The Bushmen talk of all these things in terms of animals, the animal heroes of their stories. The deep inner meanings the psychologists talk about, they are all there. It is almost as if the Bushmen represent something which we now only find in our dreams. I shall never forget when I was questioning a Bushmen very deeply about the meaning of a story and he said to me, “It is very difficult, because there is a dream dreaming us . . .”
- Laurens van der Post, The Heart of the Hunter: Customs and Myths of the African Bushman

Ultimately, the most important wild fact is what the Eskimo calls “koviashuktok.” Koviashuktok, of the inner dream, is the outlet. It is one with the living water welling up from the very springs of being that nourish and sustain all life. Without it life becomes a dreary, dead place, and deep within, our spirit begins to rot. The inner dream need not be some great and overwhelming plan; it need not be a dramatic picture of what might or must be some day.

            Koviashuktok is the quiet persistence in the heart that enables us to ride out the storms of churning experiences. Koviashuktok is the exciting whisper moving through the isles of our spirit answering the monotony of limitless days of dull routine. It is the ever-recurring melody in the midst of broken harmony and harsh discords of human conflict. It is the touch of significance which highlights the ordinary experience, the common event, the wonder of each hour, the beauty of the Earth.

            Koviashuktok is not an outward thing. It does not take its rise from the environment in which we move and function. It lives in the inward parts, it is deep within where the issues of life and death are ultimately determined.

            We need to keep alive this exciting whisper, for as long as we are koviashuktok, we cannot lose the significance of living.
- Sam Wright, Edge of Tomorrow

"I learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." The sentence (by Thoreau) has the power to resuscitate the youth drowning in his sea of doubt. I recall my exhilaration upon reading it, many years ago, in a time of hesitation and despair. It restored me to health.
- E.B. White, A Slight Sound At Evening

We don't tell people our dreams in Lake Wobegon, because they might laugh at us and make us feel bad. So we keep them hidden in our hearts until eventually...we forget about them.
- Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days

...man is never so much himself as when he is actually part of a dream, never so lost as when it disappears and there is nothing to look forward to.
- by Sigurd F. Olson, Reflections From The North Country