Navel Gazing Quotes

“Someone experiencing the stages of grief is rarely aware of how his behavior might appear to others. Grief often produces a “zoom lens effect,” in which the focus is entirely on oneself, to the exclusion of external considerations.”
― Sol Luckman, Snooze: A Story of Awakening

“The universe of his own feelings keeps crowding everyone else's out. It is a constant struggle to see other people as people, rather than as denizens of a dimension one level below the one in which he's doomed to wander, imperially alone. That someone close to him might right now be awake in a different part of the city, feeling a pain every bit as real as his own . . . he can think it, but cannot seem to remember it. And is 'remember' even the right word for something for which you have zero empirical evidence? Postulate, maybe. Imagine. He sweeps the lens back toward the window, where the cat hasn't stirred. Her tail twitches. An idea threatens to form, but doesn't.”
― Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire

“He had ceased to be interested in anyone but himself.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good

“Last century we looked out, this one just in. We went to the moon, for Christ’s sake.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo