Acutely Quotes & Sayings

So key for making smart decisions is a mindset that actively monitors and is open to shifting tides and new information, one that is acutely aware that the interplay between our environment and its outcomes is ever in flux. — Noreena Hertz

I was always shy. Writing was my only outlet. Because I always hid in a room, I spent a lot of time watching people. When I was a small child I could detect hidden body language in others only I could see. People's emotions rub off on me. When I told this to my therapist she said, "Well, you're an empath." I thought, "No way. Like Star Trek?" And she clarified: because I am so socially uncomfortable, I have compassion for others who I recognize are also struggling. People with anxiety are acutely aware. — Jenny Lawson

Her nature is like a demonstrative cat's; she is delicate, acutely sensitive to cold, and incredibly caressing in her ways. — Colette

We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. — Walter Lippmann

Because we lived only a mile outside the town of Mayfield, I was acutely conscious of being country. I felt inferior to people in town because we had to grow our food and make our clothes. — Bobbie Ann Mason

I love you, June, and you know how acutely, how desperately. You know that no one can say or do anything to shake my love. I have taken you into myself, whole. You need have no fear of being unmasked, only loved. — Anais Nin

I really cherish the memories I have of my trips. For some reason, when you travel, it's like your mind picks up on the fact that this is something uncharacteristic, so it tunes in more acutely and remembers better. — Jennette McCurdy

The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life. — Immanuel Kant

Must acknowledge, that to act properly is much more valuable than to think justly or reason acutely. — Thomas Reid

I like exploring both the light parts and the dark parts of a single person. And all of those shades tend to come out most acutely in stories about families. — Rosemarie DeWitt

Mamaw felt disloyalty acutely. She loathed anything that smacked of a lack of complete devotion to family. In her own home, she'd day things like "I'm sorry I'm so damned mean" and "You know I love you, but I'm just a crazy bitch. But if she knew of anyone criticizing so much as her socks to an outsider, she'd fly off the handle. "I don't know those people. You never talk about family to some stranger. Never. — J.D. Vance

Remembering your mistakes more acutely than any minor success. This was the worst. The things that kept you up at night. Tip a waiter that was too small. The words that didn't fit the moment. Words that didn't come till to late. You could kill yourself in increments, punishing your spirit day after day-regret. Guilt. Not the guilt of the little girl who woke in the night embarrassed God was mad at her because she had ticked balls under her shirt, pretending to have breasts. "I even felt sexy." That was sweet, and pure, no crime at all. But the crime of obsessive replay-get rid of it, get rid of it. Who could ever have known that hardest punishments would be the ones you gave yourself? — Naomi Shihab Nye

How can life be worth living, to use the words of Ennius, which lacks that repose which is to be found in the mutual good-will of a friend? What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself? Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than yourself. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

But during all these years I had a vague but persistent desire to return to New Orleans. I never forgot New Orleans. And when we were in tropical places and places of those flowers and trees that grow in Louisiana, I would think of it acutely and I would feel for my home the only glimmer of desire I felt for anything outside my endless pursuit of art. — Anne Rice

The shock of public hostility served as a stimulant. It made them acutely conscious of how society functioned. — David Brooks

It is important-even necessary-for us to become acutely aware of the fact that we can't trust ourselves. The only ones you can trust to some extent are people who really know that. We had better get this straight. — Ryunosuke Akutagawa

In fact, though the books came slowly, he was a novelist to his bootlaces, an avid narrator who couldn't stop the story once it had started, who felt the terrors of existence so acutely that he had to tell them and tell them until he'd made them something else. — Joseph Heller

I am acutely aware that all I have been able to achieve has been in large part due to circumstances outside my control. This is why I teach, and this is why I write. I want to be one of those opportunities for others. Perhaps this is the true measure of success. — Chris Matakas

I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this. — A. C. Benson

I have seen the Gore documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth,' just released in the States, and admired the acutely revolutionary delivery of the slideshow assisted talk he has now been giving for some 16 years. — Saffron Burrows

