Quotes About Reality

Structures of lines, surfaces, forms, colours. They try to approach the eternal, the inexpressible above men. They are a denial of human egotism. They are the hatred of human immodesty, the hatred of images, of paintings... Wisdom (is) the feeling for the coming reality, the mystical, the definite indefinite, the greatest definite.

Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.

So-called "realist" photography does not capture the "what is." Instead, it is preoccupied with what should not be, like the reality of suffering for example.

It is perhaps not a surprise that photography developed as a technological medium in the industrial age, when reality started to disappear. It is even perhaps the disappearance of reality that triggered this technical form. Reality found a way to mutate into an image.

There are only a few images that are not forced to provide meaning, or have to go through the filter of a specific idea.

The simulacrum now hides, not the truth, but the fact that there is none, that is to say, the continuation of Nothingness.

Not only does reality resist those who still criticize it, but it also abandons those who defend it. Maybe it is a way for reality to get its revenge from those who claim to believe in it for the sole purpose of eventually transforming it: sending back its supporters to their own desires.

One may dream of a culture where everyone bursts into laughter when someone says: this is true, this is real.

It is not enough for theory to describe and analyse, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality.

All we have left of liberty is an ad-man's illusion.

When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.

Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors.

We are already more or less disconnected from our history and thus also from its destination. That means, then, that time can slow as it nears its end and that the year 2000, in a certain way, will not take place.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive society.

The secret of theory is that truth does not exist.

There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you. Suddenly the TV reveals itself for what it really is; a video of another world, ultimately addressed to no one at all, delivering its own message.

Philosophy leads to death, sociology leads to suicide.

And so art is everywhere, since artifice is at the very heart of reality. And so art is dead, not only because its critical transcendence is gone, but because reality itself, entirely impregnated by an aesthetic which is inseparable from its own structure, has been confused with its own image. Reality no longer has the time to take on the appearance of reality. It no longer even surpasses fiction: it captures every dream even before it takes on the appearance of a dream.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays cosily tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

I never had the financial means that the media said I had. I laugh when I hear the amounts, $400 million, $800 million. Where do they get this imagination?

When I was 24, I was full of life. I was that ham who wanted to be famous, a movie star, all that stuff. I think it's cool. But it was not what I was searching for, really. It was more a delusion.

Because no matter what you say in life, the truth will always be the truth. You know when someone is telling the truth, you look in the eyes. I have a tendency to believe people.

What is a movie star? It is an illusion. It was everything I ever wanted to be, but it became a kind of shell, non? It was what made me famous and got me women. But it wasn't real.