Quotes About Reality

Memory is elastic, and no two people have the same version of any given event. Our versions of our own lives are necessarily fictional to some degree, wouldn't you agree?

Birdie wondered why that so often seemed to be the case—once you had what you wanted, it was a shadow of what you'd dreamed it to be.

When did the news become worse than any dystopian fiction we could imagine?

there is nothing certain in life but death. We may labour under the delusion that we know what the day ahead of us holds, what the hour holds. But we do not. We may think our death, our very certain death, is something distant and remote, an island we might never visit. But for some of us, its right here, waiting.

It was human nature to see only what you want to see, and nothing would change that, no matter what tools people had at their disposal. The truth is only what you think it is.

Give up, she wanted to tell them. You lost. The world is crap, and no amount of communicating is going to change it.

From where I stand, hidden, watching them through the glass, they are the picture of the perfect family. But I know better. What people show the world is rarely the whole truth, especially these days when everything must be curated and cropped, filtered and brightened. Real life is messy and complicated. Ugly.

Nothing is ever perfect, he wanted to say. Wanting everything to be perfect is a recipe for misery.

The more you must assert your own reality to people, the crazier you seem.

The world was not a fair place and nothing—not looks, not wealth, not love—was evenly distributed. He knew that, of course he did. Why did it never stop hurting?

Life's not so simple. People are many things, each of them true.

We broadcast one version of ourselves, cropped and filtered and out there for consumption. But the real person is hidden behind that.

Maybe we're all so confused these days about what's real and what isn't, what's authentic, what's fake, that our instincts for the truth have been dulled.

Dreams come true, I guess, just not always how you imagine them.

Real life is what happens between those posts. And you only know the version people show you on Instagram. It's a fiction. And I guarantee every single one of those perfect people you see out there is feeling as lost and insecure as you are.

Story is story, Stella said. It's a portal you walk through into another world. And this world—which usually sucks—just disappears.

How can you desire someone who hurts you? How can you miss him so much your body aches? Maybe not him, the man he actually was, but the man I thought he was. We cling to our ideas of people, don't we? We hold on tight even when all evidence points to something else.

We cling to our ideas of people, don't we? We hold on tight even when all evidence points to something else.

The rich and vivid imagining that served her so well on the page was torture in her real life sometimes, if she let her thoughts sweep her away.

After each dream, Frankie woke with a start, soaked in tears. But she found no relief in the peaceful silence of her room, because there everything was real. And the guilt was too immense to bear. Each time she opened her eyes, she'd quickly shut them. And wish that she had woken up for the very last time.

The inaugural morning at Merston High was officially over. It was no longer a mysterious place in Melody's imagination, filled with endless possibilities and hooks on which to hang hopes for a better tomorrow. It was completely - boringly - normal. Like meeting an online crush after months of e-flirting, the reality didn't live up to the fantasy. It was dull, predictable, and way more attractive in the photos.

What we call miraculous, God calls business as usual.

In my sleepwalking years, I learned the existence of another dimension. I do not inhabit it any longer. But somehow, it continues to inhabit me.

Well, the old Autumn didn't know anything about reality. The old Autumn was quite happy living in a childish make-believe world where bad things didn't happen and where you could make up whatever silly story you liked and tell yourself it was true.