Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still-are.
David MitchellRead
The state of childhood resonates with life inside a fantasy novel. If you have no control over how you spend large chunks of your day, or are at the mercy of flawed giant beings, then the desire to bend the laws of the world by magic is strong and deep.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Childhood is a time of imagination where the desire for magic reflects our yearning for control in an uncertain world.
David Mitchell reflects on childhood as a state where life is intertwined with the elements of fantasy, highlighting the innate desire for control and magic when faced with life's unpredictability and challenges. This notion suggests that children often grapple with feelings of helplessness, yearning for an escape through imagination and magical thinking, which can serve as a coping mechanism in a world dominated by larger, often unyielding forces.
Themes
ChildhoodImaginationFantasyControlMagicLife
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the significance of imagination in childhood during a parenting workshop.
More from David Mitchell
All quotes →The Revelation of Sonmi 451 To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other. The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds, that go on and are pushing themselves throughout all time. - Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.
David MitchellRead
…and there, in the background, the sky’s sediment had sunk to a place where all the woe of the words ‘I am’ dissolved into blue peace. He said it. ‘The ocean.
David MitchellRead
How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards would be at one's throat all the sooner.
David MitchellRead
. . .my dreams are the single unpredictable factor in my zoned days and nights. Nobody allots them, or censors them. Dreams are all I have ever truly owned.
David MitchellRead
My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?
David MitchellRead
Similar quotes
Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone.
Thomas JeffersonRead
Surely no mere mortal who has at all gone down into himself will ever pretend that his slightest thought or act solely originates in his own defined identity.
Herman MelvilleRead
Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts. (Leonard Shelby, Memento)
Christopher NolanRead
Our society does reward beauty on the outside over health on the inside. Women must not be blamed for choosing short-term beauty "fixes" that harm our long-term health, since our life spans are inverted under the beauty myth, and there is no great social or economic incentive for women to live a long time.
Naomi WolfRead
I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.
Shirley JacksonRead
The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.
Marcus GarveyRead