Quotes About Perception

There were so many facts that Amelia no longer felt certain about (or perhaps she had never known them). She would soon be nearer fifty than forty, and she was sure that every day she could feel more neural pathways disappearing—fusing and arcing and dying—leaving her unable to retrieve information.

What do you think you're doing?" she asked when Jackson took his own phone out of his pocket. Another chippy woman, Jackson thought with a sigh. Chippy women wherever he went. Chippy mothers who begat chippy daughters and so the circle of chippiness was unbroken.

One of the things Jackson liked about Julia was her independence, one of the things he didn't like about Julia was her independence.

They have no sense of humour whatsoever – even Bunty has a sense of humour compared with our hosts. They have united Prussian gloom and Presbyterian dourness in an awesome combination.

but it seemed so much worse somehow when he turned out to have golden curls like an angel and eyes the colour of forget-me-nots.

The mistake,' Sylvie said, 'is thinking that love equates with happiness.')

More and more these days, he had noticed, he felt like a visitor from another planet. Or the past. Sometimes Jackson thought that the past wasn't just another country, it was a lost continent somewhere

Maths was the one true thing, according to Nancy. Not love? Teddy said. Oh, love, of course, Nancy said, in an offhanded way. Love is crucial, but it's an abstract and numbers are absolute. Numbers can't be manipulated. An unsatisfactory answer, surely, Teddy thought. It seemed to him that love should be the absolute, trumping everything. Did it? For him?

Sister Michael turned and looked at him, and, despite her plump, jolly face, she had nuns' eyes, and nuns' eyes, Jackson knew, could see right inside your head, so he nodded respectfully at the statue. Sanguis Christi, inebria me.

You couldn't necessarily judge a woman by the man she slept with. (Or could you?)

Could you be an old maid if you had worn the scarlet letter?

She had one of those husky voices that sounded as if she were permanently coming down with a cold. Men seemed to find that sexy in a woman, which Jackson thought was odd because it made women sound less like women and more like men. Maybe it was a gay thing.

People have the wrong idea about fairy tales, they think they're about being rescued by handsome princes, whereas really they're like Girl Guide handbooks.

The ears of men are lesser agents of belief than their eyes.

This man, I say, is most perfect who shall have understood everything for himself, after having devised what may be best afterward and unto the end.

The man who is rich in fancy thinks that his wagon is already built; poor fool, he does not know that there are a hundred timbers to a wagon.

The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows what lies on the surfaces does lie.

Everyone remembers his past with greater vividness as the present becomes more important. Dying men in their last delirium are supposed to see their whole life spread out before them.

Elite athletes learn entitlement. They believe they are entitled to have women serve their needs. It's part of being a man. It's the cultural construction of masculinity.

A single seed of fact will produce in a season or two a harvest of calumnies; but sensible men will pay no attention to them.

When we know exactly all a man's views and how he comes to speak and act so and so, we lose any respect for him, though we may love and admire him.

I'd rather be Jack be smart, than Jack be quick. Watch out for the man with the big fat licking stick.

I don't look like a leading man, whatever they look like. It's changing a little.

My hunch is that probably men are doing more both outside the home and inside the home