Quotes About Reality

Sometimes in fiction you had to mute reality in order to make it seem more believable.

recognizing that I had understood something that evening: the banality of one's own death, so much less terrible than the death of someone you love;

Man, that's the only kind of book I like – one that's so real you want to find out everything there is to know about the person who wrote it, like how tall he is and what kind of music he likes and whether or not he really went through all the stuff he was writing about.

I'll have to come over,' she told Zurndorfer. 'What – in person?' 'Yes.' Zurndorfer's simface goggled at her. 'I'm sorry to be dense, but, you mean physically shift yourself from over there to … you know. Here?' 'Yes.' 'Well, I say, well of course. I mean. If you think that's necessary. Is that necessary?

Race is real because we perceive it. Racism is real because we enact it. Neither race nor racism has foundations in science. It is our duty to contest the warping of scientific research, especially if it is being used to justify prejudice. If you are a racist, then you are asking for a fight. But science is my ally, not yours, and your fight is not just with me, but with reality.

Nature is not cruel, it is simply indifferent

In our family histories, the frontier between fact and fiction is vague, especially in the record of events that took place before we were born, or when we were too young to record them accurately; there are few maps to these remote regions, and only the occasional sign to guide the explorer.

Here are people who refused to cheat, who eagerly sought out the truth and shrank from neither poetry nor terror, the two poles of our globe - since poetry does exist in the world, in certain events, at rare moments. And there's also no shortage of terror.

I was a wonderful parent before I had children.

I was a wonderful parent before I had children. I was an expert on why everyone else was having problems with theirs. Then I had three of my own.

They can tell no one that they have gone through the looking glass and into the world where nightmares are real.

She remembers Voltaire's warning about the perfect being the enemy of the good.

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better. I wish I was the kind who made up stories.

Nobody ever told me that motherhood was temporary. You think you have years and years with them, but the truth is, you don't.

Beware the things of this world that can mean everything or nothing. Ciro

For many men value appearances more than reality—thus they violate what's right. Everyone's prepared to sigh over some suffering man, though no sorrow really eats their hearts, or they can pretend to join another person's happiness forcing their faces into smiling masks. But a good man discerns true character— he's not fooled by eyes feigning loyalty, favouring him with watered-down respect.

No dreams, these torments, not to me, they're clear, real - the hounds of mother's hate.

We're not gods; why then expect to enjoy a lifetime of unbroken happiness?

Facts speak plainer than words

Not all creatures can become as great as they think.

Yet, isn't it strange, isn't it weird, how we can KNOW that someone is not behaving in the way we imagine, and at the same time we can be totally convinced that he is! How clever the human mind is, that it can accept two contradictory things as 'facts.' Yes, I know that in this case one 'fact' was untrue. But the human mind can KNOW something is untrue and still accept it as a 'fact,' and act on it as if it were true.

We resent being faced with facts we'd prefer to ignore as much as being wrongly accused of doing something we haven't.

Berlin stressed the farsightedness of his perception of the destructive power of ideological abstractions over human lives: "Herzen's sense of reality, in particular of the need for, and the price of, revolution, is unique in his own, and perhaps in any age.

He said, I always thought the woman I'd marry would hit me easy, in a bolt of lightning, and there is not lightning there is not even thunder there is not even rain.