Mental Image Quotes

“When a court officer suggested quarantine for Nerissa, she grabbed the man's pen and jammed it into the back of his hand, screaming that he was a Crimson Guard witch come to remove her memories and replace them with bird-song.

They decided to skip quarantine after that.”
― Caitlin Kittredge, The Iron Thorn

“You’ve always lived inside me, but I only realised it after I’ve met you. In order to love, you don’t need to find someone in the outer world. Rather, you need to sense what mental image is always in your inner world. Love is the projection of this subjective mental image into someone outside.”
― Elmar Hussein

“The first cause of the Universe — no matter how you name it, God or something else — could only created a physical substance but not the reality itself. Although reality can be associated with the physical world, reality and the physical world do not coincide. Only the brain can create reality, -- for that reason, reality is an individual phenomenon, being dependent on the physical characteristics of the individual brain, such as the brain-design, neurodynamic activity, etc. -- reality cannot be created by God, or something else. Reality cannot be a universal phenomenon, that is, can be the same for everyone. What happens in the brain causes the conceptualization of the outer world and creates a mental image of this world in the brain. You see, sense or perceive the outer world only through this mental image within you. You cannot be sure of the characteristics of any physical object, because your mental apparatus has a strong influence on the interpretation of signals coming from that object. You characterize something ‘so-and-so’ not because it is inseparable attribute, but because the chemicals acting in your brain cause you to do it, creating appropriate mental apparatus inside you in that moment. The reality cannot be immutable, it is changeable as well as the outer world. The reality changes over and over again, but it does not change symmetrically with the change in the physical world, and not only because of this change. Your reality is changing within your lifespan because of chemical changing inside your brain more than due to merely changing of the outer world. You cannot control the physical world’s changing, but you can do it with respect to your reality, to a considerable extent, influencing for what is going on in your brain in different ways, ranging from nourishment and sexual satisfaction in life to meditation.”
― Elmar Hussein

“What is this thing we call form, and to what extent do we comprehend our own forms? I have a form, surely, as do you, and let us grant that we’re both conscious even though certain philosophers would argue that assertion—fortunately they’re not here. So! Both conscious. But we have imperfect knowledge of our own forms, let alone our own selves—consider the human man, his last self-image formed at the age of twenty-five, surprised by wrinkles on his forehead as he looks in the bathroom mirror. Deathless Kings’ residual physicalities endure long after they’ve become skeletons—and they perform premortem exercises to stem mental fragmentation. You’d be surprised how frequently and how widely mental image and physical form differ.”
― Max Gladstone, The Ruin of Angels