Quotes About Perception

The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.

Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond.

Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment--where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels--this moment shows us that what is real is sacred

The brutality of the world lay beyond my understanding.

This is one of the problems with reality: the extent to which it resembles bad fiction.

Waikïkï is less Hawaiian than it is a bad mix of Las Vegas and Cancun.

every now and then I watched him beam at Olivia. He obviously adored her. And I realized that meeting her father made me look at Olivia differently. She was somebody's little girl.

prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see. The

defines a media-created "reality" whether or not it has a basis in true reality, around which individuals organize their thoughts, beliefs, and, in some cases, their lives.

Money speaks louder than the public, problems overwhelm it, fatigue sets in, attention falters, cynicism swells. A

Phaedrus: 'They will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome, having the reputation of knowledge without the reality?' "6

Indeed, during the last several decades alone, poll after poll and survey after survey have demonstrated that the media are more liberal than the public at large.

Americans believe that the media have an important role to play in our democracy—yet they don't see that role being fulfilled.

Wraiths see death in everything. They do not see things in the physical world as they appear, but as they someday will be. A person about to die might appear cadaverous, with hollow eyes and jaundiced skin; a car destined to crash will appear dented in advance. Much of the world seems decayed, a near collapse. Billboards are tattered, roads are potholed, pain is peeling, metal is rusting, buildings are crumpling. To the Restless, much of the world is already dead.

Alone, even in a crowd. Dead, but able to touch and sense the living. Real, but intangible.

We are what we think. To change how people act, we must change what they believe.

A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.

Pictures must be miraculous.

A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience.

For, while the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.

Silence is so accurate

I would like to say to those who think of my pictures as serene, whether in friendship or mere observation, that I have imprisoned the most utter violence in every inch of their surface.

It is a common misconception — pervasive and tenacious, but a misconception nonetheless — that arses are made for sitting on. It seems, instead, they are made for running.

The function of religion is to make us feel better, by peddling a lie. The function of philosophy, and a carefully chosen birthday card, is to make us feel worse, by telling the truth. And the truth is of course: we get worse.