Quotes About Reality

Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinize his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality.

Never think of a man as a tree whose shade you can rest in. Women are just fertiliser, rotting away to make the tree strong . . . There is no real love. The couples who appear loving stay together for personal gain, whether for money, power or influence.

You're convinced everything would be fine if we lived together. If only we could. But you live in a world I don't recognize. What a halcyon glow our childhood must have for you.

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined. If my body were cut up in pieces and those pieces mixed with those of other bodies, and then if someone told me, "Find your left eye," I suppose it would be difficult to do so.

It had seemed like a dream, far removed from reality, and yet there had been something amazingly vivid about the snow and being there with Jun. I remember being delighted to be alone in that special place, just the two of us; but I'm sure it must have been even more wonderful then, when we were young and knew nothing about the pain of growing up.

Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won't find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression – in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.

It shocked me to realize that he suddenly seemed old -- so frail that the slightest push would have sent him tumbling. The body I had felt when I'd gone searching for my hidden presents had been sturdier; and though I had always thought of him as tall, e was now much shorter than me. I realized I had no idea how old he was -- I suppose I'd thought that something as mundane as age could never apply to him.

It's true, I know, that there are more gaps in the island than there used to be. When I was a child, the whole place seemed…how can I put this?…a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn't worry.

But in a world turned upside down, things I thought were mine and mine alone can be taken away much more easily than I would have imagined.

Auf jeden Fall sind Erinnerungen unsichtbar, nicht wahr? Wie wundervoll sie auch sein mögen, sie verschwinden einfach, wenn niemand sie beachtet. Nicht einmal wir selbst sind in der Lage, das wahre Wesen einer Erinnerung zu erfassen. Sie hinterlassen keine Spuren. Es gibt keinen greifbaren Beweis, dass sie wirklich existiert haben.

Ibland sätter jag händerna mot väggen och försöker föreställa mig hur det är utanför. Jag tänker att det kanske kan gå att uppfatta någonting genom händernas beröring med väggen. Sådant som vindriktning, kyla, fukt, platsen du är på, vattnets porlande floden. Men det går aldrig. Väggen är bara en vägg. Det finns ingenting bakom den, den är inte sammankopplad med någonting.

Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won't find them in material things or natural phenomenon, or even in human emotions.

It's true, I know, that there are more gaps in the island than there used to be. When I was a child, the whole place seemed…how can I put this?…a lot fuller, a lot more real. But as things got thinner, more full of holes, our hearts got thinner, too, diluted somehow. I suppose that kept things in balance. And even when that balance begins to collapse, something remains. Which is why you shouldn't worry." He

Whether at his desk or at the dinner table, when he talked about numbers, primes were most likely to make an appearance. At first, it was hard to see their appeal. They seemed so stubborn, resisting division by any number but one and themselves. Still, as we were swept up in the Professor's enthusiasm, we gradually came to understand his devotion, and the primes began to seem more real, as though we could reach out and touch them.

Man sagte mir, die Welt sei vernetzt, die Entfernung spiele keine Rolle mehr. Es schien mir aber so, als ob nicht die Entfernung, sondern die Nähe keine Rolle mehr spiele. Auch jemanden, der nebenan sitzt, kann man eine E-Mail schicken. Ist die Welt wirklich vernetzt oder ist sie vielleicht verletzt?

Absolute power, as we have always known, corrupts absolutely; it corrupts because it does not do the trick for the individual. Reality always creeps in--the reality of our helplessness and our mortality; the reality that, despite our reach for the stars, a creaturely fate awaits us.

There was a jail with a prisoner in it," he said, "who was surrounded by mountains of money. He kept counting the money and feeling so happy about his life, thinking that he was the richest man in the whole world. A man passing by saw him and said through the tiny window: "Why are you so happy? You are in prison? Do you know that?" The prisoner laughed: "No! No! It is not that I am inside the jail. It is that you are outside of the jail!

Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?

The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?

That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?

So entrenched is our fictional image of Gypsies that we often brush aside real-world experiences as a mirage when they contradict the picture that we have absorbed and internalized.