"Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself."
Truman Capote

About me:

Hello all! I chose the moniker Lost in Day Dreams because I literally am all the time, life of an aspiring writer I suppose, but you could call me Cyndy if you would like. I've been a member of this site for many years now and have enjoyed every minute of it. I enjoy all kinds of writing, but love stories appeal most to my hopelessly romantic heart. I appreciate each and every one of you who has brought joy into my life by sharing your talent through your brilliant stories, and it is my hope that my writings have done a bit of the same. :)

Interests:

Favorite Shows

Reba, Star Trek: Voyager, The Office, Orange is the New Black, Green Acres, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Love Lucy, Little House on the Prairie, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Metalocalypse, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Flight of the Conchords, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Friends, The Golden Girls, Modern Family, The Middle, Glee, Raising Hope, Parks & Recreation, The Nanny, The Colbert Report, Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Conan, Boy Meets World, Fairly Oddparents, and too many 90's cartoons from my youth to list.

Favorite Movies

Any movie with my loves (Reba McEntire, Kate Mulgrew, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Gabor), Phantom of the Opera (2004), Moulin Rouge (2001), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, all the Jim Carey movies, all the Johnny Depp movies, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corspe Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Emperor's New Groove, Edward Scissorhands, The Harry Potter films, Little Miss Sunshine, Steel Magnolias, Erin Brockovich, Finding Nemo, Kung Fu Panda, Wall-E, The Chronicles of Narnia, Frozen, The Lego Movie, The Avengers, The Prince of Egypt, Airplane, The Simpsons Movie, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Three Amigos, Walk the Line, Madagascar, Anastasia, Gone With the Wind, Casablanca, My Fair Lady, Singin' in the Rain, West Side Story, An Affair to Remember, The Birds, Vertigo, Rope, Rear Window, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Psycho, and all the non computer-animated disney love story movies like Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, etc.

Favorite Musicals/Operas

South Pacific, Annie Get Your Gun, The Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, Company (anything by Stephen Sondheim, basically), Tosca, Turandot, and La Boheme

Favorite Actors/Actresses

Reba McEntire, Kate Mulgrew, Eva Gabor, Helena Bonham Carter, Rose Marie, Joanna Gleason, Johnny Depp, Channing Tatum, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr., Jim Carey, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, Steve Carell, Jude Law, Gerard Butler, Ewan Mcgregor, Nicole Kidman, Orlando Bloom, Conan O'Brien, Jim Caviezel, Vincent Price, Harrison Ford, Will Smith, Stephen Colbert, Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Audrey Hepburn, Carol Burnette, Vicki Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Vivian Leigh, Humphry Bogart, Gene Kelly, Clark Gable, and James Stewart

Favorite Singers/Groups

Reba McEntire (noticing a theme here?), Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, Brooks & Dunn, George Strait, Blake Shelton, Josh Turner, Vince Gill, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Trisha Yearwood, Kelly Clarkson, Sam Smith, Justin Timberlake, Jennifer Hudson, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, Adele, The Beatles, The Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, Etta James, Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Bing Crosby, Josh Groban, Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, and Selena

Favorite Broadway/Theatre Stars

Reba McEntire, Kate Mulgrew, Joanna Gleason, Bernadette Peters, Idina Menzel, Kristen Chenoweth, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and John Lithgow

Favorite Composers

Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Danny Elfman, Rogers & Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, and Giacomo Puccini

What I Ship Like a Mad Woman

Reba/Brock (Reba), Janeway/Chakotay (Star Trek: Voyager), Sweenett (Sweeney Todd) Victor/Victoria (Corpse Bride), Cosmo/Wanda (Fairly Oddparents)

Favorite Quotes:

"They don't even know what it is to be a fan. Y'know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts." - Sapphire, Almost Famous

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." - Christian, Moulin Rouge

"...It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." - Rick Blaine, Casablanca

"Just because I rock doesn't mean I'm made out of stone." - Jim Carrey, Me, Myself, and Irene

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?" - George Orwell

"Find a subject you care about and which you feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style." -Kurt Vonnegut

"It's not the critic who counts...It's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled...Credit belongs to the man who really was in the arena, his face marred by dust, sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs to come up short and short again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. It is the man who actually strives to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasm and great devotion, who spends himself on a worthy cause, who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of great achievement. And who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and cruel souls who know neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intellegent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be beautiful, smart, or talented?' Actually, who are we not to be? It is our duty on this earth to give glory to God in all things that we do. And when we shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same." - Unknown

"I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go. Things go wrong so that you can appreciate them when they go right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart, so that better things can fall together." - Marilyn Monroe

"The finest of all human struggles is against what we are and for what we should become." - George Livchitz

"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." - Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark

"Still glides the stream and shall forever glide; The Form remains, the function never dies; While we the brave, the mighty and the wise; We men, who in our mourn of youth defied; The elements must vanish -- be it so! Enough, if something from our hands have power; To live, to act, and serve the future hour; And if, as towards the silent tomb we go; Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower; We feel we are greater than we know." - William Wordsworth

"The recollected mind is awake
In the knowledge of the Atman
Which is dark night to the ignorant
The ignorant are awake in their sense-life
Which they think is daylight:
To the seer it is darkness" -Unknown

"I mean that tonight you've made me ashamed of every concept I ever had of superior or inferior beings. But I thank you for that shame. Because now I know that we are each of us a separate human being, Brandon. With the right to live and work and think as individuals. But with an obligation to the society we live in. By what right do you DARE say there's a superior few to which you belong? By what right did you dare decide that that boy in there was inferior and therefore could be killed? Did you think you were GOD, Brandon?! Is that what you thought when you choked the life out of him?! Is that what thought when you served food from his grave?! Well I dont know what you thought or what you are, but I know what you've done. You've MURDERED! You've strangled the life out of a fellow human being who could live and love as you never could...and never will again." -James Stewart, Rope

"So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end -- not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each other but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words 'I have something to tell you', a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's pappery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children." - Brian Doyle, Joyas Voladoras

"I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich, and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder! Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written 'the kingdom of God is within man', not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!" - Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator