“I feel like the reason I ended up becoming a playwright is because I never choose the right word. As a kid, my fantasy profession was to be a novelist. But the thing about writing prose - and maybe great prose writers don't feel this way - but I always felt it was about choosing words. I was always like, "I have to choose the perfect word." And then it would kill me, and I would choose the wrong word or I would choose too many perfect words - I wrote really purple prose.” WayFeelsWritingReasonKidsFeltPerfectFantasyBecomingProfessionNovelistsProsePurpleKill MePlaywrightRight WordsWrong Words Author:Annie Baker
“I think glamour is a female thing. I don't think that's a male fantasy. I think glamour's a female fantasy.” ThinkingFantasyFemaleMalesGlamour Author:Anna Biller
“The funny thing is, nationalism only could have come about in Europe after the invention of printing. You could have this thing that was a book in a vernacular language, and you could imagine there were other readers of this book who you couldn't see, but they were a theoretical union of readers who all use the same language. That is kind of a prerequisite for a national fantasy. You need that thing, and it's a strange thing.” NeedsKindBookUseLanguageFantasyImagineStrangeReaderEuropeUnionsInventionNationalismTheoreticalFunny ThingsPrintingStrange ThingsPrerequisitesVernacular Author:Ben Katchor
“A comic book is the opposite of a cartoon. In a cartoon, you want to simplify the idea, so when they look at it at a glance, they get it. Boom. Simple. Direct to the point. But when you're drawing Groo, now it's a narrative, a story. You want the viewer to get involved in the story. You want him to feel like he's in the town to follow your main character. So I love to add lots and lots of things in it. Things that people will enjoy going back to and say, "Oh yeah, that's how a market must have looked in this fantasy world, with people selling meat here and dishes here."” PeopleWorldWantFeelsLooksBookIdeasCharacterStoriesEnjoySimpleFantasyInvolvedDirectOppositesTownsYeahAddDrawingSellingComicNarrativeMeatDishesComic BookCartoonViewersGlancesGet InvolvedSimplifyWant HimMain CharactersFantasy Worlds Author:Sergio Aragones
“To be honest, I wasn't crazy about the kind of poetry I found in high school English books. I didn't get really excited about poetry until I discovered Lorca in college. If it wasn't for surrealism, I'm not sure I'd have become so involved in poetry. I was attracted by the extravagant imagery and elements of fantasy. This was in the '70s and it seemed to fit the psychedelic mood of the times. I found it liberating.” IfsKindBookSchoolFoundFantasyCrazyHonestCollegeInvolvedFitElementsHigh SchoolExcitedMoodBeing HonestNot SureLiberatingImageryGet RealPsychedelicSurrealismExtravagantLorcaSchool English Author:Elaine Equi
“In the past things were either in your head (subjective, imaginary, fantasy) or else they were part of the outside world - cold, hard, concrete materialistic reality. If you want to look at it in terms of poetry, there was surrealism and objectivism. Now there's the veil of the virtual in between. The old opposition between inner and outer doesn't quite capture it, especially as it contains elements of both. It's real but not concrete.” IfsWorldWantLooksRealHardRealityPastTermFantasyColdElementsOppositionCaptureConcreteImaginaryVeilsSubjectiveMaterialisticOutside WorldSurrealismObjectivism Author:Elaine Equi
“I come from musical theater, and a lot of musical theater is about accepting fantasy. I think it is more about just being open and accepting.” ThinkingAcceptingFantasyTheaterMusicalJust BeingMusical Theater Author:Amy Adams
“There's so much power in allegory, to form ideas and learn lessons that you can actually take and apply to real life. I think that's why I originally really loved fantasy and reading.” ThinkingRealReadingFantasyReal LifeAllegory Author:Amandla Stenberg
“Female sexuality is presented in our culture as a male fantasy, which doesn't include the reality of the abuse, the pleasure, the pain, the power, the complexity of women's sexuality.” RealityPainCulturePleasureFantasyFemaleAbuseSexualityComplexity Author:Deborah Kampmeier
“Socially and politically, we seem to be living in dire times, worse times than in the past. But there were far worse horrors in our past. The writer's role is to be a truth sayer. I sincerely believe that each society, each country lives by a particular fantasy vision, a fantasy vision of itself. The truth of how they live is hardly ever faced.” BelieveCountryPastVisionFantasyHorrorLive ByOur PastSincerely Author:Clarence Major
