It is when one begins to lose the consciousness of freedom, and when the idea of necessity enters the world at all, when there is any hurry or strain anywhere, a letter to be written or a train to catch, when you have got to work, to make the horses of the dream gallop, or to make the rifles go off, that the dream is declining, and turning into the nightmare, which belongs to the poorest and most vulgar class of dreams.
Isak DinesenAnd were my faith so strong that it could move mountains, that is the mountain that I would make come to me.
Isak DinesenUp in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.
Isak Dinesendeath - a passage outside the range of imagination, but within the range of experience.
Isak DinesenOf all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest.
Isak DinesenI do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.
Isak Dinesen