George R. R. Martin Quotes

The quality of our attention determines our experience.

When anything is present to the mind, what is the very first and simplest character to be noted in it, in every case, no matter how little elevated the object may be? Certainly, it is its presentness .

The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact.

People who do not see the terrible things therefore do not see the beautiful things, either.

Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.

We require, as a species, the difference between what is safe and unsafe to define ourselves. Be it in darkness or in light, where we are means nothing without the comparison to the other place - where we are not. And thus it is the difference between them that tells us who and what we are.

It's so easy just to see the one-to-one narrative between presence and non-presence.

... This is the paradox of vision: Sharp perception softens our existence in the world.

The reality of things going on around me is more interesting than the fantasies of the world I work in.

It's all real and it's all illusory: that's Awareness!

One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.

We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.

He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.

There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.

Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky.

The physical universe that you see is all in your mind. When you turn your mind off, or become unconscious, the physical universe, for you, disappears. Then, when you awaken your consciousness, the universe reappears magically. Quite simple really - no thoughts on your part, no physical world. As Walt Whitman succinctly stated: "The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual - namely to You." Without your mind to process it, the universe simply disappears into nothingness.

You cannot experience yourself as what you are until you've encountered what you are not

You do not have to imagine things; reality gives you all you need.

truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.

We look high and low for God, but somehow He's not there. So we blame Him and tell ourselves that He must have forgotten us. Or else we decide that He left us long ago, if He was ever around." "How strange," the little fish said, "to miss what is everywhere." "Very strange," the old whale agreed. "Doesn't it remind you of fish who say they're thirsty?

... the daily world exists because we know how to hold its images; consequently, if one drops the attention needed to maintain those images, the world collapses

Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and considered by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being.

The world doesn't just disappear when you close your eyes, does it?

The sky had never seemed so sky; the world had never seemed so world.

At any moment in time, our reality is based on whatever we focus on.