Artists
Many authors credit dreams as the inspiration for their stories. In the introduction to Frankenstein, Mary Shelley describes her state when conceiving the novel: “I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie.”

Robert Louis Stevenson said that some scenes from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which he wrote and printed in only ten weeks, came to him in a dream. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Edgar Allan Poe also mined their dreams for literary material. More recently, horror and science-fiction icon Stephen King and author Stephenie Meyer, of Twilight fame, have said they’ve pulled plots and characters from their dreams.

Writers aren’t the only artists who put stock in dreams. Paul McCartney has said the tune for the Beatles song “Yesterday” came to him in a dream. And pro golfer Jack Nicklaus, an artist in some fans’ eyes, told reporters he dreamed of a new golf swing that improved his game.

Dream Big
In his poem “The Dream,” Lord Byron wrote, “Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality.” The above dreams didn’t just enter history—they made it. They moved from the “wide realm of wild reality” to reality proper. Maybe yours will, too. Sweet dreams!

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