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Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real. -- Federico Fellini
Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite -- Crispin Glover
Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around. -- Terri Windling
Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods. -- Alice Hoffman
Realism can break a writer's heart. -- Salman Rushdie
Realism is a corruption of reality. -- Wallace Stevens
Realism and art cannot live together. -- Jeanette Lee
Realism has always been called cynicism. -- Gore Vidal
Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse. -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral. -- Richard M. Nixon
Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture. -- Edgar Degas
Realism is for pessimists. An optimist creates his own reality. -- David Harley
Realism...has no more to do with reality than anything else. -- Hob Broun
Realism: the wealth of detail guarantees the truth of the tale. -- Mason Cooley
Realism is death to me. I cannot stand life as it is. -- Zane Grey
Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite. -- Crispin Glover
Realism arises from the maturity of the minds, while Idealism arises from their conformity. -- M.F. Moonzajer
Realism in so far as it means Reality to life is always bad art. -- Sherwood Anderson
Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation. -- Aldous Huxley
Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason...that is its reason for existing. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing. -- Jean Cocteau
Realism is condemned by those artists whose poverty of technique does not permit them to express it. -- Walter J. Phillips
Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal. -- Gustave Courbet
Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism. -- Neil Gaiman
Realism is to fiction what gravity is to walking: a confinement that allows dancing under the right circumstances. -- George Saunders
Realism isn't something most people associate with the fantasy genre, yet it's an essential element of great fantasy writing. -- Lynn Flewelling
Realism' has been abandoned in the search for reality: the 'principal objective' of abstract art is precisely this reality. -- Ben Nicholson
Realism has to be such high quality, you can't fake it. It's all hanging out there like the laundry. -- Nelson Shanks
Realism is something we practice when we aren't feeling very well. When we don't feel up to the extra effort. -- Robert Edmond Jones
Realism is knowing fantasy and reality intersect constantly. Realism is living with the awareness that every act changes the world. -- Ales Kot
If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it. -- David Foster Wallace
Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies. -- Alex Kozinski
We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites. -- Cesare Pavese
People don't like to say Fantasy they say Magic Realism which means Fantasy written by somebody I went to university with. -- Terry Pratchett
By the artificial separation of soul and body men have invented a Realism that is vulgar and an Idealism that is void. -- Oscar Wilde
Idealism is like a castle in the air if it is not based on a solid foundation of social and political realism. -- Claude McKay
Realism is in the work when idealism is in the soul, and it is only through idealism that we resume contact with reality. -- Henri Bergson
Realism and superrealism are what I'm after. This world is full of things the eye doesn't see. The camera can see more, and often 10 times better. -- Andreas Feininger
Painting, which is essentially a rhythmic harmony of coloured spaces. Realism was the death of art. Great art should come from the harmony of two lines. -- Arthur Wesley Dow
Realism absorbs the ideal by adding a few small imperfections. Example: it paints a few specks of mud on the white gown of the Lady in the Garden. -- Mason Cooley
The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue - or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes. -- Robert Green Ingersoll
Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed. -- John Fiske
Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical. -- Andrei Tarkovsky
Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom -- Lin Yutang
Realism is a very sophisticated form of literature, a very grown-up one. And that may be its weakness. But fantasy seems to be eternal and omnipresent and always attractive to kids. -- Ursula K. Le Guin
Realism implicated that imperialism and imperialist conquests or prestige can be pursued as part of the animus dominandi, the desire to dominate, which is the social force that determines political activity. -- Nayef Al-Rodhan
Realist artists should join together in a worldwide effort... Sharing it with each other and teaching it - that is the key to the success and never-ending beauty and harmony of Realism. -- Igor Babailov
I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism. -- Barbara Hepworth
Realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision. This is the only way you can move from where you are to someplace else. -- Henry A. Kissinger
The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror. -- Oscar Wilde
The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality. -- Robert Greene
The activities of these parasites and degenerates gave rise to Cubism, Fauvism, Futurism, Pointillism, Constructivism, Orphism, Surrealism, Dada, and also Impossibleism, Supersurrealism, Dynamic Double-Dog Realism, Ishkabibbleism, and Mama, which is like Dada only nicer. -- Daniel Pinkwater
