Quotes About Perception

For a freshman nobody, I look pretty good. At least that's what some girls hanging at the pool said. Sure, they were only eleven and twelve, but girls' opinions are always worth something to me.

Books only change the world if the world is capable of digesting them.

having already understood everything that you will understand henceforward and until the end of your days." -Q

Ieri ho domandato ad un bambino di cinque anni chi fosse Gesù. Sapete cos'ha risposto? Una statua.

Yesterday I asked a five-year-old child who Jesus was. You know what he replied? A statue.

Vedi? Il denaro non lo puoi rovesciare: comunque lo giri ti mostra sempre una faccia.

Al primo sguardo distante, reso più incerto dai veli di nebbia che fanno del sole un disco biancastro, non sai se il miraggio sia il mare che stai solcando, e invece è terraferma, o i palazzi e le chiese appoggiati sull'acqua, in realtà scogli di forme architettoniche.

Most people's religion is what they want to believe, not what they do believe.

We must not regard what or how the world esteems us, so we have the Word pure, and are certain of our doctrine.

Whether thoughts and ideas manifest in a material outcome depends on our transmission of them into perceived reality.

Os meus olhos deviam ter a mesma expressão nos últimos anos, mas nunca notei. Bem que me olhava no espelho para ver que cara a pessoa tem quando sofre muito, mas era sempre o meu rosto. Cada vez mais achava que devia ter mudado muito, não se podia ser a mesma depois de tanta coisa, de tanta dor. Contudo, era eu.

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.

It is a truism among researchers into smell that all human subjects behave as if they themselves do not smell like humans, because all humans smell bad.

We survive by controlling our environment, and control is made possible by information. So lack of information quickly breeds insecurity and a situation in which any information is regarded as better than none.

A rose is a rose, but it is also a robin and a rabbit.

We may not be able to change our circumstances, but we can change the way we think about them.

People did not know what she knew, that she was not really a woman but a man, often a fat man, but more often, probably, an old man. The fact that she was an old man made it hard for her to be a young woman. It was hard for her to talk to a young man, for instance, though the young man was clearly interested in her. She had to ask herself, Why is this young man flirting with this old man?

There are also men in the world. Sometimes we forget, and think there are only women—endless hills and plains of unresisting women. We make little jokes and comfort each other and our lives pass quickly. But every now and then, it is true, a man rises unexpectedly in our midst like a pine tree, and looks savagely at us, and sends us hobbling away in great floods to hide in the caves and gullies until he is gone.

We all have an ongoing narrative inside our heads, the narrative that is spoken aloud if a friend asks a question. That narrative feels deeply natural to me. We also hang on to scraps of dialogue. Our memories don't usually serve us up whole scenes complete with dialogue. So I suppose I'm saying that I like to work from what a character is likely to remember, from a more interior place.

The Busy Road" I am so used to it by now that when the traffic falls silent, I think a storm is coming.

Under all this dirt the floor is really very clean." Lydia Davis

because she couldn't write the name of what she was: a wa wam owm owamn womn

I think I know what sort of person I am. But then I think, But this stranger will imagine me quite otherwise when he or she hears this or that to my credit, for instance that I have a position at the university: the fact that I have a position at the university will appear to mean that I must be the sort of person who has a position at the university.

Today I am feeling that chronological order is not a good thing, even if it is easier, and that I should break it up. Is it that when these events are in chronological order they are not propelled forward by cause and effect, by need and satisfaction, they do not spring ahead with their own energy but are simply dragged forward by the passage of time?