Fantasy Is Better Than Reality Quotes

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Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.
Andy Warhol
Fantasy love is much better than Reality Love.
Andy Warhol
It's like the idea of him is better than the him of him.
Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall)
love an invisible force that makes you realize that reality is better than fantasy.
Aonymous girl
...she kept hoping Mulder and Scully would kiss each other well and good. Having a relationship vicariously through fantasy and excellent scripting was all Aggie had at the moment - and to be honest, it wasn't all that bad. Her imagination was always better than reality...
Marjorie M. Liu (Dark Dreamers (Dark, #6.5; Dirk & Steele, #4))
This apparent hurly-burly and disorder turn out, after all, to reproduce real life with its fantastic ways more accurately than the most carefully studied out drama of manners. Every man is in himself all humanity, and if he writes what occurs to him he succeeds better than if he copies, with the help of a magnifying glass, objects placed outside of him.
Théophile Gautier (Mademoiselle de Maupin)
It could have been fantasy. While I love the idea of swimming with mermaids, climbing aboard a pirate ship, being the last beings on Earth—there is nothing better than my reality. I can’t think of a greater, more magnificent adventure. Than this one.
Krista Ritchie (Long Way Down (Calloway Sisters, #4))
Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her flawless skin had a slight sheen from her dash across the parking lot and up the stairs. Sexy, but he suspected the fantasy the sheen inspired was better than the reality. She was the job. Probably wore Kevlar to bed. End of story. Still, he did enjoy playing with her. He liked her big blue eyes, cute little nose, slim athletic body, and her earnest dedication to making the world a more law-abiding place. It made his dedication to crime much more interesting.
Janet Evanovich (The Heist (Fox and O'Hare, #1))
There's a reality I never understood There's a world Better than this I'll show it Because I believe In miracles
Jazalyn (Hollow: a Love Like a Life)
It’s not often for me that reality is better than fantasy.  This is one of those times.  Reed next to me, in my bed, breathing against my chest.  She was the Diane Court to my Lloyed Dobler.
Lila Felix (How It Rolls (Love and Skate, #2))
The funny thing about games and fictions is that they have a weird way of bleeding into reality. Whatever else it is, the world that humans experience is animated with narratives, rituals, and roles that organize psychological experience, social relations, and our imaginative grasp of the material cosmos. The world, then, is in many ways a webwork of fictions, or, better yet, of stories. The contemporary urge to “gamify” our social and technological interactions is, in this sense, simply an extension of the existing games of subculture, of folklore, even of belief. This is the secret truth of the history of religions: not that religions are “nothing more” than fictions, crafted out of sociobiological need or wielded by evil priests to control ignorant populations, but that human reality possesses an inherently fictional or fantastic dimension whose “game engine” can — and will — be organized along variously visionary, banal, and sinister lines. Part of our obsession with counterfactual genres like sci-fi or fantasy is not that they offer escape from reality — most of these genres are glum or dystopian a lot of the time anyway — but because, in reflecting the “as if” character of the world, they are actually realer than they appear.
Erik Davis (TechGnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information)
My guess? Romance novels. My guess? She started reading them early. My guess? She started them at a time where they made a huge impression on her and changed her perceptions. She isn't cocooned, she pays attention and she knows there are no men out there like the men in those books she reads so she prefers being with them than trying to find someone like them which, she thinks, is a fruitless endeavor. That fantasy is far better than any reality and, you know what? She's right. Men are a pain in the ass and a lot of them are dicks who cause heartbreak. And her, a girl like Faye? Well, she knows she's the kind of girl men like that will chew up and spit out. So she's smart and she's not going to go there.
Kristen Ashley (Lady Luck (Colorado Mountain, #3))
People will hold an opinion because they want to keep the company of others who share the opinion, or because they think it is the respectable opinion, or because they have publicly expressed the opinion in the past and would be embarrassed by a “U-turn,” or because the world would suit them better if the opinion were true, or . . . Perhaps it is better to get on with your family and friends, to avoid embarrassment, or to comfort yourself with fantasies than to believe the truth. But those who approach matters in this way should give up any pretensions to intellectual seriousness. They are not genuinely interested in reality.
Jamie Whyte (Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders)
Fantasy imposes order on the universe. Or, at least, it superimposes order on the universe. And it is a human order. Reality tells us that we exist for a brief, beleaguered span in a cold infinity; fantasy tells us that the figures in the foreground are important. Fantasy peoples the alien Outside, and it doesn’t matter a whole lot if it peoples it with good guys or bad guys. Putting ‘Hy-Brasil’ on the map is a step in the right direction, but if you can’t manage that, then ‘Here Be Dragons is better than nothing. Better than the void.
Terry Pratchett
People are obsessed with spectacle. We live in the society of the spectacle. People are addicted to the spectacular. They want bigger and better spectacles. They need more and more to keep them stimulated. They crave entertainment. They crave more powerful simulations, more breathtaking special effects, more everything. No one wants POR – plain old reality. Simulation – hyperreality – the simulacrum – these are what the people desire. We all live in Disneyland now – an utter fantasy world. Our true God is Mickey Mouse. At least he’s a lot nicer than Yahweh.
