Virginia Woolf Quotes

You have to keep your mind as wide-open as your eyes, because almost nothing is what it seems.

I'm trying to do what I have never done - give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing.

You must see first before you can believe.

If you don't pay attention and if your imagination isn't pretty much engaged, you're going to miss things and you're going to miss opportunities for it to be as compelling and as creepy as it can be.

It's not that I can't be fooled, but I'm not fooled often.

I got a great imagination, and I pay close attention to my surroundings and I'm very observant.

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.

If you never noticed, it never happened.

Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned - not to see what is not.

I think Abraham Lincoln said believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see.

Interesting." Raistlin coughed the word. Tanis glanced at him sharply. "What is interesting?" "I've never heard you lie before, Half-Elf," Raistlin said softly. " I find it...quite...fascinating.

Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing.

[To become a poet] The most important thing is to pay attention. The next would probably be to read; it's so important to pay attention. It keeps you from being bored, and I might add it keeps you from being boorish.

The eyes see not what is before them when the mind is intent on other matters.

I can smell bullshit from a mile away but it's so much harder to detect when it's around you all day.

It is difficult to say what truth is, but sometimes it is so easy to recognize a falsehood.

If you are wired to your memory, repetitions will happen and redundancy will come; but if you are paying attention, that changes your ability to look at things.

My bullshit meter is reading that as 'false'.

You have to learn to read between the lies.

My dear, the real truth always sounds improbable, do you know that? To make truth sound probable you must always mix in some falsehood with it. Men have always done so.

If you pay attention to the world, it's an amazing place. If you don't, it's whatever you think it is.

If somebody is going to hand me a load of BS, I feel obliged to call attention to the steaming pile

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

People tell you who they are. There are big neon signs going off. 'Pay attention! This is who I am.' And most of us put out hands a little bit over our eyes. We don't see that.