Yann Martel Quotes

But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Different people, in good faith, can look at the same fact and interpret it differently. But that's where an interesting conversation begins.

There are many levels of truth.

You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Truth is, in fact, an elusive concept. It depends almost entirely on where you are standing at the time. It is a human instinct to confuse belief with truth.

People like things that make sense to them; your perspective is your reality.

What we recall as children is a version of what's happening around us.

The prism through which you experience life is so unique. There is no objective experience.

Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist’s hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed

The difference is as great between The optics seeing as the objects seen. All manners take a tincture from our own; Or come discolor'd through out passions shown; Or fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies, Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.

The world is how we see the world. Some people see the world good, the other people see the world bad. Every person has an idea of the world with a subjective [viewpoint].

Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.... Without knowing it, we are coloring everything, putting our spin on it all.

We must look at the lens through we see the world, as well as the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.

The world you see is less of an indication about the world and more of an indication about your seeing.

I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don't.

Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. -Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (1867-1957)

I wouldn't claim to know what another person is thinking. I can imagine it, but it's my interpretation, and I try to make that clear. It's my vision of what I think their life is. I don't think there are empirical truths in that regard.

Necessity is an interpretation, not a fact.

I'm trying to get more into other things, where reality is nothing but each individual's way of thinking.

A world view is probably an expression of self.

Some people who've read my story think I had a terrible childhood and that I was neglected or even abused, while others feel that my parents, while certainly flawed, also had truly wonderful qualities. And that's the way it should be, because in real life two people can look at the same president and one will see a hero and the other a villain.

I'm not a slave to objectivity. I'm never quite sure what it means. And it means different things to different people.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.