Barry Diller Quotes

There is the natural tendency that all of us are vulnerable to, to deny unpleasant realities and to look for any excuse to push them away and resolve to think about them another day long in the future.

I'm very good at denial.

I have a very highly developed sense of denial.

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

People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it.

It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept.

Denial is a powerful force.

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

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

Sometimes I wanted to believe something so badly, I deliberately manufactured excuses and ignored painful reality.

The fool tries to adjust the truth so he does not have to adjust to it.

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

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces.

I think denial's fascinating. It's a jokey word, but it really happens, and sometimes in enormous ways.

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

Denial is a very powerful thing.

When all else fails there's always delusion.

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.

When you can't change what's bothering you, one typical response is to convince yourself that it doesn't actually bother you.

'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.

We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.

If you turn on the television, you'll find the mothers of the most obvious criminals that man could ever diagnose, and they all think their sons are innocent. That's simple psychological denial. The reality is too painful to bear, so you just distort it until it's bearable. We all do that to some extent, and it's a common psychological misjudgment that causes terrible problems.

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.

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

In no way did I allow reality as it was to intrude on reality as I wanted it to be.