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Quotes About Reality

What the novel portrays is basically the reality of Vienna today: one of the world's great cities robbed of its lifeblood, reduced to a bland provincial capital filled with beautiful old buildings.
~ Tom Reiss
disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....
~ Tom Robbins
Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.
~ Tom Robbins
I close my eyes, and this image floats beside me. A sweaty toothed mad man with a stare that pounds my brain. His hands reach out and choke me, and all the time he's mumbling. "Truth, truth." Like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold. You push it, stretch it, but it'll never be enough. You kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us. From the moment we enter crying, to the moment we leave dying, it'll just cover your face, as you wail and cry and scream.
~ Tom Schulman
Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams, and I'll show you a happy man." Keating: "But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus will be.
~ Tom Schulman
Eva Wilt got to her feet and stood with the rain running down her face and as she stood there the illusions that had sustained her through the week disappeared. She saw herself as a fat, silly woman who had left her husband in pursuit of a glamour that was false and shoddy and founded on brittle talk and money.
~ Tom Sharpe
I spent a long time trying to come to grips with my doubts, when suddenly I realized I had better come to grips with what I believe. I have since moved from the agony of questions that I cannot answer to the reality of answers that I cannot escape, and it's a wonderful relief.
~ Unknown
A ghost in this place. That's what I am. Or I'm real and Manhattan is a dream.
~ Tom Spanbauer
It's all sad, Gruney," Hank said. "If we let ourselves know how sad it really is, there wouldn't be anything left of us.
~ Tom Spanbauer
The way I figure it, we know we got this world, so live in this one while you're here. I figure the next one will take care of itself.
~ Tom Spanbauer
I tell you I'm tired of hearing it. There ain't nothing that happens to a person that ain't that person. The world out there only does what you tell it to do. The world is happening to you the way it is happening because you're telling yourself the story that way. If you want to change the world so damn bad, Ida, then where you got to start is how it is you're looking at it.
~ Tom Spanbauer
The idea that all the people locked up in mental hospitals are sane while all the people walking about are mad is merely a literary cliche, put about by people who should be locked up. I assure you there is not much in it. Taken as a whole, the sane are out there the sick are in here. For example you are in here because you have delusions that sane people are put in mental hospitals.
~ Tom Stoppard
Never believe in mirrors or newspapers.
~ Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?
~ Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats. Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.
~ Tom Stoppard
The colours red, blue and green are real. The colour yellow is a mystical experience shared by everybody.
~ Tom Stoppard
Metaphors construct, or frame, views of 'reality', which can be used in policy-making or planning. They highlight structural characteristics of the world. It is dangerous if those who frame metaphors believe there is only one reality. But if metaphors are recognised as creative constructs, they can have immense value.
~ Unknown
When a situation feels dangerous to you, it's probably more safe than you know; when a situation feels safe, that is precisely when you should feel on guard.
~ Tom Vanderbilt
We all have wanted, at one time or another, to appear as an idealized self. "I'm actually a quite different person," as the playwright Ödön von Horváth wrote, "I just never get around to being him.
~ Tom Vanderbilt
Q: What's hard for you? A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.
~ Tom Waits
Well you say that it's gospel, But I know that it's only church.
~ Tom Waits
My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
~ Tom Waits
Reality is for people who can't face drugs.
~ Tom Waits
Everything you can think of is true.
~ Tom Waits