In The Dream House Quotes & Sayings

How do we know we're not people in a movie?' she asked.
I looked at her not knowing how to reply.
Mama, [ ... ] how do we know that things are real?'
Great. Now we have a junior existentialist in the house.
Well, we don't know. We just have to hope that what we think is real is real.'
But how do we know?' she asked, insistently.
Ah, a scientist, who wants empirical evidence.
We don't know. We just have to hope.'
Mama, how do we know things aren't a dream? You know, how sometimes life feels like a dream? Do you ever feel that way?'
Yes, sweetie, I feel that way all the time. — Julie Metz

Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house — William H Gass

When I was 5 years old, we had nothing in the village. One day, in front of my house, some soldiers in a big Cadillac started to do a picnic. I looked at them like they were coming from the moon. I remember they gave me a box of rice pudding - that, for me, was the American Dream. — Renzo Rosso

Mothers-in-law do not make good house pets. Once I had the most wonderful dream
I dreamed that mothers-in-law cost money and I couldn't afford one. — Phyllis Diller

And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth, where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors (Hanif's dream, which horrifies his dream-invading mother, who believes the cinema to be an extension of the brothel business), where life has been transmuted into grotesquery by the irruption into it of history, eventually in the murkiness of the underworld he cannot help himself, he finds his eyes straying upwards, up along delicate sandals and baggy pajamas and past loose kurta and above the dupatta, the cloth of modesty, until eyes meet eyes, and then — Salman Rushdie

A lifelong insomniac, I sleep like one newly dead every night and dream deeply harmonious dreams of swimming along with the current in a clear green river, playing and at home in the water. On the first night, I dreamed that the real name of the house was not Bramasole but Cento Angeli, One Hundred Angels, and that I would discover them one by one. Is it bad luck to change the name of a house, as it is to rename a boat? As a trepid foreigner, I wouldn't. But for me, the house now has a secret name as well as its own name. — Frances Mayes

The few times he made the mistake of relaxing in a woman's bed after a quick lay proved to be serious mistakes. They wanted to coddle and always asked the questions that made him cringe, 'What are you thinking?', 'Do you love me?', 'Where do you see this going?', 'Are you as happy as I am?', 'Why do you keep calling me by my sister's name?', or his personal favorite 'I wonder what our babies will look like.' No, sex was best kept at a woman's house, hotel room or better yet in the backseat of a car. Thank god his neighbor seemed to share the same attitude. He hated the idea of waking up to the sounds of another man grunting and moaning. With his luck the sounds would filter into his dream and he would end up having a gay dream. — R.L. Mathewson

Totalitarianism is not only hell, but all the dream of paradise
the age-old dream of a world where everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith, without secrets from one another. Andre Breton, too, dreamed of this paradise when he talked about the glass house in which he longed to live. If totalitarianism did not exploit these archetypes, which are deep inside us all and rooted deep in all religions, it could never attract so many people, especially during the early phases of its existence. Once the dream of paradise starts to turn into reality, however, here and there people begin to crop up who stand in its way. and so the rulers of paradise must build a little gulag on the side of Eden. In the course of time this gulag grows ever bigger and more perfect, while the adjoining paradise gets even smaller and poorer. — Milan Kundera

Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true. — Neil Gaiman

I perceive we postpone all our joys of Christ, till He and we be in our own house above, thinking that there is nothing of it here to be sought or found, but only hope and fair promises; and that Christ will give us nothing here but tears, sadness, crosses; and that we shall never feel the smell of the flowers of that high garden of paradise above, till we come there. Nay, but I find it possible to find young glory, and a young green paradise of joy even here. We dream of hunger in Christ's house, while we are here, although He alloweth feasts to all the bairns within God's household. — Samuel Rutherford

Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, once asked, "How shall we respond to the dreams of youth?" It is a dazzling and elegant question, a question that demands an answer
a range of answers, really, spiraling outward in widening circles. — Bill Ayers

My purpose was what my father's purpose was - to make a living and to have a family. I was going to do the right thing. My dream to me was to have money to support it and to live in the kind of house I liked. — Jack Kirby

Our whole dream for our home was for it to be an artist's haven. So there are paint supplies; there's a piano with a microphone and a recorder right there to capture things right in the second. There's editing equipment. There are cameras. I think the only thing in our house that people would be surprised by is the efficiency. — Will Smith

There's no there. That elusive 'there' with the job, the beach house, the dream, it's not out there. There is here. It's in you ... right now. — Brian Kenny

Ah, the harbour bells of Cambridge! Whose fountains in moonlight and closed courts and cloisters, whose enduring beauty in its virtuous remote self-assurance, seemed part, less of the loud mosaic of one's stupid life there, though maintained perhaps by the countless deceitful memories of such lives, than the strange dream of some old monk, eight hundred years dead, whose forbidding house, reared upon piles and stakes driven into the marshy ground, had once shone like a beacon out of the mysterious silence, and solitude of the fens. A dream jealously guarded: Keep off the Grass. And yet whose unearthly beauty compelled one to say: God forgive me. — Malcolm Lowry

To succeed, this movement will have to change our ideals in fundamental ways. It will have to kill off the traditional American dream, the idea of constant striving for a better future, symbolized by the middle-class goal of a rising income and the purchase of a little house with a yard - not to mention the freedom to move where you please, run your life, and govern your town with your neighbors when you get there. Greg Galluzzo, Obama's mentor and the man who created the grassroots crusade that inspired Building One America, dismisses the American dream as a sham. What really makes Americans move to the suburbs, says Galluzzo, is 'racism and greed. — Stanley Kurtz

Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I've got $260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it
lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding
sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don't scare Cal). Spend all the money.
And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you're having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you're out in the garden. I might slip into a dream.
Visit my grave when you can, but don't kick yourself if you can't, or if you move house and it's suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I'd like that. — Jenny Downham

Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,
The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom And flit from room to room. And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

....one of those long, romantic novels, six hundred and fifty pages of small print, translated from French or German or Hungarian or something -- because few of the English ones have the exact feeling I mean. And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards -- perhaps all your life, who knows? -- surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies' dresses and the gentlemen's voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music -- everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head. 'The house I was living in when I read that book,' you think, or 'This colour reminds me of that book. — Jean Rhys

It seems to me that whether it is recognized or not, there is a terrific frustration which increases in intensity and harmfulness as time goes on, when people are always daydreaming of the kind of place in which they would like to live, yet never making the place where they do live into anything artistically satisfying to them. Always to dream of a cottage by a brook while never doing anything to the stuffy house in the city is to waste creativity in this very basic area, and to hinder future creativity by not allowing it to grow and develop through use. pg 66 — Edith Schaeffer

Horace's eyes get wide, and he glances between me and the house. "Every time I think I got a grip on this crazy shit going on in your head, I realize I don't know the half of it, do I?"
My eyes tracing the red trim of the house, I shake my head. "Not even close. — Erica Cameron

MY MOST CONSTANT and vivid memory is not so much of the people but of the actual house in Aracataca where I lived with my grandparents. It's a recurring dream which persists even now. What's more, every single day of my life I wake up with the feeling, real or imaginary, that I've dreamed I'm in that huge old house. Not that I've gone back there but that I am there, at no particular age, for no particular reason - as if I'd never left it. Even now in my dreams that sense of night-time foreboding which dominated my whole childhood still persists. It was an uncontrollable sensation which began early every evening and gnawed away at me in my sleep until I saw dawn breaking through the cracks in the door. — Gerald Martin

The house burned in the fire. Her house. Her prison of lies and of denial. Her American dream turned nightmare."~Unbreakable Heart — Kimberly Kinrade

The dream that I've been having, about my high-school sweetheart, is not really about my high-school sweetheart, when you get right down to it. It's not a dream about Alison Koechner and our lost love and the precious little three-bedroom house in Maine we might have built together, had things gone a different way. I am not dreaming of white picket fences and Sunday crosswords and warm tea.
There's no asteroid in the dream. In the dream, life continues. Simple life, happy and white-picket lined or otherwise. Mere life. Goes on.
When I'm dreaming of Alison Koechner, what I'm dreaming of is not dying. — Ben H. Winters

And as we glided across the ice toward Fingerbone, we would become aware of the darkness, too close to us, like a presence in a dream. The comfortable yellow lights of the town were then the only comfort there was in the world, and there were not many of them. If every house in Fingerbone were to fall before our eyes, snuffing every light, the event would touch our senses as softly as a shifting among embers, and then the bitter darkness would step nearer. — Marilynne Robinson

Surveys often show people would prefer a detached house with a lawn and driveway to an apartment. I understand this. It's not my place to presume to tell people where they can live. But perhaps that dream will simply not be possible in the future. — Norman Foster

Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream. — Banana Yoshimoto

God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. — Neil Gaiman

Affirm my life every morning and let myself have a good day, free myself each night to dream the necessary dreams, find pleasure in serving those I love, give up guilt at refusing to when they demand my self-annihilation, find joy in teaching, joy in talking to loving readers ... , give my self time every day to walk or go to a museum, be generous because it reminds me how much abundance I have been given, be loving because it reminds me not to feel jealous of those who only seem to have more, seize my life, release my anger, bless the known and the unknown world ...
If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair. Despair is for those who expect to live for ever.
I no longer do. — Erica Jong

The dream was not to put one black family in the White House, the dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house. — Al Sharpton

It would be a completely inconvenient time to go to the computer and write it all down. I ignored some ideas, and then became frustrated because I couldn't find the information again later or grab it back. I eventually learned to just go write it down now because Spirit does not exist on a timeline and only delivers insights in the most perfect ways. It was my responsibility to trust the timing. Responsibility is the ability to act and I had that ability, even while unloading the dishwasher, or folding laundry, or trying to get some random things done around the house, or driving on the freeway. YEP, I'm livin' the glamorous dream! — Molly McCord

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled: and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry; saying, 'What shall I do?' — John Bunyan

The townhouse was in a community called Waterview, a pretty green place with a common that had a gazebo and a fountain. The homes were red-brick colonial and beautiful. The townhouse Paxton had loved from the moment Kirsty showed it to her last year was in a cup-de-sac. Wisteria vines grew around the door, and Paxton remembered thinking how wonderful it would be to walk in and out in the springtime, when the wisteria would be in full bloom. It would be like walking through a wedding arch every day. — Sarah Addison Allen

In some cases, people are silent; they're being complacent. But we're also seeing people speak out against some of these raids, these arrests. So for example, the Townhouse Gallery - the outreach director gave an interview to Ahram Online, which is a semi-official news agency here. And he sort of dismissed it, played it down. But the publisher from the publishing house - the Merit Publishing House, which was raided - he said this won't scare us; we will continue to dream of a free country, a country with social justice, and this won't silence us. — Leila Fadel

I had a dream that Mark Wahlberg and his wife were our neighbors and we had dance parties in our living room and drank wine from Solo cups. I remember being confused as to why they lived in a regular neighborhood, or why it didn't seem to make anyone awkward that I had Marky's Calvin ads up in the living room. — Crystal Woods

Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they area dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books. — Italo Calvino

I want time in which to walk quietly over the earth, among uncrazed men. I want time in which to build a house, inhabit it, create a past with meaning. I want time in which to seek and find love. I want time. I want to be unhurried, uncaught. I want time in which to sleep and waken, in which to dream the truth of my being on earth. Time. — William, Saroyan

I had given myself a sort of early retirement when I left the scene in 1985. All of the people in my family worked until they dropped, including my father. I decided to take a little time to enjoy life. I traveled, built my dream house, rescued a few dogs. My return to music, and acting, was deliberate, part of my musical arc. — J. D. Souther

I'm sure everyone feels sorry for the individual who has fallen by the wayside or who can't keep up in our competitive society, but my own compassion goes beyond that to those millions of unsung men and women, who get up every morning, send the kids to school, go to work, try to keep up the payments on their house, pay exorbitant taxes to make possible compassion for the less fortunate, and as a result have to sacrifice many of their own desires and dreams and hopes. Government owes them something better than always finding a new way to make them share the fruit of their toils with others. — Ronald Reagan

Sometimes I wake at night in the White House and rub my eyes and wonder if it is not all a dream. — Grover Cleveland

It is, in other words, the King James Bible's exact contemporary, the product of precisely the same cultural moment, produced from precisely the same court culture, with precisely the same intention of celebrating and in a certain sense 'housing' James I and his dream of majesty. Can Hatfield House, then, be read as a companion to the Bible whose genesis is so close to its own? — Adam Nicolson

Moving is a well-established tradition in America, and _moving up_ constitutes a significant part of the American dream. Not only is working one's way to a bigger house central to our ethos but it makes sense functionally as families bring more children into the world. But why must the move to a larger or more luxurious house bring with it the abandonment of one's neighbors, community groups, and often even schoolmates? The suburban pod system causes people to move not just from house to house but form community to community. Only in a traditionally organized neighborhood of varied incomes can a family significantly alter its housing without going very far. In the new suburbs, you can't move up without moving out. (The same is true of moving down. Seniors seeking a smaller house are often forced to abandon their familiar community and start over someplace else.) — Andres Duany

And George Farr had the town, the earth, the world to himself and his sorrow. Music came faint as a troubling rumor beneath the spring night, sweetened by distance: a longing knowing no ease. (Oh God, oh God!)
At last George Farr gave up trying to see her. He had 'phoned vainly and time after time, at last the telephone became the end in place of the means: he had forgotten why he wanted to reach her. Finally he told himself that he hated her, that he would go away; finally he was going to as much pains to avoid her as he had been to see her. So he slunk about the streets like a criminal, avoiding her, feeling his his very heart stop when he did occasionally see her unmistakable body from a distance. And at night he lay sleepless and writhing to think of her, then to rise and don a few garments and walk past her darkened house, gazing in slow misery at the room in which he knew she lay, soft and warm, in intimate slumber, then to return to home and bed to dream of her brokenly. — William Faulkner

He scraped through the dark sand to the center house, two stories, both pouring bands of light into the fog. There was warmth and gaiety within, through the downstairs window he could see young people gathered around a piano, their singing mocking the forces abroad on this cruel night. She was there, proptected by happiness and song and the good. He was separated from her only by a sand yard and a dark fence, by a lighted window and by her protectors.
He stood there until he was trembling with pity and rage. Then he fled, but his flight was slow as the flight in a dream, impeded by the deep sand and the blurring hands of the fog. He fled from the goodness of that home, and his hatred for Laurel throttled his brain. If she had come back to him, he would not be shut out, an outcast in a strange, cold world. — Dorothy B. Hughes

I had a house in Haiti, in the hills above the North Atlantic coast. The house appeared as if out of a dream: my dream to have a foothold in the country. Like many concepts do in Haiti, the phrase 'pied a terre' became literal, material. — Madison Smartt Bell

I know. I know. But he's always buried in those books or shuffling around the house like he's lost in some dream." "And?" "I wasn't like that." Baba sounded frustrated, almost angry. Rahim Khan laughed. "Children aren't colouring books. You don't get to fill them with your favourite colours. — Khaled Hosseini

He knew it would take as many years as could think of now to forget the tracks, no matter how deeply buried. Some morning in autumn, spring, or winter he kn he'd wake and, if he didn't go near the window, if he just lay deep and snug and warm, in his bed, he would hear it, faint and far away.
And around the bend of the morning street, up the avenue, between the even rows of sycamore, elm and maple, it the quietness before the start of living, past his house h would hear the familiar sounds. Like the ticking of a doe the rumble of a dozen metal barrels rolling, the hum of single immense dragonfly at dawn. Like a merry-go-round like a small electrical storm, the color of blue lightning, coming, here, and gone. The trolley's chime! The hiss like a sc fountain spigot as it let down and took up its step, and starting of the dream again, as on it sailed along its way, traveling a hidden and buried track to some hidden and buried destination. — Ray Bradbury

She could see the name Fukamachi on a shiny name-plate by the door of the house, but it was a name that meant nothing to Kazuko. And at that moment, in her heart, she began to dream of meeting someone. Someone special who would one day walk into her life. Someone she would instantly feel she had known for years. Someone who would feel the same about her. — Yasutaka Tsutsui

A psychologically engrossing novel about the homes we make-in our houses, in our neighborhoods, and in the hearts of our loved ones. Laken takes on that great unspoken American subject-class-and does so with frankness, acuity and surpassing feeling. DREAM HOUSE is a memorable debut novel from a fully mature talent. — Peter Ho Davies

It was only that night, dreaming forbidden dreams of Laurence and the clear attraction he had already displayed towards her, that the dream was disturbed. She woke to pain, her eyes and mouth flashing open in a wordless scream as two strong fangs pierced her neck. A body lay across hers, warm and strong as she felt the life being sucked out of her. The moment he knew she was awake, Laurence had pulled back from feeding and smiled at her with a bloody grin. 'You are mine now, Shiloh. You may never leave this house until the day I die.' He had warned her, planting a tormenting kiss on her lips before resuming his feed. — Elaine White

I was lucky enough to realize my dream. When I was a little kid in Santa Barbara, sitting on the floor in my grandmother's house, dreaming of maybe one day working for Walt Disney, and to have that dream come true, I think that's pretty remarkable. — Floyd Norman

And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The ideal of a well-stocked mind aiming at excellence in all walks of life has been replaced by the dream of a well-stocked wine cellar, the cellar now being a specially made wine cooler strategically placed in one's house, to be viewed by even the most unobservant visitor. — Dimitris Mita

I nodded, but part of me hoped the power would be off at Beck's house. I kind of wanted Sam back in my bed, where I could keep him from disappearing like the dream that he was. — Maggie Stiefvater

The suburbs are the American dream, right? Living in a nice house, having a good job, a happy family. — Cheryl Hines

By the brook she came suddenly upon Rosemary West, who was sitting on the old pine tree. She was on her way home from Ingleside, where she had been giving the girls their music lesson. She had been lingering in Rainbow Valley quite a little time, looking across its white beauty and roaming some by-ways of dream. Judging from the expression of her face, her thoughts were pleasant ones. Perhaps the faint, occasional tinkle from the bells on the Tree Lovers brought the little lurking smile to her lips. Or perhaps it was occasioned by the consciousness that John Meredith seldom failed to spend Monday evening in the gray house on the white wind-swept hill. — L.M. Montgomery

The house protects the dreamer; the houses that are important to us are the ones that allow us to dream in peace. Guests we've had stop in for a night or two all come down the first morning, ready to tell their dreams. — Frances Mayes

I laughed on the way home, and I laughed again for sheer satisfaction when we reached the garden and drove between the quiet trees to the pretty old house; for when I went into the library, with its four windows open to the moonlight and the scent, and looked round at the familiar bookshelves, and could hear no sounds but sounds of peace, and knew that here I might read or dream or idle exactly as I chose with never a creature to disturb me, how grateful I felt to the kindly Fate that has brought me here and given me a heart to understand my own blessedness, and rescued me from a life like that I had just seen -- a life spent with the odours of other people's dinners in one's nostrils, and the noise of their wrangling servants in one's years, and parties and tattle for all amusement. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry "Let us go hence," and then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of everlasting. — Arthur Machen

Words are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common-sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in "foreign commerce" on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house, is to withdraw, step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves - this is a poet's life. To mount too high or descend too low, is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together. — Gaston Bachelard

Few people would dream of hiring a contractor to build them a house and expect it to be built to a safe standard only 85 percent of the time; similarly, few people would want to eat out in a restaurant where only 85 percent of the meals were safe to eat. Why then do we accept such sloppiness in road safety, where a situation in which 85 percent of drivers going the speed limit is deemed to be good enough? — Neil Arason

Human ... I don't know what that word means ... Tell me what defines it. What sets it apart? Are you going to tell me its love? A crocodile will defend her brood to the death. Hope? A lion will stalk its prey for days. Faith? Who is to say what gods populate an orangutan's imagination. We build? So do termites. We dream? House cats do that on the windowsill ... We live in a shabby edifice ... hastily erected over a span of ten thousand years, and we draw he flimsy curtains to hide the truth from ourselves. — Rick Yancey

Why there isn't any drama in my life
So I'll crawl on the cottonfield with a fife
Why to have a dream in vain my life begs
Am a house gecko, I eat flies and lay eggs
My death surely doesn't yield a headline and all
I'll break law by pissing on a castle's wall
For my death there wouldn't be a weeping meni
From the name of Lady Canning there's ledikeni
One foot on heaven and one foot on hell, hanging
One cannon and two cannonballs dangling. — Nabarun Bhattacharya

