Reality is a very subjective affair. I can only define it as a kind of gradual accumulation of information; and as specialization. If we take a lily, for instance, or any other kind of natural object, a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist. And yet another stage of reality is reached with that botanist who is a specialist in lilies. You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable. You can know more and more about one thing but you can never know everything about one thing: it’s hopeless. So that we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects– that machine, there, for instance. It’s a complete ghost to me– I don’t understand a thing about it and, well, it’s a mystery to me, as much of a mystery as it would be to Lord Byron. Vladimir Nabokov
About This Quote

“My own opinion is that we can never get beyond the notion of ‘reality’. We know what we call ‘reality’ and we know what we call ‘imaginary;’ but we cannot get outside that, and it is a delusion to try to do so. ‘Reality’ is the most infinite of all concepts—and what it really amounts to is not ‘real’ but ‘human.’ It has its origin in the human brain. It consists of records, beliefs, memories, etc., which are in turn created by the human brain.

They are humanly created—by man. If you question them, you have no answer. You have no way of proving them wrong.

They are there because you believe them to be so, and for exactly the same reason why you believe your own eyesight when you see a lily or a tree or anything else. You have only to doubt them in your heart for a few minutes before they are gone from your mind altogether.

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