“The view changes from where you are standing. Words can wound, and wounds can heal. All of these things are true.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 179 of 303
“I find it so easy to read qualified commentators who are 180 degrees opposed to each other.”
“Nothing is perfect...We're really more interested in what we're saying than how we're saying it.”
“Perhaps the pleasure one feels in writing is not the infallible test of the literary value of a page; perhaps it is only a secondary state which is often superadded, but the want of which can have no prejudicial effect on it. Perhaps some of the greatest masterpieces were written while yawning.”
“My father, a surgeon and urologist, studied sex professionally all his life. Before he died at 82, he told me he hadn't come to any conclusions about it at all.”
“To see the dull indifference, the negligent and thoughtless air that sits upon the faces of a whole assembly, while the psalm is upon their lips, might even tempt a charitable observer to suspect the fervency of their inward religion.”
“I will not look at another's bowl intent on finding fault: a training to be observed.”
“It is easy to see the faults of others... it is hard to see our own.”
“As we judge others so are we judged by others. The suspicious will always be tormented by suspicion.”
“In us, there is a river of feelings, in which every drop of water is a different feeling, and each feeling relies on all the others for its existence. To observe it, we just sit on the bank of the river and identify each feeling as it surfaces, flows by, and disappears.”
“There is nothing more shocking than to see assertion and approval dashing ahead of cognition and perception.”
“For me, writing is inseparable from thinking. I could say the entire undertaking is a vast cerebral construct against my demons. It's the thing that I love. It's my identity.”
“every choice has its obverse, that is to say a renunciation, and so there is no difference between the act of choosing and the act of renouncing”
“I was interested in the idea of succession - showing a father and a son both in their own time and drawing a contrast”
“Friends, both the imaginary ones you build for yourself out of phrases taken from a living writer, or real ones from college, and relatives, despite all the waste of ceremony and fakery and the fact that out of an hour of conversation you may have only five minutes in which the old entente reappears, are the only real means for foreign ideas to enter your brain.”
“People need routines. It's like a theme in music. But it also restrictsyour thoughts and actions and limits your freedom. It structures your priorities and in some cases distorts your logic.”
“I may not be the most likable person in the world, but I try not to upset people.”
“A man is like a two-story house. The first floor is equipped with an entrance and a living room. On the second floor is every family member's room. They enjoy listening to music and reading books. On the first underground floor is the ruin of people's memories. The room filled with darkness is the second underground floor.”
“When you stop caring about something, then other people have to decide whether or not they genuinely care about you, or not.”
“When we think we know people inside out and we think we know what's best for them we should try to remember we don't even know what's best for ourselves.”