“Many white-collar workers are lucky enough to have creative-class jobs that are satisfying, which is great as long as you're still able to carve out true, work-free leisure at some point. But there's been a kind of sneaky reframing of work as play as the Silicon Valley model has been imported into other fields. Now you see adult offices that look like nursery schools, and staff paintball parties, work cultures that encourage the "We're a family here!" fantasy while preventing workers from going home at a reasonable hour to be with their actual families.” KindLongEnoughHomeSchoolCultureHoursPartyFantasyLuckyOfficeNurseryGoing HomeSneaky Author:Katrina Onstad
“Just when you think you should start accepting that you're becoming an adult, all your childhood fantasies come true.” ThinkingAcceptingFantasyChildhoodYour Children Author:El-P
“When people talk about imagination, they tend to think of fantasy or something made-up. But really imagination is a mode of perception. Which is maybe why so many artists have turned to the occult. Artists tend to feel like outsiders. Whether they are actually outsiders or not is also kind of irrelevant.” PeopleThinkingKindArtistImaginationFantasyPerceptionOutsidersIrrelevantOccult Author:Janaka Stucky
“I know perception is reality in politics and I know how it looks, but the reality is Democrats lost the election and what they thought it was gonna be, a landslide with the best candidate they could have ever nominated, Hillary Clinton, look at the rejection. The rejection is real. They're creating a Fantasy Island world in which none of this happened. And that's where they're choosing to live. That's not healthy, folks.” WorldRealRealityFantasyHealthyPerceptionElectionClintonDemocratRejection Author:Rush Limbaugh
“My visions and fantasies are pretty standard. The only difference is I got to do it, while most of us haven't. Beyond that, I'm a pretty standard guy. Give me a gal with a sense of humor, acidic wit, who's read a few books and has a body like a Swedish speed skater, and I'm quite content.” GivingBookGuyVisionFantasySpeedWitSense Of HumorSkater Author:David Lee Roth
“You don't often see the words "Discipline" and "Dreaming" in the same sentence. But I believe this duality is critically important to win in both business and life. Dreaming without discipline is fantasy land. Discipline without dreaming creates rigid and stifling bureaucracies. Having a process to enable the creative process will help liberate the creativity that lives within every organization and individual.” BelieveImportantHelpingDreamWinningIndividualI BelieveCreativityFantasyCreativeDisciplineCreative ProcessBureaucracyDuality Author:Josh Linkner
“I do open endings on purpose. I expect a lot from my readers. I want them to do much of the work, because I believe that the story is built by the reader, not by the writer. I like having an open ending to a standalone fantasy, because it allows a continuing story to be written in the hearts of the readers.” BelieveHeartPurposeI BelieveFantasy Author:Kelly Barnhill
“It's important for the character, over the course of six years, to have checked off all the different boxes of the things that Mindy Kaling is trying to learn about herself to see what she wants. Which are the things that she's dreamed of since she was a kid that will ultimately be still important to her as a fully integrated adult and which ones are maybe just fantasies.” TryingImportantDifferentCharacterKidsFantasyIntegrated Author:Matt Warburton
“All entertainment is an element of fantasy because you are seeing something that is not quite real. There is no such thing as reality TV. Reality TV would be to leave a camera on in front of someone's house. Just leave it on. Then whenever the person comes or goes walking the dog or getting groceries, that's what it would be like. Any time you make an edit, you've lost reality TV. You're either compressing time or extending. That's a term that's been overused and overexposed. I think it's fantasy movies that take the fantasy of movies even further.” ThinkingRealRealityHouseTermFantasyDogWalkingOverused Author:Bruce Campbell
“The camera is your way to see what you want to see - it's an extension of the director's fantasy. I'm executing my personal fantasy, whether it's a fantasy of pleasure or of pain and fear.” PainPleasureFantasy Author:Liz W. Garcia
