A Quote by James Salter
There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.
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The good thing about writing books is that you can dream while you are awake. If it’s a real dream, you cannot control it. When writing the book, you are awake; you can choose the time, the length, everything. I write for four or five hours in the morning and when the time comes, I stop. I can continue the next day. If it’s a real dream, you can’t do that.
You merely dream that you roam about. In a few years your stay in India will appear as a dream to you. You will dream some other dream at that time. Do realize that it is not you who moves from dream to dream, but the dreams flow before you and you are the immutable witness. No happening affects your real being-that is the absolute truth.
Wait," I say. "I think you're mistaken. Saying there is no dream is the same as saying everything is a dream. Isn't it? Everyone's a dreamer? Extraordinary things happen all the time even when we're awake. What I meant to suggest to you, if indeed that was me in your dream doing the suggesting, is that there is only one world. This one. The dream is real. The ordinary is the wonderful. The wonderful is the ordinary.
But the point is, now, at this moment, or any moment, we're only cross-sections of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be us - the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream.
I'm continuously playing this game of what's real and what's not real, and having to balance and judge and realize that there are things that carry real weight in the world and actually have power in them. And there are things that are just pointless, and you don't have to pay attention to those things.
I dream about speaking in big forums about issues that need to be spoken about. I dream about helping others who I know and love, helping them realize their dreams. I dream about being able to express myself through acting and writing, definitely. I dream about bringing more realism into the world. Sometimes I just feel like certain things are so glossed over and covered up and swept under the rug and I just want to bring them out.
People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of. It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting. And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
I like to write without being stoned. I like to have a hit or two and then go punch up the writing. I just see different things and hear different things. But it's nice to be working from the base that I wrote originally and then come to it with a little buzz. I can have a little wine from time to time. I have a hit from time to time, but those are the only things I do.
I'm blessed to be living this dream of writing and singing, but that's not the real dream I had. The real dream was to make enough money to take care of all the pain and suffering that my mother has been through.
I was this little kid writing songs. I look back at having that dream, and it's weird. Being able to do it and live out your dream on any scale is amazing. I don't take any of it for granted at all.
The dream is real, my friends. The failure to realize it is the only unreality.
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
I didn't know until high school that I was interested in writing in any real way. But there was this boy that I had a crush on, and I used to tell him all the time what I felt about him. Finally he gave me a blank journal and said to write it all down - and it didn't take me very long to realize how much I loved writing.
Those were the things on my mind [stay healthy, take care of my kids and reestablish a relationship with the people], not career, money, drugs, sex, alcohol or fun. Not that there's anything wrong with any of those things, but they aren't in the film [Dream of Life], because that wasn't my life at the time.
I wish I had time to do more reading, but I just haven't had much time. But I still find time for writing. I've always preferred writing over reading, even though those things do go hand in hand. But when I do have time, even if it's not writing music, just writing in general - ideas and stories and things like that.
During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream.
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