Quotes About Awareness

Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.

It's like a telescope. My dad, no matter what he's doing, zooms right in so he can't see anything except what's right there with him at that minute. My mom, she's always on wide angle.

A lot of people have opinions, but I don't think they ever ask themselves why their opinions are what they are.

There's an elderly woman fussing with the top of the cream pitcher, trying to get it open. Her purse sits on the counter, but as I approach, she picks up the handbag and anchors it to her side, crossing her arm over the strap. "Oh, that pitcher can be tricky," I say. "Can I help?" She thanks me and smiles when I hand her back the cream. I'm sure she doesn't even realize she moved her purse when I got closer. But I did.

Everyone's surprised by death. Which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it. It's not exactly a spoiler. But I think that what really shocked me is how many people can't see the shape of the life they've lived until they get to the very end of it.

Maybe you had to come close to losing something before you could remember its value.

That's overcompensating, and that's just as bad," I say. "Your say you don't see color … but that's all you see. You're so hyperaware of it, and trying to look like you aren't prejudiced, you can't even understand that when you say race doesn't matter all I hear is you dismissing what I've felt, what I've lived, what it's like to be put down because of the color of my skin.

Sometimes you can't tell how consuming love is until you can see its absence. Sometimes you can't recognize love because it's changed you, like a chimera, so slowly that you didn't witness the transformation.

There had to have been a moment where they made a conscious decision to turn away before they saw something they didn't want to.

The scenery you see when you're driving in a car is completely different from the scenery you'd see if you walked the same stretch of road. In the car you might see splashes of color; by foot, you'd realize they are butterflies.

What we could not see clearly, we didn't have to pretend to understand.

Most of us think the word racism is synonymous with the word prejudice. But racism is more than just discrimination based on skin color. It's also about who has institutional power. Just as racism creates disadvantages for people of color that make success harder to achieve, it also gives advantages to white people that make success easier to achieve. It's hard to see those advantages, much less own up to them. And that, I realized, was why I had to write this book.

Sometimes you have to have the perspective of distance. And sometimes, you cannot tell what you're looking at until it's right under your eye.

How incredibly easy it is to hide behind white skin, I think, looking at these probable supremacists. The benefit of the doubt is in your favor. You're not suspicious. The few black faces in the room stand out in harsh counterpoint.

I've come to see that ignorance is a privilege, too.

The mind is a remarkable thing. Just because you can't see the wound doesn't mean it isn't hurting. It scars all the time, but it heals.

con su visión recuperada, bajaba los ojos para no tener que ver.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it really fall? If a character sits in a book and no one reads it, is he truly alive? As

May be it took realizing that you could die to keep you from wanting to do it.

How are you going to know who I am, she finally said, if I dont look like me?

People move too fast and talk too much, and before you know it, they come back to a place they don't want to be - except now they know there's nowhere left to run.

You can't create life in a place that's dying by degrees.

You might live on top of the biggest toxic waste dump on the planet, but if you never dig, then all you ever know is that your grass is green and your garden is lush.

Sometimes we see what we want to, instead of what's in front of us. And sometimes, we don't see clearly at all.