Famous Quotes & Sayings

Haruki Murakami

I started writing at the kitchen table after midnight. It took ten months to finish that first book; I sent it to a publisher and I got some kind of prize, so it was like a dream - I was surprised to find it happening.

Haruki Murakami

As a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday's dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.

Haruki Murakami

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

Haruki Murakami

The good thing about writing book is that you can dream while you are awake...

Haruki Murakami

Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.

Haruki Murakami

If I stayed here, something inside me would be lost forever—something I couldn't afford to lose. It was like a vague dream, a burning, unfulfilled desire. The kind of dream people have only when they're seventeen.

Haruki Murakami

In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.

Haruki Murakami

So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish.

Haruki Murakami

They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?

Haruki Murakami

Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly’s wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose.

Haruki Murakami

I think people who share my dreams can enjoy reading my novels. And that's a wonderful thing. I said that myths are like a reservoir of stories, and if I can act as a similar kind of "reservoir," albeit a modest one, that would make me very happy.

Haruki Murakami

People with dark souls have nothing but dark dreams. People with really dark souls do nothing but dream.

Haruki Murakami

For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. I can continue yesterday's dream today, something you can't normally do in everyday life.

Haruki Murakami

The good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake. If it’s a real dream, you cannot control it. When writing the book, you are awake; you can choose the time, the length, everything. I write for four or five hours in the morning and when the time comes, I stop. I can continue the next day. If it’s a real dream, you can’t do that.

Haruki Murakami

It's just like Yeats said. In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise.

Haruki Murakami

Dreams come from the past, not from the future. Dreams shouldn't control you--you should control them.

Haruki Murakami

In dreams begins responsiblities.

Haruki Murakami

I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.

Haruki Murakami

When it's all over, it'll seem like a dream.

Haruki Murakami

Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in fight, searching the skies for dreams.

Hans Selye

To make a great dream come true, you must first have a great dream.

Harlan Ellison

The ability to dream is all I have to give. That is my responsibility; that is my burden. And even I grow tired.

Harlan Ellison

You can live in your dreams, but only if you are worthy of them.

Harlan Coben

The readers are the ones who let us live our dreams. I try to write books which are really compelling - that you'd take on vacation and rather than going out, you'd read in your hotel room because you had to find out what happened. Hopefully that's what readers are responding to.

Harlan Coben

The state of New Jersey is really two places - terrible cities and wonderful suburbs. I live in the suburbs, the final battleground of the American dream, where people get married and have kids and try to scratch out a happy life for themselves. It's very romantic in that way, but a bit naive. I like to play with that in my work.

Harlan Coben

Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex while everyone else is somewhat simpler to read. That is not true, of course. We all have our own dreams and hopes and wants and lust and heartaches. We all have our own brand of crazy

Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa

I cherished the dream of a country embracing all its people.

In youth the human body drew me and was the object of my secret and natural dreams. But body after body has taken away from me that sensual phosphorescence which my youth delighted in.

Gustave Moreau

I have never looked for dream in reality or reality in dream. I have allowed my imagination free play, and I have not been led astray by it.

Gustave Moreau

No one could have less faith in the absolute and definitive importance of the work created by man, because I believe that this world is nothing but a dream...

Gustave Flaubert

She remembered the heroines of novels she had read, and the lyrical legion of those adulterous women began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those amoureuses whom she had so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures; the long dream of her youth was coming true.

Gustave Flaubert

Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?

Gustave Flaubert

Each dream finds at last its form; there is a drink for every thirst, and love for every heart. And there is no better way to spend your life than in the unceasing preoccupation of an idea--of an ideal.