Quotes About Perception

Why is the sky blue?" - A fair enough question, and one I have learned the answer to several times. Yet every time I try to explain it to someone or remember it to myself, it eludes me. Now I like to remember the question alone, as it reminds me that my mind is essentially a sieve, that I am mortal.

Look for yourself, and ask not what has been real and what has been false, but what has been bitter, and what has been sweet.

Nonetheless, as Billie Holiday knew, it remains the case that to see blue in deeper and deeper saturation is eventually to move toward darkness.

And yet, at the same time, it feels disingenuous of me not to acknowledge that on a literal level, having a small body, a slender body, has long been related to my sense of self, even my sense of freedom.

If you're looking for sexual tidbits as a female child, and the only ones that present themselves depict child rape or other violations...then your sexuality will form around that fact.

Les Bluets, which she painted in 1973

On the surface, it may have seemed as though your body was becoming more and more "male," mine becoming more and more "female." But that's not how it felt on the inside. On the inside, we were two human animals undergoing transformations beside each other, bearing each other loose witness. In other words, we were aging.

The chubby white suburban teenagers impersonating cops were precisely the kind of men to whom we would have preferred not to unload this story.

Las palabras no se parecen a las cosas que designan (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

She has always cried such enormous tears, like heavy pearls, quite at odds with the slightness of her frame.

Two women in a room. One seated, one standing

He thinks of his grief over his sister as an entity that is horribly and painfully attached to him, the way a jellyfish might adhere to your skin or a goitre or an abscess. He pictures it as viscid, amorphous, spiked, hideous to behold. He finds it unbelievable that no one else can see it. Don't mind that, he would say, it's just my grief. Please ignore it and carry on with what you were saying.

I mean', he says, 'that I don´t think you have any idea what it is like to be married to someone like you.' 'Like me?' 'Someone who knows everything about you, before you even know it yourself. Someone who can just loo at you and divine your deepest secrets, just with a glance. Someone who can tell what you are about to say- and what you might not- before you say it. It is' he says, 'both a joy and a curse.

She had the strange and unaccustomed sensation of having been observed and, perhaps, understood. How odd it was that the person who seemed to comprehend her, to see into her very soul, should be a man who had glimpsed her only once.

She feels it; he feels it. They know it and they know each other's thoughts and they sense each other's actions and fears. She does not know why this is or where it might lead, but she knows it must remain hidden, and silent as the tongue in his head.

To never feel that again, that idea of yourself as one unified being, not two or three splintered selves who observed and commented on each other. To never be that person again.

So it follows, of course, that she will be here now, in whatever form she can manage. Agnes does not need to turn her head, does not want to frighten her away. It is enough to know that she is there, manifest, hovering, insubstantial. I see you, she thinks. I know you are here.

there are the parents, then the sons, then the daughter, then the pigs in the pig-pen and the hens in the henhouse, then the apprentice and then, right at the bottom, the serving maids. Agnes believes her position, as new daughter-in-law, to be ambiguous, somewhere between apprentice and hen. Agnes

Outside, the colours accost his eyes: the glancing lapis sky, the virulent green of the verge, the creamy blossoms of a tree, the pink kirtle of a woman leading a nag along the road.

He inhales: the aroma of wood, of lime, of something sweet and fibrous. Also a chalky, musky undertone. And the woman beside him: he can smell her hair and skin, one of which carries the faint scent of rosemary

Cuando mira a alguien le ve hasta el fondo del alma. No hay ni una gota de hostilidad en ella. Se toma a las personas por lo que son, no por lo que deberían ser. —Observa a Eliza—. Son cualidades poco comunes, ¿verdad?

This is a different man, surely, from the one who ordered Contrari's death. It cannot have been him. This is her husband, who loves her, or seems to; that was the ruler of Ferrara. They are the same man, they are different men, the same yet different.

It has been drummed into her by physicians and priests alike that the character of a child is determined by the mother's thoughts at the moment of conception.

Qu'as-tu vu? lui demande-t-il. - Rien. Ton cÅ"ur. - Ce n'est rien? dit-il, faussement outré. Rien? Comment peux-tu dire une chose pareille?" Elle lui sourit, fait semblant de sourire, mais il lui prend alors la main et la pose sur sa poitrine. "Et ce n'est pas mon cÅ"ur que tu as vu, lui dit-il. Mais le tien.