Quotes About Illusion

Thus the fundamental illusion from which we must be disentangled, or "undone," is that the proper definition of the life of faith itself is first and foremost a belief system with behavioral consequences, rather than a way of being in the world whose behavior consequences make clear the things we believe. In other words, we are not acting upon beliefs so much as we are believing through action—we are not believers who act but actors who believe.

Where there is denial there is dysfunction, and the more one's faith resembles a fairy tale the sooner the clock strikes midnight.

We have constructed an artifice, a Potemkin village of an ecosystem where we perpetrate the illusion that the things we consume have just fallen off the back of Santa's sleigh, not been ripped from the earth. The illusion enables us to imagine that the only choices we have are between brands.

we perpetrate the illusion that the things we consume have just fallen off the back of Santa's sleigh, not been ripped from the earth. The illusion enables us to imagine that the only choices we have are between brands.

Reality is just a crutch for people who can't handle drugs.

Hollywood is a suction for your confidence or your faith or your togetherness. Just walking on the street you can feel it.

Pleasure is the carrot dangled to lead the ass to market or the precipice.

I learned that ruling poor men's hands is nothing. Ruling men's money's a wedge in the world. But after I'd split it open a crack I looked in and saw the trick inside it, the filthy nothing, the fooled and rotten faces of rich and successful men.

What is love if not a trick of the light?

Nothing is ever what it seems, he

I never believed Jacob was human. But sometimes, like a lot of predators, he did a decent impression of one.

created the first fake company approximately

The Cinderella story just never came true.

Stories," she says, "are the only thing in this world that are real. Everything else is just a dream.

His sense of humor is purely cheap vaudeville, yet everyone falls for it.

I look normal but i'm not

Everyone liked a clean-cut guy, and they tended to forget that appearances were deceiving. His

I had always thought it was her way of blinding herself to the messiness of the way we lived. Now I realised it was easier for her mind to go out through the air far above the clouds than to acknowledge the ugliness right before her eyes.

How can the moon be scooped from the water's surface, or flowers be plucked from the void?

I had always thought it was her way of blinding herself to the messiness of the way we lived. Now I realised it was easier for her mind to go out through the air far above the clouds then to acknowledge the ugliness right before her eyes.

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.

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.

Didn't he know that she was playing him? The funny thing was that they almost never, ever did. And even after they figured it out, they doubted themselves. Wanted to believe they were wrong. Even when there was no denying that they'd been had, you could almost always go back for a second helping.

Harry Houdini had a saying that came back to Ian now and again: For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who don't, none will suffice.