Quotes About Perception

The daylight too is strange, even outside, in the yard, as if something has happened to it, as if something has been done to it, before it is allowed to reach us. It has an acid, lemony cast, and comes in two intensities: either it is not enough to see by or it sears the sight. Of the various kinds of darkness I shall not speak.

For whom is the funhouse fun? Perhaps for lovers. For Ambrose it is a place of fear and confusion .

Unhappily, things get clearer as we go along. I perceive that I have no body. What's less, I've been speaking of myself without delight or alternative as self-consciousness pure and sour; I declare now that even that isn't true. I'm not aware of myself at all, as far as I know. I don't think. . . I know what I'm talking about.

So, reader, should you ever find yourself writing about the world, take care not to nibble at the many tempting symbols she sets squarely in your path, or you'll be baited into saying things you don't really mean, and offending the people you want most to entertain. Develop, if you can, the technique of the pall bearers and myself: smile, to be sure -- for fucking dogs are truly funny -- but walk on and say nothing, as though you hadn't noticed.

Others live for the lie of love; Echo lives for her lovely lies, loves for their livening.

innocence is ignorance; ignorance is illusion; and Commencement, while it certainly is a metaphor, is no illusion. Commencement's for the disillusioned, not for the innocent.

remember that there's always another way of seeing things: that's the beginning of wisdom.

T]he world is richer in associations than meanings . . . and it is the part of wisdom to distinguish between the two.

The story of your life is not your life. It is your story.

That clever folk care less for what ye think than why ye think it.

All the same, they [young, twenty-somethings] can't help feeling that the aged and even the infirm have somehow elected that condition ... or have as it were been assigned those roles ... so that they ... can play their youthful-energetic, all but immutable selves.

One reason for not writing a lost-in-the-funhouse story is that either everybody's felt what Ambrose feels, in which case it goes without saying, or else no normal person feels such things, in which case Ambrose is a freak.

In sum I'm not what either parent or I had in mind. One hoped I'd be astonishing, forceful, triumphant—heroical in other words. One dead. I myself conventional. I turn out I.

Drolls & dreamers that we are, we fancy that we can undo what we fancy we have done.

The necessity for an observer makes perfect observation impossible.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later [1978]

Everybody knew that Theodore Dinkins was dead. But Theodore Dinkins sat on the graveyard fence and said that he was not; and grew angry if contradicted.

Listen, for poets are feigned to lie, and I For you a liar am a thousand times . . . .

Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.

Imprisoned in a cage of sound Even the trivial seems profound

It's not their fault they do not know The birdsong from the radio.

We fix our attention, not on things that are seen, but on things that are unseen" (2 Corinthians 4:18 TEV). That which is unseen is the Word of God. His Word is just and accurate.

Whoever says, I know Him [I perceive, recognize, understand, and am acquainted with Him (Jesus Christ)] but fails to keep and obey His commandments (teachings) is a liar, and the Truth [of the Gospel] is not in him. But he who keeps (treasures) His Word [who bears in mind His precepts, who observes His message in its entirety], truly in him has the love of and for God been perfected … (1 John 2:4–5 AMP)

Most are deceived by and drawn to behavior and things that seem right, good, and wise but are contrary to His wisdom.