Quotes About Perception

They like to tell us that it is important to speak the truth, but it has been my experience that real happiness lies in having people tell you what you want to believe, usually not the same thing at all, and if you have to stub your toe on the truth later, so be it.

She looked up and ran her eyes over me, slowly, while I stood and wondered why. Had she forgotten what I looked like? But she finished with a big smile. She really did like me, the idiot.

I waved to everybody. Some of them even waved back. They knew me, had seen me go by before, always cheerful, a big hello for everybody. He was such a nice man. Very friendly. I can't believe he did those horrible things . . .

The whole point of wearing a disguise was to be seen wearing her.

the faster it ran away from me. And I found myself reasoning that perhaps one more beer would unlock the doors of perception

As Deborah had so astutely pointed out, I was engaged and still didn't get it.

Perhaps Dexter's dutiful but uninspired brain pictured him as Sherlock Holmes, able to examine the wheel ruts and deduce that a left-handed hunchback with red hair and a limp had gone down the road carrying a Cuban cigar and a ukulele. I would find no clues, not that it mattered.

Doakes had a first name! It was Albert - had anyone ever really called him that? Unthinkable. I had assumed his name was Sergeant.

But it is a truism of life that no matter how much we are suffering, nobody else cares—generally speaking, nobody even notices.

I have really good eyesight," I said, wondering if everyone who came in to see me today was going to be profoundly annoying.

Because she had formed an image of me as a ravening monster?

Whoever claimed honesty is the best policy, or even a good one, clearly had very limited experience with the real world.

Oh," I said, and my eyes pop open to the fluorescent light of Deborah's office, and no matter how hard I try to push it away and find a way not to believe it, the things I saw do not change. Even in the harsh and ugly light of the office the picture is the same, and even worse, I now see Deb and Jackie staring at me uncertainly, as if they had been watching me urinate on a busy street. "Oh, um," I say. "It's, you know. I just thought of something.

In fact, from what I had observed it was quite possible for one to actively dislike one's girlfriend, although of course true hatred is reserved for marriage.

I knew I was supposed to understand that Rita was actually saying something very specific, that her pauses and stutters added up to a great and marvelous thing that a human male would intuitively grasp. But I had not a single clue as to what it might be, nor how to figure it out. Should I count the breaths? Time the pauses and convert the numbers to Bible verses to arrive at the secret code? What was she trying to tell me? And why, for that matter, was she trying to tell me anything at all?

I looked at Anderson. His face was full of anger, venom, dislike for me, and above all, impenetrable stupidity. It was possible that he actually thought I was guilty, or had talked himself into believing it. I didn't think so. "If you say it enough times, you might actually believe it," I say.

Deborah looked at me with a frown, and I frowned back. What Alana said made sense, of course, especially to someone untroubled by human feelings, like I used to be. It was clinically cold reasoning, serpentine but clear, and that certainly fit what we were coming to know about Alana. And yet—something was wrong with it, whether it was the way she said it or something else, I couldn't say; it didn't quite add up for me.

This was not even a matter of putting two and two together; it was looking at four.

Salvia divinorum

Vince looked where I pointed. "Salvia divinorum," he said. "Hey, you think so?

what fair-minded person could possibly call me "nothing but" a psychopath? I'm very good at board games, too.

So that meant that as long as the SA could believably present me as a pedophile, it was ipso facto proof that I was also a murderer. And

Kraunauer was waiting for me, standing next to the same young and serious agent who had brought us up. "I'm beginning to believe," Kraunauer said, "that Detective Anderson may not like you.

My car is right over here," Kraunauer said, steering me toward a modest-looking gray sedan with a stylized letter "B" on each hubcap. And in spite of that, it wasn't until I opened the door and saw the walnut-lined instrument panel and soft glove-leather seats that I realized the "B" stood for "Bentley." I slid onto the sweet-smelling seat and tried not to soil it by sweating or thinking impure thoughts.