Quotes About Perception

No matter how hard I listened, there was never any sign of someone living under the floor, and yet this silence made me all the more conscious of his existence.

He had a special feeling for what he called the "correct miscalculation," for he believed that mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.

A problem has a rhythm of its own, just like a piece of music. Once you get the rhythm, you get the sense of the problem as a whole, and you can see where the traps might be waiting.

When I closed my eyes, the world was filled with sound.

The supple line of his jaw and the fixed plane of his collarbone functioned together like a precisely calibrated instrument that seemed to become a separate living thing as we watched.

Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won't find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression – in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.

I wonder how she broke the news to her husband. I don't really know what they talk about when I'm not around. In fact, I don't really understand couples at all. They seem like some sort of inexplicable gaseous body to me—a shapeless, colorless, unintelligible thing, trapped in a laboratory beaker.

No one actually witnessed the first numbers come into being-when we first became aware of them, they'd already been around for a long time.

It shocked me to realize that he suddenly seemed old -- so frail that the slightest push would have sent him tumbling. The body I had felt when I'd gone searching for my hidden presents had been sturdier; and though I had always thought of him as tall, e was now much shorter than me. I realized I had no idea how old he was -- I suppose I'd thought that something as mundane as age could never apply to him.

It's true, I know, that there are more gaps in the island than there used to be. When I was a child, the whole place seemed…how can I put this?…a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn't worry.

Out in the open air, he seemed somehow older.

Wie sehr wir uns auch bemühten, den anderen zu verstehen, es gab immer etwas, das sich unserem Verständnis entzog. Und je mehr wir darüber redeten, desto deprimierender wurde es.

Auf jeden Fall sind Erinnerungen unsichtbar, nicht wahr? Wie wundervoll sie auch sein mögen, sie verschwinden einfach, wenn niemand sie beachtet. Nicht einmal wir selbst sind in der Lage, das wahre Wesen einer Erinnerung zu erfassen. Sie hinterlassen keine Spuren. Es gibt keinen greifbaren Beweis, dass sie wirklich existiert haben.

Ibland sätter jag händerna mot väggen och försöker föreställa mig hur det är utanför. Jag tänker att det kanske kan gå att uppfatta någonting genom händernas beröring med väggen. Sådant som vindriktning, kyla, fukt, platsen du är på, vattnets porlande floden. Men det går aldrig. Väggen är bara en vägg. Det finns ingenting bakom den, den är inte sammankopplad med någonting.

Hur tomt ett hjärta än är försöker det ändå förnimma något.

Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won't find them in material things or natural phenomenon, or even in human emotions.

In years past, I had carefully studied the stems, leaves, and branches and had read the tags that identified the different varieties, but I realized now that I was already unable to remember what this thing called a rose had looked like.

Igual que algo que se hunde y reposa sobre el fondo de un lago al que no llega la luz, así escapan los recuerdos a nuestro alcance. Pero si alargas el brazo lo suficiente bajo la superficie del agua, tus dedos rozarán aquello que los ojos no ven. Cógelo y tráelo a la superficie, donde la luz volverá a iluminarlo.

he has never read a single page of any of my books. Once, when I told him I'd love to know what he thinks of them, he demurred. "I couldn't possibly say," he said. "If you read a novel to the end, then it's over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I'd much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.

She got off at the train station, the final stop, but in the station saw neither signs nor people. She sat on a cold bench in the waiting room, listening. She was starting to wonder if this was really a station. Based on experience she'd assumed as much, but you couldn't count on things being the way they'd always been. Perhaps this was no longer a station, and she simply hadn't heard the news.

Now he longer felt any need to use taste as the bricks and mortar for a structure called "individuality

Now he no longer felt any need to use taste as the bricks and mortar for a structure called "individuality.

Meine Weltkugel war bestimmt nicht rund gewesen, sondern wie ein Abendhimmel, in dem die fremden Orte wie Feuerwerk blitzten.

The male members of the species Homo sapiens appealed to me a great deal. They were soft and small and had fragile but adorable teeth. Their fingers were delicately constructed, the fingernails all but nonexistent. Sometimes they reminded me of stuffed animals, lovely to hold in one's arms.