Richard Brautigan Quotes

You convinced yourselves we're just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser's way out. Your way.

Some people have a difficult time facing truth and reality. They prefer to live in a make-believe world, pretending that certain things aren't happening.

People don't want to hear the truth; they never do. They wanna live in some kind of fantasy.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.

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.

I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.

Never face reality unless your reality is just the way you want it to be.

You can fool yourself, you know. You'd think it's impossible, but it turns out it's the easiest thing of all.

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

Any mental activity is easy if it need not be subjected to reality.

Dreams, dreams. I walk them; I live them. I delude myself with them. It's a wonder I can spot reality anymore.

Is not this whole world an illusion? And yet it fools everybody.

Reality doesn't interest me.

My greatest enemy is reality. I have fought it successfully for thirty years.

I think the greatest illusion we have is that denial protects us. It's actually the biggest distortion and lie. In fact, staying asleep is what's killing us.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

Pretending that we live doesn't make us alive.

Storytelling, mythology and film provide a lot of hope but, on the flip side, can also create delusion.

Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself.

I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.

In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.

When all else fails there's always delusion.

I don't want to dig in the truth all of the time. Let me dream.

It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.