Adam Weishaupt (Hypersex)
At times I wondered whether writing was not a solipsistic luxury in countries like mine, where there were scant readers, so many people who were poor and illiterate, so much injustice, and where culture was a privilege of the few. These doubts, however, never stifled my calling, and I always kept writing even during those periods when earning a living absorbed most of my time. I believe I did the right thing, since if, for literature to flourish, it was first necessary for a society to achieve high culture, freedom, prosperity, and justice, it never would have existed. But thanks to literature, to the consciousness it shapes, the desires and longings it inspires, and our disenchantment with reality when we return from the journey to a beautiful fantasy, civilization is now less cruel than when storytellers began to humanize life with their fables. We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.
Mario Vargas Llosa (In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture)
Sometimes our fantasies are better than our realities.
Jenna Alatari
of course i have learned over the years that my fantasies are always better than reality and i leave it at that.
Scott C. Holstad (Junction City)
I know there’s a reality I never understood As I wander in Utopia But I find a courage In your aura I know there’s a world Better than this Both for you and me And I’ll show it Because I believe in miracles
Jazalyn (Hollow: a Love Like a Life)
And not only the world but humanity itself does need dragons” “And why is that?” Chade demanded disdainfully. “To keep the balance,” the Fool replied. He glanced over me, and then past me, out of the window and his eyes went far and pensive. “Humanity fears no rivals. You have forgotten what it was to share the world with creatures as arrogantly superior as yourselves. You think to arrange the world to your liking. So you map the land and draw lines across it, claiming ownership simply because you can draw a picture of it. The plants that grow and the beasts that rove, you mark as your own, claiming not only what lives today, but what might grow tomorrow, to do with as you please. Then, in your conceit and aggression, you wage wars and slay one another over the lines you have imagined on the world’s face.” “And I suppose dragons are better than we are because they don’t do such things, because they simply take whatever they see. Free spirits, nature’s creatures, possessing all the moral loftiness that comes from not being able to think.” The Fool shook his head, smiling. “No. Dragons are no better than humans. They are little different at all from men. They will hold up a mirror to humanity’s selfishness. They will remind you that all your talk of owning this and claiming that is no more than the snarling of a chained dog or a sparrow’s challenge song. The reality of those claims lasts but for the instant of its sounding. Name it as you will, claim it as you will, the world does not belong to men. Men belong to the world. You will not own the earth that eventually your body will become, nor will it recall the name it once answered to.
Robin Hobb (Fool's Fate (Tawny Man, #3))
When the minds of men slip from realities to fantasies without thinking of the future consequences, then we must ponder. When the hearts of men are entangled with what though might seem great but yet, specious ambitions without pondering over the resulting footprints, then we ought to take precautions. When the hands of men unwittingly and for the sake of self-gratification find the right weapons and dexterity for the wrong purpose, then massacre and cruelties leave indelible footprints of sorrow and bitterness in the hearts of men. We shall always look back to the footprints of yesterday to say had we know if we don’t take a critical look at today’s footsteps. There is always an alternative that is better than good
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
If they who are appointed to instruct and rule over men had wisdom and virtue themselves, realities, and not fantasies, would enable them to govern better; but scoundrels, quacksalvers, ambitious ruffians, or low sneaks, the lawgivers have ever found it easier to lull nations to sleep with bedtime tales than to teach truths to the public, than to develop intelligence in the population, than to encourage men to virtue by making it worthwhile for sound and palpable reasons, than, in short, to govern them in a logical manner.
Marquis de Sade (Juliette)
Our world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing. Modern civilization does not know how to be quiet. It holds forth in an unending monologue. Postmodern society rejects the past and looks at the present as a cheap consumer object; it pictures the future in terms of an almost obsessive progress. Its dream, which has become a sad reality, will have been to lock silence away in a damp, dark dungeon. Thus there is a dictatorship of speech, a dictatorship of verbal emphasis. In this theater of shadows, nothing is left but a purulent wound of mechanical words, without perspective, without truth, and without foundation. Quite often “truth” is nothing more than the pure and misleading creation of the media, corroborated by fabricated images and testimonies. When that happens, the word of God fades away, inaccessible and inaudible. Postmodernity is an ongoing offense and aggression against the divine silence. From morning to evening, from evening to morning, silence no longer has any place at all; the noise tries to prevent God himself from speaking. In this hell of noise, man disintegrates and is lost; he is broken up into countless worries, fantasies, and fears. In order to get out of these depressing tunnels, he desperately awaits noise so that it will bring him a few consolations. Noise is a deceptive, addictive, and false tranquilizer. The tragedy of our world is never better summed up than in the fury of senseless noise that stubbornly hates silence. This age detests the things that silence brings us to: encounter, wonder, and kneeling before God. 75. Even in the schools, silence has disappeared. And yet how can anyone study in the midst of noise? How can you read in noise? How can you train your intellect in noise? How can you structure your thought and the contours of your interior being in noise? How can you be open to the mystery of God, to spiritual values, and to our human greatness in continual turmoil? Contemplative silence is a fragile little flame in the middle of a raging ocean. The fire of silence is weak because it is bothersome to a busy world.
