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

“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

“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

“I don't know the world, I don't even know myself. I'm forever daydreaming and often can't tell dreams from reality.”
― Vítězslav Nezval, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

“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

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

“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

“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

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

“All my life I have been a rower of two boats. I have been here physically and somewhere else mentally. My existence is split, my soul is cut, my heart is rent asunder.”
― Sadia Hakim, The Weight of Tender Things

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“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

“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

“Dreams are overrated. You work and work and work and then they end.”
― Jennifer Iacopelli, Break the Fall

“Boredom has a bad reputation. In a world of constant entertainment, the slightest lull sends us to our phones. Yet boredom can be a doorway. When we are bored, our minds begin to wander. Without external input, we may turn inward. Ideas bubble up. Connections form. Boredom is the soil from which creativity often grows.”
― Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"

“20 seconds of daydreaming can make you forget the whole previous 20 minutes, until you rewind. I’m speaking from experience. Amnesia”
― Niedria Dionne Kenny, Insane Asylum

“How stupid to be always trying to do things. What wonderful thrills, excitements, longings, desires and, of course, successes to be had as often as you like by daydreaming. As I said, contrast is the key to these delights; suddenly I had no commitments, worries, frustrations, and my feelings opened like a flower on a sunny spring morning.”
― Francis Chichester