“I love a chance to shoot real locations, because in films in the earlier days before people traveled as much, it was exotic to see a film set in Switzerland, and that area has been taken over by CGI, mostly, and fantasy landscapes. It's unusual to see this much landscape, people say it's old fashioned. So what you're referring to is there was that period in the '50s and '60s when there were epics and you saw landscape.” PeopleRealFilmChanceFantasyTakenUnusualEpicOld Fashioned Author:Peter Weir
“When we come back to fantasy, I think we're actually coming back to the real bedrock of storytelling. Our national or international genre really is fantasy, if you think about the worldwide myths and legends and stories that we all know, whether we're talking about Little Red Riding Hood or the Arabian Nights or Noah's Ark or Hercules. These are stories that cross many cultures in much the same way that dragons cross many cultures.” ThinkingRealNightCultureFantasyMythStorytellingHoodArabianRed Riding HoodLittle Red Riding Hood Author:Robin Hobb
“I'm absolutely as vulnerable as the next person in terms of being swept up in aspirational Instagrams. You just have to know what is fantasy and what is real. It's always good to have a diverse feed in your life and in your social media.” RealTermFantasySocial MediaVulnerableDiverse Author:Rose Byrne
“As a child I loved fantasy books, I loved Harry Potter and the idea that there is something 'out there' is inspiring to kids and inspiring to me. It's exciting and I think people can relate to it. Even if things are difficult or bad for you, the idea that there is something special within you is positive and true.” PeopleThinkingChildrenBookKidsDifficultFantasySpecialExcitingHarry Potter Author:Alexandra Daddario
“Brazil obviously connotes something in my mind to do with desire, sexuality and freedom. In fantasy, in mythology, Rio is the iconography of the imagination. In essence, we're all sex tourists. I've never been to Rio and I've never been to a psychoanalytic convention, but in a sense, Rio is symbolic of desire, some sort of ultimate ecstasy.” MindDesireImaginationFantasyUltimateSexualityMythologyEcstasyPsychoanalytic Author:Francis Levy
“I've always had the fantasy of doing a boot camp for a military film, at some point. I've always wanted to know what the experience is like, to feel that mounting pressure of going off to war and needing to be so present and physically aware of your body because you ultimately need to fight for your life and for your country.” WarCountryFilmFightingFantasyMilitary Author:Seth Gabel
“My fans probably know what I had for breakfast that morning. And that's the cool part. And I respond to people, if they post on my blog, I'm like, "Oh, that's really cool you read that book, that fantasy series!" It's almost like they're my friends in a sense. There's less separation. They know me more as a human being with my flaws, versus some kind of actor on a pedestal.” PeopleKindBookMorningFantasySeparationFlawsKnow MeReally Cool Author:Felicia Day
“We are not buried in history, but surrounded by it. You can't avoid our behavior being shaped by it, to a considerable degree. We have this fantasy that we are free of history. This allows us not to see the circumstances, the historical circumstances of other people.” PeopleFantasyCircumstancesBehaviorHistorical Author:Russell Banks
“My fantasy life made me survivor. One day I knew that me, this skinny, ugly girl who was only invited to slumber parties when they were forced to - someday I knew I would be someone. That was my driving goal. It wasn't to be famous. I didn't want furs and signing autographs, I didn't care about any of that. I wanted to be someone other than myself.” CareGirlGoalPartyFantasyOne DayUglyDrivingSomedaySurvivorUgly GirlSlumber Party Author:Kristen Johnston
“Your body, which is very physical, is under the influence of your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your dreams, your fantasies, your desires, your instincts, your drives, your imagination. All these things orchestrate themselves - all these internal activities that are in the invisible domain that we call consciousness actually have very precise physical effects both in our biology, but they also influence our perception of the world.” WorldFeelingsDreamDesireImaginationEmotionConsciousnessFantasyInfluencePerceptionInstinctInvisibleBiology Author:Deepak Chopra
“You never know how things are going to fit. So, you don't count your eggs until they hatch. You can't pre-project that. I mean, this was literally like a childhood fantasy of mine, to be able to work in action. You know, growing up on Disney films like Pocahontas and wanting to enter into that, or Aladdin and how he's fighting - being your own hero, being your own heroine is like every one's dream.” MeanDreamActionFilmFightingFantasyGrowing UpChildhoodHeroFit Author:Jena Malone
