Bedtime Story Quotes

Forgive me, Old One." Vaughn stifled a yawn. "Is there a point to this bedtime story?"
Rhys picked up the fork from Vaughn's plate and drove it into his brother's thigh. "There. I've made four points for him. ~ Hailey Edwards

Angels do not whisper in our ears. Predestination is a fairy tale, a bedtime story for adults scared of meaningless death. ~ Paul Doiron

Shall I tell you a bedtime story? ~ Steven King

For example, there is an old grammarian's saw about how a sentence can end in five prepositions. Daddy trudges upstairs to Junior's bedroom to read him a bedtime story. Junior spots the book, scowls, and asks, Daddy, what did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to out of up for? ~ Steven Pinker

Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn't be human without narrative fiction. ~ Paul Auster

[Veda:] Twenty years of thinking that vampires and witches and all things supernatural were nothing but a bedtime story: a myth, thought up by ignorant people and told to children to keep them from straying after dark. Now, when it was right in front of her, it still felt like a fairy tale. ~ Jessica Lave

I walked in on my folks doing it doggy style less than four hours ago."
"Waitress!" Jonas screamed, clicking his fingers madly. "Bring two!" then, more quietly,"You want a neck massage? A bedtime story? A bullet in the ear? ~ MaryJanice Davidson

Why does everything want to eat children?!"
Neferre smiled. "Because you taste like candy. Stinky socks would mask your delicious scent from the aziza. We must get you stinky socks. So they do not eat you."
"That's not much of a bedtime story! You really haven't done this before! ~ Ash Gray

Angels, angels, always near, protecting you, my special dear! ~ Alexis York Lumbard

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales. ~ Paul Auster

What frightens you?
What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged?
Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire?
Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside? ~ Libba Bray

Normal' is a bedtime story-a fable-that humans tell themselves to feel better when faced with overwhelming evidence that most of what's happening around them is not 'normal' at all. ~ Deborah Harkness

When I was your age - about, ooh, a thousand years ago - I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics. ~ Mark Gatiss

I can't believe I ever thought reading to her was a chore. I'd sit here some nights, fidgeting, thinking of all the things I needed to do, my voice hoarse, reluctant to read, 'just one more chapter,' wishing I could escape to my glass of wine. What did I have to do that was so important? What could be more important than reading my daughter a bedtime story? ~ Sanjida Kay

Settle yourself down for an apocryphal bedtime story. A programmer's parable, if you will ... . ~ Anonymous

Frog Princess loved the lilly flowers
where Green Frog lay dreaming away the hours ~ Suzy Davies

In his earliest memories he was sitting on the floor in the family room, in front of the giant stereo his parents had bought themselves as a wedding present, his face pressed into the padded fabric of one speaker. The fabric was prickly against his forehead but his nose fit perfectly into a little groove, and he could feel music spilling like molten gold through his entire body. He'd sit back on his heels when the song was over and his father, an accountant and amateur drummer whose (still-unrealized) dream was to open a jazz club and coffee house, would say, "Order up!" and put another record on the turntable. Rabbit's favorite albums were by Earth, Wind & Fire (syncopation made his brain feel like it was laughing) and Also sprach Zarathustra, its opening rumbling like an earthquake. And he loved The White Album, and when his mother played ABBA on the piano and they'd sing together (though Alice couldn't do it without being a total showoff), and the Star Wars soundtrack, and of _course_ Zeppelin. For six months in 1984, he had asked his parents to play "Stairway to Heaven" instead of a bedtime story. ~ Kate Racculia

The monsters were never
under my bed.
Because the monsters
were inside my head.


I fear no monsters,
for no monsters I see.
Because all this time
the monster has been me. ~ Nikita Gill

Raising children I've decided is a lot sadder than I expecte4d. Seeing them grow up brightly and vividly is tempered by the knowledge that each year brings another share of lasts. The last time I push my daughter on a swing. The last time I play Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The last time I read a bedtime story. If I could give my daughters one piece of advice I would tell them to make the most of the first times -their first kiss, their first date, their first love, the first smile of their first child…There can only be one. ~ Michael Robotham

I really love to read bedtime story for my kids before they fall asleep.
Making them so excited and inspired, it's truly my favorite quality time. ~ Toba Beta

