“Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!”

Source: Portnoy's Complaint (1969)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life …" by Philip Roth?
Philip Roth photo
Philip Roth 95
American novelist 1933–2018

Related quotes

Roberto Bolaño photo
William Morris photo

“All this I have seen in the dreams of the night clearer than I can force myself to see them in dreams of the day. So that it would have been nothing new to me the other night to fall into an architectural dream if that were all, and yet I have to tell of things strange and new that befell me after I had fallen asleep.”

Source: A Dream of John Ball (1886), Ch. 1: The Men of Kent
Context: When I was journeying (in a dream of the night) down the well-remembered reaches of the Thames betwixt Streatley and Wallingford, where the foothills of the White Horse fall back from the broad stream, I came upon a clear-seen mediæval town standing up with roof and tower and spire within its walls, grey and ancient, but untouched from the days of its builders of old. All this I have seen in the dreams of the night clearer than I can force myself to see them in dreams of the day. So that it would have been nothing new to me the other night to fall into an architectural dream if that were all, and yet I have to tell of things strange and new that befell me after I had fallen asleep.

Jack Kerouac photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Alex Haley photo

“If I had been taking hashish, I could not have dreamed of this.”

Alex Haley (1921–1992) African American biographer, screenwriter, and novelist

On the popularity of the television series Roots (1977).
TIME interview (1977)

W.B. Yeats photo

“But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1499/
Variant: I have spread my dreams under your feet.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Source: The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
Context: Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Jonas Salk photo

“I have dreams, and I have nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing https://books.google.com/books?id=-T3QhPjIxhIC&lpg=PP1&dq=%22I%20have%20dreams%2C%20and%20I%20have%20nightmares.%20I%20overcame%20the%20nightmares%20because%20of%20my%20dreams.%22&pg=PA254#v=onepage (2006) by Larry Chang (page 254)

Related topics