Robert Sarah (The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise)
My faith is not some escapist fantasy born of my inability to face reality. Rather, it is the belief in a reality that supersedes the one that I am being accused of escaping from. And because that’s the case, that reality demands more of me than would have been demanded had I stay put. So, if I am in fact escaping, it’s escaping to something better which is entirely different than fleeing from something that I fear.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Understand something people, we will be hated by many in the name of Christ, ridiculed, mocked, stoned, slaughtered. We will be fined, jailed and killed for our love for Christ. You are supposed to see better with your eyes today, how close this is happening, just prepare your heart and soul to be braver than Peter and not deny Christ in the moment your life might be in jeopardy for Him and what you believe. Apostle Pauls says to live is Christ to die is gain.
Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
Of course there is no denying that all these primordial dreams appear, in the opinion of nonmathematicians, to have been suddenly realized in a form quite different from the original fantasy. Baron Munchhausen’s post horn was more beautiful than our canned music, the Seven-League boots more beautiful than a car, Oberon’s kingdom lovelier than a railway tunnel, the magic root of the mandrake better than a telegraphed image, eating of one’s mother’s heart and then understanding birds more beautiful than an ethologic study of a bird’s vocalizing. We have gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one’s big and second toes; there’s work to be done. To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving. It is exactly as though the old, inefficient breed of humanity had fallen asleep on an anthill and found, when the new breed awoke, that the ants had crept into its bloodstream, making it move frantically ever since, unable to shake off that rotten feeling of antlike industry.
Robert Musil
The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom. Without access to true chaos, we’ll never have true peace. Unless everything can get worse, it won’t get any better. This is all stuff the Mommy used to tell him. She used to say, “The only frontier you have left is the world of intangibles. Everything else is sewn up too tight.” Caged inside too many laws. By intangibles, she meant the Internet, movies, music, stories, art, rumors, computer programs, anything that isn’t real. Virtual realities. Make-believe stuff. The culture. The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)
By Jove, what claptrap! Love can turn to contempt in the blink of an eye. When it sours, believe me, only bitterness and misery remain. Such disappointment spoils all other affection. Whereas mature, reasonable expectations cannot be disappointed, my lady, because they can be fulfilled.” “I will not marry without love, my lord.” “Nor will I pretend to love in order to marry,” he growled in reply. “I won’t spout drivel to stoke your overheated fantasies. If we can rub along, that is enough for me. In return, I will honor you, provide for you and protect you.”   “My father loved my mother deeply, devotedly. He loves her to this day. That is perfect, enduring love.”   “I cannot promise you perfection.”   “It’s not impossible to love with devotion. Swans mate for life, why can’t I?” “Perhaps because you are not an aggressive water fowl with a brain the size of an acorn. You have the option to act as a rational creature and accept that there is no such thing as perfect love in reality.”   “ I will not settle for less.” “By all means, don’t settle, Lady Elizabeth,” Clun said and rudely stood up to leave. “Don’t settle for me. Hold out for a poet. Or more appealing waterfowl for all I care. In the meantime, do not presume to lecture me about the proper basis of marriage, as if you knew better than I.
Miranda Davis (The Baron's Betrothal (Horsemen of the Apocalypse #2))
If these avatars were real people in a real street, Hiro wouldn't be able to reach the entrance. It's way too crowded. But the computer system that operates the Street has better things to do than to monitor every single one of the millions of people there, trying to prevent them from running into each other. It doesn't bother trying to solve this incredibly difficult problem. On the Street, avatars just walk right through each other. So when Hiro cuts through the crowd, headed for the entrance, he really is cutting through the crowd. When things get this jammed together, the computer simplifies things by drawing all of the avatars ghostly and translucent so you can see where you're going. Hiro appears solid to himself, but everyone else looks like a ghost. He walks through the crowd as if it's a fogbank, clearly seeing The Black Sun in front of him. He steps over the property line, and he's in the doorway. And in that instant he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. As one, they all begin screaming. Not that they have any idea who the hell he is -- Hiro is just a starving CIC stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It by the airport. But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun. He turns and looks back at ten thousand shrieking groupies. Now that he's all by himself in the entryway, no longer immersed in a flood of avatars, he can see all of the people in the front row of the crowd with perfect clarity. They are all done up in their wildest and fanciest avatars, hoping that Da5id -- The Black Sun's owner and hacker-in-chief -- will invite them inside. They flick and merge together into a hysterical wall. Stunningly beautiful women, computer-airbrushed and retouched at seventy-two frames a second, like Playboy pinups turned three-dimensional -- these are would-be actresses hoping to be discovered. Wild-looking abstracts, tornadoes of gyrating light-hackers who are hoping that Da5id will notice their talent, invite them inside, give them a job. A liberal sprinkling of black-and-white people -- persons who are accessing the Metaverse through cheap public terminals, and who are rendered in jerky, grainy black and white. A lot of these are run-of-the-mill psycho fans, devoted to the fantasy of stabbing some particular actress to death; they can't even get close in Reality, so they goggle into the Metaverse to stalk their prey. There are would-be rock stars done up in laser light, as though they just stepped off the concert stage, and the avatars of Nipponese businessmen, exquisitely rendered by their fancy equipment, but utterly reserved and boring in their suits.
