When I was in hospital I found I could hardly read or writ. In these circumstances I began to write poems. I found that poetry was the only kind of writing in which I could express my thoughts. One night I dreamed I was lying on the bank of a canal, under machine gun fire. The next morning I wrote it out, Carentan O Caretan, and as I wrote I realized it was not a dream, but the memory of my first time under fire.
Louis SimpsonRelated topics
bank begin canal dream found fire kind lying memory morning next night read time under writ write circumstancesRelated quotes
When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die.
Randall Jarrell
A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.
Gertrude Stein
If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. ... For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay.
Romain Rolland
For as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any books however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly.
John Calvin
Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace The day's disasters in his morning face Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he Full well the busy whisper circling round Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd. Yet was he kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault The village all declar'd how much he knew, 'Twas certain he could write and cipher too.
Oliver Goldsmith
