Quotes About Perception

It's easy to say you will do what's right and shun what's wrong, but when you get close enough to any given situation, you realize that there is no black or white. There are gradations of gray.

Words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder. Like falling in love or finding god, if it ha...ppens to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else - and language only takes you so far.

Oh,that's right. You're a...what did you call it? Ah, a ghost hunter. You don't have to see things to believe them. Adam's gaze locked onto the persecutor's. Maybe you've got that backward, he said. Maybe it's just that I believe things you cant see.

Each memory is like a paper flower stowed up a magician's sleeve: invisible one moment and then so substantial and florid the next I cannot imagine how it stayed hidden all this time. And like those paper flowers, once they've been let loose in the world, the memories are impossible to tuck away again.

Identification is not the same as knowing someone through and through.

When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.

Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer.

Jacob looks like a totally normal young man. He's clearly intelligent. But having his day disrupted probably makes him feel the same way I would if I was suddenly told to bungee off the top of the Sears Tower.

Ask a kid who's struggling in math if he likes being in a mixed-level class, and he'll tell you he feels like a moron. Ask the math genius if he likes being in a mixed-level class, and he'll tell you he's sick of doing all the work during group projects. Sometimes, it's better to sort like with like.

A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.

There is a fine line between seeing something that's lost as missing, and seeing it as something that might be found.

Maybe a mother wasn't what she seemed to be on the surface.

You have to understand what you're missing before you can really feel a loss.

She understood what it was like to stand right in front of people you loved, even though they could not see you.

You can't be real, Delilah murmurs. Says who? I ask. Did you really think that a story exists only when you're reading it?

I would tell them that when you look at a person, you never know what the're hiding.

Time is an optical illusion-- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is.

If words had flavors, hers would be bitter almonds and coffee grounds.

You may be real, but you're still stuck in a book.

Witness testimony is always flawed. It's better than circumstantial evidence, sure, but people aren't camcorders; they don't record every action and reaction, and the very act of remembering involves chosing words, actions and images. In other words, any witness who was supposed to be giving a court facts is really just giving them a version of fiction.

What one person takes away from a book might be very different from what the next person takes away -- almost as if the story is altered depending on who's reading, where, and when. But then, maybe all books are like that -- a little different each time they are opened. The real question is who's doing the changing: the story, or the reader.

Lies were only as strong as the suckers that believed them.