Thornton Wilder Quotes

We're all looking from the point of view of our own reality tunnels. And when we begin to realize that we're all looking from the point of view of our own reality tunnels, we find that it is much easier to understand where other people are coming from. All the ones who don't have the same reality tunnel as us do not seem ignorant, or deliberately perverse, or lying, or hypnotized by some mad ideology, they just have a different reality tunnel. And every reality tunnel might tell us something interesting about our world, if we're willing to listen.

We never know the reality of things: we see only what we are aware of. It is our consciousness that determines the shape of the world around us -- its size, motion and meaning.

You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia.

I think perception is important.

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

You must understand that seeing is believing, but also know that believing is seeing.

As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.

The best thing anybody ever told me about acting - and I think it's probably true for life, generally - is listen. You've really got to watch, and you've really got to listen. Not see and hear.

According to my parents, I've always liked to tune into the conversations of others. But rather than hope for a snippet of salacious gossip, it has always been the words themselves that I wanted to understand.

We see only that which we are.

Everybody hears, but few listen.

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.

Sit here long enough you get to know everything. You listen, see ?" She taps the side of her head. "Nobody listens any more. Everyone knows what they want to hear, but nobody actually listens.

I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears when that One steps near and begins to speak.

Life can show up no other way than that way in which you perceive it.

How often do we do that, he wondered--look at someone and fail to see what's really there?

When you don't understand, you depend on reality. When you do understand, reality depends on you.

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are──or, as we are conditioned to see it.

Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.

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

Paradigms are like glasses. When you have incomplete paradigms about yourself or life in general, it's like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. That lens affects how you see everything else.

There are many levels of truth.

This is what I tell my students: step outside of your tiny little world. Step inside of the tiny little world of somebody else. And then do it again and do it again and do it again. And suddenly, all these tiny little worlds, they come together in this complex web. And they build a big, complex world.

We don't live in the world of reality, we live in the world of how we perceive reality.