Quotes About Perception

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.

I now know that if you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

This school was on top of a hill so that God could see everything that went on. It looked like a cross between a prison and a church and it was.

The English think incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist, and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.

Then my hostess said, "Oh, Denis (as my name was before I dyed it) never plays the part of a man.

I did not know that a reputation for wit is earned not by making jokes, but by laughing at the pleasantries of others.

Mr Melly had to be obscene to be believed

I have known female whores who spoke very bitterly of their calling. "If they don't like my face, they can put a cushion over it. I know it's not that they're interested in." But to the boys this profession never seemed shameful. It was their daytime occupations for which they felt the need to apologize. In some instances, these were lower class or humdrum or, worst of all, unfeminine. At least whoring was never that.

Among other objections to the image of me was that I hated animals. I still do. I have enough dumb friends without them.

It is no longer possible to be exotic.

There is no great Dark Man !!!

D.H. Lawrence said that it was not living life that mattered but watching it be lived. I would say that it was not watching life that mattered but explaining what you saw.

It is universally agreed that men are neither heterosexual nor homosexual; they are just sexual.

As my friends became older, many of them married and moved out of Soho into the suburbs where their failure would be less apparent.

Later, I met a woman to whom I said, "If all my family had stood around me as a child and said, 'You're wonderful. You're wonderful. You're wonderful.' after an hour I would have complained, 'You're not saying it loud enough.

Sooner or later the time comes for almost everybody when, although he has sworn to himself he will never utter such sentiments, he declares that the country is going to the dogs, that life has become louder, public manners cruder, and art totally incomprehensible. When, he asks himself, will it all end?

The very purpose of existence it to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think of us.

Also, it's a little odd to assume all your patrons are thieves.

When Cliff saw Belmondo in Breathless, he thought, That guy looks like a fucking monkey. But a monkey I like.

Cliff didn't know enough to write critical pieces for Films in Review, but he knew enough to know Hiroshima Mon Amour was a piece of crap. He knew enough to know Antonioni was a fraud.

Okay, Marvin thinks, that's the second time Rick has put down his Tanner co-star Michael Callan. That's not a good sign. It suggests stinginess in spirit. It suggests a blamer. But Marvin keeps these thoughts to himself.

You don't need proof when you have instinct.