Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible.
Interpretation
Reality is shaped by how we perceive time; the past appears more definite than the present.
This quote by Salman Rushdie highlights the subjective nature of reality as perceived through the lens of time. It suggests that our understanding of past events tends to become more solid and believable as we distance ourselves from them, while our experience of the present is often filled with ambiguity and disbelief, ultimately reminding us that perception plays a crucial role in shaping our understanding of truth and reality.
In practice
In a discussion about how memories change over time, this quote could illustrate the fluidity of reality.
I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.
Killing people because you don't like their ideas - it's a bad thing.
faith without doubt is addiction
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of 'respect.' What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name?
Good advice is rarer than rubies.
For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.
I figure anytime you put an adjective before 'writer,' it's a way of dismissing the writer.
Having a scapegoat means not knowing that we have one.
He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
It's always easier for people to face backward than to face forward.
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