#escapism

Humans had built a world inside the world, which reflected it in pretty much the same way as a drop of water reflected the landscape. And yet ... and yet ... Inside this little world they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from — hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamt up took them further in. He was fascinated. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#escape #escapism #human-nature #theatre #art

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

— Ruth Rendell

#escapism #life #reading #life

It was as if the sensory overload that is American life had somehow led to sensory deprivation, a gilded weariness, where everything is permitted and nothing appreciated. ↗

— J. Maarten Troost

#escapism #overload #life

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 crainte : je puis agir. Mais lorsque le monde des hommes me contraint à observer ses lois, lorsque mon désir brise son front contre le monde des interdits, lorsque mes mains et mes jambes se trouvent emprisonnées dans les fers implacables des préjugés et des cultures, alors je frissonne, je gémis et je pleure. Espace, je t'ai perdu et je rentre en moi-même. Je m'enferme au faite de mon clocher où, la tête dans les nuages, je fabrique l'art, la science et la folie. ↗

— Henri Laborit

#fantasy #folly #solitude #art

I had read tons of science fiction. I was fascinated by other worlds, other environments. For me, it was fantasy, but it was not fantasy in the sense of pure escapism. ↗

— James Cameron

#escapism #fantasy #fascinated #fiction #had

I think we simply all like to project ourselves into somebody else - somebody who is better-looking, richer, smarter. It's comforting. It's escapism, and that, of course, is what the movies are supposed to be all about. Ultimately, I think it's just part of human nature to pretend. ↗

— Richard D. Zanuck

#comforting #course #else #escapism #human

People talk about escapism as though it's something nasty but escapism is wonderful! ↗

— Margaret Forster

#escapism #nasty #people #something #talk

Music is escapism, it's entertainment. ↗

— Andy Taylor

#escapism #music

Do the children who prefer books set in the real, ordinary, workaday world ever read as obsessively as those who would much rather be transported into other worlds entirely? ↗

— Laura Miller

#children #escapism #fantasy #reading #reality

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#escape #escapism #fiction #interpretation #narrative