quotations about reality
These days even reality has to look artificial.
J. G. BALLARD
Kingdom Come
Whatever reality is, it's not that.
HERMAN NORTHROP FRYE
The Anatomy of Criticism
Absolute reality is and always will be unknowable to us.
LEENA KROHN
"Cracking the Codes of Leena Krohn", The New Yorker, January 13, 2016
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
O the heart has dreams Elysian!
That steal o'er it calm and sweet,
Hushing pain like a magician
Who binds spirits at his feet.
WALTER RICHARD CASSELS
"Reality", Eidolon, or the Course of a Soul and Other Poems
We live on two levels ... the realistic level and the fantastic level, and which is the real one, really?
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Night of the Iguana
Without poetry, reality is speechless.
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
T. S. ELIOT
Murder in the Cathedral
It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Angel's Game
Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Against Certainty"
By changing your mind, you change everything.
PATANJALI
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Doth the reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?
GEORGE BERKELEY
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous
The world could only be known as it existed in men's hearts. For while it seemed a place which contained men it was in reality a place contained within them.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
Reality, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Reality is frequently inaccurate.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Reality is subject to the mind's creation.
DIANE STEIN
Essential Reiki
There are some things that just have to be whether they are or not, have to be a damn sight more than some other things that are and it don't matter a damn whether they are or not.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
There is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
The angel of reality is unknowable, a figure only partially apprehended, then transformed into something else in continuous movement--here and then gone.
DAVID MICHAEL HERTZ
Angels of Reality
I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
letter to Countee Cullen, 1943