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
There's mainstream pornography--soft-core airbrushed fluff such as Penthouse and Playboy. The folks makin' this stuff do men and their range of desires a disservice; their implication is that anything outside the "big hair, fake tits, tiny waste, no pores, limited body hair" aesthetic is deviant, weird, not normal--and not something that a red-blooded American man would be interested in. The common boys-will-be-boys explanation for porn--that men get turned on visually (in contrast to "feminine" mode of arousal, which is mental and emotional)--is nothing more than an insult, making men out to be Pavlovian dogs who salivate uncontrollably and strain at their trousers upon contact with nudie pictures. Antiporn arguments, however well-meaning, are no better. Folks like Catherine MacKinnon also believe that men are inherently drawn to porn. And to them, porn is by definition violent, suggesting that it's somehow in men's nature to be aroused by hurting others. Furthermore, antipornography activists think that porn leads men to commit violence--as if men have no self-control or capacity to separate fantasy from reality, as if an erection is a driving force that can't be stopped once it's started... The only difference is one of perspective: Antiporn folk believe that male sexuality is always threatening, while men's-magazine editors think it's always fabulous.
Lisa Jervis (BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine)
He adopted his standard mocking approach. “Having trouble getting out of the pool, Lily? There’s a ladder on the side for the old ladies who come and do aqua aerobics.” Everything inside her stilled. That condescending wretch. She felt him come closer, and was careful not to stir an inch, not even a hair. “You should get out of the pool and take a long hot shower. It’ll make you feel better,” he suggested, not ungently. His brow furrowed with worry. She ignored the thread of concern in his voice and concentrated on not moving too suddenly. Slowly, as if in unbearable agony, she lifted her head. He was dressed once more in his khakis and shirt, his sneakers were in one hand, his gear bag in the other. Good. She let her face crumble, her expression slip into wretchedness. Her lower lip trembled, a special added effect. “I—I’m not sure I can even make it to the ladder,” she confessed haltingly. “My whole body’s shot.” Damn, she must be hurting worse than he’d imagined. Trying not to stare at her lush lower lip quivering helplessly, Sean dropped his gear bag and stepped forward. “Here,” he said, leaning over, stretching out his hand. “Grab my hand. I’ll pull you out.” She’d braced her feet against the wall of the pool, knowing she’d have to strike fast. They grasped hands. The second his tightened about her forearm, she jerked backward with all her strength. Physics were on her side. Caught off balance, Sean somersaulted through the air, with only enough time to yell, “Shit!” before he landed with a cannonball-sized splash. Lily braced her arms on the pool deck. She’d intended to jump out and make a mad dash for the ladies’ locker room but her efforts were hampered by her convulsive laughter. A surprised “Oof!” flew from her lips. Sean’s arm had snaked out and wrapped around her waist, dumping her backward into the water. She pushed to the surface to find Sean glowering menacingly. He was sopping wet and just as furious. Lily’s laughter redoubled, then died away when his hands took her by the shoulders and pulled her close. Mere inches separated their bodies. “What are you doing?” Her voice came out an alarmed squeak. Her eyes flew to his. They sparkled with green and gold lights. “Payback time, Lily. You’ve pushed me once too often. I had my cell phone in my pocket. I don’t think it’s waterproof. My leather wallet is in my rear pocket, crammed with pictures of my adorable niece and nephew. Basically, Banyon, you owe me. Big time.” His tanned face, with drops of water still clinging to its chiseled planes, descended. He was going to kiss her, she realized, panic-stricken at the thought. “Don’t, Sean, don’t!” “I think I have to. It’s been a long time coming. Oh, by the way, I like lots of tongue.” Indignant, her mouth opened, ready to skewer him. But Sean was quicker. He shut Lily up the way he’d been dreaming of for so long. For years she’d driven him mad, made him crazed with desire. Now, by God, he was going to taste her. The passion and frustration inside him erupted. He seized her mouth, molding her lips to his own. Carnal fantasies gave way to a reality a thousand times sweeter. Starved for her, Sean’s lips plundered, boldly claiming her as his.
