#sca

Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw. ↗

— David Mitchell

#escape #reading #real

[Pope] Clement waved his hands in irritation as if to dismiss the very idea. "The world is crumbling into ruin. Armies are marching. Men and women are dying everywhere, in huge numbers. Fields are abandoned and towns deserted. The wrath of the Lord is upon us and He may be intending to destroy the whole of creation. People are without leaders and direction. They want to be given a reason for this, so they can be reassured, so they will return to their prayers and their obiediences. All this is going on, and you are concerned about the safety of two Jews? ↗

— Iain Pears

#civilization #decay #end-of-the-world #genocide #god-s-wrath

There, too, she would sit for hours gazing seawards. No tiniest speck of sail that crossed the waters could escape her watchful eyes, and as she watched she dreamed that some day one of these distant sails should bear down towards her, and one should come, in whose hand she would lay her own, and they two would flee to the far East. But as the changeless years went by and brought him not, the girl grew sullen, and a sense of wrong possessed her, for the older she grew, the clearer became her consciousness of a world beyond her, and the greater her longing to seek it. ("The Serpent's Head") ↗

— Emilia Francis Strong Dilke

#maturity #romance #dreams

I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me, before.'A dream of form in days of thought: ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#the-picture-of-dorian-gray #dreams

Unsettled by the sudden appearance of Captain Quire within her court, Gloriana resolved to forego all frivolous entertainments and shun the more unnecessary pleasures. Yet, the queen reasoned, this surely did not apply to healthful exercise, such as riding in the royal park. Nor could she refuse to spend the remainder of the afternoon in quiet seclusion, lying face down upon a cushioned bench in her private dressing room while gentle Lady Mary rubbed all the soreness from her muscles. Such occupations were safe, and harmless. It was only afterwards, when she was sleeping deeply, that Captain Quire came to her in a dream. ↗

— Michael Moorcock

#dreams

Let's pray that the human race never escapes Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#hilarious #escape

I spent the rest of the day in someone else's story. The rare moments that I put the book down, my own pain returned in burning stabs. ↗

— Amy Plum

#die-for-me #escape #kate #loneliness #reading

The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions. ↗

— Marya Hornbacher

#self-image #escape

Knives are sharp, but are equally confusing. ↗

— Nathan Hassall

#funny #nascent-illusion #sad #scary #strange

The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far? — how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#experience