Quotes about Perception

The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.

Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?

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

God is frightful, God is great--you pick. I choose this: God is in the details, the completely unnecessary miracles sometimes tossed up as stars to guide us. They are the promise of good fortune in a cloudless day, and the animals in the clouds; look hard enough, and you'll see them. Don't ask if they're real.

Most of them don't know what communism is, could not pick it out of a lineup. They only know what anticommunism is. The two are practically unrelated.

Be still, and the world is bound to turn herself inside out to entertain you. Everywhere you look, joyful noise is clanging to drown out quiet desperation.

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.

Words were not just words, describing things a person could see. Even if most did not. Maybe they had to know a thing first, to see it.

I thought everything in the world was already discovered. Already in my books. A lot of dead stuff that put me to sleep. That was the day I understood the world is still living.

I'd forgotten how trees full of bird sounds made you sense the world differently: that life didn't just stop at eye level.

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