Quotes about escape
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The Last Messiah (1933) <br class="br">Source: trans. Peter Reed & David Rothenberg https://ia803202.us.archive.org/15/items/20200821_20200821_1659/OAP_Zapffe_Last_Messiah.pdf, page 8

Religion, Tear

“We women have presented larger petitions in support of our enfranchisement than were ever presented for any other reform; we have succeeded in holding greater public meetings than men have ever held for any reform, in spite of the difficulty which women have in throwing off their natural diffidence, that desire to escape publicity which we have inherited from generations of our foremothers. We have broken through that. We have faced hostile mobs at street corners, because we were told that we could not have that representation for our taxes that men have won unless we converted the whole of the country to our side. Because we have done this, we have been misrepresented, we have been ridiculed, we have had contempt poured upon us, and the ignorant mob have been incited to offer us violence, which we have faced unarmed and unprotected by the safeguards which Cabinet Ministers enjoy. We have been driven to do this; we are determined to go on with this agitation because we feel in honour bound. Just as it was the duty of your forefathers, it is our duty to make the world a better place for women than it is to-day.”

Emmeline Pankhurst book My Own Story

My Own Story (1914), Book II, Ch. 3

Women, Men, Hostility, World

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.”

Lynda Barry (1956) Cartoonist

World, Reality

“Can you come over to Amberwood? I need you to help me break curfew and escape my dorm.”
There were a few moments of silence. “Sage, I’ve been waiting two months to hear you say those words. You want me to bring a ladder?”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Silence, Waiting, Help

“You're trying to escape from your difficulties, and there never is any escape from difficulties, never. They have to be faced and fought.”

Enid Blyton (1897–1968) author

Source: Six Cousins At Mistletoe Farm

“She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Heart, Animals

“I don't want to be a writer so I can write about my life. I want to be a writer to escape from it.

+ Then you shouldn't be a writer.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

Life

“When a man carries an instrument of violence, he'll always find the justification to use it. If we really want to escape this war, we have to stop bringing it with us.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Saga, Vol. 1

War

“… as long as American life was something to be escaped from, the cartel would always be assured a bottomless pool of new customers.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice

Life

“It should not be denied… that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Law, History, Freedom

“Memories - you can't escape them, but you can't let them rule you either.”

Rob Thurman (1950) American writer

Source: Deathwish

Memory

“Eve was still frowning at the pasta like she suspected it was going to do something
clever, like try to escape from the pot.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 3 "Human Nature and Character

Problem, Animals

“Novels aren’t just happy escapes; they are slivers of people’s souls, nailed to the pages, dripping ink from veins of wood pulp. Reading the right one at the right time can make all the difference.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Happiness, People, Soul, Time

“This book taught me, once and for all, how easily you can escape this world with the help of words! You can find friends between the pages of a book, wonderful friends.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkspell

Books, World, Help

“Miles is… Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Nature

“Escape plan number seventeen," I told her. "Run away and open a juice stand in Fresno."
"Why Fresno?"
"Sounds like the kind of place people drink a lot of juice.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

People, Drink

“Everything has shape, if you look for it. There is no escape from form.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Variant: You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say.
Source: The Alchemist

Heart

“I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from man's and for which man's language was inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored. D. H. Lawrence began to give instinct a language, he tried to escape the clinical, the scientific, which only captures what the body feels.”

Anaïs Nin book Delta of Venus

As quoted in D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers (1996) by Leo Hamalian, p. 90
Source: Delta of Venus

Sex, Feeling, Sense, Box

“The past can be escaped only by embracing something better.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Past

“I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”

Anaïs Nin book Incest: From a Journal of Love

July 7, 1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Variant: Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.
Source: Incest: From a Journal of Love
Context: I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger than reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.

Life, Way

“escape from the black widow spider
is a miracle as great as art.
what a web she can weave
slowly drawing you to her
she'll embrace you
then when she's satisfied
she'll kill you
still in her embrace
and suck the blood from you.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Art, Drawing

“Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Reality

“And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

Death, Truth, Madness

“What is fear after all? It is indecision. You seek some way to resist, escape. There is none.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Source: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

Fear, Way, Indecision

“To escape from the world means that one's mind is not concerned with the opinions of the world.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Source: A Primer Of Soto Zen

World

“We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art--we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays

Art

“… In the summer New York was the only place in which one could escape from New Yorkers…”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Summer

“If I'd had enough breath, I would have screamed, both at the sensation and at the sheer pettiness of the bastard who wouldn't allow me even a tiny chance of escape.”