M. Zola sits down to give us a picture of the Second Empire. Who cares for the Second Empire now? It is out of date. Life goes faster than Realism, but Romanticism is always in front of Life. -- Oscar Wilde
There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough - there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph. -- Robert Frank
Realism and Naturalism rely mostly on the eye of the flesh. Abstract, conceptual and surrealistic art rely mostly on the eye of the mind. Great works of art rely on the eye of contemplation, the eye of the spirit. -- Alex Grey
Realism hasn't fallen out of favor with most people, who are interested in people's lives rather than gymnastics of style or literary trends. It's a certain kind of academic who undervalues realism, largely because it is not amenable to endless exegesis. -- Vikram Seth
It has generally been assumed that of two opposing systems of philosophy, e.g., realism and idealism, one only can be true and one must be false; and so philosophers have been hopelessly divided on the question, which is the true one. -- Morris Raphael Cohen
Realism to be effective must be a matter of selection.genius chooses its materials with a view to their beauty and effectiveness; mere talent copies what it thinks is nature, only to find it has been deceived by the external grossness of things. -- Julia Marlowe
I'm not going to star in every one of my movies. But I'm telling you [pounds fists] what I will bring to this film industry is the same thing I brought to the record industry when I came into it. Realism. Uncompromised, unconditional dog love. -- DMX
Realism falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination. -- Eugene Ionesco
Realism in foreign policy is made up of a clear set of values, since difficult foreign policy decisions are often decided with the narrowest of majorities. Without any sense of what is right and wrong, one would drown in a flood of difficult and pragmatic decisions. -- Henry A. Kissinger
Realism gives me the impression of a mistake. Violence alone escapes the feeling of poverty of those realistic experiences. Only death and desire have the force that oppresses, that takes one's breath away. Only the extremism of desire and death enable one to attain the truth. -- Georges Bataille
Abstraction and realism work best together. -- Ken Danby
We need realism to deal with reality. -- Slick Rick
I don't want realism. I want magic! -- Tennessee Williams
Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism. -- Bette Davis
He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting. -- Jackson Pollock
Comedy is exaggerated realism. It can be stretched to the almost ludicrous, but it must always be believable. -- Paul Lynde
So-called 'realist' photography does not capture the 'what is.' Instead, it is preoccupied with what should not be, like the reality of suffering for example. -- Jean Baudrillard
Offensive realism predicts that the United States will send its army across the Atlantic when there is a potential hegemon in Europe that the local great powers cannot contain by themselves. -- John Mearsheimer
I have this certain vision of the way I want my comics to look; this sort of photographic realism, but with a certain abstraction that comics can give. It's kind of a fine line. -- Daniel Clowes
Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won't have anything to complain about. -- Tori Amos
Without any intended hubris, I've lead a pretty exciting life. What I've tried to do in Mission Compromised is draw on those experiences to create a sense of excitement and realism within the story -- Oliver North
My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for magic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor's on the very day. -- Angela Carter
I would never write realistic prose. I don't like people who try to write in a poetic style, but in the course of their book abandon it for realism, and weave back and forth like drunkards between the surreal and the real. -- Marguerite Young
I often told the fanatics of realism that there is no such thing as realism in art: it only exists in the mind of the observer. Art is a symbol, a thing conjuring up reality in our mental image. That is why I don't see any contradiction between abstract and figurative art either. -- Antoni Tapies
Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists. -- David Brin
Justice is what is good for the stronger. -- Thrasymachus
Even with all the documents, you can never forge nature -- Auguste Rodin
When people have given up on happiness they call themselves "realists. -- Marty Rubin
A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow. -- John C. Maxwell
No ghosts need apply. - Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire -- Arthur Conan Doyle
You'll see some bad things, but if you didn't see them, they'd still be happening. -- Paula Fox
The Gospel worldview equips the artist with a unique combination of optimism and realism about life. --
It's time to bury the unreal, failed 'realism' of those who have long thought that dictators brought stability. -- Elliott Abrams
While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance. -- Oscar Wilde
The public is always relieved to find that once the chief officers of state are elected they do not sincerely want change. -- Gore Vidal
Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all. -- Stephen King
