“Or -- and this she knew was a far more accurate way of looking at it -- the book was true and reality was lying.”

“We need to develop a better descriptive vocabulary for lying, a taxonomy, a way to distinguish intentional lies from unintentional ones, and a way to distinguish the lies that the liar himself believes in – a way to signal those lies that could be more accurately described as dreams. Lies – they make for a tidy little psychological Doppler effect, tell us more about a liar than an undistorted self-report ever could.”

“I look at the human sciences as poetic sciences in which there is no objectivity, and I see film as not being objective, and cinema verite as a cinema of lies that depends on the art of telling yourself lies. If you’re a good storyteller then the lie is more true than reality, and if you’re a bad one, the truth is worse than a half lie.”

“She had the feeling that the door was looking at her, which she knew was silly, and knew on a deeper level was somehow true.”

“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.”

“She wasn't totally unaware of herself, though. She knew there was pain, but in the same way she knew the sun was hot. It was far away and only tendrils of it reached her.”