are you dreaming, Frederick?

"No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever."
--J.K. Rowling


"Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;--
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fullness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:--
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
--But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,--
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest--
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
--William Wordsworth

"...It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well."
--Dumbledore, pg. 718, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling


" 'Tell me one last thing,' said Harry. 'Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?'

"Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.

" 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?' "
--pg. 723, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling


"In Motley, everything was a long time ago. That's what people said: They told a story, then let it trail off into the twilight and wet heat of August, fanning themselves with paper cocktail napkins. But that was all a long time ago, they said, and watched the fireflies beating their bodies against the damp blue dark. They never finished the story. The story disappeared, wavering up in front of them like heat, just slightly contorting their faces as they wiped the sides of their hands against their foreheads and shook off the sweat. Their mouths clamped up like small trapdoors.

"It was a long time ago. The trains and the red iron ore. The town was gone before my time. We lived in its skeleton like a pack of hermit crabs. A solitary train went past every night. Its whistle blew once while we lay there in our separate beds, waiting for the sound. When I was older, we lit bonfires and drank down by the tracks, digging small holes with sharp stones and passing the bottle around. The iron mines were stripped, rusted husks of equipment left to rot in the ditches' faint red dirt.

"Everything the town knew was a long time ago. All that was left were the stories. The seasons. The dull, familiar rage of men without work for their heavy hands.

"The men did not complain because to complain implied a hope that things could change.

"The women complained about the men and dragged them to bed when they passed out on the couch, took their shoes off. Hesitating, kissing their cheeks. People love in strange ways."
--Marya Hornbacher, The Center of Winter


"Do not ask me who I am, and do not ask me to remain the same."
--Michel Foucault

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that."
--Dumbledore, HP and the SS by J.K. Rowling

"What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrel is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows."
--Dumbledore, HP and the SS by J.K. Rowling

"After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
--Dumbledore, HP and the SS by J.K. Rowling

"You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all--the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them."
--Dumbledore, HP and the SS by J.K. Rowling

"Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself."
--Dumbledore, HP and the SS by J.K. Rowling

"The truth.[...]It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution."
--Dumbledore, HP and the SS by J.K. Rowling

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web."
--Pablo Picasso

"All art is experimental, or it isn't art."
--Gene Youngblood

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
--C.S. Lewis

"The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."
--Mark Twain

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
--Bill Watterson

"I have seen the life on this planet, and that is exactly why I am looking elsewhere."
--Mulder, The X-Files

"I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be adding mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable."
--Joseph Addison

"All poetry is supposed to be instructive but in an unnoticeable manner; it is supposed to make us aware of what it would be valuable to instruct ourselves in; we must deduce the lesson on our own, just as with life."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Art is telling the truth, and then maybe even a secret."
--unknown

"The image is not a certain meaning,
expressed by the director,
but the entire world
reflected as in a drop of water."
--Andrei Tarkovsky

"I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema for is time: for time lost or spent or not yet had. He goes there for living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances, and concentrates a person's experience--and not only enhances it but makes it longer, significantly longer. That is the power of cinema: 'stars,' story-lines, and entertainment have nothing to do with it."
--Andrei Tarkovsky

"The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real."
--Lucian Freud

"Art is an activity you do while having some other career."
--Vito Acconci

"The first step--especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money--the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art."
--Chuck Palahniuk

"Creativity is to introduce order into the randomness of nature."
--Eric Hoffer

"I think my think, and then I make my think."
--a small child

"If an idea is any good, it's on the verge of being stupid."
--Michel Gondry

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
--Aldous Huxley

"The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren't any space aliens. We can't be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we're not all there is. If so, we're in big trouble."
--Ellen Degeneres

"Love much. Earth has enough of bitter in it."
--Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness."
--Robertson Davies