Quotes About Perception

The memory seems both real and unreal, reliable and tenuous, solid and insubstantial.

From my village I see as much of the universe as you can see from earth, So my village is as big as any other land For I am the size of what I see, Not the size of my height. —Fernando Pessoa as Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

I told her I was not sure I could bear living with memories, she said, Look up at the stars, look, they are not there, what you see is the memory of what once was, once upon a time.

It's just that our memories are rarely where we think they are.

There are a few places on the East Coast, and maybe Los Angeles, where women understand evening gowns. The rest of the country still has far to go.

When things turn out as you expect more often than not, do you feel more in control of your destiny? Do you take more responsibility for your life? If that's the case, why do Americans always behave as if they're victims? Hear

Other people are hazy phenomena that become corporeal only in my memories.

Why is it that you live in such a safe place yet consider the world so dangerous?" "I'm an American.

Why is it that you live in such a place yet consider the world so dangerous?" "I'm an American.

My Existence is Uncomfortable for People

Uncle Jihad used to say that what happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of those events affect us. My father and I may have shared numerous experiences, but, as I was constantly finding out, we rarely shared their stories; we din't know how to listen to one another.

I was living, I thought I was content, I was told I was happy. I did a marvelous impression of a man not crushed by dread. Once I felt your warm breath on my neck, I was no longer invisible, you saw me, you always saw me. Me cogitas, ergo sum.

I know. You think you love art because you have a sensitive soul. Isn't a sensitive soul simply a means of transforming a deficiency into proud disdain?

Memory, memoir, autobiography - lies, lies, all lies.

I can imagine her memories of the novel, or, more likely, of who she was and how she felt when reading it.

Isn't a sensitive soul simply a means of transforming a deficiency into proud disdain?

When things turn out as you expect more often than not, do you feel more in control of your destiny? Do you take more responsibility for your life? If that's the case, why do Americans always behave as if they're victims?

In the early pages of his gorgeous novel Sepharad, Antonio Munoz Molina writes: "Only those of us who have left know what the city used to be like and are aware of how much it has changed; it's the people who stayed who can't remember, who seeing it day after day have been losing that memory, allowing it to be distorted, although they think they're the one who remained faithful, and that we, in a sense, are deserters.

Rarely was Arabic used for physics, chemistry, or mathematics in any of the schools of Beirut, whose main curriculum has always been community conformity. It seems that Arabic is not considered a language for logic. A joke that used to make the rounds when I was a child, probably still going strong: the definition of parallel lines in geometry textbooks in Saudi Arabia is two straight lines that never meet unless God in all His glory wills it.

The girl strolled past, indifferently, seductively, her eyes hidden by cheap sunglasses. The old man sat up when the girl passed him. "Don't you think your pants are too tight?" he asked. "Kiss my ass, Uncle," she replied. He leaned forward. She kept going. "No one listens anymore," he said quietly.

If you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out.

Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.

What is Art? It is the response of man's creative soul to the call of the Real.

YOU are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf, I am the smaller one on its upper side,' said the dewdrop to the lake.