Step Back And Realize Quotes & Sayings

You might have a favorite book or film, but you can only watch or read it so many times before you have to let it sit and then go back and realize it's your favorite still. At some point everything gets a little stale and you have to step away from it. — Les Claypool

Someone sent me a letter that had one of the best quotes I've ever read. It said "What is to give light must endure burning." It's by a writer named Viktor Frankl. I've been turning that quote over and over in my head. The truth of it is absolutely awe-inspiring. In the end, I believe it's why we all suffer. It's the meaning we all look for behind the tragedies in our lives. The pain deepens us, burns away our impurities and petty selfishness. It makes us capable of empathy and sympathy. It makes us capable of love. The pain is the fire that allows us to rise from the ashes of what we were, and more fully realize what we can become. When you can step back and see the beauty of the process, it's amazing beyond words. — Damien Echols

I like to go after the foibles, basically of beliefs that are held without question. If people still want to believe in their stuff after that, that's great - as long as they just have a chance to step back and look at it for a second. Sometimes, you don't even realize what you've been thinking for 20 years. — Elayne Boosler

Looking back, I wish that everyone could have that sort of moment: a moment where you realize that your hands are so impossibly small and this world is so impossibly big. And the two don't seem to add up. Maybe recognizing the smallness of your own hands is just the very first step to changing anything at all. — Hannah Brencher

If you really take a step back and observe people who are considered super-normal and watch them a bit, you'll realize that they're actually completely out of their minds! Most people are really nuts, and that's fascinating. — Johnny Depp

If you're lucky, in some point in the future when you're in need of guidance or perhaps moral support, you may cross paths with a suitable mentor. Even luckier, you'll realize you had one in your life all along and you'll gain a new appreciation for how you benefited from that relationship. The luckiest relationship of all, of course, is a combination of the two. You've had help all along, and as the path widens or narrows, whatever the case may be, new and powerful influences will enter your life and aid your progress. In my experience, a mentor doesn't necessarily tell you what to do, but more importantly: tells you what they did or might do, then trusts you to draw your own conclusions and act accordingly. If you succeed, they'll take one step back and if you fail, they'll take one step closer. Whatever it is they teach you, pass it on. — Michael J. Fox

I step back further, until I feel cold tiles against my back. It is then I get the glimmer that I associate with memory. As my mind tries to settle on it, it flutters away, like ashes caught in a breeze, and I realize that in my life there is a then, a before, though before what I cannot say, and there is a now, and there is nothing between the two but a long, silent emptiness that has led me here, to me and him, in this house. — S.J. Watson

We remember what it was like to meet someone new. We remember what it was like to grant someone possibility. You look out from your own world and then you step into his, not really knowing what you'll find there, but hoping it will be something good. Both Ryan and Avery are doing this. You step into his world and you don't even realize your loneliness is missing. You've left it behind, and you don't notice because you have no desire to turn back. — David Levithan

You want to know how to stop this killer? Forgive yourself, and he'll
disappear from your life forever."
"Thanks. I'll be sure to do that."
And I know:
1. This is almost the same conversation I've had with myself many times
before.
2. Gordon's only trying to help.
But it doesn't matter.
I:
1. Say, "See you later."
2. Step outside.
3. Close the door.
I don't want to, really. I want to go back inside and believe Gordon's words,
like a child believing in a fairy tale, and I want to escape this nightmare forever.
But I can't.
I realize now that it's easy to tell the difference between a real problem and
an imaginary one.
It's just the terror of facing the truth that's hard. — Jeremy C. Shipp

I've never really been a careerist; I've never been able to step back and look at anything in that way. I though this is just what happens. I did take my work very seriously. I loved immersing myself in a character. I loved getting the opportunity to do that. I didn't realize how extraordinary it was, how lucky I was, because I was young. — Jennifer Jason Leigh

It's about realizing, painfully, you've kept that voice inside yourself, locked away from even yourself. And you step back and see that your jailer has changed faces. You realize you've become your own jailer. — Tori Amos

You think you're in control, and you're trying to get that square peg in that round hole. You're frustrated, and you realize that you're not in control of everything. You need to just step back and let God. — Cheryl Ladd

Whenever you wonder about yourself, look up at the stars swirling around in the heavens and just realize how tiny and puny they are. They're supposed to be gigantic explosions and they're just these insignificant little dots. If you step back from things far enough you realize how important and powerful you are. — Alan Alda

Some day you will be able to step back and see the entire work of art. In that moment you will understand how truly remarkable and beautiful your life was. You will realize that every brush stroke had a purpose. When you finally see the masterpiece in its entirety you will understand that there was no other way it could have ever been painted. — Alex Alexander

If you're stuck in a situation that's painful or there's something that makes you angry, it can enable you to step back from your own experience of it and realize that this is just a part of what it is to be human. It can allow you to accept it a little bit more and make you feel like it's less unfair. — Joan Osborne

