Penelope Fitzgerald Quotes

I don't believe there's any such thing as objective reality. It's only reality as we experience it.

I'm coming 'round to the view that there's only a personal view of the world.

We see the world through the lens of all our experiences; that is a fundamental part of the human condition.

At the heart of 'The Famished Road' is a philosophical conundrum - for me, an essential one: what is reality? Everybody's reality is subjective; it's conditioned by upbringing, ideas, temperament, religion, what's happened to you.

The prism through which you experience life is so unique. There is no objective experience.

Your positions on EVERYTHING are based on the story you tell yourself and not some universal fact from the universal fact database.

Everybody's entitled to their own experience.

Perception is reality.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

All of us create our own versions of an event, of our lives, even, not because we're liars, necessarily, but because we can only see and understand the truth from our own viewpoint, and a shifting viewpoint at that.

It is the mind which creates the world around us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with which yours is touched.

I'm less interested in reality. I'm more interested in perception, the truth of the universe that we see.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth.

Each reader projects their own version of the experience inside their skull as they go along. It's probably true that no two people read exactly the same book.

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.

We are artists. We are all subjective people; we have a point of view. It doesn't mean we are right.

Perception is reality. People take what they want to from things.

When someone starts talking to me about the truth, what I hear is what they're telling me about themselves.

You create your response to reality, and that response, for all practical purposes, is your reality.

What each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him...

We don't all see the same way at all. Even if I'm sitting looking at you, there is always the memory of you as well. And a memory is now. So someone who's never met you before is seeing a different person. That's bound to be the case. We all see something different. I assume most people don't look very hard at anything.

What you think is real is your reality.

The camera is as subjective as we are.

There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.