Joshua Oppenheimer Quotes

'Ernest Borgnine' is sort of my version of Woody Allen's 'Purple Rose Of Cairo' in that it's about the occasional difficulty of coming to terms with the cold hard facts and the temptation to escape into another world - like movies, for example. I'm a pro at escaping.

The better you were able to imagine what you wanted to imagine, the farther you could flee from reality.

The ability to suspend reality and go into a make-believe world can be really, really difficult if there's something really big going on.

Gilligan's Island is wherever you want it to be in your mind.

I spent my childhood in an imaginary world - probably because I needed an escape. I think that's one of the reasons people have imaginations - because they can't maintain existence here.

Our society's need for escapism has always interested me.

The minute I forget to balance reality with the fantasy, I'm going back to Virginia.

When I'm playing 'Rock Band,' I'm like, 'Man, someday, later on in life when I'm a famous rock star...' Which gets a little harder to convince myself of as I reach middle age, but it still happens a lot.

We all need illusions. That's why we love movies.

It's my job, to create a fantasy.

I love to fantasize still, as I did as a little boy. If I see a movie, I want to fantasize about what it's all about.

I love fantasy; I love imagination - that's the inner child in me.

I live in a wonderful world of make-believe. A world of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. A world of Winnie the Pooh and Edward Bear. Things like that. Wonderful things. Funny things.

It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams

You convinced yourselves we're just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser's way out. Your way.

The masses think that is is easy to flee from reality, when it is the most difficult thing in the world.

I’d much rather pretend I’m somewhere else, and any time I open the pages of a book, that happens.

The idea of my life as a fairy tale is itself a fairy tale.

So she sat on with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality.

Dreams, dreams. I walk them; I live them. I delude myself with them. It's a wonder I can spot reality anymore.

Escape into the dream. Escape, a key thing charged against these drugs, that they are for escapists. I think the people who make this charge hardly dare dream to what degree they are escapist.

I realized that everything I do is fantasy, whether it is an adult movie or a kids movie.

What I wanted to do was to get that sense of being in touch with this lost world while holding onto what draws readers and audiences there in the first place.

As a child, I loved story books and wanted to be in them so desperately and live the stories.

My greatest enemy is reality. I have fought it successfully for thirty years.