Karen Chance book Touch the Dark

Source: Touch the Dark

Chance

“Maniacal suicide. —This is due to hallucinations or delirious conceptions. The patient kills himself to escape from an imaginary danger or disgrace, or to obey a mysterious order from on high, etc.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: On Suicide: A Study in Sociology

Suicide

“I’d spent my entire life overdosing on uncut escapism, willingly allowing fantasy to become my reality.”

Ernest Cline book Armada

Source: Armada

Life, Reality

“Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Source: The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

Reality

“I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. XV).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: The thing that irks me most is this shattered prison, after all. I’m tired, tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there; not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart; but really with it, and in it.

World, Tear, Heart

“I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Beauty

“Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Help

“The thing was, if I had found a way to escape- even for just a little while- I knew the pain would be there waiting for me when I got back.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Bruiser

Pain, Way, Waiting

“In a city this size, every year, hundreds of husbands walk away. Kids leave home. Wives escape. People disappear.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

People, Home

“We can’t choose what we want and don’t want and that’s the hard lonely truth. Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us. We can’t escape who we are.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Truth

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Way, Home, Thinking

“Reading is a gift. It's something you can do almost anytime and anywhere. It can be a tremendous way to learn, relax, and even escape. So, enough about the virtues of reading. Time to read on.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Source: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens: Simple Ways to Keep Your Cool in Stressful Times

Way, Learning, Time, Reading

“Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“When things get unbearable, I wrap myself into a tight ball and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body is tense. I open my eyes and I'm still where I was when I closed them to escape. Nothing's changed.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967–2020) American author and journalist

Change

“No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man's hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Time

“Angel says that rich people don't like to tolerate much. Money gives you permission to just walk away from everything that isn't pretty and perfect. You can't put up with anything less than lovely. You spend your life running, avoiding, escaping.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Diary

Source: Diary

Love, Life, Money, People

“He had escaped the abhorrent taint! He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world!”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

World

“It’s my belief that the study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 39
Context: I’ve always been interested in foreign relations. It’s my belief that the study of history should be our preparation for understanding the present, rather than an escape from it.

History, Understanding, Study

“I have one problem, I don’t hate people. They disgust me and I want to get away from them. I do not have hatred. I have an escape mechanism.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Hate, People, Problem

“Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Books, Way, Housing

“What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: 1Q84 BOOK 1

Personality

“A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

Source: The Gum Thief

Age, Dreams, Past

“can run, you can hide, but you can’t escape my love”

Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974

Making India Awesome

Love

“If you've made your own hell, then only you have the power to escape it.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Hell

“Was this all part of your plan as my lawyer? I don't recall explosive escapes being part of the legal training."
"Well, I'm sure it wasn't part of Damon Taru's legal training.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Parting, Training

“But on that sunlit Sunday, Alexander knew nothing, thought nothing, imagined nothing. He forgot Dimitri and war and the Soviet Union and escape plans, and even America, and crossed the street for Tatiana Metanova.”

Paullina Simons book Tatiana and Alexander

Source: Tatiana and Alexander

War, Imagination

“You can never escape me. Bullets don't harm me. Nothing harms me. But I know pain. I KNOW pain. Sometimes I share it. With someone like you.”

Frank Miller book Batman: Year One

Source: Batman: Year One

Pain

“For a second I was almost jealous of the clouds. Why was he looking to them for an escape when I was right here beside him?”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Source: Kartography

“War and hunting and chasing-that's all there is. That's life, Jenny-no one can escape it.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Chase

Life, War

“A man who catches History's eye is thereafter bound to a mistress from whom he will never escape.”

