Quotes About Perception

Cornell knew that most people thought he was strange, even creepy. He'd been diagnosed with Asperger's disorder and various forms of autism. Maybe all those diagnoses were correct or maybe none were. His IQ was very high, and he'd made a lot of money while sitting alone in a room, developing apps that had proved enormously popular. When he was rich, no less than when he'd been poor, people thought he was strange, even creepy.

When they believe your lie is the truth, when they fail to see that the freedom you claim to champion is in fact slavery disguised, they'll live by whatever rules you imply without realizing they're being obedient.

clairvoyance

He knew what he didn't know. Dorian Purcell, on the other hand, seemed not to know what he didn't know.

The child who, far too young, saw anarchy in the world and feared it. The child who resented being born into such a disordered world, who saw chaos and yearned to find order in it.

This man on sixteen people's directories was named Alexander Gordius. To anyone lacking Woody's unique mind, the name would have looked like just another in a long list. But, to him, it seemed unlikely that someone would be named for both the creator of the Gordian knot and the man who solved it with a sword. To him it looked like a potential false identity.

the animals on Jacob's Ladder are likely to be sensitive

It was unnerving to have allies who struck you as goofy; it made your own opinions seem suspect.

Sometimes truth was elusive...

Lots of people are unable to see all kinds of truths right in front of their eyes. You can't worry about them for a minute. They're hopeless.

I've read more truth in fiction than in nonfiction, partly because fiction can deal with the numinous, and nonfiction rarely does.

when darkness often passed for light, the just and the unjust wore the same face.

A lesser mind might try to hide its brilliance behind a mask of stupidity. He chooses, instead, to conceal his true wisdom under a flamboyant pretense of erudition that he is pleased to let people think is the best of him.

Intuition alone determined for her what the patterns meant and what they suggested she should do. To her way of thinking, intuition was a word for perceptions that were received on a level far below the subconscious. Intuition was seeing with the soul.

Although it earned him a living, a suspense writer's imagination made him more aware of the constant proximity of death than were most people. Every dog was a potential rabies carrier. Every strange van passing through the neighborhood was driven by a sexual psychopath who would kidnap and murder any child left unattended for more than three seconds. Every can of soup in the pantry was botulism waiting to happen.

all of time—past, present, and future—was complete in the instant of the big bang. Therefore the past and the future were contained in the present. If the future of this timeline was here to be known right now, there might be people gifted enough to see what most could not.

I didn't want him to think I was all that young, meaning too young for Sharona

Libby hears her name wrapped in the louder sound, attenuated and distorted—"Liiiiibeeeee

Those in the Mysterium had different views about to whom and when the truth of them should be revealed. Their

As a man who felt that he had been born too late, Jeffy was often amazed at what passed for high art in this low age.

I admit that I don't understand art that isn't in the least representational. But I feel no need to understand it.

I'd been slowly robbed of my sense that I lived in a culture that still valued reason above unreason, civility above rote invective, which had once been the case.

the heart is deceitful above all things.

all creatures with high cognitive ability, to one degree or another, were often fools and should embrace their foolishness rather than deny it.