Quotes About Illusion

Arnie had always called her a dreamer, and maybe he was right about that.

I want an explanation!" "I'll give you one," Maxine said: "You're crazy.

Horror shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory.

Houses weren't haunted, only human minds.

They looked, to all intents and purposes, like living men and women. But then wasn't that the trick of their craft? To imitate life so well the illusion was indistinguishable from the real thing?

Brooding only looks good in the movies.

Welcome to the worst nightmare of all, reality!

The man's head nodded to his chest; he looked like a drunk who had dozed off. But it was an act.

You should see the latest computer-generated movies featuring the long-gone old stars with the new. I've watched the video of Arizona Sunset at least a dozen times. Who plays the leads? Humphrey Bogart, Lionel Barrymore, Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts, and Tom Cruise. It's so real, you'd swear they all acted together on the set.

Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.

Life is smoke, plain and simple; we just fool ourselves that it's otherwise. All it takes is one good gust and we float away and disappear, leaving behind only the scent of our passing in the form of memories.

A journey is not a cure. It brings an illusion, only, of change, and becomes at best a spartan comfort

Trekkers at high altitudes sometimes sense a person walking a few paces behind them, just out of sight. Often this person is dead. I never feel this, but once or twice I imagine someone walking a little ahead of me.

The mere fact of Vegas, its necessity, was an indictment of our normal lives. If we needed this place--to transform into a high roller or a sexy swinger, to be someone else, a winner for once--then certainly the world beyond the desert was a small and mealy place indeed.

He is fat and pink. On the United Elevator Co. advertisements, they airbrush away the pocks in his cheeks, the red slivers in his nose. In person he is too flesh, a handful of raw meat. Dogs have been known to follow him, optimistic.

It was a gorgeous and intricate delusion, Manhattan, and from crooked angles on overcast days you saw it disintegrate, were forced to consider this tenuous creature in its true nature.

Try to forget bit by bit, it will be easier on you. Leave it behind. Then the plane tilts in its escape and over the gray wing the city explodes into view with all its miles and spires and inscrutable hustle and as you try to comprehend this sight you realize that you were never really there at all.

This or this," his eye doctor asked at checkups, a choice between two lenses of different power. Elwood never ceased to marvel how you could walk around and get used to seeing only a fraction of the world. Not knowing you only saw a sliver of the real thing. This or this?

Verkligheten var en föränderlig skyltning i ett butiksfönster, manipulerad av händer när man inte såg, lockande och ständigt utom räckhåll.

The iron horse still rumbled through the tunnel when she woke. Lumbly's words returned to her: If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.

of a runaway? Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the

Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth. Nothing

the con men never betray the game.

The elevator world will look like Heaven but not the Heaven you have reckoned.