“Many people are under the delusion that I'm just a special-effects man, but I've worn many different hats in my day. On every film I've been involved in, I worked with the writer and producer. We really formulated those scripts. We tried to make films that were logical but still had the fantasy feel of it. I enjoy Aardman Animation's films with Wallace and Gromit, but they're obvious puppet films, whereas we tried to disguise it and make our effects characters in the films rather than obvious puppets.” PeopleMenDifferentCharacterFilmEnjoyFantasyObviousProducersDelusionLogicalDisguise Author:Ray Harryhausen
“Childhood is usually identified with fantasy, adventure, and dreaming. But mine didn't offer a lot of hope. I could read my future in my palm. Everything foretold: "You have no future!" A person must be very strong to keep going without hope.” DreamStrongFantasyChildhoodAdventureKeep GoingVery StrongMy FutureWithout Hope Author:Luljeta Lleshanaku
“When you come into a movie theatre, there are no windows, you don't hear the sound outside and you're ready for fantasy.” FantasyWindowTheatre Author:Bertrand Bonello
“I always tell people that I have never ever gone dancing in my life. But that's the point. It's the point of dreaming of doing it, imagining doing it. My music is like a fantasy version of it, not a practical version of it. With the way a club DJ would make a track - they are in the club, they know how to get people excited. I don't know how to get people excited. I'm just imagining euphoria; I'm not necessarily feeling it.” PeopleFeelingsDreamFantasyMusic IsDancingTrackExcitedEuphoria Author:Memory Tapes
“I love fantasy. I love thrillers. I love action. I'm all over the place. As long as the story and characters are good, I'll love it.” LongCharacterActionFantasy Author:Julianne Hough
“My recent drawings that personal ones aren't fashion-related. I sometimes sit and draw people on the bus, or some fantasy hybrid animal. You know, wherever the hand will lead.” PeopleSometimesAnimalFantasyBusHybrid Author:Giles Deacon
“The Ramones were a great bunch of guys. They were very quiet, very shy. They were a little in awe of the filmmaking process, probably because we started at 7 a.m. I do remember the very first day of shooting, I met them and did the scene in the bedroom where Joey sings to me, and they were all scattered around my bedroom in my little fantasy scene. That was the first scene we shot of the movie. That scene is kind of a strange way to start a movie. "Okay, get undressed, and these weird guys in leather jackets and ripped jeans are going to sing to you."” KindRememberGuyFantasyStrangeSceneQuietOkayAweShyFilmmakingBedroomRamonesJoey Author:P. J. Soles
“My upbringing has been pushing and pulling my work my whole life. At first it pushed me away, as I sought to clean up my mind with a style that was slick and glossy, aspirational and wrapped in fantasy. That's still largely how I approach my fashion work. More recently it's pulled me back, particularly since Katrina, and as I get older and lose some of that shame that's inherited with poverty.” MindPovertyFantasyFashionStyleShameWhole LifeUpbringingKatrinaSlick Author:Clayton James Cubitt
“The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out. The moment you carry out any of your dreams or your fantasies - travel around the world, climbing a high mountain, buying a new house, writing a novel, carrying out a sexual fantasy, traveling to an unknown country - the moment you carry out your dreams, it's always, by definition less perfect and rosy than it had been as a dream. This is the nature of dreams.” WorldWritingCountryMomentsDreamHousePerfectFantasyNovelMountainRosy Author:Amos Oz
“I loved acting as a kid because I was kind of shy, so it brought me out of myself. Acting for kids is like playing house, you know? But growing up in Hollywood, it just made it seem possible. It wasn't like some idea of going to Hollywood; it was in my backyard. I lived two blocks from Grauman's Chinese Theatre growing up. It was what people did. It's an industry town. So it wasn't some far-off fantasy, it was like "Oh yeah, when you grow up, you do this because that's what people do here."” PeopleKindKidsHouseActingFantasyGrowing UpTheatreBlockChineseShy Author:Jennifer Jason Leigh
