Fran Lebowitz Quotes

The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for dramatic effect. The theater is unnatural, a place of imagination. But the theater tells the audience something true: that the world requires judgments.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.

Reality has a way of intruding upon illusion.

It is faith that moves mountains, because it gives the illusion that mountains move …. Illusion is perhaps the only reality in life.

Let me tell you the truth. The truth is what is, and what should be is a fantasy. A terrible, terrible lie that someone gave to the people long ago.

People don't really want reality. They want theater, and that's different.

I like illusion when it is so convincing that we might as well see reality this way - I like to present to our belief system something that is convincing, that 'we know not to be.'

I am who I am, you are who you are, and everything else is a perception based on acceptance, deception, smoke, mirrors, and so on. It's what's between us that seems to justify our accidental identities.

And if you ever do a survey, you'll find that people prefer illusion to reality, ten to one. Twenty, even.

Who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge?

Truths are illlusions which we have forgotten are illusions.

Reality can easily become the current fantasy.

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better. I wish I was the kind who made up stories.

We move from the illusion of certainty, to the certainty of illusion

The problem with assumptions is that we believe they are the truth.

You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

Illusion never changed into something real.

Why are you messing with the fantasy? We know about the reality. Don't ruin the fantasy, OK?

Just because it's a dream doesn't mean it's a lie.

What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

A man’s greatest treasures are his illusions - Durzo Blint

We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.