Quotes About Introspection

Staring isn't difficult. I can do it all day long. Without blinking, if I want to, which is sometimes painful, but always useful. The trick is to not really look at them, but to focus ten yards beyond, on nothing, which produces a glassy effect, which makes them worry, mostly about what's going on behind your empty eyes.

It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.

He looked at them and wondered if they were the fools, or if he was.

People who say no right away are usually lying. A truthful person is perfectly capable of saying no but generally they stop and think about it first. And they add sorry or something like that. Maybe they come out with some questions of their own. It's human nature. They say, Sorry, no, why, what happened?

There was nothing else in Carbone's six-by-eight cell. Nothing significant, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing explanatory. Nothing that revealed his history, his nature, his passions, or his interests. He had lived his life in secret, buttoned down, like his Saturday-night shirts.

Human motivation is very complex. Most people don't really know why they do things.

He finished his story with a little facial shrug, part Yankee modesty, part genuine perplexity. As in, how did that happen?

I had rambling on my mind.

I sat there in the armchair and felt bad. I'd lost something I never knew I'd had.

stopped. She looked at it like she was having second

house. Out of sight, out of mind. That was the way he wanted it. He crossed the shoulder and leaned on his mailbox, watching

They looked at Neagley. Dark hair, dark eyes, a tan. A good-looking woman. She smiled at them. Her forearms were on the table. Reacher noticed her nails. They were shiny with clear polish, and neatly filed. Even on the right, which she must have done left-handed. She wouldn't use a nail salon. She couldn't bear her hands to be touched. She looked at one guy, and then the other. The

identified, and

They really didn't want me there. I finally realized. So I didn't fight it. I took an honorable discharge and walked away." "When was this?" "A long time ago." "And you're still walking." "That's too profound." "You sure?" "Deep down I'm very shallow.

function for them? Or are you just some kind of onlooker?

one of his mother's favorite expressions started to echo in his head: When you're in a hole, stop digging.

Generally I avoid having things to do. Clearly a reaction against literal regimentation earlier in my life. The result is I have no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there.

About where you are now," she said. "For years you've laughed off the small things, but they come so thick and fast that eventually you realize an avalanche is made up of small things. Snowflakes, right? Things don't get much smaller than that. Suddenly you realize that small things are big things.

That's the thing with life; whenever there's a real proper decision to be made, there's never anybody around but you.

On some deep level, we may choose to fill our days with busy work as a way to avoid the inevitable pain and disappointment in accepting that who we are may not be who we thought we were.

Besides, how could I trust them, when I couldn't even trust myself?

They were learning how to perform their privacy.

In the end, despite all your careful introspecting, you pay for following your instincts. And the more intensely and honestly you live, the more incessantly you pay. If you have become that particular, irreducible person, you get precisely what you want but no more. This is the unforgiving truth.

Life as a writer was not what I expected. I knew no other writers. I knew no writing teachers or editors. I had to draw every last bit of strength from the exalted notions I nursed about myself.