This beach I voyage on leads me through the earth's immortal consistencies. Each form I encounter obeys the principles of perfection and trial, a timelessness in the making. The proportions of truth are at hand. Existence is celebrated in a splinter of driftwood, worn by wind-driven sand into the shape of an arrow. The onshore waves jostle each other, busy with their eternal changing, mixing crab shells, sand grains, and fish bones together. The trim little shorebirds feeding at the water's edge are acutely aware of one another, under the light and shadow leaning and drifting over all awareness. Wither own mysteries behind their beady eyes, their quick, advantageous movements, they follow the great, unifying sea." ~ John Hay. Bird of Light. — John Hay

Yet even without saying, each knew what the other was thinking, and, more acutely, what the other was feeling
this is a further effect of our shared sorrow, this empathy, this mournful telepathy. — John Banville

He drew in a breath and struck the opening note. He was usually relaxed when he played. He liked to let himself be swept away from the here and now, but with Zach beside him, brushing his arm when Lucas played the high notes, he was acutely aware of where he was and what he was doing. It was an emotional piece to begin with, now intensified by his feelings for the boy sitting next to him, the physical manifestation of his own dreams of love. His heart felt as if it would burst. When he came to the end of the piece, he was breathing heavily and was on the verge of tears. — Madison Parker

For example, I'm terribly proud. I'm as mistrustful and as sensitive as a hunchback or a dwarf; but, in truth, I've experienced some moments when if someone had slapped my face, I might even have been grateful for it. I'm being serious. I probably would have been able to derive a peculiar sort of pleasure from it-the pleasure of despair, naturally, but the most intense pleasures occur in despair, especially when you're very acutely aware of the hopelessness of your own predicament. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

In looking back now, I see how it began in my childhood, altho' I was not conscious of the necessity until '67 or '68 when I broke down first, acutely, and had violent turns of hysteria. As I lay prostrate after the storm with my mind luminous and active and susceptible of the clearest, strongest impressions, I saw so distinctly that it was a fight simply between my body and my will, a battle in which the former was to be triumphant to the end ... So, with the rest, you abandon the pit of your stomach, the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, and refuse to keep them sane when you find in turn one moral impression after another producing despair in the one, terror in the others, anxiety in the third and so on until life becomes one long flight from remote suggestion and complicated eluding of the multifold traps set for your undoing. — Alice James

Ceaseless optimism about the future only makes for a greater shock when things go wrong; by fighting to maintain only positive beliefs about the future, the positive thinker ends up being less prepared, and more acutely distressed, when things eventually happen that he can't persuade himself to believe are good. — Oliver Burkeman

The smile that covered a "multitude of pains" was no hypocritical mask. She was trying to hide her sufferings - even from God! - so as not to make others, especially the poor, suffer because of them. When she promised to do "a little extra praying & smiling" for one of her friends, she was alluding to an acutely painful and costly sacrifice: to pray when prayer was so difficult and to smile when her interior pain was agonizing. — Brian Kolodiejchuk

To a fault, Ann has always been a very sensitive, trusting woman. It's as if she was born to feel and experience the world more acutely than the rest of us. It is both her greatest strength and weakness; if recognized by someone with devious intentions, this delicate quality can be easily exploited... — Mitch Cullen

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. — Agatha Christie

All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can, conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations, then let it be seen that way. — Patrick Warburton

We became acutely aware of the profound healing that is needed in our species. We knew with conviction that what we were doing, as women and men together, was confronting the cultural dynamics that are killing us all- killing women and men, killing our children, killing the planet. — William Keepin

But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savour of that strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As I pass by him, I feel a crackle of tension between us. A slow heat begins its way into my cheeks, mirroring the flush in Grey's, and I realize that I hadn't been the only one acutely aware of his nakedness in the shower. — Carrie Ryan

She turned to Roy with her gayest expression. He smiled back at her with what Phil called "his deep, black, velvety smile." Yet, she really did not see Roy at all. She was acutely conscious that Gilbert was standing under the palms just across the room talking to a girl who must be Christine Stuart — L.M. Montgomery

