Quotes About Illusion

Going quail hunting is like saying "I'm going fishing," and going to a goldfish bowl and going "Got it!"

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

There is no me. I do not exist. There used to be a me but I had it surgically removed.

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.

Used to do a lot of falling in love with people, almost in the street, and imagining that there would be no obstacle to a happy love story other than finding the 'right person'.

I used to think I actually was Batman.

Something I've learned being in this industry for so long is that if you want to work with somebody, call them up. Very few musicians have any illusions about genre boundaries. They are useful descriptive terms, but they don't really bind musicians.

In general, a writer would like to think that the best book that he has written is the book that he is writing, and the next book will be even better. Maybe if this is not true, it is very useful to keep the illusion alive.

Magic is something that happens that appears to be impossible. What I call 'illusion magic' uses laws of science and nature that are already known. Real magic uses laws that haven't yet been discovered.

The secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is to give the other side the illusion of control. Don't try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Ask questions, that begin with 'How?' or 'What?' so your opponent uses mental energy to figure out the answer.

Where 'Paranormal Activity' really comes into its own is its rhetoric of legitimacy - how it uses itself to authenticate itself, and thus furthers the pretence of being real.

I don't think Othello is a jealous man - he is a man who has been deceived by another person, just as everybody in the play is deceived by that person... The playwright uses the word 'jealousy' over and over and over again, but I don't think it has anything to do with being jealous.

People may think I'm trying something new by telling stories, but they're just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That's what I do.

Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.

And the nature of magic is all in the person's experience. Whether the magician is using a highly complex sleight of hand or he's just got two cards that are the same, it doesn't matter: it's how it's sold and how magical it is for the person that matters.

Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.

My relationship to reality has been so utterly skewed for so long that I don't even notice it any more. It's just my reality.

Deep down, I think I would be utterly miserable in Hollywood.

Instagram is an app, it is not a realistic representation of anyone's life - do not base your idea of what your body, hair, face, vacation, relationship or meal should be like according to what you see on it.

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.