Judith Guest Quotes

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams

Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?

People would rather be deceived than have the truth cause them anxiety

'Ernest Borgnine' is sort of my version of Woody Allen's 'Purple Rose Of Cairo' in that it's about the occasional difficulty of coming to terms with the cold hard facts and the temptation to escape into another world - like movies, for example. I'm a pro at escaping.

I convinced myself I hadn't seen anything, ... I had done this many times before ... I was adept at erasing reality.

An Irishman's imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never satisfies him; but it makes him that he can't face reality nor deal with it nor handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do, and be 'agreeable to strangers', like a good-for-nothing woman on the streets.

You convinced yourselves we're just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser's way out. Your way.

Most people cant' deal with reality, but indulge heavily in fantasy and fear.

People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.

The masses think that is is easy to flee from reality, when it is the most difficult thing in the world.

We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.

People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer.

The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that helps him get through the day

Most people like to live in illusions.

Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.

Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all.

My greatest enemy is reality. I have fought it successfully for thirty years.

Some people have a difficult time facing truth and reality. They prefer to live in a make-believe world, pretending that certain things aren't happening.

People don't want to hear the truth; they never do. They wanna live in some kind of fantasy.

When all else fails there's always delusion.

We live in our fantasies and endure our realities.

We are constantly - in order to cope with painful realities - shuffling through third-rate, half-remembered fantasies taken from movies, from TV, from people we admire. We do this individually, we do it collectively - we tell stories to escape our most painful truths.

And if you ever do a survey, you'll find that people prefer illusion to reality, ten to one. Twenty, even.

Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.