I can explain why I have to do what I'm about to do, but I'm acutely aware that an explanation is not a righteous justification. What's bad is bad even if necessary. — Dean Koontz

Every person is a possibility. The hopeless romantics feel it most acutely, but even for others, the only way to keep going is to see every person as a possibility. — David Levithan

I am acutely aware that like a slip of paper in the wind, something in his nature eludes my grasp. — Christina Baker Kline

The angry person is acutely sensitive to all they are owed by the world, and blind to all they have received — Jules Evans

It is my conviction that the personality of the writer has nothing to do with the literate product of his mind. And publicity in this case embarrasses me because I am acutely conscious of how far short the book falls of the artistry I am struggling to achieve. It's like being caught half-dressed. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The same men who are blind and deaf to feminism are acutely sensitive to what threatens their dominance and privilege. — Marilyn French

Preserve your peace of mind. There is not much time; all things end in death. Do not lament the past too much, or fear the future too acutely, ot waste too much energy on other peoples' woes, in case the present dissolves altogether. — Fay Weldon

Cities produce love and yet feel none. A strange thing when you think about it, but perhaps fitting. Cities need that love more than most of us care to imagine. Cities, after all, for all their massiveness, all their there-ness, are acutely vulnerable. — Junot Diaz

I feel acutely aware of how young I am. In a way that is good. It's productive. It makes me realise that I should be growing as a writer and a person. — Veronica Roth

Recently, I took my son to see The Haunted Mansion, which was one of the worst things (I hesitate even to call it a movie) that I have ever seen. He thought it was better than Finding Nemo and we had a fruitless argument which I'm sure made him acutely aware of the disadvantages of having a film critic for a dad. — A.O. Scott

Having lived through the transition from totalitarianism, I am acutely mindful of the need to never take for granted the basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief that democracy brings. — Daisaku Ikeda

Nobody is weirder than your own family, and I think teenagers feel that particularly acutely; the fact that you can walk five steps ahead of your parents and still be in the same family, but refuse to acknowledge it. — Simon Templeman

And so, from the first, we separated our pleasure. She lay on the rug and I lay at right angles to her so that only our lips might meet. Kissing in this way is the strangest of distractions. The greedy body that clamors for satisfaction is forced to content itself with a single sensation and, just as the blind hear more acutely and the deaf can feel the grass grow, so the mouth becomes the focus of love and all things pass through it and are re-defined. It is a sweet and precise torture. — Jeanette Winterson

I am so often struck by what we do not do, all of us. And I am also, now, so acutely aware of the quick passage of time, the way that we come suddenly to our own separate closures. It is as though a thing says, I told you. But you thought I was just kidding. — Elizabeth Berg

But I gotta tell you, I just think to look across this room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware than me, or that somehow their interior life is less rich and complicated and acutely perceived than mine, makes me not a good writer. Because that means I'm going to be performing for a faceless audience instead of trying to have a conversation with a person. — David Foster Wallace

As a child you are in some ways more acutely aware of what people feel about one another than you are when childhood has come to an end. — Anthony Powell

Other mysteries have been untangled. Redheads are known to feel pain especially acutely. This confused researchers until someone realized that the same genetic mutation that causes red hair also increases sensitivity to pain. One study found that redheaded patients require about 20 percent more general anesthesia than brunettes. — Deborah Blum

Ace!" Tate shouted, both Wendy and I jumped and twisted our necks to look his way. "You cashed out or what?" Tate asked still in a shout.
"I'm cashed out," I shouted back.
"You wanna socialize for the next hour or are we gonna go?" He was still shouting and I was acutely aware, due to the fact that the noise level declined significantly, that the entire bar was listening.
"Keep your pants on!" I yelled.
The noise level disappeared.
"Babe, get your ass over here," Tate ordered.
"Patience, Captain, I'm talking to Wendy," I shot back.
"Ass. Over. Here!" Tate commanded.
I looked at Wendy and snapped loudly, "He's so darned bossy!"
Two men and a woman sitting at the bar close to us burst out laughing.
"You better get your ass over there," Wendy advised, I rolled my eyes and stomped across the bar. — Kristen Ashley

