Anne Carson Quotes

In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

For once you are going to hear a dream, a dream that I have made sound... I dreamed all this; never could my poor head have invented such a thing.

You must remember how to dream what you already know.

A word only writes its night and rides its dream.

Writing is a strange synthesis between the two parts of your mind: the analytical side and the side that knows nothing at all, and you have to allow the dreaming side free rein.

A work of fiction is conceived very much the same way as a dream occurs in the mind of a sleeper. But a lot of it is imagination. It's not based on real people.

The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?

In terms of the symbolism, I think that if you do it right, writing is a bit like dreaming.

You have to be open to dreaming. It's a complicated language, but I'm obsessed with it.

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.

You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, right? It’s a game, right? It’s like being paid for dreaming.

Writing is like meditation or going into an ESP trance, or prayer. Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious. To be fully conscious and alert, with life banging and popping and cuckooing all around, you are not going to find your way to your subconscious, which is a place of complete submission.

Writing songs is no different than explaining to somebody what you dreamed last night: No one ever gives you crap for what you dreamed last night. "I was laying in my bed, and all of a sudden a stallion jumped on my bed and the next thing I know I was in Mars but it looked like my kitchen"... That's kind of what I do with my songs, write them in a dream-like manner. It's up to people to swallow it however they want.

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.

Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It's that easy.

Writing music is like tasting the sky. It keeps me dreaming in color.

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.

Teaching well draws from the same well that writing draws from: the reserves of compassion and ability to listen and concentrate on another. So I have to have fine line between teaching and writing. I try not to ever think of career. I just try to go to the dream world every day.

For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.

The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream-he awoke and found it truth.

As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.

This is my inception, I'm writing my dreams.

Hold fast to your most indefinite, waking dream.