Quotes About Introspection

My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?

At first I thought he was having a stroke or a heart attack, but then I realized I was seeing pure misery, the kind people only show when they think they're by themselves.

Ted shrank from these youths, though he was six foot four and weighed in at two hundred thirty, with a face that looked innocuous enough in the bathroom mirror but often prompted colleagues to ask him what was the matter.

I am ALONE AND PEACEFUL and that combination is so unusual, it's like meeting someone for the first time.

I see now that the place I've been yearning for is my own imagination.

The album's called A to B, right?" Bosco said. "And that's the question I want to hit straight on: how did I go from being a rock star to being a fat fuck no one cares about? Let's not pretend it didn't happen.

there are so many things that can take a person somewhere else, but none of those things ever happened to me

Anna liked Bascombe, which was partly to say that she liked herself in his company.

Sometimes, before coming inside, Eddie would stand in the hall and overhear a festive gaiety from behind the closed door. It always surprised him. Did I imagine that? he would ask himself later. Or had they been easier—happier—without him?

Being observed felt like an action, the only one worth taking.

They resumed walking. Alex felt an ache in his eyes and throat. "I don't know what happened to me," he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't." Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. "You grew up, Alex," he said, "just like the rest of us.

Your throat tightens up and your eyes get wet as you watch their faces go from stony to sad, and it's all kind of moving and sweet except that you're not completely there—a part of you is a few feet away, or above, thinking, Good, they'll forgive you, they won't desert you, and the question is, which one is really "you," the one saying and doing whatever it is, or the one watching?

I've led a sheltered, virtuous life," she said.

We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind?

I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?

Briefly, I was a journalist in my twenties, although not a very good one. I didn't quite grasp the whole concept of accuracy.

At every waking moment now, I was plagued by the thought that I was living a lie.

There are times when I think it's impossible to know another soul. I don't know, maybe we're lucky that way. If we knew what really went on inside other people's private hearts it would make our eyeballs bleed.

Sometimes you stop seeing what the person is to the world. You only see what the person is to you.

are unsightly but eloquent, a timid girl's

If she had access to a mirror, a palette, an easel and paint, a woman could endlessly reflect on her face, and, by extension, her place in the world.

I didn't think I would end up here." "Me neither.

I doubt if he himself leaks even enough to piss more than once a year on his birthday,

If you don't love yourself, you can't love anybody else. And I think as women we really forget that.