A Quote by David Foster Wallace

We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.

David Foster Wallace

Quote Topics

Asleep Dead Dreaming Ourselves

Quote Author

David Foster Wallace
American - Writer
February 21, 1962 - December 12, 2008

The lives of most people are small tight pallid and sad, more to be mourned than their deaths. We starve at the banquet: We cannot see that there is a banquet because seeing the banquet requires that we see also ourselves sitting there starving-seeing ourselves clearly, even for a moment, is shattering. We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.

David Foster Wallace

Emma was no asleep, she was pretending to be asleep; and, while he was dozing off at her side, she lay awake, dreaming other dreams.

Gustave Flaubert

Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what's in front of you.

David Eagleman

Some people know they are dreaming when they are asleep. You must also know you are dreaming when you wake-up. When you know you are dreaming when you wake up, then you are really waking up

Mooji

The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.

Don DeLillo

Your wits can't thicken in that soft moist air, on those white springy roads, in those misty rushes and brown bogs, on those hillsides of granite rocks and magenta heather. You've no such colours in the sky, no such lure in the distances, no such sadness in the evenings. Oh the dreaming! the dreaming! the torturing, heart-scalding, never satisfying dreaming, dreaming, dreaming, dreaming!

George Bernard Shaw

Sometimes we don't know we're dreaming; we can't even fathom that we're asleep.

Jodi Picoult

You are asleep and have forgetten that you are dreaming. You mistakenly believe you are awake.

Frederick Lenz

We are asleep people, unconscious people, and this is what is serious. Unfortunately, we think the best of ourselves and not even suspect that we are asleep.

Samael Aun Weor

Has my heart gone to sleep? Have the beehives of my dreams stopped working, the waterwheel of the mind run dry, scoops turning empty, only shadow inside? No, my heart is not asleep. It is awake, wide awake. Not asleep, not dreaming— its eyes are opened wide watching distant signals, listening on the rim of vast silence

Antonio Machado

She was sound asleep when he came to curl up next to her. She grunted. "Don't worry. I'm too drunk, I won't do anything," he murmered. As she had her back to him, he placed his nose on her neck and slid his arm underneath her to be as close to her as possible. Short strands of her hair tickled his nostrils. "Camille?" Was she asleep? Was she pretending? No answer either way. "I like being with you." A little smile. Was she dreaming? Was she asleep? Who knows.

Anna Gavalda

What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?

Jonathan Safran Foer

Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours.

Mary Baker Eddy

We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

You're dead," I repeated. "So why are you in my dream?" He raised the bill of his olive drab ball cap with one finger. " Good question. Morbid, isn't it?" "What?" "Dreaming about dead peolpe. Creepy. You ever see a therapist about that?" "I'm not -" Even in dreams, I couldn't win an argument. Even when he was dead.