Insomnia Quotes

The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others — who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without.To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals with one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.

Joan Didion

And so, now, it is almost midnight of the first day, and I have broken my resolution to go to bedearly - postponing sleep, and thereby the inevitable waking up in tomorrow. Another device of escape.

Silvia Plath

Alone with thoughts of what should have long been forgotten, I let myself be carried away into the silent screams of delirium.

Amanda Steele

Here, from her ashes you lay. A broken girl so lost in despondency that you know that even if she does find her way out of this labyrinth in hell, that she will never see, feel, taste, or touch life the same again.

Amanda Steele

Words become sentences, twisted, difficult/The story weaves itself, always noisiest at night/As herds of words won't stop. . . "Wildebeest of Words/Breathe In

Eileen Granfors

When I can't sleep I count the buckles on my straightjacket.

Cathie Linz

The problem with radio frequency (RF) exposure is not the small amount of brain tumors, is it the large amount of subtle alterations in the brain that lead to attention, confusion, insomnia and fatigue problems.

Steven Magee

Rings and magazines; keychains and umbrellas; hats and glasses; rattles and radios. They looked like different things, but Ralph thought they were really all the same thing: the faint, sorrowing voices of people who had found themselves written out of the script in the middle of the second act while they were still learning their lines for the third, people who had been unceremoniously hauled off before their work was done or their obligations fulfilled, people whose only crime had been to be born in the Random... and to have caught the eye of the madman with the rusty scalpel.

Stephen King

That night I slept badly, thrashing about in my bed, not quite asleep and not quite awake. At times I had the feeling there was someone else in my bedroom who was talking to me, but of course I could not deal with this perception in any realistic way, since I was half-asleep and half-awake, and thus, for all practical purposes, I was out of my mind.

Thomas Ligotti

Those who wake at this hour feel a lonely separation from everyone but night birds and ghost crabs, never imagining the legion of kindred souls scattered in the darkness, who stare at ceilings and pace floors and look out windows and covet and worry and mourn.

Kathy Hepinstall

And that night he couldn't sleep, but lay looking out at the light June night which was full of lonely whisperings and rustlings and the pattering of feet. The air was sweet with the smell of flowers.

Tove Jansson

Somewhere in the night ahuman being is drowning.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Persons in whom a crisis takes place pass the night preceding the paroxysm uncomfortably, but the succeeding night generally more comfortably.

Hippocrates

When the world is itself draped in the mantle of night, the mirror of the mind is like the sky in which thoughts twinkle like stars.

Khushwant Singh

That's the advantage of insomnia. People who go to be early always complain that the night is too short, but for those of us who stay up all night, it can feel as long as a lifetime. You get a lot done

Banana Yoshimoto

Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time...

Ray Bradbury

As an artist suffering from insomnia and working from my apartment, I had an artistic freedom to explore and create awesome stuff. I wore a robe and slippers as my work dress code. These are the days when creativity is my best imaginary friend. And I was crazy enough to create what people would call masterpieces.

Shawn Lukas

All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. I loathe Somnus, that black-masked headsman binding me to the block; and if in the course of years I have got so used to my nightly ordeal as almost to swagger while the familiar axe is coming out of its great velvet-lined case, initially I had no such comfort or defense: I had nothing - save a door left slightly ajar into Mademoiselle's room. Its vertical line of meek light was something I could cling to, since in absolute darkness my head would swim, just as the soul dissolves in the blackness of sleep.

Vladimir Nabokov

Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you're over. You've caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know.

Renata Adler

And if I do fall asleep, Marla has to keep track of Tyler. Where he goes. What he does. So maybe during the day, I can rush around and undo the damage.

Chuck Palahniuk

A 2002 Oxford study showed counting sheep actually delays the onset of sleep. It's just too dull to stop us from worrying about jobs and spouses

A.J. Jacobs

I thought calming thoughts and visualized serene places. Eventually, i found myself drifting along the frenetic edges of my mind. The Sandman was nowhere to be found, as i slipped further away from sleep.

Jaeda DeWalt

That gap between half sleep and half awakening has always been occupied by nostalgia.

Shreya Gupta

I’m awake and I can’t sleep. The more I’m awake, the more I see, and the harder to sleep.

Donna Lynn Hope

For there is nothing quite so terror-inducing as the loss of sleep. It creates phantoms and doubts, causes one to questions one's own abilities and judgement, and, over time, dismantles, from within, the body.

Charlie Huston

His impatience for sleep often frightened that very sleep away.

Hugh Howey

Of all the things which make up our Short-Time lives, sleep is surely the best.

Stephen King

It is at night when sleep like the outgoing sea leaves you dry and cold and the morning light arrives like a small punishment.

Chloe Thurlow

Like chocolate, she craved sleep and it made her life brighter, but she could do without.

Thomm Quackenbush

But who, in these modern times, slept well?

Dexter Palmer

The rain is, in a sense, The sole sad friend of those who find themselvesThinking, wide awake, until the dawn,Who, in bed, alone, with fevered hands, Listen to it, soothed. They like the companyOf its faint moan across the sleeping plain,Its rustling in the garden all night

Alain-Fournier

The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.

W.C.Fields

I think insomnia is a sign that a person is interesting.

Avery Sawyer

sleep is such a luxury, which i cant afford.

Robin Sikarwar

Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance--as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off.

