Paul Auster Quotes

Not seeing is half-believing.

Seeing is not believing - it is only seeing.

It is quite possible we may have formed entirely erroneous ideas of what we actually see. The greenish gray patches may not be seas at all, nor the ruddy continents, solid land. Neither may the obscuring patches be clouds of vapor.

Belief and seeing: They are both often wrong.

I often tend to think that things are not what they seem.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.

All I know is reception; I am and I have: but I do not get, and when I fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did not.

Oftentimes what you see cancels out what you perceive.

In Shakespeare's world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and truthful, or is it a demon, tempting young Hamlet into murderous sin? Is Juliet dead or merely sleeping? Does Lear really stand at the edge of a great cliff? Or has the Fool deceived him to save his life?

Seeing is not always believing.

I realize that nothing's as it seems.

Things are not always as they seem.

I feel that one of the most important lessons that can be learned is that what we "see" may be different than what is actually in front of us.

We are led to believe a lie When we see not through the eye.

The truth is a fog, in which one man sees the heavenly host and the other one sees a flying elephant.

Never believe your eyes

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

We believe what we see.’...What do you do when you’re in the dark?

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

Out of the corner of one eye, I could see my mother. Out of the corner of the other eye, I could see her shadow on the wall, cast there by the lamplight. It was a big and solid shadow, and it looked so much like my mother that I became frightened. For I could not be sure whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world.

We move from the illusion of certainty, to the certainty of illusion

But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality.