Quotes About Introspection

It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again.

gran parte de nuestra conciencia está llena de lenguaje, como una especie de murmulleo detrás de la oreja, un continuo blablablá que en realidad nos impide respirar hacia lo más hondo y sentir con más sutileza y dulzura los sentimientos que realmente albergamos como personas, los unos por los otros, más que como máquinas parlantes.

We're stuck in our Selves, And who else to be stuck in? - New York to San Fran

I don't do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision. —  Allen Ginsberg, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems: 1937-1952 . (Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press Ed edition November 1, 2006)

I find a certain degree of loneliness not only tolerable but deeply pleasurable.

He had to get out, get some space between him and the world, just to breathe.

There is a lot to be said for living an unobserved life.

Oh, this terrible second me, always seated whilst the other is on foot, acting, living, suffering, bestirring itself. This second me that I have never been able to intoxicate, to make shed tears, or put to sleep. And how it sees into things, and how it mocks!

Cada persona tiene una imagen o una memoria que guarda en secreto. Una que tiene que desenvolver, como un trozo de caramelo, por las noches. Si uno pasa por allí, cae en el valle de la ensoñación.

People who love reading are often called bookworms — but that's the wrong way around. It's not you that worms into a book; it's books that worm into you." — Amanda Craig

When you are small, if you reach out, and nobody takes your hand, you stop reaching out, and reach inside, instead. — Amanda Eyre Ward, How to Be Lost . (Ballantine Books; Reprint edition August 30, 2005)

We've realized something about ourselves too: we are just as tempted by the propensity to make everyone feel happy as we are by booze.

Part of thinking for oneself is learning to recognize obstacles when they present themselves, and understanding that one must confront those obstacles, not merely ignore them in the mistaken hope that they will disappear.

MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.

Self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.

We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization.

There's something uncomfortable about looking at pictures of your parents at a time when they made each other happy.

I knew when not to speak, when not to let myself be heard. Silence was my friend, my twin, the other half of me. Silence was my weapon. Not a blustering gun, but an invisible spider's web.

I thought of how much they all wanted to be free; how they went mad wanting their freedom; I began to wonder whether it was I that was mad because I was happy to be bound; whether I was alone in knowing that I could not live without the clamour of the voices within me.

There was no place more solitary than a dark room, with its murky light and fetid closeness.

Thoughts, books, ideas, words – if anything, they make you more alone, because they destroy whatever instinctive loyalties you may once have possessed.

Why do I do this?

Does the devil know he is a devil?

It is healthy to be disabused of our self-deceptions every now and then, even if it hurts.