Terry Pratchett Quotes

I think I survived by running away some. Running away to work.

I think we live in a time where we can all distract ourselves from facing the pain or the reality of all of our lives - tons of ways to hide, to kill pain, to deal with pain.

My first line of defense against reality is called sleep.

If I'm in a rotten mood, I stay in and watch television.

You can always find a distraction if you're looking for one.

I spent my childhood in an imaginary world - probably because I needed an escape. I think that's one of the reasons people have imaginations - because they can't maintain existence here.

Music and art and culture is escapism, and escapism sometimes is healthy for people to get away from reality. The problem is when they stay there.

Ironing is a great diversion from the reality you don't want to face.

Reality is just a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.

'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.

Everyone asks me about why I care about anime and football so much, but that's because anything dark that happened in my life, those two things would make me feel better. I just used to sit in front of the TV and watch football and breathe a sigh of relief. You know what I mean? It's another world. An escape.

I don't want to go too deep, but football and 'Dragon Ball Z' were the two things that, when I was going through a hard time when I was younger, kind of gave me an escape.

A sensitive person is seldom happy with the world the way it is. And since you cannot change it, you think, 'Might as well numb the anguish.' If you're using something to escape reality, then it's something you need to address.

I really, really wanted to lose awareness of the here and now. The best way for me to do that was bury myself in a book.

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

Like the ostrich, head under wingWhen the roaring storm breaks,So many people take refugeUnder the soft pillowOf specious arguments.

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

Drugs or overeating or alcohol or sex, it was all just another way to find peace. To escape what we know. Our education. Our bite of the apple.

Klaus sighed, and opened a book, and as at so many other times when the middle Baudelaire child did not want to think about his circumstances, he began to read.

He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him.

Daydreamin' drugs the pain of living.

Drugs and alcohol are not my problem, reality is my problem, drugs and alcohol are my solution.

Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book. Well, Mumsy, no, not really. Your beloved large-print sagas of rags, riches, and heartbreak were no camouflage against the miseries trained on you by the tennis ball launcher of life, were they? But, yes, Mum, there again, you have a point. Books don’t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.

Reading keeps me sane. Growing up, it was my scape, my alternative; it provided both rebellion and peace.

Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.