Quotes About Reality

Leggere] – è importante perché fornisce uno spazio per esistere al di là della realtà che ci è data. È così che gli esseri umani si fondono. Le menti si collegano. Grazie ai sogni. All'empatia. Alla comprensione. Alla possibilità di fuga. Leggere è amore in azione.

the mind-boggling bit is that the theory hints that the entire universe is just two-dimensional information on a cosmological horizon and that everything we think we see in three dimensions is really as much an illusion as a 3D movie, and it could all be a simulation. So really, the world (and everything) might be flat after all. And then again it might not be.)

Fiction felt not like an escape from truth, but a release into it.

We have the knowledge to realise we are just a mass of quanta and particles, like everything else is, and yet we keep trying to separate ourselves from the universe we live in

there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other.

A picture of a pipe is not a pipe, as Magritte told us. There is a permanent gap between the signifier and the thing signified. An online profile of your best friend is not your best friend. A status update about a day in the park is not a day in the park. And the desire to tell the world about how happy you are is not how happy you are.

To be a human is to state the obvious

Depression can be exacerbated by things being all right externally, because the gulf between what you are feeling and what you are expected to feel becomes larger. If you feel the same amount of depression as someone would naturally feel in a prisoner of war camp, but you are not in a prisoner of war camp, and are instead in a nice semi-detached house in a free world, then you think "Crap, this is everything I ever wanted, why aren't I happy?

It is a popular modern idea. That the inner us is something different to the outer us. That there is an authentic realer and better and richer version of ourselves which we can only tap into by buying a solution. This idea that we are separate from our nature, as separate as a bottle of Dior perfume is from the plants of a forest.

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective. (…) It's not what you look at; it's what you see.

every day a retreat from who she'd imagined she'd be.

there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

Places don't matter to people anymore. Places aren't the point. People are only ever half present where they are these days. They always have one foot in the great digital nowhere.

Yes. The cat guy. He said that in quantum physics every alternative possibility happens simultaneously. All at once. In the same place. Quantum superposition. The cat in the box is both alive and dead. You could open the box and see that it was alive or dead, that's how it goes, but in one sense, even after the box is open, the cat is still both alive and dead.

There is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

Sometimes regrets are just....a load of bullshit

I don't know for sure that the words I write were the words that were actually spoken. They probably weren't. But this is how I remember these things, and all we can ever be is faithful to our memories of reality, rather than the reality itself, which is something closely related but never precisely the same thing.

I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other.

it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

and all we can ever be is faithful to our memories of reality, rather than the reality itself, which is something closely related but never precisely the same thing.

Problemen met de geestelijke gezondheid zijn geen: Massahysterie. Modegril. Bevlieging. Trend bij sterren. Gevolg van toegenomen bewustzijn van geestelijke problematiek. Gemakkelijk gespreksonderwerp. En: geestelijke problemen zijn niet meer wat ze geweest zijn.

I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness.

What we are and what we mean are different things. It's fine. The world makes it very hard not to be a prick.

That humans are not at the centre of things. You know, the planet is in orbit around the sun. That was a fucking hilarious joke in the 1500s, but Copernicus wasn't a comedian. He was, apparently, the least funny man of the whole Renaissance. He made Raphael look like Richard Pryor. But he was telling the fucking truth.