Charles Simic Quotes

I'm so many people. They shock me sometimes. I wish I was just me! I used to think I was going crazy, until I discovered that some people I admired were like that to.

There are so many separate selves; no one who writes creatively hasn't felt that.

I think that we can learn so much if we pay attention to our dreams, whether when we are asleep or in waking dreams. There are connections that are absolutely incredible.

Our dreams can teach us, instruct us, confuse us... sometimes I think they look to be considered. And in terms of like, they are an opportunity and I think they most certainly could be utilized to focus, to try and achieve - whether it's looking for someone, or influencing us, or inspiring us.

I've known both misery and happiness, lived in so many different skins it is impossible for one skin to claim me. And I have felt like a wayfarer on an alien planet at times - walking, running, wondering about what brought me to this particular place, and why. But once I was here the dreams started moving in, and I went about devouring them as they devoured me.

I dream about my teeth, losing a tooth, which I think means that you want control back.

It’s strange how dreams get under your skin and give your heart a test for what’s real and what’s imaginary.

Should I be what I think? But I think about being so many things!

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.

Maybe he was real. Maybe I'd made him up. Either way, he didn't think I needed him anymore. Maybe he was right.

A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood it becomes a living experience.

They say dreams are the windows of the soul-take a peek and you can see the inner workings, the nuts and bolts.

I keep thinking that if I could just unzip my skin, step out of this body, then I would see who I really am.“ She nods her head slowly. „What do you think you‘d look like?” “Smaller, for a start.

We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be.

I don't understand why I do what I do. I don't understand why I act anymore. But I do know that I love it, and that I find it really interesting and satisfying to enter into other worlds and explore different ways of thinking.

I don't think I realized what was going to be the hardest part of becaming an artist until I dove off the diving board ... first I had to overcome a pre-speculated idea of me. I had to sort of burst through that and introduce myself, and that was the first hurdle, and then now sing in front of everybody, and then that was the second one, and I'm the offspring of - you know, who I'm the offspring of - I had a few hurdles to get through, no doubt about it. But the scales never tipped in the other direction too much.

Do you ever wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and think, something's not accurate?

There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.

But knowing what I don’t want to do doesn’t help me figure out what I do want to do. I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don’t have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That’s my problem now. I can’t find the image.

Sometimes I think I spend my whole life trying to figure out where I fit in.

You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares.

The voices in my head, which I used to think were just passing through, seem to have taken up residence.

How would I know which one I was?

In our dreams (writes Coleridge) images represent the sensations we think they cause; we do not feel horror because we are threatened by a sphinx; we dream of a sphinx in order to explain the horror we feel.

But when I call for a hero, out comes my lazy old self; so I never know who I am, nor how many I am or will be. I'd love to be able to touch a bell and summon the real me, because if I really need myself, I mustn't disappear.