Quotes About Illusion

What I am certain of is that there's something wonky going on beneath the surface of what we call reality. Things are not as they appear. They are much, much more.

And if I said because I'm a witch, they'd think I was crazy.' 'That's exactly right,' she confirmed. 'Because everybody knows witches aren't real.' She nodded. 'Yes.' 'Except they really are real.' She continued nodding. 'Mm-hmm.' 'But you also told me Santa and the tooth fairy were real.' 'Those were lies,' she said. 'But they're lies every parent tells their children. So they're not really lies so much as a script.' 'I slept with teeth under my pillow, so it seems like a lie to me.

Was it a universal truth that the closer you looked at something, the more you would see but the less you would understand what you where looking at?

I realized I'd only seen him at night in dim, flattering restaurant lighting. The sun was not his friend.

Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter.

We never sampled our drugs because we were afraid of them, but to admit it aloud would have broken the spell.

I understood that instead of being a treat for me, the Certs had been a mild compromise for him. By letting me believe they were a special something, just for me, he didn't have to actually think of a special something for me.

It can be a bit of a puzzle, locating the single aspect of your life that isn't what it appears to be, the belief you assume you hold dear but that, in fact, you've never even questioned. It's hard to find what you don't know you're searching for.

It's amazing how drunk you can be without alcohol.

A person can be utterly incompetent and yet dazzlingly confident. What's more, this same person can know how incompetent they are and still be just as confident. Confidence has nothing to do with ability.

No, this is what has suddenly consumed me: if something were to happen on the island of Manhattan, the fact that we are, indeed, on an island would suddenly become a deep and terrible problem. I am wholly unequipped for a disaster. Vulnerable. The safety in numbers I had always felt in the city was an illusion. All those numbers could turn against each other under the right circumstances.

Motion, according to him, is an illusion, because we can demonstrate that it does not actually exist; the same for the multiplicity of existing things, which are in his logic, a single being, infinite, eternal, unchangeable. Like Heraclitus, Parmenides too, had his radical disciple, named Zeno. The latter had the habit of telling two stories to prove the inexistence of motion.

I was thirty-five and I'd thought I was playing political poker and it turned out I'd been playing in some other game I didn't even know about. Like I'd been holding a hand of kings and then the people around the table started putting down more kings, a king with a squid's face, a naked king with goat's horns holding up a bough of holly. A Russian king with an insect's voice.

The pleasure of being drunk is obviously the pleasure of escaping from the responsibility of consciousness. And so are the kind of social gatherings, held for no other purpose than the expression of hysterical chaos, where the guests wander around in an alcoholic stupor, prattling noisily and senselessly, and enjoying the illusion of a universe where one is not burdened with purpose, logic, reality or awareness.

You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn't want me to show it. You wanted an act to help your act...

He thought that they were walking there like Mickey and Minnie Mouse and that they probably appeared ridiculous to the passers-by.

He realized that when he had been afraid to change he had been holding on to the illusion of Old Cheese that was no longer there. So

He realized that when he had been afraid to change he had been holding on to the illusion of Old Cheese that was no longer there.

when he was afraid to changed he had been holding on to the illusion of Old Cheese that was no longer there

Although many pairs of lips spoke her name, none ever brought its reality to her.

In short, we suffer from an "illusion of control" that fools us into thinking the future is more predictable and less uncertain than it really is. Or worse, we believe we can influence chance events through our own actions.3

What is optimism? Alas, it is the mania for pretending that all is right, when in fact everything is wrong. —Voltaire, Candide

We have believed in any number of things - the tooth fairy, cold fusion, and benefits of smoking, the free lunch - that turn out not to exist. We all subscribe to preposterous beliefs; we just don't know yet which ones they are.

We all subscribe to preposterous beliefs; we just don't know yet which ones they are. We