Quotes

I have been trying to connect my essay question to the idea of 'line', although I have an idea I would like to explore I have not been able to find images depicting lines and borders between good and bad or the line between everyday life and the worlds we escape into through films, books and other escapist activities. I am going to look more at film as fantasy films often deal with a physical manifestation of these borders. I have been collecting quotes from a variety  of sources based on escapism.

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?"

J. R. R. Tolkien

"Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort."

Jean Cocteau

   "Would we be so enamored with dystopian fiction if we lived in a culture where violent death was a major concern? It wouldn't be escapism."
Maggie Stiefvater

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

Margaret Forster

   "I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, 'What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and hostile to, the idea of escape?' and gave the obvious answer: jailers."

C. S. Lewis

"There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality."

Arthur C Clarke

"Paradise was always over there, a day's sail away. But it's a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home."
J Maarten Troost

"...When people lose their way and lack a real purpose for living they often fall back on certain forms of escapism as a form of self-soothing..."

John Geddes

I wanted to try and find a footing that would allow me to discover new avenues to investigate. I think that gaining these varieties of different points of view or interpretations of escapism will help me to find these paths.