Quotes About Reality

If you write a book and nobody reads it, does the book exist? Stories in books, characters and things, you know, like places and monsters or whatever the writer has made up and written down, they only really come alive when we read them. Otherwise it's just a jumble of squiggles on bits of paper.

Things are as bad as you fear they are. People are as bad as you think they are. The Universe does not care.

If I saw something once that I can't explain, that doesn't make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn't make them real. And if a madman says what's at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that's just one more reason not to believe.

The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air. Alone in a room, he mutters lies to himself to keep from falling into the trap of truth-telling. In the day, sleeping in his bed, deep in the safest heart of Coalition headquarters, he dreams in lies. The better to keep his left hand from knowing what betrayals his right has planned.

I'm interested in trying to explore what I think is the truth at a given time in my life, and part of the process of being honest is - in my mind - talking about the idea that you're watching a movie. You're sitting here watching a movie. And I like that. It appeals to me intellectually, and also in a way I can't even explain.

I think you just assume that your memory is just sort of a video playback of your experience, but it's nothing like that at all. It's a complete refabrication of an event and a lot of it is made up, because you're filling in spaces.

I've kind of come to the conclusion that what passes for realism in movies has nothing to do with reality and that my stuff is more realistic than that.

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true.

We're all hurtling towards death. Yet here we are, for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we're going to die. Each of us secretly believing we won't.

Somehow, the city of promise had become a scrap yard of dreams.

But these things are not supposed to be news. These things are supposed to be normal. And when normal things become the news, the abnormal becomes the norm. And when that happens, you might as well put a fork in it. What galleries and museums have to do

Christmas always sucked when I was a kid because I believed in Santa Claus. Unfortunately, so did my parents. So I never got anything.

It's relatively easy, you know, when you don't see someone. To kid yourself that you really don't love them any more.

If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend.

What is being called the UN 'gender architecture' is more like a shack. Women need a bigger global house if equality is ever to become a reality.

There is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but the present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame others; we complain; we feel sorry for ourselves. All of these symptoms show that we're stuck in our thoughts. We're out of touch with the open space that is always right here.

When we're lost in thought, when we're dreaming, what have we lost? We've lost reality. Our life has escaped us.

Some of the often told stories we use to con ourselves: It's getting better. Nobody's perfect. S/he had a hard childhood. I know s/he really loves me, s/he just has a hard time showing it. S/he has so much potential. I'm sure it will get better. Don't ever marry potential or plan on someone changing. Ask yourself, why would it get better? Why would this person change?

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.

Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.

I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once. But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time. And though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn! I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.

This is the only world where I belong, the only place I fit in, the only thing I'm good at... why couldn't it all just stay perfect?

Day does not forestall nightmares - Night is not needed for dreams - There is no better time than here - No better place than now -