“People create the illusion of acting natural, which is what I think most documentarians do in part because of the direct cinema orthodoxies that came into play really in the '60s. That moment of performance is a tremendous opportunity to make visible something hitherto invisible, which is how people want to be seen. How do they see themselves? What are the scripts, fantasies, genres by which they imagine themselves? How is storytelling part of what we are as human beings? We wouldn't kill each other en masse if it weren't for storytelling. We wouldn't be able to live with ourselves.” PeopleThinkingMomentsOpportunityNaturalActingFantasyImagineIllusionDirectInvisibleStorytelling Author:Joshua Oppenheimer
“I think we need to make documentaries about fantasy and storytelling. I think I just started to scratch the surface of a method that allows us to do that. We want to be sucked into the events, suspend our disbelief and imagine that this is a fiction, but actually putting onscreen the gap between who the people are and who they want to be and therefore opening the question about why they want to be this person.” PeopleThinkingFantasyImagineStorytellingImagine ThatDisbelief Author:Joshua Oppenheimer
“L.A. has a lot of tackiness to it, but at the same time, in that funny kind of fantasy pretentiousness, it's unpretentious because it's all here. It's what you make of it. It's a land of opportunity in a lot of ways. It's a great for an immigrant because it is what you make of it, and especially artists as workers in this culture, it offers so much, in terms of variety, of diversity. For years, the alleys of Los Angeles were my art store.” KindArtArtistCultureOpportunityTermFantasyDiversityVarietyLos AngelesPretentiousness Author:Michael C. McMillen
“I'd love to do a really cheap action movie. I'd love to do stunts. I mean, not myself. I'd hurt myself, but I'd love to direct others doing stunts. I think that would be a blast. The funny thing is, if I really think through this fantasy, I know that the way I conceive of doing an action movie would still lose money. No matter how far I think I'm getting away from myself, it always comes back to something that's not terribly commercial.” ThinkingMeanActionHurtFantasyDirectGet AwayAction Movie Author:Andrew Bujalski
“I want the pleasures of the real exploitation movie, and exploitation has changed so much in 40 years. Plenty of people grow up with this fantasy of, "We're going to do it like Roger Corman did it," as that sounds so fun. If you make something small, goofy and exploitative, it's nowhere near the guaranteed moneymaker it might have been 40 years ago. If you look at the way the world works now and money is made, it doesn't seem that fun. Maybe that's just a mental block I have and I need to get over that and find that corner where you can make money and still have a good movie.” PeopleWorldRealFunPleasureFantasyGrowing UpChangedBlockPlentyMaking MoneyExploitationGood MovieGoofy Author:Andrew Bujalski
“I feel like I've finally got to this place that I really want to be. The place where, in my fantasy, the characters just get up and walk around - this interstitial place between humans and dolls. But I also feel like, where am I supposed to go from here? Because this feels like the place I've always wanted to be, for my whole life of shooting.” CharacterFantasyWhole Life Author:Laurie Simmons
“It does seem like if you're an interesting person and you have endless amounts of money to indulge your fantasies, then those fantasies will be plagued with guilt about that level of indulgence. It really becomes a self-defeating exercise in pursuing hedonistic desires in any sort of normal or guiltless fashion.” DesireInterestingFantasyFashionExerciseGuiltIndulgeIndulgence Author:Lawrence Douglas
“Science fiction is a weird category, because it's the only area of fiction I can think of where the story is not of primary importance. Science fiction tends to be more about the science, or the invention of the fantasy world, or the political allegory. When I left science fiction, I said "They're more interested in planets, and I'm interested in people."” PeopleThinkingWorldPoliticalFantasyImportanceScience FictionInventionAllegory Author:Donald E. Westlake
“We have the talent, just not the money and not the audience. People in France don't really like fantasy. You need to go to Spain, England and Germany for that. Many of the people from my crew come either from Spain or England. But I hope to be able to work with them again and I wish to create European cinema on that scale. It could happen and attitudes may be changing. Animated fantasy movie Despicable Me was made entirely in France, so there is the talent here and now maybe the desire too.” PeopleDesireWishAttitudeFantasyAudienceTalentAnimated Author:Joann Sfar