Quotes About Insight

You're too clever for your creed, my friend. Forsake it.

I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much for reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.

I read so that I can live more than one life in more than one place.

It occurred to him, not for the first time, that prophetic dreams were not much use if their meaning emerged only in hindsight.

I read so I live more than one life in more than one place.

Plenty of other books say how to see as much of the city as possible," his boss had told him. "You should say how to see as little.")

How was it that she had never realized the power of the young back when she was young herself?

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place !

Oh, my. I guess it's true what they say about how you have to skip a generation to appreciate some of your relatives.

You wake in the morning, you're feeling fine, but all at once you think, "Something's not right. Something's off somewhere; what is it?" And then you remember

It is safe to assume that any individual or group you wish to influence has access to more wisdom than they currently use. It is also safe to assume that they also have considerably more facts than they can process effectively. Giving them even more facts adds to the wrong pile. They don't need more facts. They need help finding their wisdom. Contrary to popular belief, bad decisions are rarely made because people don't have all the facts.

He was lying; I could hear it the way you hear a tune and you know how it goes. I wondered how many times I'd heard him lie, to know so well what it sounded like.

I had been chipping at the world idly, and had by accident uncovered vast and labyrinthine further worlds within it.

I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again

But there is another kind of seeing that involves a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment's light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.

I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

The interior life is often stupid.

The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.

Maybe Flicker's power made her think differently than most people. She saw the world from so many perspectives, and seeing was half of enlightenment.

And I kind of love it that you want to know everything.

Makes perfect sense. In a problematic way. But life is problematic, so novels must be too.

If you see everything through hovercams and feed stories, you wind up blind to what's right in front of you.

It was way cool, being the one who did the math.

The wisdom of the crowd, Aya. If a million people look at a puzzle, chances are that one of them knows the answer. Or maybe ten people each know one piece, and that's enough to put it all together.