You fight your superficiality, you shallowness, as to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as unbank-like as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them menacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong, you might as well have the brain if a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and them you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting, and you get them wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words, and then proposing that there word people are closer to the real thing than we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful consideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that - well, lucky you.

— Philip Roth

You have to realize that modern power, is nothing but a concept in the mind of the one who’s under the power. And once you realize this, you realize that authority is indeed an illusion.

— Phoenix Sinistra

You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.' Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?' The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.

— J.D. Salinger

You know what an illusion is? On this planet, one small cloud has the ability to block the entire sun.

— J.R. Rim

You lost your ability to choose the moment you started to use your eyes to see, and your heart to feel. Choice has become nothing but an illusion for you.

— Lionel Suggs

Your body and my body are both totally made up of and dependent upon the elements of the earth—the water, the air, the heat, the land, the soil and the food it produces—as well as all the elements that these elements are dependent upon—the sun, the stars, the galaxies, and a vast field of energy and space to contain them in. Nature is our extended body, and the elements outside our skin are just as important to our health as the elements within our skin. Our bodies are connected to the universe as a whole, and consequently to each other and the many ways in which we influence our shared environment.

— Joseph P. Kauffman

You're absolutely insane, that much I'm certain of, but it's one of the many things I love about you.

— Ashley Beale

You're a dream. Like everything else.

— Kelly Creagh

Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your kiss just seems too real Your touch the only thing I feel From your presence I can't seem to heal love without a seal The faceless ghost in my dreams that I can't evade

— Evy Michaels