#escape

You are aware of only one unrest; Oh, never learn to know the other! Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast, And one is striving to forsake its brother. Unto the world in grossly loving zest, With clinging tendrils, one adheres; The other rises forcibly in quest Of rarefied ancestral spheres. If there be spirits in the air That hold their sway between the earth and sky, Descend out of the golden vapors there And sweep me into iridescent life. Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands To carry me to distant lands, I should not trade it for the choicest gown, Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#magic #spirit #unrest #world #life

When I was a child and teenager I read whenever I had the opportunity, but since then I've found it hard to read as much as I'd like, children, work, and pets all providing powerful incentives to escape into a book and a practical reason why I rarely do so. ↗

— Louise Brown

#child #children #escape #found #had

Vaguely conscious of that great suspense in which we live, we find our escape from its sterile, annihilating reality in many dreams, in religion, passion, art. ↗

— Arthur Symons

#dreams #escape #religion #suspense #throbbing-gristle

The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#church #escape #accomplishments

I believe one has to escape oneself to discover oneself. ↗

— Rabih Alameddine

#escape #searching #self-discovery #self-discovery

A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #escape #lie #lies #literature

We should get jerseys, cause we make a good team; but yours would look better than mine, cause you're outta my league. ↗

— Relient K

#god-s-grace #grace #lyrics #relient-k #songs

Bosch had never liked Las Vegas, though he came often on cases. It shared a kinship with Los Angeles; both were places desperate people ran to. Often, when they ran from Los Angeles, they came here. It was the only place left. ↗

— Michael Connelly

#desperation #escape #las-vegas #los-angeles #nevada

The tears in my pus-filled eyes became a thousand little crystals of ever color. Like stained-glass windows, I thought. God is with you today, Papi! In the midst of nature's monstrous elements, in the wind, the immenseness of the sea, the depth of the waves, the imposing green roof of the bush, you feel your own infinitesimal smallness, and perhaps it's here, without looking for Him, that you find God, that you touch Him with your finger. I had sensed Him at night during the thousands of hours I had spent buried alive in dank dungeons without a ray of sun; I touched Him today in a sun that would devour everything too weak to resist it. I touched God, I felt Him around me, inside me. He even whispered in my ear: "You will suffer; you will suffer more. But this time I am on your side. You will be free. You will, I promise you. ↗

— Henri Charrière

#god #prison #religion #tears #nature

Besides the alternate universe offered by a book, the quiet space of a museum was my favorite place to go. My mom said I was an escapist at heart . . . that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one. It’s true that I’ve always been able to yank myself out of this world and plunge myself into another. ↗

— Amy Plum

#escape #imagination-reading #read #universe #world