Quotes About Illusion

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art, there are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

Nothin's real scary except in books.

Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn't the way they actually are.

What happened after that had a dreamlike quality: in a dream I saw the jury return, moving like underwater swimmers, and Judge Taylor's voice came from far away, and was tiny. I saw something only a lawyer's child could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and it was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun was empty.

I thought we were just people. I have no idea." Her uncle smiled, and an unholy light appeared in his eyes. He's gonna skate off now, she thought. I can never catch him and bring him back.

Men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes, Jean Louise. They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways.

Men tend to carry their honesty in pigeonholes. They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways.

It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.

In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.

Things outside you are projections of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you're stepping into the labyrinth inside.

Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.

Please remember: things are not what they seem.

What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things.

Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.

It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.

Some things, you know, if you say them, it makes them not true?

Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?

From a distance, most things look beautiful.

Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free?

It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.

Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.

Don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality!

Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory.