Elias Canetti Quotes

It's well we cannot hear the screams we make in other people's dreams.

People have so much pain inside them that they're not even aware of.

I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?

Don't tell me that [broken heartstrings] hurt less than a broken bone, that an ingrown life is something surgeons can cut away, that there's no way for it to metastasize - it does.

I always found myself trying to cover the mental anguish and the torment and the abuse that I was dealing with. That made me always question my beauty, my intelligence, and a lot of other things about myself.

The things we ignore often come back to us in our sleep.

I preferred that my bad dreams be vague.

We all suffer from dreams

I try to write about the stuff that torments us all.

Dreaming men are haunted men.

I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.

I only remember the end of my dreams, like waking up at a steering wheel, or falling.

When you're mid-season, in very intense situations, it's hard not to take that home with you. Especially when you're sleeping, you can't control what you dream about. And it sneaks into the unconscious.

The best monsters are our anxieties given form. They make sense on the level of a dream - or a nightmare.

I led the life of an intellectual up until a certain age. I remember Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams' was a big favorite when I was 11. It sounded so interesting. And it really was!

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.

We can never flee the misery that is within us.

In the world of the present, in our time, we feel that suffering, anguish, the torments of body and soul, are greater than ever before in the history of mankind.

I think when people are repressing things, or burying things, that can manifest in all sorts of ways.

I normally sleep very well, but when I do have bad dreams, they always involve my children.

Such persons are windows through which one looks into terrible worlds.

I didn't come from a background where I was hurt, but I felt hurt inside.

I used to have a recurring black-and-white dream where I would drive in on a hover car and raid the shoe closets of this huge mansion. I don't know what that means at all, to be honest.

The first thought that will go through my mind in the morning when I open my eyes will be very much related to my current dreams, rather than to my past nightmares.