It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. – John Kenneth Galbraith

This sort of adoration of the real is but a heightening of the beau ideal. – Lord (George Gordon) Byron

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