Quotes about dreams
page 17

“Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

Color, Reality, Painting

“I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

“A dream deferred is a dream denied.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

“I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

World, Imagination

“No one can steal our dream.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Even though we are each our own person… we're connected through the same dream! We are Seigaku!”

Takeshi Konomi (1970) Japanese manga artist

Personality

“Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer, and each dreamer has his own folds to open and knots to untie.”

Siri Hustvedt (1955) novelist, essayist, poet

Source: The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves

“You've got to follow your passion. You've got to figure out what it is you love--who you really are. And have the courage to do that. I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Love, Courage, Passion

“HI. I’m from Arkansas, the cantaloupe state. And tonight, I hope you will hold my melons close to your heart and vote me your Miss Teen Dream.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

Hope, Heart

“You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude.
And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they
were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade,
you'll suffer yet!”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

Suffering

“All memories fade away in the end. Then, only dreams are left. And because they are all we have, we confide our life’s worries to them.”

Philippe Forest (1962) French writer

Life, Confidence, Memory

“I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love, Life, Hope, Future

“Sadie," he said forlornly, "when you become a parent, you may understand this. One of my hardest jobs as a father, one of my greatest duties, was to realize that my own dreams, my own goals and wishes, are secondary to my children's.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Children, Understanding, Parent

“Day and night I always dream with open eyes.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

"I dream awake" ["Ismaelillo"]
As quoted in Great Hispanic-Americans (2005) by Nicolás Kanellos, Robert Rodriguez and Tamra Orr, p. 72

Night

“Joy, happiness, are hopes and our dreams…. A place of peace and harmony… that's the kind of land I invision.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Happiness, Peace, Hope, Joy

“You were never one to moon over handsome boys, or talk about balls and parties, or dream about your future husband.”

“That was because of Merripen,” Win admitted. “He was all I ever wanted.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Seduce Me at Sunrise

Boy, Future

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”

Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian

Motivational, Success, Inspirational, Hope

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

The alchemist, p. 141.
Variant: There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
Source: The Alchemist (1988)

Fear, Motivational, Business, Powerful

“I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

Men, Flowers, Tear, Laughter

“As you move toward a dream, the dream moves toward you.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

“Coleridge wrote, "Dreams are no shadows, but the very substances and calamities of my life.”

Sidney Sheldon book Memories of Midnight

Source: Memories of Midnight

Life

“I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”

George S. McGovern (1922–2012) American politician, Congressman, senator, Democratic presidential candidate

Men, War

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 1
Endymion (1818)

Health, Beauty, Sleep, Joy

“All that happens when your dreams come true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn't what you thought.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

“Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Past, Future

“Reality - Dreams = Animal Being
Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism)
Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism)
Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism
Dreams + Humor = Fantasy
Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living

Wisdom, Reality, Heart, Animals

“I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer.”

Sharon M. Draper (1948) American children's writer

Learning, Reading

“When I dream, I dream of him. For several nights now he’s come to me, waving from a distant shore as if he’s been waiting patiently for me to arrive. He doesn’t utter a word, but his smile says everything: I’ve missed you.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Smile, Distant, Waiting, Night

“Some kids get called 'bundles of joy' or 'slices of heaven' or 'dreams come true.' We got 'the fifty-fourth generation of DNA experiments.' Doesn't have the same warm and fuzzy feel. But maybe I'm oversensitive.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Angel

Feeling, Joy

“Demons don't understand human hearts, not well. They see through a distorted glass and show you what you desire, but warped and wrong. Use that wrongness to push yourself out of the dream. Life is loss, Alexander, but it's better than this.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Life, Understanding, Loss, Heart

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
First lines
Variant translation (by David Wyllie): One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.
Source: The Metamorphosis (1915)

“My final word: don't follow your dreams… chase them. With a stick, or a shovel, or whatever you have handy. Get that [bleep]ing dream!”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

“It's well we cannot hear the screams we make in other people's dreams.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

People

“We need men who can dream of things that never were.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Men, Motivational, For Men

“What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?”

Libba Bray book Rebel Angels

Source: Rebel Angels

Evil

“Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 3

Nature

“Dreams are only dreams until you wake up and make them real.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Motivation, Question, Funny

“What could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream”

Cormac McCarthy book Suttree

page 154
Source: Suttree (1979)
Context: Pale manchild were there last agonies? Were you in terror, did you know? Could you feel the claw that claimed you? And who is this fool kneeling over your bones, choked with bitterness? And what could a child know of the darkness of God's plan? Or how flesh is so frail it is hardly more than a dream.

God

“As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space
an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble
a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning
view all created things like this.”

Red Pine (1943) American author, poet, and translator of poetry

Source: The Diamond Sutra

Star

“Stop being so fruitlessly busy and. Use your. Reach out into the unknown and dream of how you can enlarge your experience and improve your mind and your soul and your world.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

World, Soul, Business

“I fell asleep and dreamed that life was only Happiness.
I woke and discovered that life was Duty.
I did my Duty and discovered that life was Happiness.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Life, Happiness

“If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us out of the imminent night”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Wine, Night

“in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: Howl: Original Draft Facsimile

Tear, Sea, Night

“I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Thinking, Chance, Reading

“No young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared, it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Love

“It was the one dream he'd never permitted himself to consider.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: When He Was Wicked

“Exile is a dream of a glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution: Elba, not St Helena. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back. The exile is a ball hurled high into the air.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

“I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality.

