Quotes About Perception

Slowly the silent bird turned its head. It could do so, if it chose, through more than three hundred and sixty degrees.

The old man had smiled kindly. "It is in their nature, child. God has made woman the weaker vessel." It was an old belief, dating back to St Paul himself. "It is man who is made in God's image, my child. Man's seed produces his perfect likeness. Woman, being only the container in which the seed matures, is therefore inferior. She may still reach heaven, but, being inferior, it is harder.

And he would have been most surprised if anyone had told him he was prejudiced, it being the nature of a prejudice that those who possess it have no idea that it is prejudice at all.

People in the city developed antennae that sent warning signals whenever trouble came near.

propio del prejuicio es que aquel que lo tiene no es consciente de ello en absoluto.

It's amazing, isn't it? She seems to think there are better things to do than going to parties.' 'I always thought she was a little peculiar,' said Nicholas wisely.

The shock of standing again under the wide pale sky, completely exposed. This must be what the oyster feels when the lemon juice falls.

There could be no real dialogue between those who still thought that time was on their side and those who realized that they were dangling from its jaws, like Saturn's children, already half-devoured.

I find everything boring, therefore I'm fascinating.

I'll let you in on a little secret, Garry: everything is history. By the time you notice it, it's already happened. That famous imposter, the present, disappears in the cognitive gap. Mind the gap!

What if memories were just memories, without any consolatory or persecutory power? Would they exist at all, or was it always emotional pressure that summoned images from what was potentially all of experience so far?

Thanks for putting that in terms I can easily grasp,' said Malcolm, without showing the patronizing bitch the slightest sign of irony.

If we can't control our conscious responses, what chance do we have against the influences we haven't recognized?

The Talking Heads pulsed from every speaker. 'The centre is missing,' gasped David Byrne, and Patrick could not help agreeing with him. How did they know exactly what he was feeling? It was spooky.

Patrick's own nanny was dead. A friend of his mother's said she had gone to heaven, but Patrick had been there and knew perfectly well that they had put her in a wooden box and dropped her in a hole. Heaven was the other direction and so the woman was lying, unless it was like sending a parcel.

Other people knew what they were meant to say, knew what they were meant to mean, and other people still - otherer people - knew what the other people meant when they said it.

forced to observe the fringes of unconsciousness and make darkness visible;

Is reality a consensual hallucination? And is a nervous breakdown in fact a refusal to consent? Go on, don't be shy, tell me what you think.

David listened to the swishing sound his yellow slippers made as he walked up the last flight of steps to the door that led from the terrace into the drawing room. Yvette had not yet opened the curtains, which saved him the trouble of closing them again. He liked the drawing room to look dim and valuable.

Life imitating bad literary criticism. Dis/inte/gration.

She always said, 'I know you like this,' which was a lie, because he had told her he didn't the last time.

The language of shame is extreme. Hear it enough and you believe it. You are told you are disgusting and unclean, and eventually you believe you are.

Anger looks down from the judge's perch; wisdom comes down from those heights and looks up from below. Humility captures it.

Anger takes everything personally, as if everything is an intentional act to make your life miserable.