quotations about reality
All reality is a game. Physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance; the same description may be applied to the best, most elegant and both intellectually and aesthetically satisfying games. By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of its rules.
IAIN M. BANKS
The Player of Games
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!
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
There are intangible realities which float near us, formless and without words; realities which no one has thought out, and which are excluded for lack of interpreters.
NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY
attributed, Mystery in Life
Reality is subject to the mind's creation.
DIANE STEIN
Essential Reiki
Without poetry, reality is speechless.
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge
There is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
Reality is not a fad That changes with the latest whim.
DAVID EDWIN HALL
"Rejoicing in Reality", Quiet Time Poems
I've never felt Truth was Beauty. Never. I've always felt that people can't take too much reality. I like being in Ingmar Bergman's world. Or in Louis Armstrong's world. Or in the world of the New York Knicks. Because it's not this world. You spend your whole life searching for a way out. You just get an overdose of reality, you know, and it's a terrible thing. I'm always fighting against reality.
WOODY ALLEN
attributed, Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles
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
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
JOHN LENNON
attributed, As Time Goes By: Living in the Sixties with John Lennon
I like reality. It tastes like bread.
JEAN ANOUILH
Plays
The raw materials of reality without the glue of time are materials adrift and reality is as meaningless as the balsa parts of a model airplane scattered to the wind.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Better to bridge the gap between virtual reality and reality reality by marrying the two, by enhancing our environment and finding further means to access those populating it, even if through a game.
AMANDA KNOX
"Amanda's View: Reality is Better", Ballard News Tribune
Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Against Certainty"
Reality is frequently inaccurate.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
T. S. ELIOT
Murder in the Cathedral
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
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