The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimon...y to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you'v...e been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatur...es are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists--in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have dreamt of every woman there is, and dreamt too of the miracle that would bring us the pleasure of being a woman, for women... have all the qualities--courage, passion, the capacity to love, cunning--whereas all our imagination can do is naively pile up the illusion of courage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Terrorism is an intolerant reaction to the hypertolerance of our societies, just as rape may be an intolerance of our boundless se...xual tolerance (paradoxically, the number of rapes increases with the degree of sexual liberation). It is second-generation violence--a reaction to the absence of violence. The same is true of the second-generation illnesses (cancer); they are a reaction to the hyperprotection of our bodies. When a woman turns off all signals of pleasure in your arms and leaves you no other solution but a disenchanted rape, no phantasy is of any use. But the same applies when her sexual demand is so great as to leave no room even for the illusion of rape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their p...ower.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in ou...r imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings. Music works in the same fashion; I would say that there is no art form that has so much in common with film as music. Both affect our emotions directly, not via the intellect. And film is mainly rhythm; it is inhalation and exhalation in continuous sequence. Ever since childhood, music has been my great source of recreation and stimulation, and I often experience a film or play musically.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the perso...n of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recog...nize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »