Quotes About Awareness

It's the unbroken calm, both within and without, that is getting to her. Real events happen to people, she thinks, why not me? And then there's her conviction that they are happening, all around her, but that they're being kept from her.

Keep steady, I told myself. Don't share too much about yourself, it will be used against you. Listen carefully. Save all clues. Don't show fear.

I'm beginning to feel that I've discovered something worth knowing. There's a way out of places you want to leave, but can't. Fainting is like stepping sideways, out of your own body, out of time or into another time. When you wake up it's later. Time has gone on without you.

What are we do to? The child sex trade is not for us: our children are unattractive and rude, and - due to the knowledge of our history - have a bad habit of mugging prospective customers and shoving them over cliffs.

The people in the chaos cannot learn. They cannot understand what they are doing to the sea and the sky and the plants and the animals. They cannot understand that they are killing them, and that they will end by killing themselves. And there are so many of them, and each one of them is doing part of the killing, whether they know it or not. And when you tell them to stop, they don't hear you.

All I can hear now is the sound of my own heart, opening and closing, opening and closing, opening

We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

hard to get the full view, of the sky, of anything. But we can do it, a little at a time, a quick move of the head, up and down, to the side and back. We have learned to see the world in gasps.

Why do you want to talk about ugly things?" she said. Her voice was silvery, like a music box. She waved one hand in the air to dry the nails. "We should think only beautiful things, as much as we can. There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you.

Everybody knew. Nobody admitted to knowing. If other people began to discuss it, you tuned them out, because what they were saying was both so obvious and so unthinkable.

He put his arms around me. We were both feeling miserable. How were we to know we were happy, even then? Because we at least had that: arms, around.

There's nothing more for me to see. The bridge is only a bridge, the river a river, the sky is a sky. This landscape is empty now, a place for Sunday runners. Or not empty: filled with whatever it is by itself, when I'm not looking.

What could be done? We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?

The months passed; my life of tiptoeing and eavesdropping continued. I worked hard at seeing without being seen and hearing without being heard. I discovered the cracks between door frames and nearly closed doors, the listening posts in hallways and on stairs, the thin places in walls. Most of what I heard came in fragments and even silences, but I was becoming good at fitting these fragments together and filling in the unsaid parts of sentences.

We must continue to remind ourselves of the wrong turnings taken in the past so we do not repeat them.

Possible, impossible. What could be done? We thought we had such problems. How were we to know we were happy?

We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing

There were stories in the newspapers, of course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with, as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were the men we knew.

The floods, the fires, the tornadoes, the hurricanes, the droughts, the water shortages, the earthquakes. [...] Why did I think it would nonetheless be business as usual? Because we'd been hearing these things for so long, I suppose. You don't believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you

One must always keeps both sides in one's head; it's the only way to anticipate the moves of one's opponent

But it's difficult to be grateful for the absence of an unknown quantity.

What you don't know won't hurt you.

Take what the moment offers. Don't close doors. Be thankful.

There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you.