Laura Moore (Night Swimming: A Novel)
Dear, What’s the Point of it All? What is the point of being nice? When you do not know what you are going to get from it? Knowing eventually sooner rather than later someone and maybe that person you are being nice to will turn their back on you. I always have to stay grounded and focused. When I am there for people, I feel like I am always punished for it. I am always treated as if I committed a crime. I was there for my mom; however, she was killing me slowly but surely. Like my mom, I noticed that when people get themselves in some shit, they get stuck in their own mess. They are confident that they do not have to deal with the consequences—because they know the ‘kind’ person will bail them out. What’s the point of being kind? Like my mom and the officer, there are so many people in the world who are judgmental and tainted because of their selfish needs. What’s the point of my life? Here I am in a library filled with many books. I can read them and go anywhere I want to in my mind, but after I close the book, I will have to snap out of my fantasy world and welcome the cruel cold world, which is reality. If I was a book, I would be better off left on the shelf. There is no excitement in my life—only struggles. What’s the point of living and loving life when the only thing I do is read between the lines and tread carefully? Come to think about it, I am a book that nobody can understand or read. They think they know what is best for me, but if they only take the time to listen, I would be so happy to tell them about me and my needs and wants. My actions scream for attention, but time after time, I am ignored. Sadly, without a care, they were quick to rip out the pages. Yet, once again, nobody noticed me. What’s the point of it all when I never had an opportunity to make a mistake? If I did one thing wrong, they would give up on me and send me to one home after another. I’ve always been fully exposed and had to walk in a line filled with sharp curves from disappointment to disappointment. Sorrow is my aura, and sadness hugs me tightly. It is hard to cry when my eyes are closed shut by the barbed wire fence of my eyelashes as they prohibit tears from falling. What’s the point of complicating my life? I am always back to where I started, and then ... I relive the same patterns, but on a more difficult journey. I believe when you put yourself in your own mess that you should clean it up and start over. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. However, when someone else puts you in their mess, you do not know how to clean up the mess they’ve made. You do not know how to start over because you do not know where to begin. I look at it this way; it is like telling a dead person he/she can start over. How so, when that person’s life no longer exists? I know my life isn’t over. However, I am lost in a maze my mom set up for herself—and she too is lost in her own maze. When a person gets lost in their own maze, they are really fucked up. However, this maze shouldn’t be left for me to figure out. Unfortunately, I am in it, and I have to find my way out one way or another. What’s the point of taking Kace from me? He was safe and in good hands. Now he is worse off with people who are abusing him. He didn’t ask for this—I didn’t either. He deserves so much better. Again, what is the point of it all? What’s the point of making me suffer? Do you get a kick out of it? What are you trying to accomplish? I am trying to understand; what is the point of it all? What is the point? I don’t know why I am here.
Charlena E. Jackson (Pinwheels and Dandelions)
Look At Only The Reality Because Reality Is Better Than Fantasy
Sushil Singh (System dynamics: a practical approach for managerial problems)
Not much has been said by critics about the structure of The Lord of the Rings, but it is considerably more complex and at least as carefully-integrated as the multiple narrative of Joseph Conrad, for instance, in Nostromo. One might feel that a more experienced writer, one who wrote novels or fantasies professionally rather than passionately, would have known not to risk such finesses or trust so much to the ingenuity of his readers: but Tolkien knew no better than to try it. The main effect of his interlacing technique, however, does not lie in surprise and suspense. What it does is to create a profound sense of reality, of that being the way things are. There is a pattern in Tolkien’s story, but his characters can never see it (naturally, because they are in it). To them the whole story seems chaotic, haunted by bad luck; they are lost in a wilderness metaphorically as well as cartographically, indeed in a ‘bewilderment’, sometimes in the dark, sometimes in an enchanted wood, frequently guessing wrong as to the meaning of what happens even to them.
