Appearance is something absolute, but reality is not that way – everything is interdependent, not absolute.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.

My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‚This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.‘ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Appearance is something absolute, but reality is not that way – everything is interdependent, not absolute. So that view is very helpful to maintain a peace of mind because the main destroyer of a peaceful mind is anger.

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

The darkness is really out there. It’s not something that’s in my head, just. It’s in my work because it’s in the world.

There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you’re a Christian you’ve got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It’s no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that’s going to go, ‚Yeah, give me some of that?‘

Seeing is not always believing.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I’ll show you a poorly uniformed leader.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

I always liked characters that were more grounded in reality.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Why is it you always meet people when you look your worst?

Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

I can tell you all kinds of moral tales, but fashion and reality are vaguely different.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by ‚sophisticated‘ methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

I like to make people feel happy and superior in their reaction towards my appearance.

Particularly Instagram, people look like they have a much better life than they really do. People basically seem like they are way better-looking than they really are, and they are way happier-seeming than they really are.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime.

I’m odd looking. Sometimes I think I look like a funny muppet.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

I am odd-looking. I sometimes think I look like a funny Muppet.

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been part of my quest for immaculate reality.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.

My concern today is not with the length of a person’s hair but with his conduct.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

My life is real.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if we have one or two really good friends, we are lucky.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.