Quotes About Perception

We all have a world of things inside ourselves and each one of us has his own private world. How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value that I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself, too.

It is so.When YOU think so

The capacity for deluding ourselves that today's reality is the only true one, on the one hand, sustains us, but on the other, it plunges us into an endless void, because today's reality is destined to prove delusion for us tomorrow; and life doesn't conclude. It can't conclude. Tomorrow if it concludes, it's finished.

When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.

The idea that others saw in me one that was not the I whom I knew, one whom they alone could know, as they looked at me from without, with eyes that were not my own, eyes that conferred upon me an aspect destined to remain always foreign to me, although it was one that was in me, one that was my own to them (a "mine," that is to say, that was not for me!)—a life into which, although it was my own, I had no power to penetrate—this idea gave me no rest.

I am an "unrealized" character, dramatically speaking...

Do you recognize perhaps, also you, now, that a minute ago you were another?

You don't appreciate the fact that madmen are very lucky.

Thus, sir, you see when faith is lacking, it becomes impossible to create certain states of happiness, for we lack the necessary humility. Vaingloriously, we try to substitute ourselves for this faith, creating thus for the rest of the world a reality which we believe after their fashion, while, actually, it doesn't exist.

These children are so stupid; they think they are the first to discover the world.

Big Angel had never noticed his mother's endowment before. Suddenly, she seemed to be blessed with an expanse of pillowy flesh. And she tucked the parrot into that cleavage, adjusting herself as it sank from view, finishing the operation by using her thumb on its head to get it well positioned in the shadows. She adjusted her bust and said, "Let's go to San Diego, boys!

This ain't what we are, homes," Lalo says. "This is not us. This is the story they tell about us, but it's not true.

The Sinaloans had heard that the Sonorans indulged in the unspeakable atrocity of eating flour tortillas. Flour! Any human being knew that tortillas were made of corn.

Some of the women, it must be said, had not yet accepted the idea that a woman could be Municipal President. They had been told that they were moody and flighty and illogical and incapable for so long that they believed these things.

The whole family had inherited the bizarre belief system of Antonio and América: instant coffee was some kind of miracle.

We spend our lives walking into our own mirrors. All we see is ourselves as we walk down the road.

It was 1965, and he felt he had already lived a hundred years.

He, who endlessly combated his family's reliance on 'Mexican time.' They drove him crazy. If a dinner gathering was announced for six o'clock, he could be sure it wouldn't start until nine. They'd walk in as if they were early. Or worse, they'd say 'What?' as if he were the one with a problem. You know you're Mexican when lunch doesn't show up till ten at night.

They couldn't sweat him, no matter what they did. Hey, they were gringos—no way were they going to do the kind of things to him the Mexican cops and the Federales would have done. Every Mexican gangster knows this—Los Yunaites is the land of human rights

The Sinaloans had heard that Sonorans indulged in the unspeakable atrocity of eating flour tortillas. Flour! Any human being knew that tortillas were made of corn.

Being American was like getting a good shellacking--whatever that meant. He'd heard it, and it sounded right for how he was feeling. These people did things all day long. They were frantic. They ate lunch in their cars and never had a siesta. They even went to church in their cars. Or on their TVs.

The Art of Seeing. It is essential to an architect to know how to see: I mean, to see in such a way that the vision is not overpowered by rational analysis.

Don't ask me about this building or that one, don't look at what I do, see what I see.

Si me dijeran: te quedan veinte años de vida, ¿qué te gustaría hacer durante las veinticuatro horas de cada uno de los días que vas a vivir?, yo respondería: dadme dos horas de vida activa y veinte horas de sueños, con la condición de que luego pueda recordarlos; porque el sueño sólo existe por el recuerdo que lo acaricia.