Tom Shippey (J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century)
Social conservatives do have a pretty decent predictive track record, including in many cases where their fears were dismissed as wild and apocalyptic, their projections as sky-is-falling nonsense, their theories of how society and human nature works as evidence-free fantasies. . . . If you look at the post-1960s trend data — whether it’s on family structure and social capital, fertility and marriage rates, patterns of sexual behavior and their links to flourishing relationships, or just trends in marital contentment and personal happiness more generally — the basic social conservative analysis has turned out to have more predictive power than my rigorously empirical liberal friends are inclined to admit. . . . In the late 1960s and early ’70s, the pro-choice side of the abortion debate frequently predicted that legal abortion would reduce single parenthood and make marriages more stable, while the pro-life side made the allegedly-counterintuitive claim that it would have roughly the opposite effect; overall, it’s fair to say that post-Roe trends were considerably kinder to Roe’s critics than to the “every child a wanted child” conceit. Conservatives (and not only conservatives) also made various “dystopian” predictions about eugenics and the commodification of human life as reproductive science advanced in the ’70s, while many liberals argued that these fears were overblown; today, from “selective reduction” to the culling of Down’s Syndrome fetuses to worldwide trends in sex-selective abortion, from our fertility industry’s “embryo glut” to the global market in paid surrogacy, the dystopian predictions are basically just the status quo. No-fault divorce was pitched as an escape hatch for the miserable and desperate that wouldn’t affect the average marriage, but of course divorce turned out to havesocial-contagion effects as well. Religious fears that population control would turn coercive and tyrannical were scoffed at and then vindicated. Dan Quayle was laughed at until the data suggested that basically he had it right. The fairly-ancient conservative premise that social permissiveness is better for the rich than for the poor persistently bemuses the left; it also persistently describes reality. And if you dropped some of the documentation from today’s college rape crisis through a wormhole into the 1960s-era debates over shifting to coed living arrangements on campuses, I’m pretty sure that even many of the conservatives in that era would assume that someone was pranking them, that even in their worst fears it couldn’t possibly end up like this. More broadly, over the last few decades social conservatives have frequently offered “both/and” cultural analyses that liberals have found strange or incredible — arguing (as noted above) that a sexually-permissive society can easily end up with a high abortion rate and a high out-of-wedlock birthrate; or that permissive societies can end up with more births to single parents and fewer births (not only fewer than replacement, but fewer than women actually desire) overall; or that expressive individualism could lead to fewer marriages and greater unhappiness for people who do get hitched. Social liberals, on the other hand, have tended to take a view of human nature that’s a little more positivist and consumerist, in which the assumption is that some kind of “perfectly-liberated decision making” is possible and that such liberation leads to optimal outcomes overall. Hence that 1970s-era assumption that unrestricted abortion would be good for children’s family situations, hence the persistent assumption that marriages must be happier when there’s more sexual experimentation beforehand, etc.
Ross Douthat
You have always and will always be my first. My first love, the first girl I ever kissed, the first girl I ever touched. The mind is a powerful thing, and I know for a fact the fantasy of you will always be better than the reality of anyone else. You are my heart. You are my saviour. You are my sky.
J.B. Hartnett (Watching the Sky Cry)
Professor followed me out to the studio. Pollack considered coming along then changed her mind and returned to snoozing on the couch. Once in front of the easel, I let loose. I sketched Lark smiling. Painted Lark laughing. Grabbed charcoal and drew her sleeping. My muse inspired me to create one image of her after another. Eventually, I sketched her expression when she had an orgasm. Hands covered in paint and charcoal, I sat down and stared at the pictures I’d created. As Lark looked back at me from all of my creations, I accepted what I had been hiding from all morning. I was in love with Lark. The fantasy of her had transformed into the reality of loving her. She was everything I hoped for all those nights when I wished to know her. Now, I knew her and she was better than the fantasy. Lark knew how to make me feel like a man, strong and protective. She also understood how to keep my head from lodging up my arrogant ass. Her teasing made me laugh and kept me in line. I wanted my tiny fighter to smile at me always.
Bijou Hunter (Damaged and the Cobra (Damaged, #3))
I’d accepted the fact that I would probably be single the rest of my life; at least I could live out my fantasies through my books though. Every girl had the right to dream; it was better than drowning in depression over reality.
Christin Lovell (Alpha Doms Box Set: (BBW Paranormal Romance) 9 Delicious Stories + 10 Sexy Heroes = 19 Reasons to Indulge)
What is “virtual reality”? It’s where people HIDE from real reality. What is the spectacular society? It’s where people watch other people having the spectacular life of which they dream. Why don’t they try to make it happen FOR REAL? There’s no high higher than REAL highs. There’s nothing better than being a real hero, not a fantasy hero. Ironically, all the spectacular people are a crashing disappointment in real life. They don’t have their scriptwriters with them to give then something clever and witty to say. They don’t have their make-up artists with them or the airbrushers or digital image enhancers that make them look so good on screen.
Adam Weishaupt (The Revolt of the Spectacular Society)
Plan all you want, it is a very different thing to actually kill a person than to fantasize about it. In your fantasy, you have superhuman strength. Or your action takes no strength at all. You just do it, your arms gliding effortlessly through the weightlessness of your dream world. In reality, you have to plunge a knife or pull a trigger. You have to look into the eyes of an actual person. You see their humanity. You have to push past the respect for life that has been drilled into you since before you could talk. I’m not saying it’s impossible. It happens every day. But for normal people who have lived their whole lives as law-abiding citizens, trying to be polite and well-mannered, respectful of their elders and kind to animals, good listeners and good employees; for people who use their turn signals, and hurry to get to work on. time, leave tips for their letter carrier, and put dollars in the Salvation Army’s red bucket, hoping to make the world a little better— killing another human being is not an easy thing.
