Quotes About Perception

Books leave gestures in the body; a certain way of moving, of turning, a certain closing of the eyes, a way of leaving, hesitations. Books leave certain sounds, a certain pacing; mostly they leave the elusive, which is all the story. They leave much more than the words.

If I see someone I see the ghost of them, the air around them, and where they've been. If I see a city I see it's living ghostliness—the stray looks, the dying hands. I see it's needs and its discomforts locked in apartments.

We'd appraise each other, in the provisional way that lovers do, by attaching great depth and significance to the provisional. How, after all, do you know anyone? You take in certain physical and emotional characteristics that you've aestheticized, ignoring the facts. You listen to what a lover has to say, taking in the erotic music of their sound, their timbre, while dismissing the lyrics.

She could assassinate streets with her eyes

Dali's Reclining Woman Wearing a Chemise looks like a dead slaughtered doll, and I can see preying eagles, broken arrows, and jazz musicians in Jackson Pollock, and because I believe that Man Ray and Duchamp were lovers.

But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.

Americans do seem to say things which make the English notice England.

While I have been writing I have lived in the past, the light of it has been all around me...

People do look different with their eyes closed, their features seem so much more sculptured.

there is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means.

Father says hot water can be as stimulating as an alcoholic drink and though I never come by one...I can well believe it.

but it is always dreadful when the pictures in front of one's eyes become meaningless and the real word is there instead and seems meaningless, too.

Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just...wonder.

I wasn't merely remembering, it seemed to be trapped inside my eyelids.

Simon: You always were wise beyond your years. Cassandra: No I wasn't. I used to be consciously naive.

Incidentally, I never felt less brisk in my life, because being looked at like that makes a person feel dizzy.

I glanced through another page in case I had missed something, and came to the description of Simon's face as he lay on the grass with his eyes closed. It gave me a stab in which happiness and misery were somehow a part of each other.

The way one's mind can dash about just while one opens a window.

I could see he was nervous; at least, I thought I could, but then it struck me how little I know of him, or of Topaz or Rose or anyone in the world, really, except myself.

The vague expression was gone from his eyes - I had a feeling it was gone forever.

You're the kind of child who might develop a passion for Bach. I told him I hadn't at school. The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon.

They said this flat was converted but I think its still heathen

I could never explain how the image and the reality merge, and how they somehow extend and beautify each other.

I leaned against the carved banisters and listened to the music and felt quite different from any way I have ever felt before -- softer, very beautiful and as if a great many men were in love with me and I might very easily be in love with them.