Quotes About Perception

But what you are saying now, the way you're speaking to me - there's a level to this that I never saw when you were in the group. A level of honesty, vulnerability. If you could have opened yourself up like this even once… It's kind of amazing to see it now.

You wouldn't believe how quickly the most interesting person in the world can turn into the most boring person you'll ever meet.

since a person couldn't exist in two places at once, the more he existed as the Internet's image of him, the less he felt like he existed as a flesh-and-blood person.

You didn't have to write to be a poet, you didn't have to create things to be an artist. Her mother's spiritual Endeavor was itself a kind of art—an art of invisibility.

There was such a relative paucity of smells in California that the interconnectedness of all possible smells was not apparent. She

the more he existed as the Internet's image of him, the less he felt like he existed as a flesh-and-blood person.

Over the years, Leila had come to believe that politicians were literally made of special stuff, chemically different stuff. The senator was flabby and bad-haired and acne-scarred and yet completely magnetic.

So I envy animals. Dogs especially, because nothing smells bad to them.

While man experienced time as a progression, from unknown past to unknowable future, to God the entire course of history was eternally present

In the elevator it seemed to Enid that the ship was suffering not only from a seesaw motion but also from a yaw, as if its bow were the face of someone experiencing repugnance.

Now that I'm blind, I can see there is nothing to see.

What's it do?" she said. "Absolutely nothing," Hibbard replied, "if you are in perfect mental health. However, let's face it, who is?

Sex with a squirrel who had exciting breasts beneath her little-kid pajamas was not without its appeal

Ora si rendeva conto […] che aveva sempre odiato essere la figlia di un pastore. I padri delle sue amiche progettavano edifici, curavano malattie, perseguivano criminali. Suo padre era come un fabbricante di croci, però peggio. La sua fede ardente, la sua santità, erano un odore che aveva sempre minacciato di aderire a lei, come la puzza delle Chesterfield, però peggio, perché non si poteva lavare via.

Clem didn't know a man who worked more passionately for social justice than his father, and when you really loved someone, the whole person, you simply accepted the little things you might have wished were different. He could see eyes being rolled when his father waxed religious at a fellowship meeting, but Becky herself rolled her eyes like that. It didn't mean she didn't love him.

Joey described to her the sleek warm neatness of her turds as they slid from her anus and fell into his open mouth, where, since they were only words, they tasted like excellent dark chocolate.

Her face and hair were on the verge of confirming a wicked little dictum of Leila's: Blondes don't age well. (Leila saw middle age as the Revenge of the Brunettes.)

You on the floor in a fugue state, me not knowing what to do. It's remarkable how high-functioning you are, for an insane person. I'm the only one who gets to see you on the floor.

How many times had he read the word joy without having experienced what it meant?

They had the beauty of the second glance, the beauty that only revealed itself with intimacy.

The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.

If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.

Each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it really is. We further believe that the facts as we see them are there for all to see, therefore others should agree with us. If they don't agree, it follows either that they have not yet been exposed to the relevant facts or else that they are blinded by their interests and ideologies.

Jealousy, hatred, greed, and the like lead to suffering and dissatisfaction because they're out of step with reality. They paint a misleading picture of the world.