escapism QUOTES

1 " An escape can become escapism before we even know it. Books are wonderful things, but you can't live in someone else's story. You have to live your own story. "

― Jennifer Donnelly , Beauty and the Beast: Lost in a Book

2 " Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes "

― Daniel Pennac

3 " The work of art always requires us to adapt to it—and in this manner can be distinguished from escapism or shallow entertainment, which instead aims to adapt to the audience, to give the public exactly what it wants. We can tell that we are encountering a real work of art by the degree to which it resists subjectivity. "

― , How to Listen to Jazz

4 " Music is energy, emotion, expression, escapism, enlightenment. Music is so much more than just entertainment. "

― Rasheed Ogunlaru

5 " I found that reading gave me a certain relief – one form of escapism that seemed safe, and maybe more than safe. I felt saner – less fragmented- after reading for an hour.
location 3234 "

― Alena Graedon , The Word Exchange

6 " Reading is important. It’s not primarily escapism (though it can be, and there’s nothing wrong with some of that in good measure) and it’s not primarily a way of passing the time. Reading is important to the good life because it stokes the furnaces of our intellect, allows us to expand our understanding of the universe, both inner and outer, for practical gain and simple pleasure. It can induce awe, inspire respect, excite, piss off, and intrigue. These are things that make life worth living. "

― Robert Wringham , Escape Everything!

7 " Relatable escapism can only be achieved using facets of the real world. "

― BatWhaleDragon

8 " Whenever I come across someone speaking negatively about escapism or looking down on those who seek a temporary escape from this world, I can't help but look at them as absolute fools. To deny someone the right to find temporary peace in escapism is to deny human nature itself as well as all the benefits of such a beautiful concept. Often times, these instances show them saying that " it'll only make things worse" or " it's not gonna change anything" , except, a lot of times, that's not the case at all. How many times has someone shut themselves away from the world by listening to a song they hold dear only to return more ready to face the world than before, how many times has someone learned something about themselves through the fictional events of a novel that they wouldn't have other wise, how many times has society experienced great change through people who dreamed of making the world a better place, only to eventually make those dreams into a reality. "

9 " I know now that everything after the accident was merely a tactic to indulge in escapism and self-delusion. When you are hit by a streetcar that almost smashes you to a pulp, when you experience your own end...there is no recovery, only temporary respite, she thought.

Pain made me aware of my body. My body made me aware of deterioration and death. That awareness made me old. My death sentence may have been deferred, but I now had to live with a twofold realization. Not only was I going to die—there was nothing unusual about that except that I was made to realize it at a tender age—but I knew exactly what that meant. Because I had already been through it. Unlike other condemned people for whom death is an abstraction because they have no idea what really awaits them, my stay of death came with a constant reminder, the presence of pain. "

― Slavenka Drakulić , Frida's Bed

10 " The writing of fantasy is best left to those who have nothing better to do, as is indicated by the fairy tales of otherwise gifted writers like Robert Graves and John Ciardi. It isn't so much the difficulty of doing it right, without falling off the tightrope into the cold pits of allegory or mindless whimsy‌—‌the weary thing is that even if you bring it off, all you've done is write a fantasy, and so what? Life is dangerous, and escapism has become a dirty word. I feel the same way, being a child of my own critical times. I'd write the other stuff, the real books, if I could. Plenty nitty-gritty. If I could. "

― Peter S. Beagle

11 " What is fantasy? On one level, of course, it is a game: a pure pretense with no ulterior motive whatever. It is one child saying to another child, “Let’s be dragons,” and then they’re dragons for an hour or two. It is escapism of the most admirable kind—the game played for the game’s sake.
On another level, it is still a game, but a game played for very high stakes. Seen thus, as art, not spontaneous play, its affinity is not with daydream, but with dream. It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not antirational but pararational; not realistic, but surrealistic, superrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud’s terminology, it employs primary, not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes, which, Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. And their guides, the writers of fantasy, should take their responsibilities seriously. "

― Ursula K. Le Guin

12 " 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, weapons, knowledge you didn't have before. Then you are better equipped to deal with your current reality. "

― Neil Gaiman

13 " But perhaps the greatest escapism of all is to take refuge in the domesticity of the past, the home that history and literature become, avoiding the one moment of time in which we are not at home, yet have to live: the present. "

― Tim Parks

14 " This, it would turn out, is the main thing we had in common: a susceptibility to the brassy escapism of myth. "

― Steve Almond , My Life in Heavy Metal: Stories

15 " Books allow us to escape from the pressures of modern life. By far, the best vehicles of escape are Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy genre allowing us to lose ourselves in worlds far away from the reality we know. This escapism works because we totally immerse ourselves and:-

We become the hero or heroine.
We are the ones who thwart evil.
We laugh as we socialise with characters we have never met but feel they are as close as our family.
We cry when we lose a good friend. "

― Peter Graham

16 " Judging others is too often escapism dressed in the garb of righteous indignation, whereby I dutifully point out in others that which I probably should be pointing out in myself. "

― Craig D. Lounsbrough

17 " Many do not have the courage to face the truth of life and instead dwell upon some delusions to escape it. Any such escapism is a major hurdle in spiritual development. "

― Thomas Vazhakunnathu , Spiritual Theory of Everything

18 " All music is escapism for me, but I like the way that, on a good night, that sense of escapism can be shared. "

19 " All through my life what I've loved doing is watching movies. I love the escapism of film, I love stories. So it is incredible to be able to be in them as much as I am, to see them from the first stitch in a costume to the end product. "