Good dreams are better than films or books.

When Alison Goldfrapp said, “Good dreams are better than films or books,” she was not merely speaking as an artist, but as one who understands the sacred fire of imagination. Her words echo across time as a hymn to the mystery of the inner world — the boundless realm of dreams, where the soul paints its own stories, unshackled by the limits of form or reason. In these few words, she unveils a profound truth: that the human spirit is its own storyteller, its own creator of visions more vivid, more intimate, and more alive than anything that can be written or performed. For in a dream, we are not the audience — we are both the author and the actor, the witness and the world.

Goldfrapp, known for her ethereal music and her gift for blending fantasy with sound, has always walked the line between the real and the imagined. In her art, she seeks not to escape life but to expand it — to awaken the dreamer within. Her statement reflects this philosophy: that dreams are the purest form of creation, untouched by the machinery of industry or the weight of interpretation. A film may dazzle the eyes, and a book may stir the intellect, but a dream enters through the heart’s secret door. It is shaped by our memories, our longings, our fears, and our hopes — it is the soul speaking in the language of image and emotion.

In the ancient world, dreams were not dismissed as illusions. They were seen as messages from the divine, visions that bridged heaven and earth. The Greeks sought the guidance of their gods through dream temples, sleeping upon sacred stones so that revelation might come in the night. The prophet Joseph, in the scriptures, rose from prisoner to prince because of his power to interpret dreams — for in them, he saw not fantasy, but truth. Even the philosopher Aristotle pondered them as reflections of the inner self. Goldfrapp’s words carry this same reverence, stripped of religion yet infused with awe: to her, good dreams are not distractions, but revelations of beauty and meaning, as if the universe itself whispers to us while we sleep.

A good dream, as she speaks of it, is more than pleasant fantasy — it is the kind of dream that leaves an imprint on the waking soul. It might be a vision of love so radiant that it renews our faith in affection, or a journey through places unknown that stirs our sense of wonder. Such dreams carry a truth that no fiction can replicate, because they are born from the deepest chambers of our being. A dream does not need a director or a pen — it is written by the mysterious intelligence that dwells within us, the same creative spirit that has moved poets, painters, and saints. When we dream, we glimpse the infinite — a personal mythology shaped by the pulse of our own existence.

Consider the artist Salvador Dalí, whose surreal visions reshaped the art of his time. Dalí often claimed that his paintings were not inventions but translations of his dreams — he saw his imagination as a sacred instrument through which the subconscious world revealed itself. In his nocturnal visions, elephants marched on impossibly long legs, clocks melted in the sun, and the boundaries between waking and dreaming dissolved. His art, like Goldfrapp’s statement, teaches that the dream is not a retreat from reality but a door into its hidden dimensions. Dreams, he believed, were the purest expression of freedom — freedom from logic, from limitation, from all that confines the human mind.

Yet there is a gentle warning hidden in Goldfrapp’s words. To dream is easy; to remember, to honor, to live one’s dreams — that is the harder path. A film or book ends when the credits roll or the last page turns, but a dream lingers, calling to us to give it life. Too many, upon waking, cast aside their visions like mist evaporating in sunlight. But the wise know that good dreams are gifts to be cherished, for they contain the seeds of awakening. Every great creation — a painting, a song, a revolution — began as a dream once dismissed as impossible. The dreamer who listens becomes the creator who acts.

So, my child, remember this teaching: guard your dreams as treasures of the spirit. Do not think of them as idle wanderings of the mind, but as messages from the deeper intelligence within you — the same intelligence that shapes the stars and breathes through the flowers. Let them guide you as films and books cannot, for they are written in your own eternal language. When you wake from a good dream, do not leave it behind — carry it into your day, let it shape your choices, your art, your love. For as Alison Goldfrapp reminds us, the truest stories are not those we read or watch, but those we live — the stories born in the luminous space between sleep and awakening, where the soul remembers what it truly is: infinite, imaginative, and free.