“I lived too much in my head instead of the real world.”

“I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.”

Neil Gaiman book The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

“I have too much brain for my head. It cannot play comfortably in its box.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

“I'd like to imagine I won't end up in hell, but I think I've done too much acid and listened to too much death metal to sit on a cloud next to God with angels floating above my head.”

Dave Grohl (1969) American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter

“Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“I am human, sometimes I feel afraid and sometimes I am worried because even though I am not afraid to spend a few years in jail, I understand that my mother and friends will be worried. I always discuss this in my head. … I'm more scared to live in this country, in this world, and do nothing: to spend life too afraid of everything, too afraid to speak or go to certain places, to just be in a normal work and don't create anything for the next generation. In my understanding, that is much more scary than to go to jail.”

Oksana Shachko (1987–2018) Ukrainian artist and activist with FEMEN

“I don’t want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world but opted for the Home Shopping Network Instead)…”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“They don't know my head's full of me
And that I have my own special thing,
And there's no hole in my head.
Too bad.”

Malvina Reynolds (1900–1978) American folk singer