I was immersed in comfortable Christianity. Years ago, I found myself living what seemed like the American church dream - pastoring a large church, living in a large house, and surrounded by all the comforts this world has to offer. But inside I had a sinking feeling that I was missing the point. — David Platt

No matter how far they traveled, they always had this house to welcome them home." "True. Did you ever wonder why they altered it so often?" "Miss Everleigh says they were innovators. Visionaries." He glanced at her, the firelight shadowing his face. "They kept knocking down the walls. Expanding them, making new routes for egress. Not much innovation in that. As visions go, it's the dream of claustrophobics." The notion unsettled her. "What do you mean to say?" "I mean, they traveled to escape this place." He reached for the bottle, splashed more liquor into his glass. Set down the bottle and stared at it. "Came back very reluctantly, already itching to leave again." She did not like that idea. "It was their home. They were a famously loving family - " "It's a house," he said. "That doesn't make it a home. And family - yes, family is important. But it can trap you more neatly than four walls and a locked door." Her — Meredith Duran

In her remorse, she was also willing to admit that she was sad for another reason. She no longer had a reason to see or spend time with Wesley. She would lose her dream house to him and him to the house. It seemed almost tragic how everything had panned out and it made her consider more strongly than she had before that maybe it was a sign that she should take Jerry back. She'd lost her dream and was realizing quickly that in the end that's all it had ever been and maybe it was time that she finally woke up. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

I soon began to dream ... I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping ... I left my bed and wandered downstairs ... There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers, 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.' — Abraham Lincoln

I can confirm by a modern dream the element of prognosis (or precognition) that can be found in an old dream quoted by Artemidorus of Daldis, in the second century A.D.: A man dreamed that he saw his father die in the flames of a house on fire. Not long afterward, he himself died in a phlegmone (fire, or high fever), which I presume was pneumonia. — C. G. Jung

Sometimes the house of the future is better built, lighter and larger than all the houses of the past, so that the image of the dream house is opposed to that of the childhood home. Late in life, with indomitable courage, we continue to say that we are going to do what we have not yet done: we are going to build a house. This dream house may be merely a dream of ownership, the embodiment of everything that is considered convenient, comfortable, healthy, sound, desirable, by other people. It must therefore satisfy both pride and reason, two irreconcilable terms. — Gaston Bachelard

In the dream life, you don't deliberately set out to dream about a house night after night; the dream itself insists you look at whatever is trying to come into visibility. — Jane Hirshfield

[Winning an Oscar] was a beautiful thing that happened. It is in my house, and every time I look at, I see all the people who are a part of it, all the people who gave me opportunities to work, gave me opportunities to make a living at this thing [acting] that was a dream for me, growing up. And I got to do it, and then again and again and again, and make a living out of being an actress. — Penelope Cruz

They climbed the wide stairways. Their footsteps echoed and echoed through the house. "What on earth will you be doing with something so large?" said Mum.
"I shall live in it with my servants, of course," said Mina. "Or I shall establish a school."
"A school, my lady?"
"Yes. A school for the writing of nonsense and the pursuit of extraordinary activities. — David Almond

My parents loved each other. I was raised in a house of total love and respect. My dad worked very hard and my mother was incredibly devoted to him. I can unequivocally, without any peradventure of doubt, tell you that I was raised with the kind of love that we only dream of. — James Woods

In the summer of 1988, my father took me up to look at the remains of our home, the dream house that he'd built. It was my first time since our family left four years earlier. Political and obscene graffiti covered the half-torn walls. There was no ceiling and surprisingly no floor: the parquet, the stone, the marble, all looted. — Rabih Alameddine

My dream is to one day own a country house on the shore in England, have gotten married, wipe some debt off and get a few more good films. — Matthew Goode

