Phil Elverum Quotes

I tell myself lies and soon I believe them.

Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

All literature is an effort at the formal character of the epigram.

For me, prose walks, poetry dances.

I've always thought my poems told stories.

Ideology gives people the illusion of principles and dignity while making it easier for them to part with them.

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.

I enjoy the inventive ways in which language is manipulated to make meaning.

The trouble with illusions is that you aren't aware you have any until they are taken away from you.

How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.

It begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

When I turn the lights out, when I close my eyes, reality overcomes me, I'm living a lie.

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.

Sometimes the way you think about someone isn't the way they actually are.

We believe we're seeing the world just fine until it's called to our attention that we're not.

Lie to yourself until it's true.

People defend nothing more violently than the pretenses they live by.

The truth is still the truth whether or not you believe it. Can we say the same about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don't believe in lies, they simply disappear.

The "paradox" is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality "ought to be."

Most people like to live in illusions.

Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.

It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts... For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.