For me, fiscal realism is not a betrayal of Labour values; it is the foundation by which we win the trust of the public. -- Douglas Alexander
Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out. -- Dawn Powell
Reality hasn't really sunk in yet, I knew that. I didn't want to know what life was going to feel like when it finally did. -- Keary Taylor
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This strange business of what it is to be a writer is this increasingly insane world in which we live, in which surrealism, it seems, is the new realism. -- Salman Rushdie
Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work. Think of how many times you put on your underwear in a lifetime. It was appalling, it was disgusting, it was stupid. -- Charles Bukowski
I tend to prioritize emotional realism above the known laws of time and space, and when you do that, it's inevitable that strange things happen. Which can be quite enjoyable, I think. -- Helen Oyeyemi
Optimism was for children. Once you reached adulthood then you had to join the rest of the world as a realist - life was a bag of shit you were expected to pay for. -- NikNak
Hysterical optimism will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. . . Hysterical optimism as a sin against knowledge. -- Richard M. Weaver
You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well. -- Bill Gates
A substantial amount of research over the past decade has reinforced the idea that although internal happiness can deviate from its "resting state" in reaction to life events, it usually returns toward its baseline over time. -- Dan Ariely
Today, Democrats not only have the White House; they have the Senate too. So we have to be realistic about what we can and cannot achieve, while at the same recognizing that realism should never be confused with capitulation. -- Mitch McConnell
The residue of religion in my work appears as a modified transcendentalism, and the positivist scientific side of my thought appears as concreteness and realism. The effort to reconcile the two is at the core of all my poetry. -- Louis Dudek
Magical realism allows an artist like myself to inject layers of meaning without being obvious. In American culture, where there is freedom of expression, this approach may seem forced, unnecessary and misunderstood. But this system of communication has become very Iranian. -- Shirin Neshat
Back in George W. Bush's second term, when diplomatic realism began to overtake foolish bellicosity, the president developed one of his patented nicknames for the two most powerful neoconservative journalists, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer: he called them 'the Bomber Boys.' -- Joe Klein
Magical realism is a blending of the unusual or supernatural into an otherwise ordinary setting. And, to me, this perfectly describes the South. 'The Sugar Queen' involves a lot of magical happenings, but in a very down-home Southern setting. It's full of things that could almost be true. -- Sarah Addison Allen
The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective."(Letter, April 19, 1951) -- Raymond Chandler
A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn't real. It's real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221 1/2 B Baker Street and didn't find him."[An Invitation to Learning, January 1942] -- Rex Stout
All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy. -- Jerry Saltz
If with open mind one reads and observes industriously and long; if in so doing one covers a wide field and so covering reflects in terms of realism, he is likely, soon or late, to be brought to a sudden consciousness that Man is an unknown quantity and his existence unsuspected. -- Louis Sullivan
All I want, oh dear friend of mine, is for you to go out with someone. Do something, even if it's not the magical, wonderful thing you had in mind. Don't sit around for one more second pining away for some fantasy that might never come along, because it might not even exist. -- Lauren Morrill
There is an interesting scientific dispute about realism and optimism. Some find that very optimistic people have benign illusions about themselves. These people may think they have more control, or more skill, than they actually do. Others have found that optimistic people have a good handle on reality. The jury is still out. -- Martin Seligman
Each time I'm starting to work on a film, even if I love to settle the plot in the real world, I start to think about the plot as a fairy tale, or a dream, or a nightmare... As if it was the best way to tell the truth about characters or narration, instead of realism. -- Arnaud Desplechin
I ran on the platform of moderation and won the election by a large margin. By virtue of the strong mandate that I received from the electorate, I am committed to operating in the framework of moderation, which calls inter alia for a balance between realism and the pursuit of the ideals of the Islamic Republic of Iran. -- Hassan Rouhani
I only understand realism. -- Manuel Puig
You're right, super-realism is back in style. -- Robert Genn
What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people. -- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Idealism and realism meet in the actual. -- Mary Parker Follett
I learned my realism from guys like Kafka. -- Robert Coover
The realism of failure, the romance of success. -- Mason Cooley
The cinema that interests me departs from realism. -- Jacques Audiard
People want to see realism in action now. -- Akshay Kumar

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