Allison Leotta (A Good Killing (Anna Curtis, #4))
Dear music, I’m writing you this letter to thank you. Thank you for when you’re here, you catalyse my imagination. Thank you for this ineffable thing you bring, which makes the experience of writing so much better. Thank you for making real and palpable what is not. Thank you for being generous. Humans rarely are. You give breath to my characters. Moreover you give a mainspring to my tears, my laughs and my heart-bleedings. Actually, you give a purpose to Life, even if it’s just the one I created in my head, in the deepest abyss of my fantasies. Thank you for not judging me for that, by the way. Thank you because you make me wanna love. Life, people, nature… Everything. I can even say that sometimes, you make me fall in love of my own protagonists, my own scenes, my own jokes… I sound mad, I know, but believe me, I’m not. Well, not completely. Thank you for allowing me to travel without spending a cent. That’s pretty cool of you. I’ve even been in places never visited. Places only you and I will ever know. Thank you for your loyalty. I know I can rely on you every time, in every places. If I could live forever, I’d stay with you for a thousand year at least, until my dreams, as crazy and odd as they may be, became more authentic than my own reality. ‘Cause you know, reality sucks. Love, a girl who really likes you
Alaska Berry
You couldn't wake someone when his own dreams turned out better than reality.
Danielle Bennett (Steelhands (Havemercy, #4))
The reality of faith is far better than the fantasy of facts.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Better to cherish an ideal fantasy than to resign himself to reality, with all its limitations and unpredictability.
Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals)
But the truth is that the fantasy is often better than the reality. I had just learned that lesson. Most men eventually learn that lesson. Mystery may have thought he wanted to live with two girls who love each other as much as they love him, but chances are they’d get on his nerves, team up against him, and eventually make him just as miserable as he’d been with Katya.
Neil Strauss (The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists)
Children often think the cure for their childhood pain and emotional loneliness lies in finding a way to change themselves and other people into something other than what they really are. Healing fantasies all have that theme. Therefore, everyone’s healing fantasy begins with If only… For instance, people may think they’d be loved if only they were selfless or attractive enough, or if only they could find a sensitive, selfless partner. Or they may think their life would be healed by becoming famous or extremely rich or making other people afraid of them. Unfortunately, the healing fantasy is a child’s solution that comes from a child’s mind, so it often doesn’t fit adult realities. But whatever the healing fantasy, it gives a child the optimism to get through a painful upbringing in hopes of a better future. Many people have survived a miserable childhood in this way. The hopeful fantasy of one day being loved and attended to keeps them going.
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
Kids lie for a few main reasons. First, the line between fantasy and reality is murkier for them than it is for adults. Kids frequently engage in pretend play, where they aren’t constrained by the laws of reality and they enter into different worlds and take on traits of different characters. I’m a big fan of pretend play. It’s where children can express and explore the issues they struggle with, because it’s a safe world within their control. But when you ask your child if she broke the lamp, knowing full well that she was the one who tipped it over, and she says, “No, I was playing in my room,” your child may be coping with her guilt, or her fear of disappointing or enraging you in that moment, by entering into fantasy. We can look at this in two ways: that a child is “avoiding telling the truth” or that telling the truth feels so hard and scary that she slips into a world of pretend where she has control and can dictate an ending that feels better to her.
Becky Kennedy (Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be)
Jesus never taught that David wrote Psalm 110, or that Daniel wrote the book of Daniel, or that the book of Jonah is historically accurate. At the very most, he assumed these things. But not even this is guaranteed. It is quite possible that by alluding to these traditions, Jesus was simply conceding to standard assumptions. He may have known better, he may not have. As I showed in chapter 1, perhaps Jesus was aware that Jonah was an example of a fictional short story. By alluding to the story, he does not commit himself to its historicity, any more than Evangelicals commit themselves to the historicity of the Chronicles of Narnia when they say, reverently, that “Aslan is not a tame lion.” A preacher may confess from the pulpit that after his visit to Las Vegas, he knows what Frodo must have felt like carrying that ring, but no one assumes the preacher has confused fantasy and reality. Factual theological claims are made all the time by reference to fictional narratives, and no one gets in trouble for it. Jesus may simply have been working within the assumptions of his tradition, even if he knew better. On the other hand, he may not have known better; in all likelihood, Jesus assumed the traditions with which he was raised.
Thom Stark (The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It))
Romance novels. My guess? She started reading them early. My guess? She started them at a time where they made a huge impression on her and changed her perceptions. She isn’t cocooned, she pays attention and she knows there are no men out there like the men in those books she reads so she prefers being with them than trying to find someone like them which, she thinks, is a fruitless endeavor. That fantasy is far better than any reality and, you know what? She’s right. Men are a pain in the ass and a lot of them are dicks who cause heartbreak. And her, a girl life Faye? Well, she knows she’s the kind of girl men like that will chew up and spit out. So she’s smart and she’s not going to go there.
