Quotes About Reality

Good management reduces ego. But in the Trump White House, it could often seem that nothing happened, that reality simply did not exist, if it did not happen in Trump's presence.

The next day Kellyanne Conway, her aggressive posture during the campaign turning more and more to petulance and self-pity, asserted the new president's right to claim "alternative facts." As it happened, Conway meant to say "alternative information," which at least would imply there might be additional data. But as uttered, it certainly sounded like the new administration was claiming the right to recast reality. Which, in a sense, it was.

he lied about his height to keep from having a body mass index that would label him as obese),

He had no ability to distinguish the important from the less important. There seemed to be no such thing as objective reality.

Trump, as almost anyone who had ever worked for him appreciated, was, despite what you hoped he might be, Trump—and he would invariably sour on everyone around him.

Bannon was, once again, gobsmacked. "When Ivanka and the Mooch can talk the commander in chief of the United States into thinking that people will believe that you had a double negative problem, you've left the Cartesian universe.

But now there seemed to be a new understanding: Donald Trump believed he had vastly more power, authority, and control than in fact he had, and he believed his talent for manipulating people and bending and dominating them was vastly greater than it was. Pushing this line of reasoning just a little further: senior staff believed the president had a problem with reality, and reality was now overwhelming him.

It was all too possible that the hardly plausible would lead to the totally credible.

Michael Wolff

Kushner's analysis was the same as nearly everyone's who spent a significant amount of time around the president. He was childlike—a hyperactive child at that. There was no clear reason for why something caught his interest, nor was there any way to predict his reaction or modulate his response to it. He had no ability to distinguish the important from the less important. There seemed to be no such thing as objective reality.

Donald Trump believed he had vastly more power, authority, and control than in fact he had, and he believed his talent for manipulating people and bending and dominating them was vastly greater than it was. Pushing this line of reasoning just a little further: senior staff believed the president had a problem with reality, and reality was now overwhelming him.

that looseness with the truth, if not with reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book.

Few people who knew Trump had illusions about him. That was almost his appeal: he was what he was. Twinkle in his eye, larceny in his soul.

Salesmen, whose primary characteristic and main asset is their ability to keep selling, constantly recast the world in positive terms. Discouragement for everyone else is merely the need to improve reality for them.

senior staff believed the president had a problem with reality, and reality was now overwhelming him.

It's all exaggerated. My exaggerations are exaggerated.

But evidence is all around you." "The world is all around me. Some parts I understand, some I don't. Some the scientists do, some they don't. It exists. That only proves it exists." "I don't understand how you can look at the world and say there's no God." "And I don't know how you can look at the world and pretend you know there's a God and what he wants. So we're even.

this is the problem with photographs. After a while, you can't remember if you're recalling the actual memory or the memory of the photograph. Or perhaps the photograph is the only reason you remember that moment. (p.85)

Know this: even if you're like us and still doddering around above ground, someone out there from your past is probably pretty sure that you're dead by now. (p.125 )

Novel is a particular form of narrative./ And narrative is a phenomenon which extends considerably beyond the scope of literature; it is one of the essential constituents of our understanding of reality. From the time we begin to understand language until our death, we are perpetually surrounded by narratives, first of all in our family, then at school, then through our encounters with people and reading. - The Novel as Research. (1968)

La lectura, y sobre todo la lectura novelesca, es un tipo de sueño; un sueño que no realizamos dormidos sino en un estado particular que no corresponde enteramente a estar despierto.

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right…. We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.