Quotes About Reality

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing. – Edmund Burke

What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!

his reverie merged discouragingly into the austere reality of the classroom.

All this world's glory seemeth vain to me, And all their shows but shadows, saving she.

you always look your age, down to the last minute

When history gives out, fiction takes over.

The novel is alive and thriving through various strategies of renovation. The merging of fiction and reality, of memoir and narrative, is one great current source of strength. The reimagining of the historical novel is a second. And the third is the admission of new voices previously unheard or slienced.

Awww, 'tis the refuge we take when the unreality of the world weighs too heavy on our tiny heads.

George: Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Martha: I am, George. I am.

Good writers define reality Bad ones merely restate it.

what I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing cards when you're a kid, and pornographic playing cards when you're older. It's that when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf mean who's afraid of the big bad wolf…who's afraid of living without false illusions

I had no night terrors. Maybe when your real life becomes the terror, there's just nothing left to dream about

Like the Pied Piper, the street entertainer carries his own mystique which cannot easily be transferred to the stage. He seems to have escaped reality, to perform in a time and space where he doesn't necessarily belong.

I thought it was going to be different; It turned out to be(,) just the same.

We spend all our lives trying to avoid reality in one way or another. I've always had a rather strong sense of unreality. I feel other people exist in a way I don't.

Oh, you know, fantasy I've always found a word I really don't care for. Fantasy always strikes me as something that doesn't have any reality because it's completely irresponsible. Anything that is fantastic I don't think is really terribly interesting. What's the Coleridge distinction between imagination and - is it fantasy? I don't think that's the word. Anyway, you know, one is meaningful and one isn't.

I've decided that, as somebody's pointed out, the older you get, it's very difficult to tell how much younger anyone else is. I mean I can't really tell the difference now between people who are fifteen and people who are thirty-five.

I always feel that other people's lives are filled with meaning. You look at them on the street and think how real their lives must be. Of course, you also know that isn't true.

every now and then I do think life is a crock, there's no getting around it. Basically, it's really just awful. I do think it's stupidity that makes the world go round. And if you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point.

Let me, however, although no verbal critic, protest against the profanation of the word friend. In this my history I must be honest, make a distinction between the oriental diamond and its worthless imitation of paste, and separate the grain from the chaff — gossamer words, that weigh nothing, from substantial realities heavier than gold.

ONLY TODAY Yesterday can no longer be touched. Tomorrow is out of your reach. So live today, only today.

We have to deal with the world as it is, not as it should be," he would gently point out.

I gather that when people are cremated one never really gets their ashes, just some communal rakings from the bottom of the oven. As you can imagine, I regard that as good news. Ideally, all ashes would belong to somebody else, but we don't live in a perfect world.