Quotes About Reality

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.

If you're happy in a dream…does that count? The happiness–does it count?

Ammu's tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real.

Although you know that one day you will die, you live as if you won't.

Lose your dreams and you Will lose your mind.

But it's hard to say where experience ends and imagination begins. The story is by no means a true story. But the feelings in it are.

Reading Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar bridges the gap between what most Indians are schooled to believe in and the reality we experience every day of our lives.

Normalcy was declared. (Normalcy was always a declaration.)

If you're happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count?' Estha asked. 'Does what count?' 'The happiness—does it count?' She knew exactly what he meant, her son with his spoiled puff. Because the truth is, that only what /counts/ counts. The simple, unswerving truth of children. If you eat fish in a dream, does it count? Does it mean you've eaten fish?

Once you have fallen off the edge like all of us have, including our Biroo," Anjum said, "you will never stop falling. And as you fall you will hold on to other falling people. The sooner you understand that the better. This place where we live, where we have made our home, is the place of falling people. Here there is no haqeeqat. Arre, even we aren't real. We don't really exist.

If you're happy in a dream, does that count? The happiness - does it count?

Once you have fallen off the edge like all of us have, you will never stop falling. And as you fall you will hold on to other falling people. The sooner you understand that the better. This place where we live, where we made our home, is the place of falling people. Here there is baqeeqat. Arre, even we aren't real. We don't really exist

The harbinger of harsh reality:

the connection between GDP growth and jobs is a myth.

tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real.

Venne dichiarato il ritorno allo stato di normalità. (Lo stato di normalità era sempre una dichiarazione.)

And they would not believe me precisely because they would know that what I said was true.

If you are happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count? Estha asked. Does what count? The happiness does it count?

Death was everywhere. Death was everything. Career. Desire. Dream. Poetry. Love. Youth itself. Dying became just another way of living.

Si, comme il arrivait quelquefois, elle avait les traits d'une femme que j'avais connue dans la vie, j'allais me donner tout entier à ce but : la retrouver, comme ceux qui partent en voyage pour voir de leurs yeux une cité désirée et s'imaginent qu'on peut goûter dans une réalité le charme du songe. Peu à peu son souvenir s'évanouissait, j'avais oublié la fille de mon rêve.

They had not understood - they'd not known what a hole you faced when you turn around, and the one you'd thought would always be there was gone.

Dreams and reality are opposites. Action synthesizes them.

Death, of course, is not a failure. Death is normal. Death may be the enemy, but it is also the natural order of things.

We're always trotting out some story of a ninety-seven-year-old who runs marathons, as if such cases were not miracles of biological luck but reasonable expectations for all. Then, when our bodies fail to live up to this fantasy, we feel as if we somehow have something to apologize for.