Quotes About Illusion

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable... The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head.

It's one of the great fallacies, it seems to me, that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to man.

Puts a weight on ya. Goin' out lookin' for somepin you know you ain't gonna find.

Part of the far shore disappeared into a shimmer that looked like water. There was no certainty in seeing, no proof that what you saw was there or was not there. And the people of the Gulf expected all places were that way, and it was not strange to them.

Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.

In town in a whorehouse. That's where your money's goin'. Jesus, I seen it happen too many times. I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.

It is good to know what you are doing. The man with his pickled fish has set down one truth and has recorded in his experience many lies. The fish is not that color, that texture, that dead, nor does he smell that way.

And the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realized that what they had wanted was happiness.

It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is as white as snow.

I had made myself believe that the eyes are not the mirror of the soul. Some of the deadliest little female contraptions I ever saw had the faces and the eyes of angels.

Was she very beautiful, Samuel? To you she was because you built her. I don't think you ever saw her--only your own creation.

Oh! Alice in Wonderland. You're too big for that.

She told the best lie of all—the truth.

It's one of the great fallacies, it seems to me," said Lee, "that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to a man.

I seen too many guys with land in their head. They never get none under their hand.

Usted ve lo que es, mientras que la mayor parte de la gente ve lo que espera ver

And every fall a great number of men set out to prove that without talent, training, knowledge, or practice they are dead shots with rifle or shotgun. The results are horrid.

And the greatest foolishness of all lies in the fact that to do it at all, the writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true. If he does not, the work is not worth even what it otherwise might have been.

Students present themselves...like a succession of CDs whose shimmering surface gives no clue to their contents without the equipment to play them.

Which witch is which?

Death is easily fooled. If the churches don't work, a filter will do.

A jelen a paradicsom, ám az agyunk nem engedi, hogy sokáig éljünk benne.

Although this block of brick three-stories is just like the one he left, something in it makes him happy; the steps and windowsills seem to twitch and shift in the corner of his eye, alive. This illusion trips him. His hands lift of their own and he feels the wind on his ears even before, his heels hitting heavily on the pavement at first but with an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter, he runs. Ah: runs. Runs.