The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

I think the perception of peace is what distracts most people from really having it.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

Reality is a sliding door.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

What people see on court is another side of me; it’s not me.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

The less you know, the more you believe.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to look like one.

Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

What you see, but can’t see over is as good as infinite.

Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the U.S. in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

In my experience, many people confuse being cowardly with being nice.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, ‚tough this and tough that.‘ Then there is this business about ‚gooey.‘ The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.

I’ve learned people are watching, so don’t do nothing stupid.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

Purity of speech, of the mind, of the senses, and of a compassionate heart are needed by one who desires to rise to the divine platform.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.