“The person one loves never really exists, but is a projection focused through the lens of the mind onto whatever screen it fits with least distortion.”
The Road to the Sea, p. 269
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)
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Arthur C. Clarke 207
British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, u… 1917–2008Related quotes
Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

“I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”

Source: A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

"As I Please," Tribune (13 December 1946)
"As I Please" (1943–1947)
Context: While the game of deadlocks and bottle-necks goes on, another more serious game is also being played. It is governed by two axioms. One is that there can be no peace without a general surrender of sovereignty: the other is that no country capable of defending its sovereignty ever surrenders it. If one keeps these axioms in mind one can generally see the relevant facts in international affairs through the smoke-screen with which the newspapers surround them.

“Nothing really improves us. Whatever improves one person will disimprove another.”
Salon interview (1996)
Context: Nothing really improves us. Whatever improves one person will disimprove another. Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it. … The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you. And one of the things that I thought a lot about at the time of the fatwa and ever since is that quite a few of the people I really care about died during this period, all about the same age as I am, and they were not under a death sentence. They just died, of lung cancer, AIDS, whatever. It occurred to me that you don't need a fatwa, it can happen anytime.

“I've never been afraid to be who I really am on screen.”
Lana K. Wilson-Combs (November 21, 2003) "Halle Berry finally finds a scary movie she can embrace in 'Gothika'", Alameda Times-Star, Section: Bay Area Living.

The First Year of Life of the Child (1927), "The Egocentrism of the Child and the Solipsism of the Baby", as translated by Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Vonèche