Quotes About Reality

The poetry is all in the anticipation, for there is none in reality

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another.

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.

In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has.

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

There is risk, known and unknown, in all aspects of life. We often consider the loss of life the only serious risk. Unless we are genuinely aware, we calculate the danger arising from our own physical and emotional states and from external conditions based on incomplete information. If we believe we can manage those risks, we accept them. Whether these choices are born of delusion or reality comes out in the end.

There is no appeal from the ways of the world, which must continue on its own terms or take us all down with it into chaos and confusion.

The job of the poet is to render the world-to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.

It's not a stereotype if it's always true.

Ugliness is better than beauty. It lasts longer and in the end, gravity will get us all.

Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.

If the world was perfect, it wouldn't be.

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.

You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig.