To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect

It was more fun dreaming about being a movie star than actually being one.

I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams

The end of the world turned out to be something I preferred to fantasize about rather than experience.

It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing.

There’s a fine line between wishing and dreaming. There’s an even bigger line between dreaming and doing. Most people wish upon a star. It’s fine and fun, but it doesn’t mean a thing unless you follow that star. In other words, do something about realizing your dream. It’s fun to build castles in the air, and keep your head in the sky. But it’s all a waste of time if you haven’t got your feet planted firmly on the ground. When you dare to dream, to visualize or make think-pictures, be sure they are realistic goals for you, and not nonproductive fantasies. I’m a dreamer. Aren’t we all?

Do not confuse dreams with wishes. There is a difference. Dreams are where you visualize yourself being successful at what's important to you to accomplish. Now, dreams build convictions because you work hard to pay the price to make sure that they come true. Wishes are hoping good things will happen to you, but there's no fire in your gut that causes you to put everything forth to overcome all the obstacles. So you have to dream more and never, ever, ever blame somebody else if it doesn't happen. That is in your department.

To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But in the end I had understood that desire itself demanded for its fulfillment that I should forget about the conditions of my existence, and that I should abandon what for me constituted the only barrier to love, namely the belief that I could not be loved. I had always thought of desire as being something clearer than it really is, and I had not realized that it required people to see themselves in a slightly dreamlike, unreal way.

I found that the rich whom I’d envied dreamed of greater riches, and that power came not from obeying the law but from not getting caught.

What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me.

I was an aesthete rather than an athlete, and my only wish was to be an ecstatic wanderer.

I dreamed, I worked hard, I received.

But the truth is far less interesting than any of these explanations. The truth is, I thought I wanted something, but it turns out I didn’t. End of story. I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love with not the fight but only the victory.

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart’s hope. It was what I wanted to be.