I began reading Harper Lee's novel in the skimpy shade of a pine outside my grandmother's house, fat beagles pressing against me, begging for attention, ignored. At dark, I kept reading, first on the couch, a bologna sandwich in one hand, then in my bed, by the light of a 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling on an orange drop cord. When my mother came in from her job as a maid and unplugged my chandelier, I replayed the story in my head until it was crowded out by dreams. I woke the next morning, smelling biscuits, and reached for the book again. — Rick Bragg

In AirAsia, we consider ourselves basically a dream factory. We deliberately decided that we wanted a company where people can pursue their passion, and we wanted to make use of all the talent that we have in-house. — Tony Fernandes

I can't stop thinking about what Caroline said to Minna about death. It isn't an infection, she said. She might be right. Then again, we've nested in the walls like bacteria. We've taken over the house, its insulation and its plumbing - we've made it our own. Or maybe it's life that's the infection: a feverish dream, a hallucination of feelings. Death is purification, a cleaning, a cure. — Lauren Oliver

Hey, hold up!" I drop the pickax to the ground and jog after K.T. I pull a roundish piece of amethyst about half the size of my palm out of my pocket and hold it out. "Would you give this to her?"
K.T. tilts her head to the side as she takes the stone and examines it. "Pretty. Is it amethyst?"
"Yeah."
"Why don't you give it to her yourself?"
I shove my hands in my pockets and shrug. There's no answer I can give that wouldn't either sound crazy or be an outright lie. K.T. smiles and slips the stone into her pocket.
"All right, Romeo. I'll go see if I can get Juliet to come to the ball tonight."
K.T. winks and walks around to the front of the house. — Erica Cameron

Secret kabals of vegetarians habitually gather under the sign to exchange contraband from beyond the Vegetable Barrier. In their pinpoint eyes dances their old dream: the Total Fast. One of them reports a new atrocity published without compassionate comment by the editors of Scientific American: "It has been established that, when pulled from the ground, a radish produces an electronic scream." Not even the triple bill for 65 will comfort them tonight. With a mad laugh born of despair, one of them throws himself on a hot-dog stand, disintegrating on the first chew into pathetic withdrawal symptoms. The rest watch him mournfully and then separate into the Montreal entertainment section. The news is more serious than any of them thought. One is ravished by a steak house with sidewalk ventilation. In a restaurant, one argues with the waiter that he ordered "tomato" but then in a suicide of gallantry he agrees to accept the spaghetti, meat sauce mistake. — Leonard Cohen

Devil, and then angel - is it the same you?
Which are you then, my prick? How should I name you?
You and that cunt of hers - no man alive
Can hope to get away from you, or tame you;
There is no mind that doesn't dream of you,
In every house the seeds you've sown proclaim you. — Obayd-e Zakani

And in his dream, Coyotito was reading from a book as large as a house, with letters as big as dogs, and the words galloped and played on the book. — John Steinbeck

We all crave latitude in life, yet simultaneously dig ourselves deeper into domestic entrapment. We may dream of traveling light but accumulate as much as we can to keep us burdened and rooted to one spot. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Because-though we all muse on the theme of escape-we stil find the notion of responsibility irresistible. The career, the house, the dependents, the debt-it grounds us. Provides us with a necessary security, a reason to get upin the morning. It narrows choice and ergo, gives us certainty. And though just about every man I know rails against being so cul-de-saced by domesic burden, we all embrace it. Embrace it with a vengeance. — Douglas Kennedy

I once had a dream about getting a marriage, house in the country, and at the end of the day we'd retire, but I'm never going to retire. — Ozzy Osbourne

When you really want something, when you lust, seek, desire, await, anticipate or expect, when you sit in front of the TV after the late news twirling a plastic spoon in a bowl of lukewarm skim milk and saturated puffs of Special K, praying for nine or so hours to pass so that you can check the morning mail to see if the college accepted, the one-night stand wrote, the tax refund arrived or Publisher's Clearing House made you the winner of a dream house in Wisconsin, when you're really looking forward to something, that's when Fortuna dispatches a couple of her handmaidens to drop a load of shit on you. — Martin Fillmore Clark

I always wanted to be a comedian, even when I was a little kid. I had a funny father who was in the news business, by the way. He was a radio news guy. So the news was always in my house, and funny was always in my house. It was sort of just baked into the DNA that I would do this for a living, but I can remember being less than 10 years old and dreaming about being a comedian. — Bill Maher

American Wedding

In america,
I place my ring
on your cock
where it belongs.
No horsemen
bearing terror,
no soldiers of doom
will swoop in
and sweep us apart.
They're too busy
looting the land
to watch us.
They don't know
we need each other
critically.
They expect us to call in sick,
watch television all night,
die by our own hands.
They don't know
we are becoming powerful.
Every time we kiss
we confirm the new world coming.

