Given that external reality is a fiction, the writers role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there. – J. G. Ballard

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there. – E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 1960

What was once called the objective world is a sort of Rorschach ink blot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and color of the blot itself. – Lewis Mumford, “Orientation to Life,” The Conduct of Life, 1951