Reality

"Reading is a sage way to bump up against life. Reading may be an escape, but it is not an escape from my own life and problems.  It is an escape from the narrow boundaries of being only me. Reading in some wonderful ways helps me find out who I am. When she was a young girl Patricia Mac Lachlan's mother encouraged her to "read a book and find out who you are." And it is true that in some ways reading defines me as it refines me. Reading enlarges my vision of the world; it helps me understand someone who is different from me. It makes me bigger on the inside. We tend to see the world from our own perspective; it is good to see it from the eyes of others. Good literature helps me understand who I am in relation to what others experience. Far from being an escape from reality, good literature is a window into reality. I read to feel life."

"Outside has everything. Whenever I think of a thing now like skis or fireworks or islands or elevators or yo-yos, I have to remember they're real, they're actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they're all really in Outside. I'm not there, though, me and Ma, we're the only ones not there. Are we still real?"

"...one could accept Muhammad as a genuine mystic—just as one could accept Joan of Arc's voices as having genuinely been heard by her, or the revelations of Saint John the Divine as being that troubled soul's 'real' experiences—without needing also to accept that, had one been standing next to the Prophet of Islam on Mount Hira that day, one would also have seen the Archangel."

"The world is full of opinions. But I am not searching for opinions, I'm searching for truths."

"The truth feels like it hurts, yet actually it builds. A lie feels like it builds, yet actually it hurts."

"I have blogged previously about the dangerous and deadly effects of science denialism, from the innocent babies unnecessarily exposed to deadly diseases by other kids whose parents are anti-vaxxers, to the frequent examples of how acceptance of evolution helps us stop diseases and pests (and in the case of Baby Fae, rejection of evolution was fatal), to the long-term effects of climate denial to the future of the planet we all depend upon. But one of the strangest forms of denialism is the weird coalition of people who refuse to accept the medical fact that the HIV virus causes AIDS. What the heck? Didn’t we resolve this issue in the 1980s when the AIDS condition first became epidemic and the HIV virus was discovered and linked to AIDS? Yes, we did—but for people who want to deny scientific reality, it doesn’t matter how many studies have been done, or how strong the scientific consensus is. There are a significant number of people out there (especially among countries and communities with high rates of AIDS infections) that refuse to accept medical reality. I described all of these at greater length in my new book Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future."

"The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact."

"Dreams can be of value even if you don’t have an opportunity to turn them into reality."

"There are plenty of atheists in foxholes. What I don't see are Christians in foxholes. If a Christian soldier takes a bullet to the knee, he will undoubtedly first call for a medic, not a priest. Reliance on god is typically only available when a problem can be ignored without discomfort or when the problem belongs to others (where it can be ignored without discomfort). When the chips are down, like when you have a serious illness or you've been shot or you’re at war, even the most devout Christians rely on humans (doctors or other soldiers) even though they'll swear up and down that it’s god helping them."

"I have a firm belief in such things as, you know, the water, the Earth, the trees and sky. And I'm wondering, it is increasingly difficult to find those elements in nature, because it's nature I believe in rather than some spiritual t"

"She toyed around with his smiles and emotions, till they actually turned plastic. And then, She changed the toy…"

"I repeat one of my mantras. 'This is not happening. This is not real. This did not happen to you. That was someone else."

"I live in a world where people are guided by limited imagination; only facts that are favorable to them are truths. They are unable to live anyway else. When a person finds out that a fact is against them, it's usually because it's the truth. No one tries to step outside of the edge of reason. No one tries to step beyond the edge of the world."

"Life truly becomes exactly what you make it. All the choices lead to the reality you are experiencing."

"It can be heartbreaking when you find out that your fairytale image of the world doesn't match the reality."

"Cucullus non facit monachum; that’s as much to say, as I wear not motley in my brain."

"It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described."

"The idea of a divine creator belittles the elegant reality of the universe."

"From a universal perspective, what you do matters less than how you feel about what you do."

"The ocean was back in the pond, and the only knowledge I was left with, as if I had woken from a dream on a summer's day, was that it had not been long ago since I had known everything. I looked at Lettie in the moonlight. "Is that how it is for you? I asked. "Is what how it is for me" "Do you still know everything, all the time" ... She wrinkled her nose. "Everybody did. I told you. It's nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play." "To play what" "This," she said. She waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and the shawls and clusters of bright stars."