“Imagine a world that seemed so much bigger than you. Imagine waking up one morning and finding a piece of yourself you didn't even know existed.”

“Do you know what absolute happiness is? For me, it is to wake up my kids in the morning - these little pieces of innocence - to wake them and find they're so happy to see me! It is unequivocal love, no question about it.”

Michael Douglas (1944) American actor and producer

“Desire for embodied existence is the root-cause of trouble. (…) Desire leads to experience. Experience leads to discrimination, detachment, self-knowledge –liberation. And what is liberation after all? To know that you are beyond birth and death. By forgetting who you are and imagining yourself a mortal creature, you created so much trouble for yourself that you have to wake up, like from a bad dream. Enquiry also wakes you up. You need not wait for suffering; enquiry into happiness is better, for the mind is in harmony and peace.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

“You don't even realize you're living in a before until you wake up one day and find yourself in an after.”

Robin Wasserman (1978) American writer of speculative fiction for young people

“I imagine the touch of someone who loves you so much, he cannot bear to watch you sleep; and so you wake up with his hand on your heart.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

“Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.”

Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon

“Imaginations and illusions are always so much more powerful and bigger than this mediocre and boring thing called reality.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

“He sought an adventure but didn't find one. He was inexperienced and besides he didn't have too much imagination.”

Raymond Queneau (1903–1976) French poet

“Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world, but the heart has its beaches, its homeland, and thoughts of its own. Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings, but the heart has its seasons its evenings, and songs of its own”

Robert Hunter (1941–2019) American musician

“When you get over an infatuation, to fall for someone ever again seems so inconceivable that you imagine no one, not even a bug, that is not mired in disappointment.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist