Gayl Jones Quotes

Knowledge is recognition of something absent; it is a salutation, not an embrace.

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.

You discover how confounding the world is when you try to draw it. You look at a car, and you try to see its car-ness, and you're like an immigrant to your own world. You don't have to travel to encounter weirdness. You wake up to it.

This time next year,—this time ten years,—this time one hundred years,—probably it will be just as easy as we think it is to understand that glass of water, which now seems so plain and simple. I cannot doubt but that these things, which now seem to us so mysterious, will be no mysteries at all; that the scales will fall from our eyes; that we shall learn to look on things in a different way—when that which is now a difficulty will be the only commonsense and intelligible way of looking at the subject

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery.

There is no good leader. First of all, if you think you are a leader, you are just messed up in your head. People should think you are a leader. If you think you are a big success, again, you are messed up. Other people should think you are a success.

While my friend always spoke about the sun, I kept speaking about the clouds, until one day I realized that it was the sun that allowed me to see the clouds.

Punctuationally speaking, wonder is a period at the end of a statement we've long taken for granted, suddenly looking up and seeing the sinuous curve of a tall black hat on its head, and realizing it was a question mark all along.

It's not finding what's lost, it's understanding what you've found.

In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.

Interest which blinds some People, enlightens others.

Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time.

Awareness is always the first step.

When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a globe he doesn't notice that the track he has covered is curved. I was lucky enough to have spotted it.

The first act of insight is throw away the labels.

I didn’t know I could do that. I mean I knew I could do that before, but I didn’t know it was actually working now until you screamed. I thought I was just imagining it. And don’t give me that look…sorry? (Xypher)

It might be good to open our eyes and see.

Sometimes what you want is right in front of you. All you have to do is open your eyes and see it.

We see nothing till we truly understand it.

Conceptuality is subjective; realization is objective.

If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.

Once you realize something, then you can't pretend you don't know it any more.

Consciousness of a fact is not knowing it: if it were, the fish would know more of the sea than the geographers and the naturalists.

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.