We are assuming that we exist, that there is reality, and that the matter of which we are made is real.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed.

Christmas is the antithesis of Thanksgiving. Christmas is pretty much a man-made holiday.

Why is it any more reasonable to believe that God has always been than it is to say that matter has always been?

You read about somebody, and it doesn't really matter whether or not they really exist - the point is that you get into them like real characters.