Quotes About Reality

The time-deniers say: forty's nothing, at fifty you're in your prime, sixty's the new forty, and so on. I know this much: that there is objective time, but also subjective time, the kind you wear on the inside of your wrist, next to where the pulse lies. And this personal time, which is the true time, is measured in your relationship to memory.

If I can't be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be true to the impressions those facts left.

This [...] isn`t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn`t always the same as what you witnessed.

It's the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. Beyond that … [it's] delight in, and play with, language; also, a curiously intimate way of communicating with people whom you will never meet.

Look, writers aren't perfect , I want to cry, any more than husbands and wives are perfect. The only unfailing rule is, If they seem so, they can't be.

but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

he couldn't believe how falling love with Martha made things simpler. No, that wasn't the right word, unless 'simpler' also included the sense of richer, denser, more complicated, with focus and echo. Half his brain pulsed with gawping incredulity at his luck; the other half was filled with a sense of long-sought, flaming reality. That was the word: falling in love with Martha made things real.

And you can never prepare for this new reality in which you have been dunked.

Such was humanity's self-love, Nadar concluded, that most were inevitably disappointed when they finally saw a true image of themselves.

Masters and parents used to remind us irritatingly that they too had once been young, and so could speak with authority. It's just a phase, they would insist. You'll grow out of it; life will teach you reality and realism. But back then we declined to acknowledge that they had ever been anything like us, and we knew that we grasped life--and truth, and morality, and art--far more clearly than our compromised elders.

Io so una cosa per certo: che un tempo oggettivo esiste, ma che esiste anche quello soggettivo, quello che si porta sull'interno polso, proprio accanto alle pulsazioni cardiache. E questo tempo personale, che è poi anche quello autentico, si misura in funzione del nostro rapporto con i ricordi.

I can see there might be a positive side to this wilful averting of the eye: ignoring the bad things makes it easier for you to carry on. But ignoring the bad things makes you end up believing that bad things never happen. You are always surprised by them. It surprises you that guns kill, that money corrupts, that snow falls in winter. Such naivety can be charming; alas, it can also be perilous.

We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient—it's not useful—to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it.

what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents- were they the stuff of Literature?

At best you have one of those debilitating conditions which come in many forms, and which some people decline to admit actually exist.

Hoe vaak vertellen we ons eigen levensverhaal? Hoe vaak stellen we bij, verfraaien we, laten we handig dingen weg? En hoe langer het leven doorgaat, hoe minder er om ons heen overblijven om onze versie te betwisten, ons eraan te herinneren dat ons leven niet ons leven is, maar alleen het verhaal dat wij erover verteld hebben. Verteld aan anderen, maar - voornamelijk - aan onzelf.

But then, no one told the whole truth about sex. And in that respect, nothing has changed.

Beware of dreams," Elizabeth Finch replied. "Also, as a general rule, beware of what most people aspire to.

People say of death, "There's nothing to be frightened of." They say it quickly, casually. Now let's say it again, slowly, with re-emphasis. "There's NOTHING to be frightened of." Jules Renard: "The word that is most true, most exact, most filled with meaning, is the word 'nothing.

In truth, he was just another man, behaving as men did in books, and she was just another woman for believing otherwise.

everyone has their love story. Even if it was a fiasco, even if it fizzled out, never got going, had all been in the mind to begin with: that didn't make it any the less real. And it was the only story

Manchmal glaube ich, es ist der Sinn des Lebens, uns mit seinem letzendlichen Verlust zu versöhnen, indem es uns zermürbt, uns beweist, auch wenn das eine Weile dauern kann, dass das Leben gar nicht so toll ist.

Vivimos con suposiciones muy fáciles, ¿no? Por ejemplo, que la memoria es igual a sucesos más tiempo. Pero es algo mucho más extraño. ¿Quién dijo que la memoria es lo que creíamos que habíamos olvidado? Y debería ser obvio que el tiempo no actúa como un fijador, sino más bien como un disolvente. Pero no conviene —no es útil— creer esto; no nos ayuda a seguir adelante; por lo tanto, lo pasamos por alto.