Sees Quotes (page 412)
Without knowing it, I was acquiring that haughty bearing which is characteristic of so many eccentrics. What other expression would you expect to find on the face of anyone who knows that if he turns his head too quickly, he will see on the faces of others glares of stark terror or grimaces of hatred? Aloofness is the posture of self-defense.
Quentin Crisp
From the time I arrived on the Cape, one of the things I chose explicitly was to put my writing first. Everything else in my life waxed and waned, but writing, I discovered during my restructuring, was my real core. Not any relationship. Not any love. Not any person. I had become more selfish and less accessible. I ceased to be the universal mommy of the tribe. I wanted to see people when I was done with my writing for the day, and not in the middle of my work time.
Marge Piercy
I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy questions - and here I was getting the ax again. It mad me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates - I wanted racing skates and she bought me hockey - but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.
J. D. Salinger
You mean,” said Caspian, “that we might be just–well, poured over it?”
“Yes, yes,” cried Repicheep, clapping his paws together. “That’s how I’ve always imagined it–the World is like a great round table and the waters of all the oceans endlessly pouring over the edge. The ship will tip up–stand on her head–for one moment we shall see over the edge– and then, down, down, the rush, the speed–
C. S. Lewis
There was something about the eyes. It wasn’t the shape or the color. The was no evil glint. But there was…
… a look. It was such a look that a microbe might encounter if it could see up from the bottom end of the microscope. It said: You are nothing. It said: You are flawed, you have no value. It said: You are animal. It said: Perhaps you may be a pet, or perhaps you may be a quarry. It said: And the choice is not yours.
Terry Prachett
Count up the almonds,
Count what was bitter and kept you waking,
Count me in too:
I sought your eye when you glanced up and no one would see you,
I spun that secret thread
Where the dew you mused on
Slid down to pitchers
Tended by a word that reached no one’s heart.
There you first fully entered the name that is yours,
you stepped to yourself on steady feet,
the hammers swung free in the belfry of your silence,
things overheard thrust through to you,
what’s dead put it’s arm around you...
Paul Celan
A year seems very long to wait before I see them, but remind them that while we wait we may all work, so these hard days need not be wasted. I know they will remember all I said to them, that they will be loving children to you, will do their duty faithfully, fight their bosom enemies bravely, and conquer themselves so beautifully that when I come back to them I may be fonder and prouder than ever of my little women.
Louisa May Alcott