Quotes About Illusion

She was a cartoonist, not an engineer; reality could get stuffed.

The aspiring novelist in me wants a secret tunnel hidden behind a false wall, or a poster of a famous movie star, or

Neither disclosed these private discomforts. Each wanted the other to have the illusion that they might pause, anywhere, at any moment, and make love. And while both thought this was highly unlikely—not in this heat, not at this hour—the possibility kept bubbling up, every place they touched. This was the only true protection they'd brought with them as they walked deeper into the blue-gold Mojave.

At times, my brother made me think of one of those tapered, horned conch shells, with a glossy pink interior curving away and out of sight into some tightly wound inner mystery. You could hold your ear to such a shell and imagine you heard the depths of a vast roaring ocean—but it was really just a trick of acoustics.

Life was a good dream, but now I'm awake. Only demons cling to life after their time is up.

Maybe it was better to just go on believing everything was OK, even when really bad things were just about to happen.

He used books the same way he used alcohol: to pretend that he was not here, and if he was here, that he was happy for a change.

The truth is more complicated than that,"she said, "not as neat.

You might as well get used to the idea: All the evils of this world are nothing but pictures in the mind. When you know this, they begin to dissolve.

Memories are like everything else. They're a trap.

Ah, love at first sight. When you see someone so beautiful that you forget they aren't there just for you.

Love is a dream someone else had last night.

Belief is merely a thought or idea that is held to be true. No thought or idea is true. This is the flaw. In fact, in direct experience, no thought or idea can be found.

Belief cannot give you what already is. Belief can merely obscure that clarity of ever-present reality, which is non-conceptual.

minor magics meant to amuse and entertain.

The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Here too it's masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind. I grasped a lovely masked procession, And caught things from a horror show… I'd gladly settle for a false impression, If it would last a little longer, though.

What I possess, seems far away to me, and what is gone becomes reality.

Everything transitory is but an image.

I nothing had, and yet enough for youth--Joy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth. Give unrestrained, the old emotion, The bliss that touched the verge of pain, The strength of Hate, Love's deep devotion,--O, give me back my youth again!