Victor Hugo Quotes

I'm trying to use myself and my own flawedness as a metaphor for general human experience. I'm trying to 'stand next to' a subject, whether it's Bobby Knight or Vince Carter, and use that subject to meditate on both him and me.

I think my job is hopefully to connect with people emotionally and to feel less alone or understand things in a certain way.

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.

One man said, "I looked at my brother through the microscope of criticism, and I said, "How coarse my brother is." Then I looked at my brother through the telescope of scorn, and I said, "How small my brother is." Then I looked into the mirror of truth and I said, "How like me my brother is."

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

I think you gotta have an honesty and a humility about human nature and that it's not about you at the end of the day.

By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself

We know others to the extent that we know ourselves.

I have never met a person in whom I did not see myself reflected.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

I recognize myself to a lesser or greater extent in everything I read, good and bad, and that's part of being a human being if you're honest enough. And obviously the darker parts are the things you don't let control you.

Whoever claims to understand another person completely, is either entirely ignorant of himself, or else has a nature so small that he can measure it easily, and supposes it to be the standard of every other nature.

All of us are much more human than otherwise.

I was a little truth seeker as a child. I wanted more than anything to understand myself and also other people.

There's no way for me to know, but my best guess, as it must be for everyone, is that other people are pretty much like me.

The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself.

I'm just writing about people. People are dark and complicated. I'm trying to tell the truth; that's all that I do.

I don't know what other people are like, I haven't been able to crawl inside anybody else.

I understand the common man because I understand me in that regard at least.

I think it's important to have perspective and to look at what you don't necessarily want to see.

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself