Imaginary Life Quotes:

What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become.

- David Malouf

source: FaceBook post by David Malouf from Dec 16, 2013

topic: Pushing, Mystery, Consciousness, Imaginary Life

We are not satisfied with real life; we want to live some imaginary life in the eyes of other people and to seem different from what we actually are.

- Blaise Pascal

topic: Real, Eye, People, Imaginary Life

If I had my life to live over, I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.

- Don Herold

topic: Worry, Trouble, Imaginary, Overcoming Worry, Spinach

I think the written word is my first love. I was just a very imagination - centered child and a big part of that imaginary life came from reading.

- Zoe Kazan

topic: Children, Reading, First Love, Written Word, Imaginary Life

Writing has always allowed me to escape. I was a very lonely child. Because I was very socially awkward, I would always have trouble making friends. And so reading and writing allowed me to have friends and to have an active imaginary life that really sort of kept me sane.

- Roxane Gay

source: "Roxane Gay Will Make You Proud to Be a Bad Feminist". Interview with Hannah Levintova, www.motherjones.com. July 24, 2014.

topic: Lonely, Children, Reading, Socially Awkward, Lonely Child

When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer.

- David Eddings

source: David Eddings, Leigh Eddings (1997). “Polgara the Sorceress”, Del Rey

topic: Eye, Reality, Normal, Imaginary Life

I have to be able to shake my imaginary life from my real life when I walk through the door with my children who immediately need a lot from me. It's actually kind of a relief, especially if it was a dark day on set.

- Mira Sorvino

source: "Inside Mira Sorvino". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 22, 2014.

topic: Dark Days, Imaginary Life

I was very moved to see that the name of the boat was Hamlet - an imaginary character becomes so important to people, we think about them so much that we name a ship after them. The imaginary lives on in the real.

- Paul Auster

source: "A Connoisseur of Clouds, a Meteorologist of Whims: The Rumpus Interview with Paul Auster". Interview with Juliet Linderman, therumpus.net. November 16, 2009.

topic: Real, Character, Thinking, Imaginary Life

People really want to believe that there is no fiction. I think they find it much easier to imagine that novelists are writing memoirs, writing about their lives, because it's difficult to conceive that there's a great imaginary life in which you can participate.

- Mark Leyner

topic: Believe, Writing, Thinking, Imaginary Life

What luxury, to be so happy that we can grieve over imaginary lives.

- Lisel Mueller

topic: Grieving, Luxury, Imaginary, Imaginary Life

If we listen to our self-love, we shall estimate our lot less by what it is than by what it is not; shall dwell upon its hindrances and be blind to its possibilities; and, comparing it only with imaginary lives, shall indulge in flattering dreams of what we should do if we had but power, and give if we had but wealth, and be if we had no temptations.

- James Martineau

source: James Martineau (1905). “Tides of the Spirit: Selections from the Writings of James Martineau”

topic: Dream, Self, Giving, Imaginary Life

We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real.

- Blaise Pascal

topic: Real, Vanity, Hypocrisy, Imaginary Life