Salman Rushdie Shame

Source: Shame

History

“Alongside the practical thought something else struggled and, like an escaped butterfly, took wing: the assurance of something wonderful awaiting her. Just around the corner……”

Norah Lofts (1904–1983) British writer

“It is always the same with mountains. Once you have lived with them for any length of time, you belong to them. There is no escape.”

Ruskin Bond (1934) British Indian writer

Source: Rain in the Mountains: Notes from the Himalayas

Mountain, Time

“We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Life, Solitude, Holiday

“Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep--
But nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep.
Maybe you just had the worst day of your life;
Well, you know, there's no escape.
That's no excuse. Just suck up and be nice.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Pixie
Song lyrics
Source: Ani Difranco - Little Plastic Castle

Life, Sleep

“A massage is just like a movie, really relaxing and a total escape, except in a massage you're the star. And you don't miss anything by falling asleep!”

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923–2014) writer

Source: Mr. Wrong

Star

“There's no escaping fate, it just keeps going. Day and night, the future just keeps coming at you.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Fate, Future, Night

“The platform underneath the balloon fell on her as she was trying to escape," she explained. "She was crushed."
"I'd have been disappointed too.”

Anthony Horowitz book Scorpia

Source: Scorpia

Disappointment

“Escape plan #5: Open an alpaca ranch in Texas, one that requires all blond-haired, brown-eyed, brainy girls to wear sexy cowgirl outfits.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Girl

“Once I'm on my feet I realize escape might not be so easy.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it or to escape what is bad in it but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Past

“The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.”

Gilles Deleuze book Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation

Source: Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation

Animals

“It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“We cannot avoid
Using power,
Cannot escape the compulsion
To afflict the world,
So let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction,
Love powerfully.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

"Power and Love" (1926)
Context: p> Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.We cannot avoid
Using power,
Cannot escape the compulsion
To afflict the world,
So let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction,
Love powerfully.</p

Love, World, Affliction

“Honey, the only experts in PMS are men. That's why men are so good at fighting wars; they learned Escape and Evade at home.”

Linda Howard (1950) American writer

Source: Mr. Perfect

Men, War, Home, Learning

“This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.”

Carol Shields Unless

Source: Unless

Reading

“It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Man kann sich des Eindrucks nicht erwehren, daß die Menschen gemeinhin mit falschen Maßstäben messen, Macht, Erfolg und Reichtum für sich anstreben und bei anderen bewundern, die wahren Werte des Lebens aber unterschätzen.
Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 1, as translated by James Strachey, p.25

Life, People, Success, Falseness

“Mr. Sagunuma: We can never escape who we are. Instead of wasting time worrying about it, why don't you cut to he chase and love yourself?”

Bisco Hatori (1975) Japanese manga artist

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 4

Love, Time

“I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

Source: The Simple Art of Murder

Pleasure, Art, Mathematics, Reading

“Then how about one kiss?' he said with a sexy grin. 'Something to remember me by?'

'I’ll give you something to remember me by,' I said. The back of my head.' I pushed past him and escaped through the door to freedom.”

Ellen Schreiber (1967) American writer

Source: The Coffin Club

Kiss, Freedom, Past

“One doesn’t become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that - to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to by others.”

Sylvia Townsend Warner book Lolly Willowes

Source: Lolly Willowes

Life, Help

“As it was, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was out of my element. I found myself thinking of a book I'd left half-read at home and wishing I'd stuck it in my purse so I could pull it out now.”

Charlaine Harris (1951) American writer

Source: Last Scene Alive

Books, Feeling, Home, Thinking

“To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Suicide

“Laughing at the universe liberated my life. I escape its weight by laughing. I refuse any intellectual translations of this laughter, since my slavery would commrnce from that point on.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: Guilty

Life, Laughter, Universe

“A past may chase you if you try to escape from it… but once you confront it, it's just an old memory inside you. There's nothing to be afraid of.”

Kazuya Minekura (1975) Japanese manga artist

Memory, Past

“The free man never thinks of escape.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

Thinking

“We feel free when we escape, even if it be from the frying pan into the fire.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Feeling

“My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me……..”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss (pp. 8)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: My Name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in The Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Peeta was taken prisoner. He is thought to be dead. Most likely he is dead. It is probably best if he is dead...

Hunger, Hate, Home, Game