-Claude Frollo”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Reality

“Women want the fairytale. Not all women, of course, but most women grow up dreaming about the kind of man who would risk everything for them, even knowing they might get hurt.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

Women, Fairytale, Hurt

“I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

Love, Lie, Time

“The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.”

Jack Kerouac book Lonesome Traveler

Lonesome Traveler (1960)

Happiness

“Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Grass, Summer

“Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
---"On death”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Complete Poems and Selected Letters

Life, Death, Sleep

“But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

“So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“Dream and love are just words - until you decide to experience them”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love

“I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Life, Mountain, Change

“I really hate you sometimes."
"There's a fine line between love and hate."
I glared at him. "Dream on.”

Michelle Rowen (1971) Canadian writer

Source: Reign Fall

Love, Hate

“In my dreams of this city I am always lost.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

“Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Sonnets from the Portuguese

No. XXVI
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)

God

“When you read you can have every adventure. In the pages of a book you can be anyone you ever dreamed of being… They can never tell you you're too young to slay the dragon -- because it all happens right here, where it's safe.”

Janette Oke (1935) Canadian writer

Source: Love Comes Softly

Books, Reading

“I would build a cloudy House
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud -
I build it bright to see, -
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Housing

“But the country's disintegrating. What's happened to America? What's happened to the American dream? It came true. You're lookin' at it.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

Country

“The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.”

Hannah Arendt book On Violence

"On Violence".
Crises of the Republic (1969)

“I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Life, Imagination

“God surpasses our dreams when we reach past our personal plans and agenda to grab the hand of Christ and walk the path he chose for us. He is obligated to keep us dissatisfied until we come to him and his plan for complete satisfaction.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Source: Breaking Free: Discover the Victory of Total Surrender

God, Past, Christ, Personality

“In my dreams, I never have an age.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Age

“Dreaming was easier than screaming, and screaming was easier than worrying, and worrying was easier than crying, which was what she knew she would be reduced to if she didn’t keep a hard eye on herself.”

Kevin Brockmeier book The Brief History of the Dead

Source: The Brief History of the Dead

Cry

“Perhaps life is just that… a dream and a fear.”

Joseph Conrad book Under Western Eyes

Pt. IV, ch. 2
Under Western Eyes (1911)

Life, Fear

“You’re free to dream however you wish,” Nollin teased. “But don’t ask the rest of us to share your unrealistic—”
“Then don’t ask us to share your weakness!” Jason interrupted.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Chasing the Prophecy

“Dreams come true all the time, just not for the dreamers”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Time

“It was like meeting someone out of your dreams, or fantasies, or a beloved character from a favorite book.”

James Patterson book Sundays at Tiffany's

Source: Sundays at Tiffany's

Books

“I wondered about the explorers who'd sailed their ships to the end of the world. How terrified they must have been when they risked falling over the edge; how amazed to discover, instead, places they had seen only in their dreams.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

World

“This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Life, Imagination

“He had everything a dream boy should have. Back, front, sides, Everything. A head.”

Louise Rennison book Withering Tights

Source: Withering Tights

Boy

“Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Pleasure, Imagination

“What is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.”

Sigmund Freud book The Interpretation of Dreams

Source: The Interpretation of Dreams

“Dreams, you know, are what you wake up from.”

Raymond Carver book Cathedral

Source: Cathedral

“Childhood romances always seem so real, so enduring, when we are separated from the object of our affection. But usually, when we return, we find that our dreams and memories quiet surpassed reality.

-Lady Anne, Whitney's aunt”

Judith McNaught book Whitney, My Love

Source: Whitney, My Love

Reality, Memory, Childhood

“Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

World, Imagination

“Look closely at the present you are constructing:
it should look like the future you are dreaming.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Future

“The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.”

Daniel Woodrell (1953) Novelist

Source: Winter's Bone

Way, Idea, Heart

“This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children's eyes.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Children, Color, Sea

“Life was what happened when all the what-if’s didn’t, when what you dreamed or hoped or – in this case – feared might come to pass passed by instead.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Life, Fear, Hope

“I'm against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Nature, Thinking

“She would tell him what she wanted in her life--her hopes and dreams for the future--and he would listen intently and then promise to make it all come true. And the way he said it made her believe him, and she knew how much he meant to her.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Life, Hope, Way, Future

“For a woman, love is the highest dream, and if a man promises to build a ladder tall enough to reach it, she believes him, hikes up her skirt, and follows him to the stars.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: The Shoemaker's Wife

Love, Star

“You know what the difference is between a dream and a goal?… A plan.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

“He wants to be grown-up. How different dreams can be! Nature will soon grant your wish.”

Cornelia Funke book The Thief Lord

Source: The Thief Lord

Nature

“I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.”

Alice Hoffman book The Dovekeepers

Source: The Dovekeepers

Life, Distant

“I've changed my ways a little, I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment,
You see me there.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Way, Change

“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Hope, Courage, Help, Hope

“I know all about dreams that make you want to scream.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

“I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"”

George Bernard Shaw Back to Methuselah

The Serpent, in Pt. I : In the Beginning, Act I; this quote is sometimes misattributed to Robert F. Kennedy; it is often paraphrased slightly in a few different ways, including:
You see things as they are and ask, "Why?" I dream things as they never were and ask, "Why not?"
Variant: You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?
Source: 1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)