What the rose whispers
before blooming
I vow to you.
I give you my heart,
a safe house.
I give you promises other than
milk, honey, liberty.
I assume you will always
be a free man with a dream.
In america,
place your ring
on my cock
where it belongs.
Long may we live
to free this dream. — Essex Hemphill

Whether you are in an eight-hundred-square-foot home or living in a dream house on a lake, contentment is found on the way. — Joanna Gaines

About ten days ago I got started on a new book, and am completely, brazenly devoted to it: my hair is uncut, my letters are unwritten, the house is a shambles, and I sit here as happy as Mrs. Jellaby, though I am in 1836, not Africa. It won't go on like this, I shall fall over some obstacle, and wake out of my dreams with a black eye and broken shins: but while it does last, I daren't interrupt it. I haven't had such a spell of writing for nearly three years. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

You'll see the heartbreak linger in my eyes, and dream of making me forget what came before you walked into the hallway of this house. Bringing a little summer in your glance, and with your smile. While — Neil Gaiman

In the dream house, the boy listened for the monster under his bed. — Keith Donohue

White people were dangerous and snakes were dangerous and now the two were working together, each doing what the other told it to. She was sure she had seen a snake in a weeded ditch with the head of a white man. Right after she came out of the house on the way to Big Joe's, which she had immediately forgotten, she saw it, long and black and diamond-patterned in the ditch with a white man's head. It had blue eyes. The bluest eyes any white man ever had. She was sure she had seen it. She thought she had seen it. Maybe it was only a dream or a memory of another time. Whatever it was, she still saw it every time she closed her eyes, coiled there on the back of her eyelids, blue-eyed and dangerous. — Harry Crews

As was the case in Requiem for a Dream, Pollock, A Beautiful Mind, House of Sand and Fog, The Hulk and Dark Water, Jennifer Connelly's mere presence in a film guarantees that things will turn out badly for the male lead, as Connelly is always cast as the Angel of Death. Fun to hang out with, great eyes, amazing eyebrows, but the Angel of Death. — Joe Queenan

My dream is to be on my boat. Or on an island. Or in my house in the country. That's my dream. — Cameron Mackintosh

WHEN I WAS A boy, after my mother died, I always tried hard to hold her in my mind as I was falling asleep so maybe I'd dream of her, only I never did. Or, rather, I dreamed of her constantly, only as absence, not presence: a breeze blowing through a just-vacated house, her handwriting on a notepad, the smell of her perfume, streets in strange lost towns where I knew she'd been walking only a moment before but had just vanished, a shadow moving away against a sunstruck wall. — Donna Tartt

He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard this "hideous" dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he still did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for a "rehearsal" of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more and more violent. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A generation before, it had been sagebrush and coyotes; a generation later, it was a burgeoning movie town. But for that brief idyllic time in 1910, Hollywood looked like the perfect place for a successful writer to settle down, build his dream house, and maybe do some gardening. — Kage Baker

Only In Sleep
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child? — Sara Teasdale

He woke whimpering in the night and the man held him. Shh, he said. Shh. It's okay.
I had a bad dream.
I know.
Should I tell you what it was?
If you want to.
I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers. And we were in that house that we used to live in and it came around the corner but nobody had wound it up and it was really scary.
Okay.
It was a lot scarier in the dream.
I know. Dreams can be really scary.
Why did I have that scary dream?
I dont know. But it's okay now. I'm going to put some wood on the fire. You go to sleep.
The boy didnt answer. Then he said: The winder wasnt turning. — Cormac McCarthy

I used to have a recurring dream where I was at a party in a country house, surrounded by the same people each evening. Everyone would be singing and dancing and after a while I came to know the people; though, of course, they never really existed. — Marina Abramovic