Quotes About Perception

I have to conclude that fiction is better at "the truth" than a factual record. Why this should be so is a very large subject and one I don't begin to understand. DORIS LESSING

For she is remembering Paul's saying: There is no such thing as a frigid woman, there are only incompetent men.

However, there are certain rites in the talk of matrons, and Martha, having listened to such talk for a large part of her life, should have learned that there was nothing insulting, or even personal, intended. She was merely expected to play the part 'young girl' against their own familiar roles.

That's the point—anything might be true anywhere, there's never any way of really knowing the truth about anything. Anything is possible—everything's so crazy, anything at all's possible.

Los viejos saben por experiencia que a veces los recuerdos se alteran y el sentido cambia

The truth was, she was becoming more and more uncomfortably conscious not only that the things she said, and a good many of the things she thought, had been taken down off a rack and put on, but that what she really felt was something else again.

Algunos no saben distinguir el bien del mal ni siquiera cuando se les muestra.

The thing is, people who are indeed frothing mad, if they are in political or religious contexts are not seen as mad. Yet if the same people were in a different context, it would be seen at once. But some people who are crazy drift towards political or religious movements where their craziness will not be seen, and whether they do this consciously or not surely doesn't matter.

As soon as one has lived through something, it falls into a pattern. And the pattern of an affair, even one that has lasted five years and has been as close as a marriage, is seen in terms of what ends it. That is why all this is untrue. Because while living through something one doesn't think like that at all.

Las palabras aparecen en tu mente y allí bailan a ritmos de los que tú conscientemente nada sabes. Cabos y rabos de palabras: pueden ser una indicación de un estado de ánimo oculto. Pueden removerse o cantar durante días, enloqueciéndote. Pueden ser como película invisible, como pelicula adhesiva, entre tú y la realidad.

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

Sempre achei curioso o facto das mulheres serem veneradas como deusas, enquanto na vida quotidiana são remetidas para um papel secundário e consideradas inferiores.

I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us to see ourselves as others see us.

the progress of which mankind is so proud, may well be known to the gods by another name.

Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don't realize it.

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

I think we conjure up and invent people, and then whoever happens to be there is the recipient of our imagination. A good deal of the attraction between people, I think, is based on the fact that one is able to absorb the creation

Mama learned to laugh with them, before they could laugh at her, and to do it so well no one could be sure what she really thought or felt.

fiction is the great lie that tells the truth

Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time.

Books can offer a counter narrative—another story to the one we think we know.

that the biggest part of the struggle as a child is about trying to believe you are not the monster you are being told you are.

Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones