John Edgar Wideman Quotes

Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket. . . . Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace.

People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will.

freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.

Basketball came to me and for some reason it gave me an opportunity to live a life that I didn't dream possible. But it did let me live my dreams.

Better to dream than to be.

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

...in my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.

Death is a slave's freedom.

The woods were made for the hunter of dreams...

Don't I deserve to finally be free of you?

It's Aslan, the lion from The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. It's a symbol of my hellish childhood. I struggled through my oppressive teenage years and when I turned 18 I escaped. Like Aslan I was finally free.

I get out, I get out of all your boxes. I get out, you can't hold me in these chains. I'll get out. Father free me from this bondage. Knowin' my condition is the reason I must change

He breathed once more, holding the air in his chest, as if it were not air but something more--a sweet taste of freedom, of all cares lifted, everything over and done.

There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams.

I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.

You're innocent when you dream.

The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.

Reading dreams. That's what started her walking down the road. Every day she'd walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.

I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.

They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping, do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom. I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom.

Shells sink, dreams float. Life's good on our boat.

What happiness this is: to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of paradise?

Once Michael gets up there he says, 'Well, maybe I'll just hang up here in the air for a while, just sit back.' Then all of a sudden, he says, 'Well, maybe I'll 360. No I changed my mind. I'll go up on the other side.' He's just incredible.