Quotes About Illusion

Just as the word and its absence of enjoyment are central in the society of prohibition, the image and its illusion of present enjoyment are central in the society of enjoyment. This shift in primacy from the word to the image corresponds, in the terms of psychoanalysis, to a change in emphasis from the symbolic order to the imaginary. This means, most obviously, that images have more of an effect on us today than words, that we are increasingly dealing with images rather than words.

Most people outside of America won't get it. It's the Easter bunny. It's another lie and I don't understand why we had to invent this character.

The story you are about to read is a work of fiction. Nothing - and everything - about it is real.

Currency is… a shared delusion in the minds of all men, a necessary delusion if civilised society were not to fall… yet so many lives, so many cities and kingdoms and nations, ultimately depend on hoping that no man ever stops to wonder why he values discs of a shiny yellow metal so highly…"   -

My old skill at self-delusion overrode my doubts as I told myself that Dexter probably believed in me. I could believe anything then. I still can as long as it is improbable.

The remarkable writings of Oliver Sacks, for instance, show that the brain continually works to create and maintain the feeling of an "I" that is in control, even if there is in fact no part of the brain that can be identified as the locus of "self feeling.

Whatever he thought he was, it was painfully clear he was not.

Otro ejemplo de esta atención al detalle es la forma en que se construyó el castillo. Las piedras en la base son mayores que las que están cerca del tejado. Eso hace que el castillo parezca más grande, pero sin hacerlo demasiado imponente.

Perception and reality are two different things.

A lot of people are living in a dream world - they want to deny that aging occurs or believe it doesn't have to occur. They'll hold on to this belief until the moment they die. The reality will eventually hit them.

Doubting what you see is a very odd experience. And doubting what you remember is a little less odd than doubting what you see. But it's also a pretty odd experience, because some memories come with a very compelling sense of truth about them, and that happens to be the case even for memories that are not true.

Getting all dressed up and putting on fancy clothes - all of that's a great thing, but oddly, it doesn't really have a lot to do with acting most of the time.

I'm friends with Criss Angel. Criss has offered me a million times to go downstairs and see the setup. I don't want to see it. I just want to go, 'God, how did you do that?'

Sometimes James Bond movies drive me crazy. They're fun to watch, but they don't have anything to do at all with what intelligence officers really do.

Just after Kim Jong Il's death, the official news agency put out an article saying that under Kim Jong Il's rule, the people had been like naive children without a care in the world.

Architects of grandeur are often the master builders of disillusionment.

What fame does is there is an illusion of familiarity that is cast into the world. So it's about negotiating with that illusion because, oftentimes, you encounter people who have encountered you, but you haven't encountered them. It's a little weird to find your footing.

Oh, what lies there are in kisses.

With Tinder and all these other things, there's always this kind of illusion with infinite choices. There's something very cool about saying, 'Oh, I actually really care about this person, and I want to commit to loving this person and being loyal to this person.' You can't get that from the kind of infinite multiple choices that are out there.

You may look at us actors and think that, 'Oh my God, they are so pretty, so perfect.' But that's not how it is. It takes two hours to get ready and look like this.

OK, magic boy, let's see who you really are.

I foolishly thought that if I just 'made it' then everything would be okay. And everything wasn't okay.

I wish people could have seen what they called our mansion. They would have been so disappointed, because it was just an old house that we fixed up, and I love the old house.

I am always coming up with architectural metaphors when I think about writing. But I think one of the things that draw us to literature is that it gives us this very attractive illusion that there is meaning in the world - things connect.