quotations about dreams & dreaming
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
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
OSCAR WILDE
The Critic as Artist
Don't let your reality change your dreams, let your dreams change reality.
ANONYMOUS
In ... dreams there is a language that is older than the spoken word at all. The idiom is another specie and with it there can be no lie or no dissemblance of the truth.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Cities of the Plain
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
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
Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.
GLEN COOK
Water Sleeps
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
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 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
I'll never waste my dreams by falling asleep. Never again.
EUGÈNE IONESCO
Man With Bags
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
In dreams, as in the Gospels, one usually possesses the gift of tongues.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
2666
Dreams never deceive.
DEPECHE MODE
"Comatose"
Dreams take short cuts.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
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
Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
People have dreams all the time. It don't mean nothin.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
Better to dream than to be.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Education of the Stoic
Between the dreams of night and day there is not so great a difference.
CARL JUNG
Psychology of the Unconscious