"Thought" Verbs: A sign of weak writing or a stylistic choice?
According to Chuck Palahniuk you should avoid "Thought" verbs as much as you can. These include: knew, thought, realized, believed, etc.
However, I've seen many of them in books that I read. And I think they somehow simulate real speech (useful with first-person narrative). Here's an example from my own writing:
Lying back down, I thought about what he had just said—and realized I wasn't unhappy anymore; I no longer had this pressure in my chest; I felt released, light, as if I could reach the ceiling above me.
Are "Thought" Verbs a sign of weak writing? Or just an stylistic choice?
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Advice of that sort should rarely be taken absolutely. If you get advice like that from a reasonable person, they will not say, "Never use ..." but rather "Avoid ..." There are lots of writing techniques that are easy to overuse or mis-use, and so you should be careful about them. But just because something is easy to abuse doesn't mean you should never use it, it just means you should be careful about it. Like just because many people get drunk and act stupid doesn't mean you should never consume alcohol. Just keep it in moderation. :-)
Beyond that I pretty much say "ditto" to What's answer.
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Often, sentences that use "thought" verbs tend to provide distance between the reader and the action. This might be intentional or not. Consider your example, rewritten without the "I thought about" and "I realized":
I lay back down. I wasn't unhappy anymore; I no longer had this pressure in my chest; I felt released, light, as if I could reach the ceiling above me.
Especially in first person, it's not necessary to tell us who's experiencing these things.
Same for "I saw": "I saw the car drift into the intersection" vs "The car drifted into the intersection." The latter is more direct, and doesn't put the narrator between the action and the reader.
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In first person (as Ken says) thought verbs are less necessary or unnecessary, but they can be crucial in third person and absolutely necessary.
Mary knew Jack was lying, but she smiled anyway. "Oh, I guess I didn't think of that," she said.
Sometimes what the character is thinking is critical to their motivations, and can increase tension (or dread), and therefore conflict. That is a good thing. If Mary does nothing physical to betray her knowledge of Jack lying, informing the reader of her thoughts using some verbiage is the only choice, if we want that information revealed at this point. If Mary knows Jack is lying at this moment that can influence what she does next; e.g. cut their date short by feigning illness, continue the date and look for information in his apartment, or believe something else Jack tells her. Perhaps she is a spy and this lie tells her that her cover is blown, and that saves her life. Stuff like that.
What a character thinks or knows and does not betray by any physical display can still be important.
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