Quotes About Illusion

You'll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you're still the one in control.

people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong.

If you want something to be true badly enough, you can rewrite it that way, in your head. You can even start to believe it.

They're fake bullets, so why do I feel like Im bleeding out?

If the past few months have taught me anything, it's that friendship is a smoke screen. The people you think are solid turn out to be mirrors and light; and then you look down and realize there are others you took for granted, those who are your foundation.

Families were never what you wanted them to be. We all wanted what we couldn't have: the perfect child, the doting husband, the mother who wouldn't let go. We live in our grown-up dollhouses completely unaware that, at any moment, a hand might come in and change around everything we'd become accustomed to.

Time is an optical illusion- never quite as soild or strong as we think it is

Even the most beautiful things can be toxic.

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade.

Each memory is like a paper flower stowed up a magician's sleeve: invisible one moment and then so substantial and florid the next I cannot imagine how it stayed hidden all this time. And like those paper flowers, once they've been let loose in the world, the memories are impossible to tuck away again.

When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.

That's the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.

Time is an optical illusion-- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is.

Maybe if you spend your life pretending you're on a movie set, you don't ever have to admit that the walls are made out of paper and the food is plastic and the words in your mouth aren't really yours.

I've been an idiot to think that real life could have a happy ending

People believed what they wanted to believe, no matter what was right in front of their eyes.

Peter took a shuddering breath. He wondered what his fish had thought, expecting the cool blue of the sea, only to wind up swimming in shit.

You cannot trust perception. Falling, at first, feels like flying.

Lie to yourself until it's true.

It feels like a punch. Tears fill my eyes, and I wonder how I could be upset over losing something I never had.

People had figured out all sorts of ways to make things seem different than they truly were.

I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.