parts, ruining myself.

What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can't light up all sides at once.

Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?

I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.

Even when I look away I am still looking.

Oh, the body—its hungers, needs, and limitations. You look at somebody and you realize that they're in there, inside there, somewhere, and how will you ever reach them, understand them?

I woke up in the morning and I didn't want anything, didn't do anything, couldn't do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything. And I can't eat, can't sleep, can't sit still or fix things

I want to tell you this story without having to be in it

and then the question behind every question: What happens next?

We could pull it apart, spend our whole lives pulling it apart and have no time left to do anything smart with the pieces.

To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room.

A stone on the path means the tea's not ready, a stone in the hand means somebody's angry, the stone inside you still hasn't hit bottom.

Here is my hand, my heart, my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated cities at the center of me, and here is the center of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we can drink from, but I can't go through with it. I just don't want to die anymore.

What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can't light up all sides at once. Add a second light and you get a second darkness, it's only fair. He is looking at the wall and I am looking at his looking. Difficult thing, to be scrutinized so long. I find parts that overlap with mine and light them up in clays and creams, yellow music singing pink, the flicker of his mouth a purple rust.

There's a thing in my stomach about this. A simple thing. The last rung.

and the dark blue over everything

Looking back is easy for a while and then looking back gets murky.

I've seen your true face: the back of your head. If you were walking away, keep walking.

I want to tell you this story without having to confess anything … I want to tell you this story without having to be in it