Quotes About Introspection

Out of town I could simply be , I could feel my self , firm and calm and unmalleable as I could not when I was in school or in any of the usual human communities that seemed to weaken or scatter me. I could sit for an hour in the rocks above the Knife River, asking for no more discourse than that water's monotonous gabble. I was an inward child, it was true, but beyond that, I felt a contentment outside human society that I couldn't feel within it.

The limitless, lowering sky, the long stretches of motionless empty prairie, the silence, complete right down to the absence of birdsong -- who knows what decides a man to leave most of his words unspoken?

The odd thing about understanding was how often time alone seemed seemed to bring it about.

Deep within, every human being hoards a pitch-black riddle. The darkness of the iris is nothing other than the starless night, the darkness deep in the eye is nothing other than the darkness of the universe.

It's never about someone else the moment you realize it is up to you to get yourself to a better place. It's only about figuring out how to get there.

That was what I feared most: that he just wasn't excited about us anymore—that something between us had altered irreversibly. And afterward, I started seeing the evidence everywhere: in the way he didn't sleep facing me anymore, or the way he'd stopped asking me the questions he used to need to know the answers to, the way he stopped needing to tell me things in order for them to count.

But I knew the other part wasn't about me, so I decide not to make it about me now. It's never about someone else the moment you realize it is up to you to get yourself to a better place. It's only about figuring out how to get there.

knew each other in that honest, unmitigated way that people get to know you who meet you when you're still young. Before all the rest of it. Before it becomes both easier and harder to know yourself.

We knew each other so well by this point—knew each other in that honest, unmitigated way that people get to know you who meet you when you're still young. Before all the rest of it. Before it becomes both easier and harder to know yourself.

I had no problem being on my own. My grandfather had raised me to depend on myself. My problems came when I tried to fit myself into someone else's life, especially when that meant giving up a part of myself in the process.

I'd been wrong about the ways we move past the versions of ourselves that no longer fit. I'd thought it involved running, as far and as fast as your feet could carry you, from your former selves. I didn't understand that was the surest way to wind up exactly where you started. 44 In the morning, I looked out the window, feeling foggy and damp, like I'd had a bottle of wine the night before.

Wasn't that the gift of a home? You looked at it the same way, but then when you needed it to, it showed you all over again the many ways you'd been during the time that you had been living there. The many ways it had brought you back to yourself.

When I finally allow myself to look up, it's Bailey that I see. It cools me out, immediately, centers me. She is walking toward me from the same direction Owen has gone. She's in her gray sweater dress and high-top Converse, her long, brown hair running halfway down her back. Did Owen pass her? Did he get to see for himself how beautiful she has become? How sure of herself? I hope so. I hope so at the same time I hope not. Which way, after all, spares him?

I had no problem being on my own. My grandfather had raised me to depend on myself. My problems came when I tried to fit myself into someone else's life, especially when that meant giving up a part of myself in the process. So I waited until I didn't have to. Until it felt like someone fit effortlessly. Or maybe that's too easy - maybe it's more accurate to say that what was required to be with Owen didn't feel like effort. It felt like details.

But consider this," Jesse said, picking the bourbon back up, "maybe you aren't in this position because you forgot yourself, but because you started getting honest about who you really might be.

parecía que la única virtud de Mamá Elena era la de encontrar defectos.

A Lupita le llevó muchos años de encierro descubrir que uno escucha mejor cuando está en silencio y que está mucho más acompañado en la soledad.

Por fin ahora después de que infinidad de hombres han pasado por mí, siento un gran alivio

To answer your question, I don't think you know what you want," he said.

Our inability to see things that are right before our eyes, until they are pointed out to us, would be amusing if it were not at times so serious. We are coming, I think, to depend too much on being told and shown and taught, instead of using our own eyes and brains and inventive faculties, which are likely to be just as good as any other person's.

Howard Ensign had joined the Congregational church after their revival and would testify at prayer meeting every Wednesday night. It seemed to me that the things between one and God should be between him and God like loving ones mother. One didn't go around saying, 'I love my mother, she has been so good to me.' One just loved her and did things that she liked one to do.

Was that what she meant? Why she cried? Because he was an animal afraid to leave its cage, no words to say what he thought, no thoughts but muddled mad stupid thoughts?

we find mates who bring out the worst in us: a partner is sent by the universe as a character test, to expose what you're really made of.

But you were a goody-goody, you said.' 'Even goody-goodies think about such things. In fact, I would say that's what defines us. We're always thinking about the things we don't dare do, figuring out where the lines are drawn, so we can go right up to the edge of things, then plead innocence on the ground of a technicality.