Quotes About Illusion

David Foster Wallace

The executive intern never brushed her hair after a shower. She just gave her head two or three shakes and let it fall gloriously where it might and turned, slightly, to give Ellen Bactrian the full effect: 'Who?' She had ten weeks left to live.

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

hindsight, the illusion appears arational, almost literally fantastic: it would be like being able both to lie and to trust other people at the same time.

college students and alcoholics/addicts are the worst: they deep-down believe they're exempt from the laws of physics and statistics that ironly govern everybody else.

Y tomaba mi silencio por aprobación. La esencia del abismo era que ella creía que no existía ningún abismo

Marathe shifted in his chair. 'In a case such as this you become the slave who believes he is free.

David Foster Wallace

The lie is that it's one or the other. A still, floating bee is moving faster than it can think. From overhead the sweetness drives it crazy.

with a big color Xerox of M. Hamilton as Oz's West Witch on the door and custom fiber-wiring for a tri-modem TP console.

My husband laughed without smiling. He looked at the last of the sun-colored water as we approached the Brooklyn Bridge's system of angled shadows. If no one is really the way we see them, that would include me, I said. And you. Rudy admired the sunset. He said it looked explosive, hanging, all round, just over the water. Reflected and doubled in that bit of river. But he was looking only at the water. I saw him.

Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks of men. Tell them how could you even hope to love what you can't grab onto.

Lo que intento decir es que pienso que esto forma parte de lo que se supone que significa en realidad ese mantra de que las humanidades «te enseñan a pensar»: ser un poco menos arrogante, tener cierta «conciencia crítica» de mí mismo y de mis certidumbres… porque un gran porcentaje de las cosas de las que suelo estar automáticamente seguro resultan ser completamente erróneas y fruto de engañarme a mí mismo.

It starts to turn out that the vapider the AA cliche, the sharper the canines of the real truth it covers.

Sviare l'attenzione, il segreto è tutto lì, tesoro. Non hai bisogno di chissà quali marchingegni, botole, casse con il doppio fondo, tavoli strani. Ho sempre sostenuto che un uomo disposto a imparare come si svia l'attenzione della gente può sfilare un oggetto dalla tasca, metterlo in un cappello e infine estrarlo. Resteranno tutti a bocca aperta, chiedendosi da dove è spuntata quella roba.

n tempo sembravano puttane. Adesso somigliavano a studentesse universitarie. Volevano tutte sembrare studentesse. Perché non ci andavano davvero, all'università, allora? Non avrebbero avuto niente di diverso dalle altre. Nessuno le avrebbe mai notate. Cristo, che maniera assurda di stare al mondo.

Un tempo sembravano puttane. Adesso somigliavano a studentesse universitarie. Volevano tutte sembrare studentesse. Perché non ci andavano davvero, all'università, allora? Non avrebbero avuto niente di diverso dalle altre. Nessuno le avrebbe mai notate. Cristo, che maniera assurda di stare al mondo.

Beyond that elfin face, the steady eyes, there was something breathing, something that was fed blood from a tiny heart beating under pointed breasts. But is was cobweb under the fingers. Cobweb in the woods that touches the face and disappears under the fingers.

Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that faded utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank, so that you might write on it to somebody else.

and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no more like the real one than this absurd little print which he cherished. But what man in love, of us, is better informed? - or is he much happier when he sees and owns his delusion?

Pasamos por el mundo profanándolo todo hora tras hora y siempre soñando con un mundo mejor, más lleno de tributos y de esclavos. No entendemos la casa que nos dieron, creemos que vinimos a mandar, ejecutores de una ley tan ciega como nosotros mismos

He loved a shadow I'd created in his mind.