A tear slipped from eye, as I stood helpless beside Kiran. "They have done nothing wrong, except fight for the freedom you have stolen from them, from all of us!" I shouted back, unable to stay silent when my friends stood at his mercy.
"I give you freedom, the freedom to live your life as you please," Lucan challenged, tilting his chin with pride and sincerity. "I ask nothing of you, except for your loyalty. I am the king, it is the least of what I deserve," Lucan turned to address the kingdom, his argument ringing through the air.
"Then why is it only your bloodline that is allowed immortality?" I argued, taking a step forward. "Why do the rest of our people suffer from the separation of races? Why are the Shape-shifters exiled by penalty of death? What have they done? What is their crime? Are you afraid to share true immortality? Are you so scared of a people that realize they don't need a king?" I turned to face the crowd too, hoping to empower them with my words. — Rachel Higginson

The importance of humor is primarily to puncture fixed ideas - to make us step back and realize that our situation, whatever it may be, is, in the grand scheme of things, always contingent and arbitrary and ephemeral. And that helps us to deal with our emotions and to keep going. Holding on to one perspective, on the other hand, whether it takes the form of grief or anger or a particular political standpoint, is often destructive to us and to those around us — Paul Murray

When you can step back at moments like these and see what is happening, when you watch people you love under fire or evaporating, you realize that the secret of life is patch patch patch. Thread your needle, make a knot, find one place on the other piece of torn cloth where you can make one stitch that will hold. And do it again. And again. And again. — Anne Lamott

There are times when you need to step back and realize that movie studios today are not necessarily the same things that they were many years ago. Many movie studios are international conglomerates now. They own everything from theme parks to toy companies to T-shirt companies to video companies. There's a lot of different wheels to be greased. — Michael Uslan

It's hard sometimes to take a step back and realize what's happened because you're always trying to move forward. You're always looking at the next palette. — Alexander Wang

Take a step back. Draw in a deep breath. Now ask yourself 'so what?' Then, after answering, ask yourself again 'so what?' And then a third time - 'so what?' Chances are you'll come to realize that the issue at hand is not as dire, detrimental, or important as you first thought. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Fundamental security comes from realizing that you have broken through something. You reflect back and realize that you used to be extraordinarily paranoid and neurotic, watching each step you made, thinking you might lose your sanity, that situations were always threatening in some way. Now you are free of all those fears and preconceptions. You discover that you have something to give rather than having to demand from others, having to grasp all the time. For the first time, you are a rich person, you contain basic sanity. You have something to offer, you are able to work with your fellow sentient beings, you do not have to reassure yourself anymore. Reassurance implies a mentality of poverty--you are checking yourself, "Do I have it? How could I do it?" But the bodhisattva's delight in his richness is based upon experience rather than theory or wishful thinking. It is so, directly, fundamentally. He is fundamentally rich and so can delight in generosity. — Chogyam Trungpa

Beside the bat, on the opposite window, was the image of a raven painted in a mixture of black, blue and purple. I had to step back to realize the creature's wings were curved into the shape of the upper half of a heart, while their bottom halves were connected at the tail to form the end of the heart. — K.A. Poe

There are times now, and my life has changed so completely, that I think back on the early years and I find myself thinking: It was not that bad. Perhaps it was not. But there are times, too - unexpected - when walking down a sunny sidewalk, or watching the top of a tree bend in the wind, or seeing a November sky close down over the East River, I am suddenly filled with the knowledge of darkness so deep that a sound might escape from my mouth, and I will step into the nearest clothing store and talk with a stranger about the shape of sweaters newly arrived. This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can't possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don't know how others are. So much of life seems speculation. — Elizabeth Strout

People get upset and it becomes an excuse to treat other people a certain way,but if you really step back, you realize what you've left behind. — Maynard James Keenan

If she possessed a genius - and a growing number of us think she did - it was a capacity for understanding and trusting the improvisational nature of her will. This might seem a contradictory state, and for most of us it would be. We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears. Fan was different. As we have come to realize, she was not one to hold herself back. Or to be fettered. In this way she startles us, inspires us. She was someone who pursued her project as a genuine artist might, following with focus and intensity as well as an enduring innocence a goal she could not quite yet understand or see but wholly believed. — Chang-rae Lee

There's not one human being on the planet earth who has never felt, at some point, unaccepted. At some point in our lives, we feel like we're not good enough, but we have to step back and realize that we are. — Jussie Smollett

I realize I'm trying to work out the boundaries. How to love her without interfering. How to step back and let her have her private world and yet still be an intimate part of it. When she talks about her feelings, I have to consciously tell myself she wants me to receive them, not fix them. — Sue Monk Kidd

I have to strive to go two steps forward and realize that, sometimes, there will be one step back. — Victoria Moran

When you step back and watch people, you realize that we use every single body part. Movement, dance - I find it genius because it's ultimate expression, really. — Jude Law

You have become more and therefore expect more, but never become too purpose-driven to step back and realize just how far you have progressed. — Chris Matakas