Isaac Asimov Quotes

Freud believed that our dreams sometimes recapitulate a speech, a comment we've heard or something that we've read. I always had compositions in my dreams. They would be a joke, a piece of a novel, a witticism or a piece of dialogue from a play, and I would dream them. I would actually express them line by line in the dream. Sometimes after waking up I would remember a snatch or two and write them down. There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue.

If you've ever wondered where your dreams come from when you go to sleep at night, just look around. This is where they are made.

Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain.

A fine shiver coursed over my skin. "Seth?" "Yeah?" "You were in my dream." One amber-colored eye opened. "Please tell me we were naked." I rolled my eyes. "You're such a perv." He sighed mournfully as he wiggled closer. "I'll take that as a no." "You'd be correct." Unable to fall back to sleep, I started chewing on my lip. So many worries surfaced at once that my brain spun.

The dreamer and his dream are the same...the powers personified in a dream are these that move the world.

Dreams surely are difficult, confusing, and not everything in them is brought to pass for mankind. For fleeting dreams have two gates: one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those which pass through the one of sawn ivory are deceptive, bringing tidings which come to nought, but those which issue from the one of polished horn bring true results when a mortal sees them.

When I dream, I dream of him.

In the drowsy dark cave of the mind dreams build their nest with fragments dropped from day's caravan.

I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.

Dream dictionaries are so disappointing. They're so limited, and I think they're just total bullshit. I really do. I don't know much about the Freudian theory of dreams; it's probably more interesting than your average hippie dream dictionary, but it's got to be a lot deeper than that. It can't all be about sex all the time, so I don't know if Freud is right either.

in dreams it is often the case that the greatest extravagances seem bereft of their power to astonish and the most improbable chimeras seem commonplace.

I have a reoccurring dream that I'm in the ocean in New Zealand and everything is completely upside down, because it's on the other side of the planet.

You know what I mean? Real and unreal, beautiful and strange, like a dream. It got me high as a kite, but it didn’t last long enough. It ended too soon and left nothing behind.” That’s how it is with dreams,” said Priscilla. “They’re the perfect crime.

The drum in a dream pounds loud to the dreamer.

No dream symbol can be separated from the individual who dreams it, and there is no definite or straightforward interpretation of any dream.

Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge; yet not the details, but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful, manly part, or a poor, drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions, they have a substantial truth.

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.

In a dream, we are simply confronted with various loaded symbols, and where one is exhausted, it gives way to another.

For years I wondered why dreams are so often dull when related, and this morning I find the answer, which is very simple - like most answers, you have always known it: No context ... like a stuffed animal set on the floor of a bank.

I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.

A dream is not a very safe thing to be near... I know; I had one once. It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough, somebody is going to be hurt. But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.

I don't know why I have these dreams. I've never wanted to be Pope. In fact, I have a greater affinity to Martin Luther.

There are all sorts of dream interpretations, Freud's being the most notorious, but I have always believed they served a simple eliminatory function, and not much more - that dreams are the psyche's way of taking a good dump every now and then.

In the end dreams became his life, and his whole life thereafter took a strange turn: one might say he slept while waking and watched while asleep.

I see the dream and I see the nightmare, and I believe you can't have the dream without the nightmare.