Jonathan Lethem

Am I sleeping? Have I slept at all? This is insomnia.

Chuck Palahniuk

The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.

Poppy Z. Brite

I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.

David Benioff

Lord, grant us rest tonight, and if we must be wakeful, cheerful.

Robert Bolt

What delicious abandon in the sleep of the child. Where do we lose it?

Frank Herbert

I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning. The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth and optimism.

P.G. Wodehouse

Your dreams may seem impossible to someone with insomnia.

Junnita Jackson

Both sleep and insomnolency, when immoderate, are bad.

Hippocrates

Staring at the blue sky causes insomnia to occur in the human

Steven Magee

But Mr. Hale resolved that he would not be disturbed by any such nonsensical idea; so he lay awake, determining not to think about it.

Elizabeth Gaskell

I'm not an insomniac. It's just that my mind is in the best position to catch the weight of all hovering possibilities the moment I lie down.

Joyce Rachelle

Yimello,' said Bernard finally, breaking the silence.'Gesundheit?' I asked.'It's a name for one of the colors that's invisible to us. Yimello," said Bernard. "There could also be glowl and novaly and replitz."'Yes.' I nodded, stunned the kid could actually string together so many words at once. 'And, uh, don't forget the beautiful grynn, the luminous dulloff, or the subtle winooze.'Bernard's face lit up. He stood and started pacing the room, speaking quickly. 'Or salty, and insomnia, and carefree, and talkative, and lonely, and burnt, and punctual.''Some of my favorite colors,' I agreed, nodding. 'We could paint this room whisper. Or zigzag. Or maybe a nice shade of ignored and invisible.

Michelle Cuevas

Some thoughts are too angry to sleep. They lie awake all night and become obsessions.

Marty Rubin

No amount of sleep will ever satisfy the tiredness i always feel.

Unknown

It is snowing and death bugs meas stubborn as insomnia.

Anne Sexton

Waldo, I say-that is-aren't you tired, my boy?" Professor Buckley, suppressing a yawn, was unaccustomed to others matching his wakefulness wink for wink, as it were, and seemed jealous of the competition Waldo presented in that regard. t"Who can sleep?" Waldo replied. "We're on another of these crazy roads, we can't find the interstate...."t"Yes, I suppose you're right." The Professor interrupted, taking off his thick spectacles and polishing them on his bright tie. "I, on the other hand, never sleep, as I'm sure you're aware." tWaldo smiled. The Professor had little in life to be vain about, and he wasn't going to stop him from expressing a little pride now and then.

Donald Jeffries

Pack up all my care and woe, blackbird, bye-bye

Stephen King

The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.

Helen Bevington

What’s the kindest thing you almost did? Is your fear of insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you? Are bonsai cruel? Do you love what you love, or just the feeling? Your earliest memories: do you look through your young eyes, or look at your young self? Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent, or that there are people with more talent? Do you walk on moving walkways? Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong �as you were doing it? Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone? How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life? What would you tell your father, if it were possible? Which is changing faster, your body, or your mind? Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis? Are you in any way angry at your phone? When you pass �a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, look at your reflection, or neither? Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it? If you could be assured that money wouldn’t make �you any small bit happier, would you still want more money? What has �been irrevocably spoiled for you? If your deepest secret became public, �would you be forgiven? Is your best friend your kindest friend? Is it in any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is there anything you feel a need to confess? You know it’s a “murder of crows” and a “wake of buzzards” but it’s a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you’re �afraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it’s an “unkindness �of ravens”?

Jonathan Safran Foer

A man who, night after night, falls like a lump of lead upon his bed, and ceases to live until the moment when he wakes and rises, will such a man ever dream of making, I do not say great discoveries, but even minute observations upon sleep? He barely knows that he does sleep. A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness. A memory without fault is not a very powerful incentive to studying the phenomena of memory.

Marcel Proust

...infirmity alone makes us take notice and learn, and enables us to analyse mechanisms of which otherwise we should know nothing. A man who falls straight into bed night after night, and ceases to live until the moment when he wakes and rises, will surely never dream of making, I don't say great discoveries, but even minor observations about sleep. He scarcely knows that he is asleep. A little insomnia is not without its value in making us appreciate sleep, in throwing a ray of light upon that darkness. An unfailing memory is not a very powerful incentive to the study of the phenomena of memory.

Marcel Proust

Right now I can't even control my own imagination as it grips my hair and drags me into the dark

Tahereh Mafi

I can’t sleep alone anymoreand I get used tocompanytoo quickly. You’re always gone too soon.

Charlotte Eriksson

It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.

Kim Stanley Robinson

Women can go mad with insomnia.The sleep-deprived roam houses that have lost their familiarity. With tea mugs in hand, we wander rooms, looking on shelves for something we will recognize: a book title, a photograph, the teak-carved bird -- a souvenir from what place? A memory almost rises when our eyes rest on a painting's grey sweep of cloud, or the curve of a wooden leg in a corner. Fingertips faintly recall the raised pattern on a chair cushion, but we wonder how these things have come to be here, in this stranger's home.Lost women drift in places where time has collapsed. We look into our thoughts and hearts for what has been forgotten, for what has gone missing. What did we once care about? Whom did we love? We are emptied. We are remote. Like night lilies, we open in the dark, breathe in the shadowy world. Our soliloquies are heard by no one.

Cathy Ostlere

1 2 Next

Insomnia Quotes

Related Topics