Quotes About Awareness

People don't want to calm down because then they see things they sort of knew but didn't want to face.

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.

It's a common mistake for vacationing Americans to assume that everyone around them is French and therefore speaks no English whatsoever. [...] An experienced traveler could have told by looking at my shoes that I wasn't French. And even if I were French, it's not as if English is some mysterious tribal dialect spoken only by anthropologists and a small population of cannibals.

This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.

I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call understanding is basically just fantasizing.

You'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to know what you're getting yourself into, so if there's blame, blame yourself.

When it happens to you it's a national tragedy— Why aren't the papers reporting this? you wonder. Only when it happens to someone else do you realize what a dull story it really is.

It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it. I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not "Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece" but "Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!

I like the kind of man John is. He watches things closely and then does nothing with the information.

never fall asleep in a Dumpster, never underestimate a bee, never drive a convertible behind a flatbed truck, never get old, never get drunk near a train, and never, under any circumstances, cut off your air supply while masturbating.

Comfort has its place, but it seems rude to visit another country dressed as if you've come to mow its lawns.

It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it.

At what point had I realized that class couldn't save you, that addiction or mental illness didn't care whether you'd taken piano lessons or spent a summer in Europe? Which drunk or junkie or unmedicated schizophrenic was I crossing the street to avoid when I put it all together?

Finally he was hit by a train while walking, which is strange because trains don't generally sneak up on people. For the most part, barring a derailment, you know exactly where to find them.

I realized I was a teacher when I felt warm during class and got up to open the door. Later on there was noise in the hallway, so I got up and shut it. Students can't open and close the door whenever they feel like it.

Fly enough, and you learn to go brain-dead when you have to. It's sort of like time travel. One minute you're bending to unlace your shoes,and the next thing you know you're paying fourteen dollars for a fruit cup, wondering, How did I get here?

July 3, 1981 Raleigh There is a new cancer that strikes only homosexual men. I heard about it on the radio tonight.

Some people, I thought, opening the wet wipes so I could wash the tumor off my hands before I touched my wallet.

there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.

It's common to be misread by people who don't know you.

When it's my turn, I'll open my mouth, unable to speak, and feel a little tap on my wrist. Time to stand up, my watch will whisper. Then, before killing myself, I'll say one last time, "I am standing up.

Hugh claims the reason I've never seen one is that I'm not perceptive enough. This is his way of telling me that I'm self-centered, suggesting that if I weren't so concerned about, for example, meeting my daily Fitbit goal, I'd realize there's a six-hundred-year-old milkmaid living in our silverware drawer.

Doesn't the blood of every suicide splash back on our faces?

A child came to Santa this morning and his mother said, "All right, Jason. Tell Santa what you want. Tell him what you want." Jason said, "I … want … Prokton and … Gamble to … stop animal testing." The mother said, "Proctor, Jason, that's Proctor and Gamble. And what do they do to animals? Do they torture animals, Jason? Is that what they do?" Jason said, Yes, they torture. He was probably six years old.