Quotes About Illusion

In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member of the crew that he is doing everything. 

I daresay that was only river water, if we had known. But we did not know, so it was alright. What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over. (Chapter XII)

No; it is not well to rule one's self by theories. We think, when we are very young, that theories, or "philosophies" as we term them, are guiding lights, held out by Wisdom over the pathway of life; we learn, as we grow older, that, too often, they are mere will-o'-the-wisps, hovering over dismal swamps where dead men's bones lie rotting.

Jerome Tuccille

It was an amazing revelation in the subtleties of human psychology. The illusion of success becomes its own reality.

In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.

We were pretending, and everybody knew you didn't get hurt pretending.

What about the war?' the young woman sitting on Chance's left said, leaning close to him. 'The war? Which war?' said Chance. 'I've seen many wars on TV.' 'Alas,' the woman said, 'in this country, when we dream of reality television wakes us. To millions the war, I suppose, is just another TV program. But out there, at the front, real men are giving their lives.

Of all the manifold things there were in all the world—trees, grass, flowers, telephones, radios, elevators—only TV constantly held up a mirror to its own neither solid nor fluid face.

He was putting on a show for us, that much was clear, but why were we all watching it?

Mom had gotten herself so gorgeous she nearly broke the mirror

And the and-then-I-woke-up-and-it-was-all-a-dream ending is simply inexcusable in fiction intended for an audience over the age of four.   The Golden Bottle will take two hours from the readers' life that they won't get back.

The eye sees everything upside down," the artist explained, "and then the brain automatically reverses it. I'm just trying to put it back the way the mind sees it." Alvis

Reality is not necessarily my friend—then again, neither are dreams—but this moment, this reality, is beautiful.

But it was him, not God or any other... illusory power... who tore me away from that fire. I give credit where credit is due. One human being made a choice, he acted, and I owe him my life. No god killed my parents, nearly killed James, and spared me. I know that, and I can't go back and believe in things that I used to believe in.. or that I used to want to believe in. I don't know how much faith I had to lose that night, but whatever I have is gone now

Beer goggles are no match for atrocious lighting.

And believing that we are broken is the same as being broken. It means we experience ourselves that way. That perception shapes our reality. It is an illusion we must strive to avoid, as great misery comes from such a belief.

My delusionary hell does not agree with yours.

Dear Die-ary, I stared, motionless, before the mirror. As always, I stayed until I'm convinced that there is no glass, nothing, separating me from the room I see on the other side. I imagine that everything is different over there. Better. There are people, in that world, who I would like. But, like always, my hand hits the glass. I know that if I'd only waited just one more second... Shit. I'm gonna go kill a party clown.

She had preferred being on the plane, detached from the earth, the illusion of sitting still.

But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out of dreams, its reality and its particular logic rendered meaningless in the light of day.

on the surface of the Grand Canal, my writing in Italian is something impalpable. Nebulous, like the fog. I'm afraid that the bridge between me and Italian doesn't, ultimately, exist. That it will remain, at best, a chimera.

Superstition moulds nature into an arbitrary semblance of the supernatural, and then bows down to the work of its own hands.

It could have been like a fairy tale. But fairy tales aren't real. Things don't work like that. There's a price for everything.