Kristen Ashley (Lady Luck (Colorado Mountain, #3))
Kelly swallowed her mounting dread as she and Ryan entered the restaurant. Ryan spoke in low tones to the maître d’ and then they were ushered to a table in the back. Ryan broke into a broad smile when he saw Rafael already seated next to a woman Kelly assumed was his wife, Bryony. Ryan’s mother was also seated, as were Devon and Cameron. Just great. They were last to arrive, and so they made an “entrance.” Kelly stood by Ryan’s side as he greeted everyone, then said, “Of course, you all remember Kelly. Except for you, Bryony.” He turned to Kelly. “Kelly, this is Bryony de Luca, Rafael’s wife. Bryony, this is my fiancée, Kelly Christian.” The room went absolutely silent at his declaration. The expressions ranged from his mother’s ill-disguised horror to outright disbelief on his friends’ faces. Even Bryony looked skeptical as she rose to extend her hand to Kelly. It was then that Kelly noticed that Bryony appeared every bit as pregnant as Kelly was. “It’s nice to meet you,” Bryony said with what looked to be a forced smile. Hell, how much could Bryony possibly know about Kelly anyway? It wasn’t as if she’d been around for that long. But she, like the others, didn’t appear to roll out the welcome mat. Kelly offered a nervous smile and allowed Ryan to seat her. This was going to be a long night. “How are you, Kelly?” Devon asked politely. He was seated next to her and she supposed common courtesy dictated his question. “I’m good,” she replied in a low voice. “Nervous.” He seemed surprised by her honesty. Ryan conversed with his friends and his mother. Kelly sat quietly beside him and watched the goings-on around her. No one tried to include her in conversation and the one time she offered a comment, the awkward silence that ensued told her all she needed to know. They were tolerating her for Ryan’s sake, but she didn’t miss the looks they cast in his direction when they thought she wasn’t watching. Looks that plainly said, Are you crazy? By the time the food was served, she was extremely grateful to have something to focus on. She felt out of place. She felt conspicuous. This was going down as one of the worst nights of her life and she was counting the minutes until she and Ryan could make their escape. The food felt dry in her mouth. Her stomach churned and after only a few bites, she gave up trying to force herself to eat. Instead, she sipped at her water and pretended she was back on the beach with Ryan, about to dance underneath the moonlight. That was her problem. She was living in a fantasy world, avoiding reality. And reality sucked. Her reality was sitting here at a dinner table while five other people judged her. Her reality was living with a man—a man she intended to marry—who felt he needed to forgive her for sins she hadn’t committed. At what point in her life had she decided she didn’t deserve better than this? It was a startling discovery. The blinders had come off. Why was she putting up with this?
Maya Banks (Wanted by Her Lost Love (Pregnancy & Passion, #2))
[T]here is a dangerous re-evaluation and exploitation of the work of Guénon as the inspirer of a "traditionalist" or "spiritualist" reaction to the modern world. They are often nothing other than attempts to manipulate the universal doctrine in order to legitimize certain thinking or power trends that are only interested in the government of this world, and which have no sense of the sacred. These readers of Guénon seem to get lost in fruitless analytic speculation about the crisis of the modern world or about a hypothetical militant revolt against it. So they make the mistake of always looking for evil outside themselves, creating a justification for being better than other people simply because they have read the work of Guénon and because the rest of the world is in chaos. They confuse their contempt for the chaos in the world with their contempt for the world itself, and their contempt for individuality with their contempt for humanity. They forget that humanity and the world are the fruit of God's creation and that, in any phase of a cosmic cycle, the life of every man is necessarily subject to the battle between the forces of good and evil. It is therefore to overcome those illusions of the soul that are a product of that imagination that is so typical of modern man who, not wanting to make the necessary changes to raise himself up spiritually by learning to control his instincts and stifling his own individuality, by a biased interpretation of tradition, tries to drag down the level of the world by disapproving of the decline of modern man in order to congratulate himself on his own supposed superiority. These people, rather than constructively delving into traditional teaching, only drag out arguments from tradition in order to oppose today's aberrations, and inevitably end up being trapped and fall into a form of dualism between good and evil, incapable of understanding the providential nature of the world that will remain like this as long as God allows it to continue to exist to be used for good. The next steps taken by these incurable idealists are usually to build a sand castle or an ivory tower lived in by a group of people romantically banded together by elective affinities or by an unstoppable missionary spirit aimed at forming a traditional society. Both cases are only a parody of the spiritual responsibility of every person on earth who lives in the world with the sincere aspiration to a genuine intellectual elevation, with a balanced awareness of a dimension of the Creation that is both universal and eschatological. On the one hand, we have people trapped like prisoners in a fantasy about the other world who often become theorists about the detachment from this world and, on the other hand, there are the militants of the illusions of this world who create confusion about the reality of the other world. Prisoners and theorists, fantasies, illusions and confusions, are all expressions of how far we are from an authentic traditional and spiritual perspective. But, above all, we must recognize that in some of these poor readers, there is a chronic inability to distinguish and bring together this world and the other world, without confusing them, and therefore cannot really understand the teachings of Shaykh 'Abd al -Wahid Yahya René Guénon and apply them to their lives.
Yahya Pallavicini