Quotes about Perception

Breasts were one thing: they were in front, where you could have some control over them. Then there were bums, which were behind, and out of sight, and thus more lawless. Apart from loosely gathered skirts, nothing much could be done about them.

The difficulty is that I have no mouth through which I can speak. I can't make myself understood, not in your world, the world of bodies, of tongues and fingers; and most of the time I have no listeners, not on your side of the river. Those of you who may catch the odd whisper, the odd squeak, so easily mistake my words for breezes rustling the dry reeds, for bats at twilight, for bad dreams.

I would like to be found. I would like to see. Or to be seen. I wonder if, in the eye of God, it amounts to the same thing.

It's simple,' Kat told them. 'You bombard them with images of what they ought to be, and you make them feel grotty for being the way they are. You're working with the gap between reality and perception. That's why you have to hit them with something new, something they've never seen before, something they aren't. Nothing sells like anxiety.

He was wrong about the sadness though: far better to have it when you're young. A sad pretty girl inspires the urge to console, unlike a sad old crone.

What's the difference between vision and a vision? The former relates to something it's assumed you've seen, the latter to something it's assumed you haven't. Language is not always dependable either.

You should never let your picture be in a magazine or newspaper if you can help it, as you never know what ends your face may be made to serve, by others, once it has got out of your control.

Falling in love, although it resulted in altered body chemistry and was therefore real, was a hormonally induced delusional state.

How young they are, how frisky! I thought. How touchingly innocent! Was I ever like that? I could not remember.

All those paintings of women, in art galleries, surprised at private moments. Nymph Sleeping. Susanna and the Elders. Woman bathing, one foot in a tin tub - Renoir, or was it Degas? both, both women plump. Diana and her maidens, a moment before they catch the hunter's prying eyes. Never any paintings called Man Washing Socks in Sink.)

Maybe all women should be robots, he thinks with a tinge of acid: the flesh-and-blood ones are out of control.

He's a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman