Neal Shusterman Quotes

How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.

Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

No matter where you go, you always see yourself in the rearview mirror.

It is not a question of observation which propels mankind forward as if toward a looking glass of great magnitude; it is an instance of aggrandized reflection that insinuates the human psyche to the inhuman.

I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality

I can see myself before myself - a being through dark scenery.

I myself have noticed my growing resemblance to a daffodil.

And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of.

For however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable I.

A fearful man who knows he is fearful is far more trustable than a fearful man who isn’t aware of his fear.

You've been thinking and I've been drinking.

Every time I end a book, I look down at myself.

We have so committed ourselves in different ways that we have hardly any time for self-reflection, to observe, to study.

The wretched reflect either too much or too little.

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

It is not vain glory for a man and his glass to confer in his own chamber.

Love After Love all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

I just don't like to be in my own - I'm already myself, so I don't like to be in my own - like, watch myself.

It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us. This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good heart whatever they might have to say.

The person who understands the evil in his own heart is the only person who is useful, fruitful, and solid in his beliefs and obedience. Others only delude themselves and thus upset families, churches, and all other relationships. In their self-pride and judgment of others, they show great inconsistency.

Self-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the 'self' see the 'self' with any objectivity?

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself, But by reflection, by some other things.