Quotes about Reality

Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.

She understands all at once, with a small shock, exactly what it is she always needed to tell Harland: being there in person is not the same as watching. You might see things better on television, but you'll never know if you were alive or dead while you watched.

I'm always looking at the dialectic between the truth we believe exists outside ourselves and the truth we invent for ourselves.

Maggot calmed me down by explaining Bible stories were a category of superhero comic. Not to be confused with real life.

You learn to read so you can identify the reality in which you live, so that you can become a protagonist of history rather than a spectator.

But people desire fair government. You say that constantly." "They want to believe in heroes, also. And villains. Especially when very frightened. It's less taxing than the truth.

And then while we all still waited I understood that the terror of my recurring dream was not about losing just vision, but the whole of myself, whatever that was. What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

People had to manage terrible truths.

If the grown-up version of me could have one chance at walking backwards into this story, part of me wishes I could sit down on the back pew with that pissed-off kid in his overly tight church clothes and Darkhawk attitude, and tell him: You think you're giant but you are such a small speck in the screwed-up world. This is not about you.

Physical pleasure was such a convincing illusion, and sex, the ultimate charade of safety.

At sunrise it always seems like you've got a good crack at getting everything done, but at sunset you know that you didn't.

The more aware we are of our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.