Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.”[Q&A with...

But an inferior talent can only be graceful when it’s carrying inferior ideas. And the more narrowly you can look at a thing the more entertaining you can be about it.

No two people ever view the world from exactly the same perspective, understand things the same way, human or not. The best we can ever do is try.

He believed in himself, believed in his quixotic ambition, letting the failures of the previous day disappear as each new day dawned. Yesterday was not today. The past did not predict the future if he...

Where you are today is where you’re from tomorrow.

Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can...

There is wisdom in climbing mountains… For they teach us how truly small we are.

We were sleeping on the same bed with our backs to each other trying to imagine a new life.

Until you’ve been washed ashore you can’t know how all encompassing the sea has become.

It has to be put into perspective. We have strategic stocks which can obviously be used very quickly indeed if necessary.

We see only a part of the surface of things. The rest will be forever hidden from us, to be appreciated for its felt but unfathomed presence.

You are a fool to speak of last great battles, Sam, for the last great battle is always the next one.

Its all about perspective, that is how you look at things. Your own thoughts and outlook defines whether an experience, event, situation whatever is good or bad. And your definition determines your response.

Truth is a kaleidoscope – it alters with perspective

No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.

Life is something like a doctor’s prescription: taken alone, and the ingredients might kill you; but properly blended, they bring healing.

The worm in the radish doesn’t think there is anything sweeter.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, but I chose neither one. Instead, I set sail in my little boat to watch a sunset from a different view that couldn’t be seen from shore. Then...

Sometimes the effect arrives thanks to a different kind of breakthrough: a dramatic increase in our ability to MEASURE something, and an improvement in the tools we build for measuring. New ways of measuring almost...

Where they (modern books) are true they will give us truths we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is...

How Horrid” has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror–puberty, public disgrace–then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.

what ifs” and consequences that we could worry about, but what’s the use? Rather than plaguing our thoughts with the unknown, we should focus on and accept only what we do know – and all...

The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.

I believe there no surer path to leaping dramatically forward in your career than to earn a Ph.D. in the humanities. Because the thought leaders in our industry are not the ones who plodded dully,...

Get some perspective. A lot of things that may aggravate you only do so because you have the luxury of not wrestling with bigger issues. Today, be thankful for everything you have: being alive, your...

I’m often painted as the bad guy, and the artistic part of me wants to hand out the brush.

It’s not a bad lesson to learn in the bleaker months: how you view a storm is a question of perspective; provided you find the right rock to watch it from, it could be the...

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is...

It looks a lot better from up here than it does down there, dont it? Yes. It does. There’s a lot of things look better at a distance. Yeah? I think so. I guess there...

Our relation, all round, exists–it’s a reality, and a very good one; we’re mixed up, so to speak, and it’s too late to change it. We must live IN it and with it

I just hope the woman I invited over to dinner shares our insightful perspective.

Of course it was a terrible thing, and the world would be a much better place without someone in it who could do that, but did that mean we had to miss lunch?

Can we ever see the truth when desire blinds us? Or do we call it the truth because it is what we wish to see?

A fantastically huge, roiling cloud, glowing bluish gray, swaggered over the city. It was more than three miles tall. Below it Hiroshima was boiling.

Was I like honey thinking it’s a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle? -Cheryl

Leave it to a vampire to think a healthy guy in his late thirties or early forties was on his deathbed.

…otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by...

My personal definition of confidence is to keep believing that the stars in the solar system are actually watching and applauding you.

A dreadful thing one day befell me when a horse came to stand on my toe. Having no power to remove him, I found that I could not go.An awful thing sometime later befell me...

Another thing is, people lose perspective. It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognise that sometimes things...

zoom lens effect,” in which the focus is entirely on oneself, to the exclusion of external considerations.

Know the enemy, know yourself and victory is never in doubt, not in a hundred battles.

What is it precisely, that they are doing when they are doing science. Are they refining their instruments for observation or discovering new aspects of reality?

The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She’d been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there,...

A quote is not a conversation, but an invitation to change your perspective.

Assume the worst. About everybody. But don’t let this poisoned outlook affect your job performance. Let it all roll off your back. Ignore it. Be amused by what you see and suspect. Just because someone...

If any man is tempted to think – as one might be tempted to who read only contemporaries – that “Christianity” is a word of so many meanings that it means nothing at all, he...

Trust is always a risk, but when placed in the right people after a trial period where they prove themselves worthy of it, it is a reward transcendent of all the emotional mire that bogs...

We all feel better when we are grateful. There is great wisdom in understanding that no matter the situation, there is always something for which we can choose to be grateful.

Those at too great a distance may, I am well are, mistake ignorance for perspective.