Quotes About Introspection

Alain Robbe-Grillet once wrote that the worst thing to happen to the novel was the arrival of psychology.

Giants of literature, philosophy, and the arts have influenced my life, but what have I done with this life? I remain a speck in a tumultuous universe that has little concern for me. I am no more than dust, a mote - dust to dust. I am a blade of grass upon which the stormtrooper's boot stomps.

She felt the intimate loss of who was meant to become.

I thought I'd be reading a new book today, but it doesn't feel right, or I don't feel like it. Some days are not new-book days.

I am a reader. Yes, I am that, a reader with nagging back pain.

Throughout our marriage, we would go for weeks without exchanging more than perfunctory communications, sharing little but the bewildered quiet. And you think that I am lonely now? Heavens. I wish I'd listened to Chekhov, or had read him then: "If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.

I realised when it came to men, I did not pick the beautiful or the correct. I picked the wrong one.

She was socially inept, an affliction I am quite intimate with.

I can relate to Marguerite Duras even though I'm not French, nor have I been consumed by love for an East Asian man. I can life inside Alice Munro's skin. But I can't relate to my own mother. My body is full of sentences and moments, my heart resplendent with lovely turns of phrases, but neither is able to be touched by another.

I was living, I thought I was content, I was told I was happy. I did a marvelous impression of a man not crushed by dread. Once I felt your warm breath on my neck, I was no longer invisible, you saw me, you always saw me. Me cogitas, ergo sum.

I know. You think you love art because you have a sensitive soul. Isn't a sensitive soul simply a means of transforming a deficiency into proud disdain?

I'm a failed narcissist.

I can imagine her memories of the novel, or, more likely, of who she was and how she felt when reading it.

Isn't a sensitive soul simply a means of transforming a deficiency into proud disdain?

I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out which is worse: the dark inside, or the darkness out.

I sit at my window gazing The world passes by, nods to me And is gone.

The burden of the self is lightened with I laugh at myself.

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

Read books when you are free, read minds when you are'nt....but do read...

What seems to be coming at you is really coming from you

I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark? I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not. He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter. He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.

What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.

When you have finished with others, that is my time.

Those who wish to sit, shut their eyes, and meditate to know if the world's true or lies, may do so. It's their choice. But I meanwhile with hungry eyes that can't be satisfied shall take a look at the world in broad daylight.