Daydreaming Quotes

“The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.”
― Rob Liano

“They say there's no harm in daydreaming, but there is.”
― Charlaine Harris, Club Dead

“She was always daydreaming. She never wanted to live in the real world; she always seemed to be separated from other children her age. They couldn’t understand her or her imagination. She was always thinking outside of the box, breaking rules, and only following what her heart told her was right.”
― Shannon A. Thompson, November Snow

“She never felt like she belonged anywhere,except for when she was lying on her bed, pretending to be somewhere else.”
― Rainbow Rowell Eleanor and Park

“There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

“A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.”
― W.H. Auden

“How do you smuggle daydreams into reality?”
― David Mitchell, Number9Dream

“The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between…Too, the rhetoric of efficiency around these technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued-that that vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window-shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more production, or faster-paced…I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“Sometimes she stuck out into the future, imagining her life different from what is was.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“All the time, I looked out our lattice window. I watched the birds fly by. I followed the clouds on their travels. I studied the moon as it grew larger, then shrank. So much happened outside my window that I almost forgot what was happening inside that room.”
― Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

“To all the boys, for when you become men: you'll leave women all throughout your life because they're holding you back, and even after she's gone she'll still weigh you down. To all the women: stay away from us men. We don't know anything about you, despite what we try to convince you of.”
― Dave Matthes, Paradise City

“It's foolish to let my thoughts wander this way," he said, drawing himself up, "but daydream is the only good thing in life. Everything else is vulgar and empty.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Là-Bas

“He raised a hand in response and tossed the ear of corn into the wagon. Then he
returned to his fantasy, imagining himself running the livery instead of working there, making the decisions, placing orders, selecting new horses, agreeing to board others, and
hiring a boy to muck out the stalls and pitch hay.
In his daydream, he no longer lived in the back room. He came home at night to a small house he’d bought with his earnings. Inside, a woman waited for him. A wife. In his fantasy her hair was as golden as the ear of corn he tossed into the wagon and her
eyes as blue as the cloudless sky overhead. Catherine smiled at him and he could hear as well as see her say his name. “Jim! Welcome home.”
― Bonnie Dee, A Hearing Heart

“You were thinking about how suburbs are perfect cradles for dreaming: they practically beg you to imagine another life, one lived at a burning voltage. The dreaming hidden in this place — murmuring beneath the comfort of the uniform gardens in their perfect rows, the mowed lawns, each driveway that bit too small for the two large cars — you couldn't have become what you are if you hadn't always been from this.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Contrary to belief, daydreaming is not an intellectual process but rather an escape from intellectualism.”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“She would have him proud of her, she thought, if she took pains to look her best, she would have him showing her off, perhaps, watching her with a smile, she would learn to be smart and clever and she would be his lady.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Julius

“Elsa, coughing her life away in the little bedroom next to him, was happy in the ignorance of death like a child who believes in God.
Time was not slow to her, the seconds passed kn the crest of a wave and so out of her reach for ever.
She live in a world of pure imagination.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Julius

“He had often seen her like this, but had never before understood it. All these little stories, these little daydreams of hers, were what gave such extraordinary color and mystery to her movements. She seemed always to be struggling in their soft grasp as though she were trying to run in a swamp. As he watched her, he felt sure that her lips must taste of blood and salt and that there must be a delicious weakness in her legs. His impulse wasn’t to aid her to get free, but to throw her down in the soft, warm mud and to keep her there.”
― Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust

“Castles in the air—they are so easy to take refuge in. And easy to build, too. (The Master Builder, act 3)”
― Henrik Ibsen, Henrik Ibsen: Four Major Plays

“Voyager

The mind travelled light
to unknown lands...”
― Irene Doura-Kavadia, The Miracles Within

“Hold on, and I’ll drive the darkness back!—
Whispers the lunar prince to the stranded sheep, tenderly,
While he puts on the adorned crown of night,
And while the winds are wrestling it out devoid of senses.
Hold on even as the stars have disappeared from sight,
And the herd has abandoned you to the wolves.
Hold on to that last bit of life you have!
Hold out throughout the seeming strife,
And I promise the clock will not strike twelve.
Hold out until my hand reaches to your rescue,
Hold on to the very last moment!—I will do it.”
― Vladimir Hlocky, Journeys Beyond Earth

“A memory is just an
imagining inclined towards the past, after all. You are bound to
relive the same mistakes because you keep imagining your own memories. But consider this: The former things shall not be
remembered; the old that’ve passed. If your future, which is in desire,
can become your past, a memory like any other, then by some mysterious miracle it will become your present too”
― Vladimir Hlocky, Journeys Beyond Earth

“I have never returned to this lost paradise. Sometimes I am struck with the sudden desire to go to the Gare de l'Est, board the Orient Express, and retrace the route between Innsbruck and Plumeshof. As I so often saw other more or less close friends of the Welser family do, I fantasize about showing up without warning in the pretty meadow surrounded by fir trees and making the climb to the house while thinking only of Aunt Heidi, who has long since gone the to join her two older sons and their father in heaven. I would concentrate on her so strongly that I would eventually see her again on the doorstep, hastily drying her flour-covered hands in her apron; her opal eyes would brighten when she saw me. She would spread her arms while joyfully shouting: "Franziska!" and I would run to her calling back, "Aunt Heidi, Aunt Heidi!" Kurt's contagious laughter would echo in the distance. Lilo, smiling, would be hanging out the laundry. A lifetime of love would still be stretching out before them. A delicious aroma of pancakes would be drifting in the air ... The large earthenware oven, the eiderdown quilts, the painted wooden chairs with a little heart carved in them like the shutters ... nothing would have changed.”
― Françoise Hardy, The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles: A Memoir by Françoise Hardy

“I relentlessly scrutinized one question: ‘How do I plant a tiny unpretentious seed for myself in this barren world? How do I forfeit what is, and start living for the kingdom in my heart?’ I kept repeating it and repeating it in my head. I knew a dreamer should breathe; break the mold in which he was set. Imagination was the answer. I knew it was all in there, prepared like a dining table for me.”
― Vladimir Hlocky, Journeys Beyond Earth

“Non lo stiamo sognando?"
"Non lo stiamo sognando."
"Anche se fosse, non potremmo saperlo.”
― David Almond, Skellig

“Invention is essentially different from reverie; if some fail to recognize the difference that is because they have not themselves experienced both. Anyone who has will understand me. In my day-dreams I was training myself to be a fool; in mapping and chronicling Animal-Land I was training myself to be a novelist.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy, Reflections on the Psalms, The Four Loves, and The Business of Heaven

“Silly thoughts in this monotonous place are inevitable I suppose.”
― Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell

“If my life was a romcom, the guy sitting across from me would be the guy. Not the one I was currently on a date with – that would be far too obvious. I mean the handsome man sitting behind him, two empty tables away.”
― Radhika Agrawal, Red Flags and Rishtas: A Desi Rom Com

“If you want to know where your heart is, watch where your mind goes when you daydream.”
― Walt Whitman