When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers I kind of wanted to be a vampire.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

When I look back over my life it’s almost as if there was a plan laid out for me – from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn’t afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.

You can make a board for all the goals you want in your life with the pictures on it, and that’s great, daydreaming is wonderful, but you can never plan your future.

Sports are basically our way of feeling sorry for ourselves. Most men can’t become athletes. We’re watching guys who actually made it. We see them dunking and making touchdowns. Then we think about ourselves when we were younger.

Some people are painters, and some are ballet dancers, and I’m a writer.

Space has always fascinated me. As a young boy looking up at the stars, I found it impossible to resist thinking what was out there and if I ever would experience space first-hand.

When I was a boy, I always saw myself as a hero in comic books and in movies. I grew up believing this dream.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

My drive is other people’s success.

I’ve experienced great things, I’ve experienced great tragedies. I’ve done almost everything I could possibly ever imagine doing, but I just know that there’s more.

Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

I think that if all kids aspire to reach a point where they could feed themselves and a few of their friends, this would be good for the world surely.

I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars; there’s a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that.

I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.

We want an Afghanistan that is shaped by the dreams of the great Afghan people, not by irrational fears and overreaching ambitions of others.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

I was 18 years old, and it was a dream come true for me to work out and eat great food for free. What else do you want in life? People think that is what it is like to be in a SEAL team, but it is less than a fraction of your career as a real SEAL.

When I was 8 years old, I saw ‚Raiders of the Lost Ark‘ in Charlotte, North Carolina. I walked out of there and was so inspired. I loved the movie, and I knew I wanted to be that guy.

Over the years, I had nurtured the hope to be able to fly; to handle a machine as it rose higher and higher in the stratosphere was my dearest dream.

It’s every girl’s dream to be a cover girl!

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

I never dreamed of being a pop star when I was a child.

Becoming famous was never what I wanted to do. There’s a lot of things that come with fame – it’s what people in the limelight have to do.

The average Hollywood film star’s ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

When I got into this, I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me, I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

I had nothing growing up, but I always wanted to be ‚sexy,‘ even before I knew what the word was.

I struggled with being a broke college graduate, and while all my friends were getting career jobs, I was working horrible part-time jobs. That’s why now, even when I get tired, I think, ‚This is what I asked for.‘

I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess.

I was sure I’d set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth – that I hadn’t set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if ‚The Big Trail‘ had been a success and launched me as a star.

I didn’t know what a stockbroker was when I was eight, but I would just tell everybody that’s what I was going to be.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

I am confident I will set foot again in Tibet in my lifetime.

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.

We’re all dreamers.

I wanted to become an illustrator as a child.

If a great opportunity opens itself up, I would love to be involved… or star in a movie.

When I grow up, I want to be like Balvin.

I always wanted to be a Vine star. I wasn’t, thank God.

I notice that young men go to the universities in order to become doctors or philosophers or anything, so long as it is a title, and that many go in for those professions who are utterly unfit for them, while others who would be very competent are prevented by business or their daily cares, which keep them away from letters.

If you’re working 50 hours a week to try to maintain family income, and your children have the kinds of aspirations that come from being flooded with television from age one, and associations have declined, people end up hopeless, even though they have every option.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.

I want to elongate my cricketing career as a consistent player. I have personal goals I would like to achieve someday.

The only thing I ever wanted to be was a professional football player.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

Do all you can to make your dreams come true.

Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to be in combat.

Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

If you were to ask me what I want to do – I don’t want to be a celebrity, I want to make a difference.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

It is natural to want to have a future.