People who are very vain are usually equally susceptible; and they who feel one thing acutely, will so feel another. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

My trepidation was growing more terrible by the minute. "Why did you do this? Why have you brought me here?"
"Why?" He repeated with a slow and heated appraisal that made me acutely, almost painfully, conscious of my sex. "Bon Dieu! Are you not woman enough to know? — Victoria Vane

Thatcherite economic policy was most acutely felt in the coal industry, where tens of thousands of jobs were lost as pits were shut down. — John Burnside

I was made acutely aware how far superior an education that stresses independent action and personal responsibility is to one that relies on drill, external authority and ambition. — Albert Einstein

One more thing: the regime is a show that conceals what in reality is chaos. What looks orderly and restrictive is in fact disorganized and inefficient. Obviously, this does not lead to order. On the contrary, people feel acutely lost, in time and space among other things. As everywhere in the country, a person does not know where to go with a particular problem. So he goes to the head of the detention facility. That's like taking your problem to Putin outside of jail. When we describe the system in our lyrics - I guess you could say we are not really opposed - We are in opposition to Putinist chaos, which is a regime in name only. When — Masha Gessen

How acutely sometimes the presence or absence of people mattered — Kristin Cashore

The dead are never exactly seen by the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them. They speak of a chill in the air. The mates of the deceased wake from dreams and see a figure standing at the end of thier bed, or in a doorway, or boarding, phantomlike, a city bus. — Alice Sebold

The fairy tale about the people who freely detach and re-attach appendages still inspires Sam. He remembers the character who interchanged his earlobes and testicles so he could acutely hear his ejaculations and enjoy a tightening at the side of his head whenever the weather got cold. — Barry Webster

I don't believe there was ever anybody who loved being happy as much as I did. What I mean is that I was so acutely conscious of being happy, so appreciative of it; that I wasn't ever bored, and was always and continuously grateful for the whole delicious loveliness of the world. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

That's what counted. It was more than a security system: it was a state of mind. Although Herkmoor had suffered many escape attempts, some extraordinarily clever, none had succeeded - and every guard at Herkmoor, every employee, was acutely aware of that fact — Douglas Preston

After the masquerade, if we had found each other, if I had asked it of you, would you have taken me as your lover?"
She closed her eyes, but it only made her more acutely aware of his hands moving down to caress her arms. She couldn't think. Why did he ask? Would a lie be kinder than the truth? Everything was blurring.
"Yes. — Elena Greene

I recall my sometimes acutely painful feelings of loneliness and of longing for someone with whom I could share thoughts, interests, and feelings. By sixteen I had accepted the idea that loneliness was a weakness and longing for human intimacy represented a failure of independence. I did not hold this view consistently, but I held it some of the time, and when I did, I had no answer to the pain except to tense my body against it, contract my breathing, reproach myself, and look for a distraction. I tried to convince myself I did not care. In effect, I clung to alienation as a virtue. — Nathaniel Branden

Paul R. Linde in his 1994 book, Of Spirits and Madness: An American Psychiatrist in Africa. "Major mental illness cuts across all cultures," Linde writes. "Amazingly enough, or maybe not, acutely psychotic people in Zimbabwe appear very similar to those in San Francisco. . . . They suffer from disorganized thoughts, delusions, and hallucinations. The content of the symptoms, however, is very much different . . . Zimbabweans do not report hearing auditory hallucinations of Jesus Christ, rather they report hearing those of their ancestor spirits. They are not paranoid about the FBI, rather they are paranoid about witches and sorcerers."1 — Dick Russell

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it. — John Sutherland

All things considered, I've learned more from talking to painters than talking to writers. Not that painters are smarter than writers, such is seldom the case, but in conversation writers are inclined to waste an inordinate amount of time either bragging or bellyaching about reviews and royalties, complaining about their publishers, or dissing other authors. Painters, being equally insecure, can likewise come across as boring and bitchy
it's tough being creative in a materialistic society
but since they labor not in vineyards of verbiage but upon ice floes of visual images, they tend to function with fewer inhibitions than the wordsmiths when it comes to vocally exploring and expressing ideas. Since no one judges their speech, comparing it to their written work, they don't feel so acutely the weight of language. — Tom Robbins

