Marsha Norman Quotes

I think the greatest illusion we have is that denial protects us. It's actually the biggest distortion and lie. In fact, staying asleep is what's killing us.

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

We don’t like to face unpleasant reality. We want our leaders to tell us what we want to hear …. You cannot manipulate reality. Reality will real its ugly head

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

The only the way that you can live and function without seeing the facts in front of you is to put yourself in a constant state of denial.

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.

Pretending that we live doesn't make us alive.

This is a world in which reasons are made up because reality is too painful.

When all else fails there's always delusion.

When we hide our failings from others, we seek to hide them from ourselves, and it is in the latter attempt that we are most successful.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.

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.

Sometimes you don't want the truth. Sometimes you're like, "Oh just tell me the good answer. I don't want the truth."

To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats- we know it not.

People have managed to avert their eyes and hope for the best.

People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

Never face facts; if you do you'll never get up in the morning.

I learned denial from my mother. I just never confronted things and if anybody did, I just would go crazy.

I never write to disappear and escape. The truth is exactly the opposite. Most people strike me as escaping and disappearing in one way or another - into their jobs, their daily routines, their delusions about themselves and others.

There's no point in living in an alternate reality.

Denial has been a way of life for me for many years. I actually believe in denial.

Some adults would rather pretend that bad things don't exist than to talk about them.

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.