We left behind the other kids; their path-working, drinking, and being grown up- and rejected all that made them grumpy, uncreative and lifeless. We dumpstered, squatted, and shoplifted our lives back. Everything fell into place...

Everyone needs to escape sometimes, and retreating into somebody else’s fantasy isn’t nearly as satisfying as slipping into your own.

[When under stress I thought of] the books I had read [and applied] them to myself. I [imagined I was] one of the characters [and soon found myself] in made-up circumstances which were most agreeable...

Träume und Märchen waren ihr eigentlicher Lebensinhalt, dachte ich jetzt. Deshalb hat sie sich auch umgebracht, dachte ich, weil ein Mensch, der nur Träume und Märchen sich zu seinem Lebensinhalt gemacht hat, in dieser Welt...

Each book was a world unto itself, and in it I took refuge.

But I reckon that this realm of higher needs, of something more than just forgetting about everyday life, of mere recreation, this realm of needs has been clearly neglected by us.

Escapism isn’t good or bad of itself. What is important is what you are escaping from and where you are escaping to. I write from experience, since in my case I escaped to the idea...

Tant que mes jambes me permettent de fuir, tant que mes bras me permettent de combattre, tant que l’expérience que j’ai du monde me permet de savoir ce que je peux craindre ou désirer, nulle...

Religion is a non-alcoholic man’s alcohol. Alcohol is a non-religious man’s religion.

I want to glide in a world of beauty,’ I said. ‘To be carried away into a world of luxurious things.

Often the most tricky questions are the ones we secretly know the answers of.What are you running from?What are you waiting for?

escapist” literature. As I understand it, the adjective implies, a little condescendingly, that the life therein depicted cannot be identified with the real life which the critic knows so well in W.C.1: and may even...

There is no time to escape reality.

Haven’t you noticed, too, on the part of nearly everyone you know, a growing rebellion against the present? And an increasing longing for the past? I have. Never before in all my long life have...

Sleeping is the most common attempt to temporarily escape reality.

With even the slightest upset, detachment soon followed. I didn’t lose sleep over men, and I was too restless to be tied down. The grass didn’t even have time to grow around my feet before...

Fiction is just that–fiction. Yes, it is serious business, but it should also be taken for face value. It’s entertainment. It’s escapism. It’s 365 pages of relaxation.

Music is escapism, it’s entertainment.

i want to give up my bearings, slip out of who i am, shed everything, the way a snake discards old skin.

but knowing about other people, other civilisations, other ways of living, other places – that’s your escape route, a magical journey. Once you know about these things, no matter what happens, your mind can create...

Sniffing glue is a homeless nonbeliever’s prayer.

Moreover, people have become accustomed to reading to escape as opposed to reading to think.

This particular book felt familiar, like an old friend. The characters drew me into their world, and I blocked out mine for the rest of the afternoon.

I sleep all day. Noises flit around the house- garbage truck in the alley, rain, tree rapping against the bedroom window. I sleep. I inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing,...

Evet Wilhelm, bazen bir an için kalkıp gitme, bağları koparma cesareti buluyorum kendimde, keşke nereye gideceğimi bilsem! heralde giderdim.

Dr. Manning said he’d thought at first it might be sleeping sickness, or even narcolepsy, whatever that was, but – no, Pete was healthy enough physically. Manoel growled that the boy was bone-lazy, spending his...

Bonnie saw ropes hanging loose, poles falling away, tree-tops sinking beneath her. As they rose, the sun rose with them. Its warmth turned the dark skin of the fiery balloon midnight blue. They flew straight...

You break through the veil whenever you strap on a sword or chant the ancient verses. You escape when you write a poem or a tale that brings beauty into the world. You are set...

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.

Let those who smile at me, ask themselves whether they have been indebted most to imagination or reality for all they have enjoyed in life, if indeed they have ever enjoyed any thing.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world...

Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But it’s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you...

Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Understand, it’s never been easy to live, when we’re trying to escape ourselves.

I love stories that suck you in, that you can’t stop reading because you are quite simply there.

I fantasize about making reality better.

I think that pretty much every form of fiction (I’d include fantasy, obviously) can actually be a real escape from places where you feel bad, and from bad places. It can be a safe place...

It may be escapist, but if I have a choice between watching the news or reading a book which gets me to see the world through different eyes, I will always choose the latter!

So many bad things have happened to them that they can’t trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.

I have spent so many nights out under the starsEuphoria running through my veins and alcohol coursing through my bloodMy mind would race along with my heartMy vision drawn to the stars and all the...

The walls were lined with books, many of them in foreign languages, like insulation against the immediate present.

There has always been, for me, this other world, this second world to fall back on–a more reliable world in so far as it does not hide that its premise is illusion.

People talk about escapism as if it’s a bad thing… Once you’ve escaped, once you come back, the world is not the same as when you left it. You come back to it with skills,...

Rural and traditional escapism. That’s my angle. Places and events where we are free to relax and be ourselves, where nobody tells us to hurry along or conform or grow up. Somewhere we can properly...

The best-trained part of us, though, is the mouth, it �is always obediently and devoutly shut. And it’s only too true: an open mouth is a yawning fact, the fact that its owner is dwelling...

Hence the uneasiness which they arouse in those who, for whatever reason, wish to keep us wholly imprisoned in the immediate conflict. That perhaps is why people are so ready with the charge of “escape.”...

I’m sorry! I really am! I wanted to get out of this place! I want to live! I want to get away from here and never see it again! I hate everything about it!””You will...

[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or...

Don’t judge me for escaping the stresses and cruelty of the world differently than you do.

Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really droppped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million...