But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation. — Howard Zinn

The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails. — William Poundstone

There were half circles under her eyes and other, subtler signs that mark an acutely troubled young girl, but nonetheless no one could have missed seeing that she was first-class beauty. — J.D. Salinger

If you realize too acutely how valuable time is, you are too paralyzed to do anything. — Katharine Butler Hathaway

Each day, the world is made fresh again, holy, and she takes it in, in all its raw intensity, like a young child. She feels something bloom in her chest - joy or grief, eventually they are inseparable. The world is so acutely beautiful, for all its horrors, that she will be sorry to leave it. — Debra Dean

If you are considering building your own business, you need to be acutely aware of who you're spending your time with and who your teachers are. It's a crucial consideration. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

24 Along the way at a [resting-] place, the Lord met [Moses] and sought to kill him [made him acutely and almost fatally ill]. 25 [Now apparently he had failed to circumcise one of his sons, his wife being opposed to it; but seeing his life in such danger] Zipporah took a flint knife and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it to touch [Moses'] feet, and said, Surely a husband of blood you are to me! 26 When He let [Moses] alone [to recover], Zipporah said, A husband of blood are you — Anonymous

Pastor Hardy's wife had been the organist back in Arkansas, and he missed her acutely whenever Mrs. Turner - her small spidery hands - would play the opening chords of "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" or "Abide with Me." A warmth would travel up his spine and then fly off, leaving him more lonesome than ever. In front of his flock, he sometimes could feel the abyss of despair open beneath him. He feared these moments and felt the hand of the devil in them. — Rae Meadows

The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember - as a sort of introductory overture - by clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long low hollow groan. So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in combination with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet. — Charles Dickens

I've always been somebody who's acutely aware of my mortality. — Julianne Moore

Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted. — Sylvia Plath

I've always been acutely aware of differences and the way you are supposed to act if you want to be popular. — Madonna Ciccone

The point of this good-day-bad-day comparison is this: Regardless of our performance, we are always dependent on God's grace, His undeserved favor to those who deserve His wrath. Some days we may be more acutely conscious of our sinfulness and hence more aware of our need of His grace, but there is never a day when we can stand before Him on our own two feet of performance, when we are worthy enough to deserve His blessing. — Jerry Bridges

Man knows, and in the course of years he comes to know it increasingly well, feeling it ever more acutely, that memory is weak and fleeting, and if he doesn't write down what he has learned and experienced, that which he carries within him will perish when he does. This is when it seems everyone wants to write a book. Singers and football players, politicians and millionaires. And if they themselves do not know how, or else lack the time, they commission someone else to do it for them ... engendering this reality is the impression of writing as a simple pursuit, though those who subscribe to that view might do well to ponder Thomas Mann's observation that, 'a writer is a man for whom writing is more difficult than it is for others — Ryszard Kapuscinski

A man with an invention on which he has spent his life, but has no means to get it developed for the good of humanity - or even patented for himself - must feel the pinch of poverty very acutely. — James Payn

I felt the sharp sting of emptiness and solitude that you feel so acutely and with such internal sorrow and wonder whenever music is performed well. — Pat Conroy

The problem was acutely described in 1909 in a penetrating essay by Adolf Schlatter: According to the sceptical position, it is true that the historian explains; he observes the New Testament neutrally. But in reality this is to begin at once with a determined struggle against it. The word with which the New Testament confronts us intends to be believed, and so rules out once and for all any sort of neutral treatment. As soon as the historian sets aside or brackets the question of faith, he is making his concern with the New Testament and his presentation of it into a radical and total polemic against it.... If he claims to be an observer, concerned solely with his object, then he is concealing what is really happening. As a matter of fact, he is always in possession of certain convictions, and these determine him not simply in the sense that his judgments derive from them, but also in that his perception and observation is molded by them.352 — Ellen F. Davis

14. Finally, the last characteristic of the menippea: its concern with current and topical issues. This is, in its own way, the "journalistic" genre of antiquity, acutely echoing the ideological issues of the day. — Mikhail Bakhtin

I reached into my pack and held something small in the fist I made. "It's a pocketknife," I said, enunciating each letter. I was asserting myself, I'd snapped out of something; he visibly snapped out of something too. I saw it acutely in his dropping posture: doubt in his movement. I said, "The truck works."

