The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.
—Wendell Barry
Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.
—Jessamyn West
Frederick William was deeply disappointed by his son, the future Frederick the Great, who in his youth seemed more interested in French culture, music, and literature than in the military virtues. The father's disaffection turned to actual hatred, and his treatment became so harsh that the young prince decided to run away, with the aid of two accomplices, Lieutenants Katte and Keith. The plan was discovered; Keith escaped, but the prince and Katte were captured and court-martialed. Katte was sentenced to life imprisonment, Frederick to solitary confinement. Frederick William, deciding that Katte's sentence was too lenient, had him beheaded in the presence of Prince Frederick. This drastic measure had the desired effect; Frederick asked the king's pardon and began to apply himself to acquiring the Prussian military philosophy.
—The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
—Brooks Atkinson
I couldn't escape him, now or ever. He'd always be there, consuming my every thought, my heart locked in his hands. I was drawn to him by forces I couldn't control, let alone escape.
—Becca Fitzpatrick in Silence
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
—Edgar Allan Poe
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
—Thomas Merton
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
—Twyla Tharp
Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy.
—Clive Bell
I needed to be somewhere different. Maybe I needed to be someone different, too.
—Heather Davis in The Clearing
He was my escape, and sometimes that can feel an awful lot like love.
—Emily Giffin in Something Borrowed
To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
—Friedrich Nietzsche