Quotes About Illusion

the pattern-recognition machinery in our brains is so efficient in extracting a face from a clutter of other detail that we sometimes see faces where there are none. We assemble disconnected patches of light and dark and unconsciously try to see a face. The Man in the Moon is one result. Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup describes another. There are many other examples.

where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise wrote the poet Thomas Gray.

True memories seemed like phantoms, while false memories were so convincing that they replaced reality. GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Strange Pilgrims (1992)

The Cardiff Giant that most Americans have seen is this copy. Barnum exhibited a fake fake.

The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.

We worry, and for good reason, about adults who still believe in Santa Clause.

Everything diminishes with time, my darling, but my feelings for certain people pierce me daily, and it is no illusion that they center me and let me know who I am, and let me know that I have loved and have been loved, no matter how badly or clumsily.

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that was it isn't so funny.

I don't want realism, I want magic! Yes, yes, magic!

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn't so funny.

Así es. Todas las muchachas lindas son una trampa y los hombres esperan que lo sean.

How about these birthday congratulations, these many, many happy returns of the day, when ev'rybody but you knows there won't be any!

BLANCHE: You see I still have that awful vanity about my looks even now that my looks are slipping!

Entra Tom. Va vestido como un marino mercante. Cruza hasta la escalera de incendios, donde se detiene y enciende un cigarrillo. Se dirige el público.   TOM: Es cierto, me reservo algunos trucos, me guardo algún as en la manga. Pero soy lo contrario de un mago de la escena. Él ofrece una ilusión con apariencia de verdad, yo os entregaré la verdad con el amable disfraz de la ilusión.

I don't want realism

Honey, you're not operating on the realistic level anymore than I am.

Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.

A hallucination is a species of reality, as capable of teaching you as a videotape about Kilimanjaro or anything else that falls through your life.

The real truth, that dare not speak itself, is that no one is in control. Absolutely no one.

How could Mark be halfway across the world when she would have sworn he'd been in this room with her only seconds ago?

Arian's ebony hair was spread in a shimmering fan around her shoulders, reminding Tristan absurdly of Snow White in her glass coffin. Even in death, hadn't the deceptive blush of life stained Snow White's pallid cheeks? Hadn't her rosebud lips parted as if to welcome a kiss from a prince who might never come? Hadn't the creamy swell of her breasts tantalized every hopelessly naive kid in the theater into daring to believe her chest would rise just one more time?

Even in lies there are sometimes truths revealed.

He understood that letting the magic guide him, that letting it think it was in control when actually it wasn't, allowed him to be its master.

We think we know them, but we really don't. We let ourselves be deceived because we are always expecting the best out of those who seem willing to provide it.