Your dreams are just bedtime stories for the chronically awake.

This quote is a neat little blade for anyone who confuses ambition with achievement. Your dreams are bedtime stories, cosy fictions you recite to yourself when the lights go out, designed to soothe you rather than move you. The twist about the chronically awake is the cruellest part. It targets people who pride themselves on seeing through everything, the ones who lie there at three in the morning congratulating themselves on their clarity while still believing the same old nonsense about their potential. Being awake has not made you wise; it has merely made you tired and insufferably smug. The line lands best when someone announces a grand dream with no plan, no deadline and no evidence of effort, as if the universe owes them a plot twist. The wound is that it names the exact gap between your fantasy and your follow through, then charges you rent for the space. You are not a visionary. You are a restless adult telling yourself a story and hoping nobody asks for the ending.