quotations about dreams & dreaming
In dreams, as in the Gospels, one usually possesses the gift of tongues.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
2666
The dream undreamed is fairer yet
Than these, that turn to dust.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN FIELD
"The Rhythm of Life"
Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
AMY HEMPEL
"The Dog of the Marriage"
Don't let your reality change your dreams, let your dreams change reality.
ANONYMOUS
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
My dreams are the problems of the day stepped up to absurdity, a little like men dancing, wearing the horns and masks of animals.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Winter of Our Discontent
There is no one so insufferable as a person who gives no other excuse for a peculiar action than saying he had been directed to it in a dream.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation's Edge
Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion.
THEODOR WIESENGRUND ADORNO
Minima Moralia
The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.
CARL JUNG
Man and His Symbols
Since symbols are permanent or constant translations, they realize, in a certain measure, the ideal of ancient as well as popular dream interpretation, an ideal which by means of our technique we had left behind. They permit us in certain cases to interpret a dream without questioning the dreamer who, aside from this, has no explanation for the symbol. If the interpreter is acquainted with the customary dream symbols and, in addition, with the dreamer himself, the conditions under which the latter lives and the impressions he received before having the dream, it is often possible to interpret a dream without further information--to translate it "right off the bat." Such a trick flatters the interpreter and impresses the dreamer; it stands out as a pleasurable incident in the usual arduous course of cross-examining the dreamer. But do not be misled. It is not our function to perform tricks. Interpretation based on a knowledge of symbols is not a technique that can replace the associative technique, or even compare with it. It is a supplement to the associative technique, and furnishes the latter merely with transplanted, usable results. But as regards familiarity with the dreamer's psychic situation, you must consider the fact that you are not limited to interpreting the dreams of acquaintances; that as a rule you are not acquainted with the daily occurrences which act as the stimuli for the dreams, and that the associations of the subject furnish you with a knowledge of that very thing we call the psychic situation.
SIGMUND FREUD
"Symbolism in the Dream", A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
I'll never waste my dreams by falling asleep. Never again.
EUGÈNE IONESCO
Man With Bags
Dreams never deceive.
DEPECHE MODE
"Comatose"
Why did I keep hitching myself to dreams as big as that Montana sky? I was like Rooster Jim's chickens, with no way to fly that high.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After
Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it!
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.
CHARLES DICKENS
Nicholas Nickleby
Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.
GLEN COOK
Water Sleeps
People have dreams all the time. It don't mean nothin.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
Dreams take short cuts.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
To be sure, the ancient belief that the dream reveals the future is not entirely devoid of truth. By representing to us a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future; but this future, taken by the dreamer as present, has been formed into the likeness of that past by the indestructible wish.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Interpretation of Dreams