> All narratives entered into ESCAPE — An EXO Writing Contest are required to use a total of four prompts OR quotes. One prompt and one quote must be used, but the remaining two requirements are up to the discretion of the author.

— EX #1: after fulfilling the requirement of one prompt and one quote, the author could choose to do two more quotes to meet a total of four prompts and quotes.

— EX #2: after fulfilling the requirement of one prompt and one quote, the author could choose to do one more prompt and one more quote to meet a total of four prompts and quotes.

— EX #3: after fulfilling the requirement of one prompt and one quote, the author could choose to do two more prompts to meet a total of four prompts and quotes.

> If the author would like to use more than four prompts or quotes, that is completely acceptable, as long as the one prompt and one quote requirement is met.

Quotes

> Quotes can be put in the foreword/description of your narrative, or at the beginning of any chapter. Please remember to add credits to the author regardless of where you choose to place the quote.  You are REQUIRED to use at least one quote from below.

> For selecting the quote(s) you are going to use, type the code “Q - (the number of the quote)” into the entry form, OR, into the comments if you are adding/changing quotes.

— EX: “Q - 3” for “There was something soothing about music, an escape that the rest of the world didn’t offer her.” —Kayla Krantz, Acid Rain (Blood Moon Trilogy #2)

1. “I do not wish to escape to myself, I wish to escape from myself. I wish to obliterate my consciousness and my knowledge of independent existence, my guilts, my secretiveness.”

—Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters

2. “When he put his arms around me, and held me to his chest, everything in me settled. When he spoke into my ear, it all came loose again, as if his words evaporated the gravity of my mind.”

—Cybill Cain, Escape (Chimera Club Stories #2)

3.“There was something soothing about music, an escape that the rest of the world didn’t offer her.”

—Kayla Krantz, Acid Rain (Blood Moon Trilogy #2)

4. “We feel free when we escape – even if it be but from the frying pan to the fire.”

—Eric Hoffer

5. “’There is no such thing as freedom on earth,’ he said. ‘Only different kinds of s. And comparative s. YOU think you are free now because you’ve escaped from a peculiarly unbreakable kind of . But are you? You love me – THAT’s a .’”

—L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

6. “There is only one escape from the madness of this world, and that is to enjoy it.”

—Marty Rubin

7. “They drove out of the driveway and onto the road, venturing forth into the horizon, spacious and empty, hanging before them blackly, and offering little else but the escape of the red morning sun.”

—R.J. Lawrence, The Fortunate Only

8. “However cozy things seemed, the facts of life were the same. You couldn’t escape death: It would get us all in the end.

—Rachel Ward, Numbers (Numbers, #1)

9. “I want to run. To do what I always do, have always done, for the last five years of my life. Escape, flee into the shadows. But this time, I stand my ground. I’m tired of running.”

—Marie Lu, Prodigy (Legend, #2)

10. “That’s the funny thing about trying to escape. You never really can. Maybe temporarily, but not completely.”

—Jennifer L. Armentrout, Onyx (Lux, #2)

11. “For a second I was almost jealous of the clouds. Why was he looking to them for an escape when I was right here beside him?”

—Kamila Shamsie, Kartography

12. “Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”

—Anaïs Nin, : From a Journal of Love

13. “Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”

―David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

14. “How did I escape? With difficulty. How did I plan this moment? With pleasure.”

―Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

15. “It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”

―Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

16. “To escape death, she'd become death.”

―Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight

17. “Talking won't change it. But sometimes it was what she wanted most, to tell someone; often, though, she just wanted to escape those horrid feelings, to escape herself, so there was no pain, no fear, no ugliness.”

―Melissa Marr, Ink Exchange

18. “It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.”

―Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

19. “You're trying to escape from your difficulties, and there never is any escape from difficulties, never. They have to be faced and fought.”

―Enid Blyton, Six Cousins At Mistletoe Farm

20. “A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.”

―Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun

21.“My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape.”

— Bret Eaton Ellis

22. "How can you escape... if they can see everything?"

— Vacancy

23. “Your beauty

Is that of my artistic escape,

As I could sculpt,

Write,

And paint my life away,

But your beauty

I could never properly

Replicate”

— Bryan Lunsford, Artistic Escape 

24. (NEW!) “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

 —Edgar Allan Poe

25. “Sorry this burden is yours, 

you can try and bleed it away; 

but there is no escape, 

this is how you were made.” 

— Nobody, Escape 

26. “enchanted fairy

land upon my windowsill

oh thou mystical

tell me there’s another realm

profer me escape”

         — Jane Taylor. Escape 

27. “Society is a prison. 

It traps you in

And steals your freedoms.

Makes you conform.

Until you are normal.

So why don't we escape?”

       — Atlas, Escape 

28. “I would be broken

Only when

I would be drowning

And would make

No attempt to 

Escape” 

      — Prerna Singh, Escape 

29. “I never hear the word “Escape”

Without a quicker blood,

A sudden expectation –

A flying attitude!” 

      — Emily Dickinson, I never heard the word “Escape”

30.  “Sand castles drifting into the wayward sea.

 As the last tower falls I feel complete.

 My spirit escaping to unknown shores...” 

      — Green Trees, Dreams of the Hourglass 

31. “I am not looking to escape my darkness, I am learning to love myself there.”

— Rune Lazuli 

32.“Do not judge me for escaping the stresses and cruelty of the world differently than you do.”

— Dan Pearce 

33.  “So you find yourself surrounded by death and horror in the world, and you escape it into lust. But lust had no duration; it leaves you again in the desert.”

— Hermann Hesse 

34. “You cannot escape the responsibility of today by evading it tomorrow.”

— Abraham Lincoln 

35. “Those who escape hell, however, never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that.”

— Charles Bukowski 

36. (NEW!) "Two possibilities exist; either we're alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. Both scream escape." 

— Aurther Clark

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