And so it did. — Aspen Matis

Her honey-coloured hair fell in heavy wavesbelow her shoulders and as she stared up at him her eyes, clear, speckled amber, seemed to tilt at the corners; her brows were black and swept up in arcs, and she had thick black lashesh. There was about her a kind of warm luxuriance, something immediately suggestive to the men of pleasurable fulfillment- something for which she was not responsible but of which she was acutely conscious. — Kathleen Winsor

I was not the only young nurse to be acutely conscious of a heightened sex appeal when in uniform. Ironically, the draconian old sisters and matrons who rigidly enforced the uniform seemed to be unaware of the effect it had on the male sex. — Jennifer Worth

They are eloquent who can speak low things acutely, and of great things with dignity, and of moderate things with temper. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Presence emerges when we feel personally powerful, which allows us to be acutely attuned to our most sincere selves. — Amy Cuddy

To be brutally honest, for much of that time, I was the only person in the world with Parkinson's. Of course, I mean that in the abstract. I had become acutely aware of people around me who appears to have the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but as long as they didn't identify with me, I was in no rush to identify with them. My situation allowed, if not complete denial, at least a thick padding of insulation. — Michael J. Fox

I grew up acutely aware of the exile and distance caused by war. — Hiam Abbass

The ubiquitous and acutely conscious presence of our adolescents is a major problem, especially since much of their consciousnessseems to be focused on sexuality
ours and theirs. They expect us to ignore them if they are kissing their dates in the family room; but let us so much as wink at one another, and they whistle loudly. — Augustus Napier

I wish we could understand the word expert as expressing an attitude of mind which we can all acquire rather than the collecting of information by a special caste ... Many of us are calling for experts because, acutely conscious of the mess we are in, we want someone to pull us out. — Mary Parker Follett

I've always been a sad person. I'm a happy person too, but it's a thing in my brain or my spirit or something, I'm just sad and really acutely aware of mortality and loss. — Fernando Torres

Both black and gleaming, ostentatiously so. I was acutely aware of our luggage piling up on the platform, matching and initialed and gleaming with comfortable wealth. I couldn't help but — Melanie Benjamin

I seem to grow more acutely conscious of the swift passage of time as I grow older. When I was small, days and hours were long and spacious, and there was play and acres of leisure, and many children's books to read. I remember that as I was writing a poem on "Snow" when I was eight. I said aloud, "I wish I could have the ability to write down the feelings I have now while I'm still little, because when I grow up I will know how to write, but I will have forgotten what being little feels like." And so it is that childlike sensitivity to new experiences and sensations seems to diminish in an inverse proportion to growth of technical ability. As we become polished, so do we become hardened and guilty of accepting eating, sleeping, seeing, and hearing too easily and lazily, without question. We become blunt and callous and blissfully passive as each day adds another drop to the stagnant well of our years. — Sylvia Plath

The more I've learned in my life, the more acutely I've felt my hunger and blindness, and at the same time the closer I've felt to the end of hunger, the end of blindness. At times I've felt myself to be clinging onto the rim - of what I can hardly say without the risk of sounding ridiculous - only to slip and find myself deeper in the hole than ever. And there, in the dark, I find again in myself a form of praise for all that continues to crush my certainty. — Nicole Krauss

This type of psychological loneliness is perhaps felt most acutely when we are as close to another person's body as is humanly possible. As the poet William Butler Yeats wrote rather dramatically, The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul. — Jesse Bering

For people of color - especially African Americans - the idea that racist cops might frame members of their community is no abstract notion, let alone an exercise in irrational conspiracy theorizing. Rather, it speaks to a social reality about which blacks are acutely aware. — Tim Wise