“It took me more than a week to deduce from the evidence around me that everything before my waking up was a dream and everything afterward was reality. There was no basis for distinguishing the two other than the growing pile of new events that seemed to argue against the drunk experience. Little things appeared, like the locked door, the outside of which I could never remember seeing. And a slip of paper from the probate court telling me that some person was committed as insane. Did they mean me?”

— Robert M. Pirsig , book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 7

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Robert M. Pirsig 164

American writer and philosopher 1928–2017

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“In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded, and it benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest movement.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), III

“So often, people ask me what is the key to success in this industry… or what would be my best advice to give to new comers… and though there are many things I could tell you from my personal experience, persistence and consistency seems to be a common thread to everything I have to say.”

Nikki SooHoo (1988) American actress

Persistently Consistent http://nikkisoohoo.com/blog/2017/10/22/persistently-consistent (October 22, 2017)

“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book A Child's Garden of Verses

My Shadow, st. 1.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)

“The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“Will I see you give
More than I can take?
Will I only harvest some?
As the days fly past
Will we lose our grasp
Or fuse it in the sun?Did she wake you up
To tell you that
It was only a change of plan?
Dream up, dream up,
Let me fill your cup
With the promise of a man.”

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Harvest
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“Night fell. I looked for a word like mine, a word to lean upon, a word to sustain me. And it seemed to me that I was going along groping my way as if expecting some one to come from round the corner and tell me everything.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVI

“What did I dream? Oh, what did I dream?
No one can keep me from my…
No one could keep me from my…
No fucker gonna keep me from my…
Oh, what did I dream?”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Loyalty Song"
Lyrics and poetry

“Why should I not expect from the sign of the dream more than I expect from a degree of consciousness which is daily more acute? Can’t the dream also be used in solving the fundamental questions of life? Are these questions the same in one case as in the other and, in the dream, do these questions already exist? Is the dream any less restrictive or punitive than the rest? I am growing old and, more than that reality to which I believe I subject myself, it is perhaps the dream, the difference with which I treat the dream, which makes me grow old.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

“Turning those revelations into art was a whole other thing…I did it, though — and that helped me realize my power, beyond the pain. Being able to illustrate those experiences for readers was a triumph, because it took everything to resist all the urges I have as a human being to present myself as good, or healed, or undamaged. I had to work against myself to make the memoir, and I ended up more empowered than I ever thought I could be.”

Terese Marie Mailhot (1983) First Nation Canadian writer, journalist, memoirist, teacher

On writing about her ordeals in “Why 'Heart Berries' Author Terese Marie Mailhot Doesn't Use The Word ‘Resilient’" https://www.bustle.com/p/why-heart-berries-author-terese-marie-mailhot-doesnt-use-the-word-resilient-8134108 in Bustle Magazine (2018 Feb 7)

“When I'm alone with you it seems all my dreams come true
It makes me feel so good I just can't help loving you
Cos you're everything I could hope for:
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Sometimes I tell myself this girl don't love you no more
and that some day with someone new she'll walk from your door
But if you did, my world would break in two,
that's why I love you
And any time I see your face
something very unusual takes place:
all my inhibitions disappear
now that you are here”

Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter

"That's Why I Love You" (song)
Song lyrics
Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "That's Why I Love You" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zpN5iej40E (song on YouTube)

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Robert M. Pirsig 164

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