#cape

That over these sea pastures, wide rolling watery prairies, and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like some slumberers in their beds; the ever rolling waves but made so by the restlessness. ↗

— Herman Melville

#seascape #dreams

Can you come over to Amberwood? I need you to help me break curfew and escape my dorm.” There were a few moments of silence. “Sage, I’ve been waiting two months to hear you say those words. You want me to bring a ladder? ↗

— Richelle Mead

#sydney-sage #escape

What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#loneliness #escape

Go to bed, you fool," Calcifer said sleepily. "You're drunk." "Who, me?" said Howl. "I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold sober." He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him. ↗

— Diana Wynne Jones

#castle #drunk #howl #sober #escape

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. ↗

— Shirley Jackson

#escapism #first-sentence #opening-lines #reality #sanity

Dinnertime!" It was Isabelle, standing framed in the door of the library. She still had the spoon in her hand, though her hair had escaped from its bun and was straggling down her neck. "Sorry if I'm interrupting," she added, as an afterthought. "Dear God," said Jace, "the dread hour is nigh." Hodge looked alarmed. "I—I—I had a very filling breakfast," he stammered. "I mean lunch. A filling lunch. I couldn't possibly eat—" "I threw out the soup," Isabelle said. "And ordered Chinese from that place downtown." Jace unhitched himself from the desk and stretched. "Great. I'm starved." "I might be able to eat a bite," admitted Hodge meekly. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#isabelle #escape

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. All of them? Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#writing #escape

What you cannot escape, you must fight; what you cannot fight, you must endure. ↗

— Lilith Saintcrow

#the-devil-s-right-hand #escape

Flickering lights anonymous doors my heart escaping in drips i'm still waking up but she's still sleeping this ICU is hotel for the dead ↗

— Maggie Stiefvater

#sam-roth #escape

I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced. ↗

— Lawrence Durrell

#reading #reality #escape