My first draft is always way too long; my books start out with delusions of 'War and Peace' - and must be gently disabused. My editor is brilliant at taking me to the point where I do all the necessary cutting on my own. I like to say she's a midwife rather than a surgeon.

Julia Glass

War Peace Art

The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.

A. E. Housman

Use Us T

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

Adrienne Rich

Very Vent Us

I am there to entertain. I call my work high escape fiction; it's high, it's good - but it's escape, and I have no delusions about that. I have no ambition to be a serious writer, whatever that means.

Alan Furst

Work Good Writer

Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces.

Alan Moore

Music Men Car

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

Ambrose Bierce

Who Us UN

I am so superstitious that I think even discussing this subject is dangerous and will probably bring me terrible luck. Having been raised a Catholic, superstition becomes almost part of your DNA. The challenge is to slowly rid yourself of these little delusions.

Anthony McCarten

Art Anger Yourself

Don Quixote's 'Delusions' is an excellent read - far better than my own forthcoming travel book, 'Walking Backwards Across Tuscany.'

Arthur Smith

War Travel Walking

I'm so incredibly tired of giving respect to a lot of delusions and crazy ideas just because they are regarded as religions.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

Respect Religion Use

The concept of the 'good ol' days' must be one of our society's biggest delusions, top reasons for depression, as well as most often used excuse for lack of success.

Bo Bennett

Success Society Good

Not creating delusions is enlightenment.

Bodhidharma

Men Us Tin

Worship means reverence and humility it means revering your real self and humbling delusions.

Bodhidharma

Religion Your You

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

Charles Dickens

Travel Home Christmas

There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.

Charles Kuralt

War Wonderful Thing Wonderful

I'm what you call a good, old-fashioned working actor who has had delusions of grandeur for my entire career and has known what I want to do, but there's a lot going on out there. There are a lot fewer films being made, and there's a lot of competition.

Chris Diamantopoulos

Work Pet Good

I don't have any delusions. I don't think I would make it through Navy SEAL training.

Chris Pratt

Would Us Training

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

Christian Nestell Bovee

Happiness Without Wit

As someone who's been covering presidential campaigns since the 1950s, I have no delusions about political reporting. Candidates bargaining access to get the kind of news coverage they want is nothing new.

Dan Rather

Age Who Want

Human beings are inherently misled into subjective fantasies, but there's a saving grace. We all have different delusions. Other people don't necessarily share yours, and hence they will help you penetrate yours through the miracle of criticism!

David Brin

Yours Your You

With mania, is it dangerous to ride that euphoric feeling. You feel very animated and creative; I would fill journals with drawings. It feels good and you want it to last, but it can lead to being delusional. The delusions can be as real as you thinking you can fly.

David LaChapelle

Good Anger You

History is delusional. Not just an illusion, it's a delusion. America is this giant country, so it has these big delusions, and history is where delusions play out.

David Means

History Where Us

I might have some delusions of grandeur.

Devendra Banhart

There are men who would quickly love each other if once they were speak to each other; for when they spoke they would discover that their souls had only separated by phantoms and delusions.

Ernest Hello

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.

Frank Ocean

World leaders and major political figures have often had delusions of grandeur.

Gavin Esler

The delusions of self-love cannot be prevented, but intellectual misconceptions as to the means of achieving success may be corrected.

George Henry Lewes

I seek the Will of the Spirit of God through, or in connection with, the Word of God. The Spirit and the Word must be combined. If I look to the Spirit alone without the Word, I lay myself open to great delusions also.

George Muller

One of the most mawkish of human delusions is the notion that friendship should be eternal, or, at all events, life-long, and that any act which puts a term to it is somehow discreditable.

H. L. Mencken

It is not unusual for the eye or ear to play tricks with one, but when such illusions and delusions are taken for the Spirit forms of the departed and voices of the dead instead of being recognized as some subjective phenomena brought about by a physical cause, the situation takes on a grave aspect.

Harry Houdini

I am fascinated by people's flaws and delusions: all the messy bits of human nature we all try to pretend we don't have.

Hattie Morahan

We are under no delusions as to the innate goodness even of very small children. They are bad a great deal of the time, but before it has been knocked out of them, they see no limit to the potentialities of the human will. Theirs is the faith to move mountains, because they do not yet know the fearful heft of them.

Heywood Broun

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

Horace

When I was a kid, I thought I was the strongest man in the world. Then, the fastest runner and then the smartest person in the world. One by one my delusions got shut down. Now I just see myself as the lamest guy in the world.

Jack Black

If an election is simply a one-day snapshot of transient mass delusions, then this is not a very noble form of government.

James Bovard

The capacity for people to kid themselves is huge. Living on illusions or delusions, and the re-establishing of these illusions or delusions requires a big effort to keep them from being seen through. But a very old idea is at work behind our current state of affairs: enantiodromia, or the Greek notion of things turning into their opposite.

James Hillman

Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.

Jane Wagner

I did not have any delusions of grandeur as a kid.

Jimmy Kimmel

I've never had any delusions about being a leading man, and it's not sour grapes to say that in the best films that I've always enjoyed, the cliched leading man type isn't a part of the picture.

John Hawkes

I'd like to be the commissioner of tennis, but do I want to get into politics? Sometimes I have delusions of grandeur that that would be an interesting, good thing. I'm talking about actual politics, like being a congressman, but then I see how unbelievably nasty it really is, and maybe I'm not quite knowledgeable enough to actually do it.

John McEnroe

I had delusions of being a 'serious actor,' and I wanted to pursue those delusions.

John Wesley Shipp

My first draft is always way too long; my books start out with delusions of 'War and Peace' - and must be gently disabused. My editor is brilliant at taking me to the point where I do all the necessary cutting on my own. I like to say she's a midwife rather than a surgeon.

Julia Glass

At its heart, 'Fat City' is not about boxing. It is a universal story of grim realities and toxic delusions. It is awash with awareness of chances blown, dreams stymied, precious time wasted, and all future prospects scorched to ashes by the process.

Katherine Dunn

Our mind is like a cloudy sky: in essence clear and pure, but overcast by clouds of delusions. Just as the thickest clouds can disperse, so, too, even the heaviest delusions can be removed from our mind.

Kelsang Gyatso

The idea that, in the age of Google, Facebook and the internet, government can control the 'commanding heights' of the economy is one of the great delusions of our age. Modern techonology, social media, the explosion of online retail, among many other things, have meant that governments have less and less control.

Kwasi Kwarteng

No one I knew in Sydney was thinking about how they might come to America and become a movie star. That would be considered delusions of grandeur. My parents were supportive, though. They just told me to keep at it as long as I was having fun.

Luke Bracey

The aging process is totally minimizing. Life in general is pretty minimizing because you have a lot of big ideas, and you have to battle the mistaken delusions and instability that come with youth.

Natasha Lyonne

The belief that one's own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.

Paul Watzlawick

A movie is a mass consumption product. I have got no delusions about being niche. I don't want to be niche. Though in the earlier part of my career I was into niche cinema, doing independent films - and I do have a revolutionary bent of mind - but you cannot make a change from outside; you have to be a part of it.

Randeep Hooda

I used to think I was a singer; I had my own delusions about it.

Randy Jackson

Every college player thinks they're on their way. But, delusions aside, I might have toiled in the minor leagues for a bit.

Richard Linklater

What appealed to me about 'The Loved Ones' script was that it had this really theatrical element to it. I thought that the scope of this character is so broad, and there is so much fun to be had playing a crazy teenage loner. It was a great way to explore the delusions a mind can create.

Robin McLeavy