[Some scientific] experiments…tell us that what we consider the objective world depends in some measure on our own conscious processes. There is no fixed eternal reality……… true understanding is not to be achieved with the rational mind.
There is nothing worse, is there," she said, "than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves ...
Where the rivers meet you tell me of your black dreams. Your memories make me uneasy. But I listen because I know my listening, like all other listening allows you to heal.
Ture stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.
True stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-changing present and tell ourselves how they unfolded.
How did you become blind, uh, Jeff is it?" Yeah, Jeff. Well, I looked directly at the sun, you know, the way they always tell you not to. If only I had listened.
The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.
Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable.
Somewhere close bye, a man is moaning; he's been trampled or thrown or bitten. He sounds resentful or surprised. Did no one tell him that pain lives in this sand, dug in and watered with our blood?
So, without telling any of my Zen-snob buddies, I liked to pretend everything was the Pure Land, that my life was already perfect as it was.
The phrase “The cat’s out of the bag” tells that a secret’s been exposed to the world. But who put the secret, or cat, in the bag in the first place? I thought only kidnap victims were supposed to be kept in bags.
The telling and hearing of stories is a bonding ritual that breaks through illusions of separateness and activates a deep sense of our collective interdependence.
We don't tell anyone the darker side of things. We've been through all the breakups and addictions and all that. But we have a chemistry that no one else in the world has. So we don't mess with it." - Chris Martin
Is it better to win over the hearts and minds of the people, or imprison them and torture them into telling you they love you? These are the tough decisions a future tyrant, I mean President, may have to make.
No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't.
All my contemporaries— hundred-and-fivers or convicts— will tell you how we lived in barely sentient fear, raising children for the executioner, prison, or the torture chamber.
The stories people tell you about themselves seem to retain the possibility of being false. But what you discover about them by yourself seems to be the truth.
Let me tell you something, kid," said Mrs. H of Boston and Beacon Hill. "Magic is just a word for what's left to the powerless once everyone else has eaten their fill.
People assume it takes years and months to love someone and that our affection must be rationed to only the best of the best. Well, I think that’s bullshit. Life’s too short not to tell those we love that they mean something to us.
I settle into my imagination so that I might someone when the real world tells me I'm no one.
I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved, ... and tried to tell myself he cared about me enough not to look elsewhere for what I wasn't giving him.
