Quotes About Perception

A definition of loneliness surfaced in his mind: when you suddenly understand that the story of your life isn't what you thought it was.

You're American," she said simply. "You think straightforwardness is a virtue.

You don't know where you are or where your dreams end and the world begins.

Girls are always saying things like, "I'm so unhappy that I'm going to overdose on aspirin," but they'd be awfully surprised if they succeeded. They have no intention of dying. At the first sight of blood, they panic.

How do we know that our life really happened and that we are not simply accumulating details, making it all up as we go along?

the truth is what you can't see but are certain of anyway.

I'd been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That's what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn't say much, I listened.

A blend of good and bad characterized all humans, and to pretend to sort that out was an insult to human complexity. But at the same time, Sandro understood that people only tended to allow their own contradictions, and not those of others. It was OK to be murky to yourself, to know you weren't an angel, but other people had to be more cleanly divided into good and bad.

Did you ever notice that women can seem common while men never do? You won't ever hear anyone describe a man's appearance as common. The common man means the average man, a typical man, a decent hardworking person of modest dreams and resources. A common woman is a woman who looks cheap. A woman who looks cheap doesn't have to be respected, and so she has a certain value, a certain cheap value.

Things are more complicated than some can admit. People are stupider and less demonic than some can admit.

And here I arrive at my point. The point is that everyone has a different dream. The point is that it is a grave mistake to assume your dream is in any way shared, that it's a common dream. Not only is it not shared, not common, there is no reason to assume that other people don't find you and your dream utterly revolting.

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made made curious. They seemed to think it had something to do with them.

Isn't that what intimacy so often is? Supposing you understand, conveying that you do, because you feel in theory that you could understand, and you want to, and yet secretly you don't?

What I eventually came to understand, about San Francisco, was that I was immersed in beauty and barred from seeing it.

A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious. They seemed to think it had something to do with them.

Another sign, NO TANK TOPS. Under it, typically, an entire three-generation family, all in tank tops, flesh spilling. And what was it about shoulders? What was law enforcement's fear of shoulders?

The thing suppressed as an intrusion," Eric said, "is almost always worth looking at.

The VW doesn't make you think of Hitler and genocide. It's a breast on wheels, a puffy little dream.

It was good to be a stranger in Los Angeles. It was bad to be a stranger in Los Angeles with the company of another stranger in a loud shirt.

people only tend to allow their own contradictions, and not those of others. It was okay to be murky to yourself, to know you weren't an angel, but other people had to be more cleanly divided into good and bad. P.357

And if someone did remember them, someone besides me, that person's account would make them less real, because my memory of them would have to be corrected by facts, which are never considerate of what makes an impression, what stays in the mind after all these years, the very real images that grip me from the erased past and won't let go.

I was a kid. I didn't know about love, that you see someone and whether or not they say much, they make the world suddenly different, a mysterious and more alive place that you can access only through them. And the new, better world falls lifeless and flat when they go away.

Whatever she was or wasn't, she looked like a liar and he liked liars.

But since you bring it up, Didier, you know what I think of language? That it's a fake horizon and there's something else, a real truthful thing, but language is keeping us from it. And I think we should torture language to stop fucking around and tell it to us. We should torture language to tell the truth.