Claudia Rankine Quotes

I had this fantasy vision of what a career as a musician was like. And then I grew up and actually got in the business and realized, it doesn't often work that way.

Disillusion is the last illusion.

This is a terrible confession to make, but after I left the Army I had a number of things to try. I had a great conceit to think that if all else failed I could always go to Hollywood. So when all else did fail I really went to Hollywood. And then I found out how wrong I was.

Apparently, the world is not a wish granting factory.

"Well, it's no use your talking about waking him," said Tweedledum, "when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real."

The last verse [In My Secret Life] completely got to me, about how we all have great ideals but in reality we end up conforming, following everyone else. We want to be stronger so we lead that life inside, thinking of ourselves as these great brave souls. I literally thought when I was 15 that I was a musical genius and I could change the world, but in fact you're not and you can't and you don't, and that realisation is almost heartbreaking.

Ask yourself: What did I eat for breakfast today? What did I eat for dinner last night? You see how fast reality fades away?

It is impossible to survive in a prolonged state of reality.

I learned life were no dream I learned truth deceived Man is not God Life is a century Death an instant

Stupid dreams. Even the good ones are bad, because they remind you how poorly reality measures up.

I think the name came [of the show 'Gaycation'] out of the fact that a lot of people just don't know - they don't know what so many people face around the world or even in their own country, where there's a variety of experience, and despite the incredible progress we've seen, that progress hasn't necessarily reached everyone. I wanted to kind of have this title to have you be open to the experience, and then you enter it and you do see the realities.

You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.

I has a dream about reality. It was such a relief to wake up.

Chirag: Rowley, do you think I exist? Rowley: Nope! I can't even hear you or see you!

It's only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.

Distance... is like futurity. A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision... But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant 'there' becomes the present 'here,' all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.

Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak.

Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals. Nobody wants to read the small print in dreams.

Communists must always go into the why's and wherefore's of anything, use their own heads and carefully think over whether or not it corresponds to reality and is really well founded; on no account should they follow blindly and encourage slavishness.

I like to think there is something deep in our own world of reality that will create a dynamic balance between technology and human existence, the relationship between which has a decisive effect on contemporary cultural forms and social structure.

Just like Sept. 11, only with nuclear weapons this time, that's the threat. I think that is the threat. I think it's just facing reality. It's not a happy reality, but it's reality and if you don't deal with it, it will become even more unpleasant.

Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.

You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia.

People move because of the wear and tear of anxiety. Because of the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they build up in one year will be torn down in one day by others. Because of the impression that the future is blocked up, that *they* might do all right but not their children. Because of the feeling that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else.

When I was 6 I thought that I wanted to be a musician - like a singer-songwriter. That's what I romantically envisioned for myself. But in reality the experience of getting into music was just the opposite. My parents signed me up for classical guitar lessons, which made for two years of the most depressing Wednesday evenings.