Quotes About Perception

Somehow he had catapulted himself beyond the world's value system. But this very fact lay upon him an awesome responsibility to maintain the illusions of other men.

It's a kind of jail, the brain's mind. We've got these mysterious three-pound brains and they jail us.

Writing teachers invariably tell students, write about what you know. That's, of course, what you have to do, but on the other hand, how do you know what you know until you've written it? Writing is knowing... I've had very little experience in my life. In fact, I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.

The experience of experience is untransmittable.

Consciousness without world is impossible, just as there is no sight without the light to see by. Is that your objection

I am thus led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative...A novel is a printed circuit through which flows the force of a reader's own life.

For a moment he thought the chair was aligned, but then he decided it was not. He moved it another turn to the right. He tried sitting in the chair now but it still felt peculiar. He turned it again. Eventually he made a complete circle and still he could not find the proper alignment for the chair.

The images of things are not the things in themselves.

and his religion no longer had any authority … other than as an organizer of his daily life and conduct as a filing system for his perceptions. From The Waterworks.

But the boy's eyes saw only the tracks made by the skaters, traces quickly erased of moments past, journeys taken.

It was innocents who died, not those born with the strength of no illusions.

if a good sign is so important you can just as soon make one up and fool yourself that way.

just because I don't have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn't mean that I'm not a witch. I'm a witch all the time and not just on Halloween.

She thanked me again and then said, ''Some people say 'God is in the details.' Others say it's the Devil.'' Margaret replied, 'Maybe it depends on who's reporting the details.

I have such faith in words that when I read about such families as a child, I thought that they were the norm and that the way I lived was subnormal, waiting for normal.

Nouilles et fromage en casserole," Parks answered. Claudia showed interest. "I'll have some, please. Sounds like something special." Parks served. Claudia looked down at her plate, looked up at me and moaned, "Why, it's nothing but macaroni and cheese.

D)on't seek great reviews from small minds. They have neither the character nor the vocabulary for them.

I never really look past my eyes. That way I always feel pretty. Windows of the soul, you know.

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?

Perfect Tommy: Pictures don't lie. Reno: The hell they don't. I met my first wife that way

No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things

We love fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing

I entered my reading the way an echo enters a sound.