James Turrell Quotes

The relationship between the imagined and the real is more complicated than people imagine.

Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.

Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

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

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.

People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be.

There are many levels of truth.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

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

Our experience of many life circumstances is a function of our personal perspective and not the circumstance itself.

So, we, as human beings, live in a very imprecise world. A world where our perceptions of reality are far more important than actual reality.

What you see is what you see.

Everything you see is filtered through your visual system (imperfect) and your brain (also imperfect, despite what your mom told you). Witness testimony is the worst kind of evidence in science.

99 percent of what you see is not what comes in through the eyes. It is what you infer about that room.

Shakespeare said, nothing is either good nor bad but thinking makes it so.

All experience is subjective.

I'm not interested in observed reality.

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.

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

We all look at the same object in different ways.

What appears on the screen is what people see. Everything else is just interpretation.

Reality is mind-made.

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

The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.