Quotes About Perception

Caroline O'Day appealed to us, although the breasts of Caroline O'Day were devalued, in Owen's view, by her Catholicism.

And Clark clearly knew and disapproved of El Nido. (A nido could be a nest, a den, a hole, a haunt.)

I actually remember my grandfather better as a woman than as a man.

That poor girl wasn't a girl," Señor Eduardo said; he'd glanced once at Lupe, asleep in his lap, just to be sure she was still sleeping. "That poor girl was Flor

WELL, NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT GOD," said Owen Meany. "I CAN'T SEE HIM—BUT I ABSOLUTELY KNOW HE IS THERE!

Jenny decided that all manifestations of her innocence were futile and appeared defensive.

Come amiamo amar le cose per conto di altri! Come amiamo che altri amino le cose tramite i nostri occhi

Don't forget: Miss Frost was an older woman, and that goes a long way with boys—even if the older woman has a penis!

Imagining something is better than remembering something

It is occasionally necessary for me to tell Torontonians of the presence of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; they tend to think of the Great Lakes as the waters of the world.

She was intimidating to me in the way someone who never remembers your name can be intimidating. 'In this world,' Franny once observed, 'just when you're trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that they've met you.

I remember you as a little boy," she told me, not long ago, "but when I look at you now, I don't know who you are." I told her I occasionally had the same feeling about myself.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON'T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE—TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT'S SO EASY; I THINK THAT'S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS

You think you have a memory; but it has you! Later

There are moments when time does stop. We must be alert enough to notice such moments.

Perhaps she had seen what Jack would look like as an older boy, or a grown man, and what she saw in him riveted her with longing and desperation. (Or with fear and degradation, Jack Burns would one day conclude, because this same older girl suddenly looked away.)

His exposure to storytelling, through Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte, had ill prepared him for characters who came from and traveled nowhere -- or for stories that made no sense.

Na vida de um homem, seu tempo é apenas um momento... os sentidos, a luz mortiça de uma vela

La gente, persino le brave persone - ché certo Wally era una brava persona - facevano un sacco di critiche a qualcuno con cui poi si mostravano perfettamente affabili.

Writers who have any audience have more readers than they know. Juan Diego was more famous than he thought.

That was when Angel Wells became a fiction writer, whether he knew it or not. That's when he learned how to make the make-believe matter to him more than real life mattered to him; that's when he learned how to paint a picture that was not real and never would be real, but in order to be believed at all—even on a sunny Indian summer day—it had to be better made and seem more real than real; it had to sound at least possible.

In a living city, I could never have noticed so much. Living cities don't hold still.

It's like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine. (on Tom Wolfe)

In this world," Franny once observed, "just when you're trying to think of yourself as memorable, there is always someone who forgets that they've met you.