Quotes About Illusion

Official truths are often powerful illusions.

The make-believe world of 'The Black Tower' succeeds by broadcasting larger truths that might otherwise elude us.

I believe that all is illusion and vanity outside the treasure of truths slowly accumulated, and which will never again be lost. I believe that the sum of these truths, always increasing, will at last confer on man incalculable power and peace, if not happiness. Yes, I believe in the final triumph of life.

Safety is an illusion, and trying to protect ourselves does nothing more than protect us from experiencing a full, evolved, and juicy life.

I'm not trying to make everything this fantasy world about how I'm living this lavish life that I'm not really living.

Hollywood always represents this big dream and fairy tale in people's minds, but to me, it's just hard work. Of course, we play fairy tale on the red carpet. It's all Cinderella. But when the clock strikes midnight, I turn into a gray mouse and I go home, and I take my dress off and it's over. That's Hollywood.

The fairytale has turned into a nightmare.

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.

What it turns out is that we think we're multitasking, but we're not. The brain is sequential tasking: we flit from one thought to the next very, very rapidly, giving us the illusion that what we're doing is doing all these things at once.

Everything is Song. Everything is Silence. Since it all turns out to be illusion, perfectly being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, you are free to die laughing.

One of my rules is never explain. A writer is a lot like a magician, if you explain how the trick works then a lot of the magic turns mundane.

As it turns out, what looks like science sometimes is not.

That's the trouble with stories. People start out fantastic. You think they're extraordinary, but it turns out as the work goes along, they're just average with a good education.

We thought we'd leave communism behind, and everything would turn out fine. But it turns out you can't leave this and become free, because these people don't understand what freedom is.

Nothing you see on TV is real.

There's a difference between reality TV and reality. There's a big difference.

People think what you are doing is real, on a TV show.

By creating so many illusory images of physical perfection, whether on store aisles or storefront ads, magazine covers or TV shows, we speak more to the profit margins of companies than the self-esteem of today's girls.

TV shows and movies are a rare form of atemporality, and in an ever-changing, always-on world, spoilers feel irrefutable - sheer access to them gives the illusion of control.

As in all TV shows, and especially a show called 'Mistresses,' all is not going to be as it seems.

I like when I tweet about Tony Hawk. A lot of times, people think it's true; like, I've tweeted about having lunch with him a lot, and people are like, 'Oh, how was he?' or, like, 'Do you have a pic?' I don't know how to explain it. He's right at the level where people could almost believe it, but it's also a really weird pairing.

It got to the point where I would wake up at 6 A.M. and go on my phone and tweet something and have it be really good and get lots of retweets... and then I would wake up, because it was actually a dream; I would wake up with my hand holding nothing - an air phone.

It's very difficult to play opposite nothing. I did it for, like, six years - I ran from an invisible smoke monster for most of my twenties.

Friends and family were convinced I was functioning just fine because I was efficient, productive and successful - who wouldn't be working twenty hour days? I had everybody fooled with my illness.