What do you and Chris even talk about?" he asks. "You have nothing in common."
"What do we talk about?" I counter.
Peter laughs. "Point taken." He pushes away from the wall and puts his head in my lap, and I go completely still.
I try to make my voice sound normal as I say, "You're in a really strange mood today."
He raises an eyebrow at me. "What kind of mood am I in?" Peter sure loves to hear about himself. Normally, I don't mind, but today I'm not in the mood to oblige him. He already has too many people in his life telling him how great he is.
"The obnoxious kind," I say, and he laughs.
"I'm sleepy." He closes his eyes and snuggles against me. "Tell me a bedtime story, Covey."
"Don't flirt," I tell him.
His eyes fly open. "I wasn't!"
"Yes, you were. You flirt with everyone. It's like you can't help yourself."
"Well, I don't ever flirt with you." Peter sits back up and checks his phone, and suddenly I'm wishing I didn't say anything at all. ~ Jenny Han

Love is a funny thing; there's the kind that's like you're five and you're looking up at your Mum's face as she reads you a bedtime story.

Then there's the kind that makes you nervous and twists in your stomach.

Then there's the kind that makes you feel like you're holding everything of worth in your hands. ~ L.C. Smith

Maybe Leland would appear there by chance in the morning his chin freshly shaved against his stiff new collar and upon seeing his love in such duress would spring into action. Maybe he would even carry her out like a princess in a bedtime story. ~ Anna Godbersen

That life can be a rich place, comprised of the highbrow and the lowdown, the casual and the ambitious, private reading and public sharing. As a parent in that landscape, you'll need to be sometimes traveling companion, sometimes guides, sometimes off in your own part of the forest. A relationship between readers is complicated and cannot be reduced to such "strategies" as mandatory reading aloud, a commendable family activity whose pleasure has been codified into virtue, transforming the nightly bedtime story into a harbinger of everybody's favorite thing: homework. ~ Roger Sutton

Reading your work out loud to yourself it's good. It helps even more if you read to people. If they start yawning that is a bad sign. Unless you are writing for children. Then your story is not bad, if you just wrote a bedtime story! ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

He looked like a thing broken loose from a bedtime story, something unreal ... The giant watched her from above with a bizarre contemplation, his head tilted acrook, as if he'd snared some exquisite fairy from a storybook tale his own. ~ R.J. Lawrence

I like this job - most days I have a chance to make breakfast and take the kids to school or to read 'em a bedtime story. It's almost like a normal life. ~ Mark Harmon

To be a mother is to live in fear. Fear of death, of sickness, of loss, of accidents, of strangers, of the Black Man, or simply those small everyday things that somehow manage to hurt us most: the look of impatience, the angry word, the missed bedtime story, the forgotten kiss, the terrible moment when a mother ceases to be the center of her daughter's world and becomes ~ Joanne Harris

The butterfly wallpaper was now gone. It had been replaced by a moody, breathless wallpaper of silver, sprinkled with tiny white dots that looked like stars. It made her feel an odd sense of anticipation, like last night. Grandpa Vance couldn't have come in last night and done this.
Did it really change on its own?
It was beautiful, this wallpaper. It made the room look like living in a cloud. She put her hand against the wall by her dresser. It was soft, like velvet. How could her mother not have told her a room like this existed? She'd never mentioned it. Not even in a bedtime story. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

Everyone is somebody's bedtime story. ~ Seanan McGuire

The Garretts were my bedtime story, long before I ever thought I'd be part of the story myself. ~ Huntley Fitzpatrick

No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way ... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story - amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific. ~ Henry Gee

There's not a lot I can fix for her anymore. Band-Aid and bedtime story days are almost over. This, I can fix with a simple Welcome. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

When I was a junior camp counselor and it was my job to tell the campers a bedtime story or devotional, I would tell them a rapture story. ~ Jerry B. Jenkins

Catastrophe is our bedtime story. ~ Don DeLillo

Do you know the story of the scorpion and the frog? You know, the frog agrees to carry the scorpion across the river, because the scorpion promises not to sting him. And then the scorpion stings the frog, half way across the river. The drowning frog asks him why he did it, when they'll both drown, and the scorpion says that he's a scorpion, and it's his nature to sting. ~ Gregory David Roberts

I have great respect for the FBI, and I know that there have been some rumors lately that the FBI was disenchanted because of what we were doing in story, or doing a certain take: that's not true. Actually the FBI was tremendously enthusiastic about us doing [ J. Edgar Hoover ] film. ~ Clint Eastwood

When I was making these damned pictures, I never knew about film noir. If you had asked me about it then, I probably would have pointed to something like Bill Wellman's The Ox Bow Incident, the best Western I ever saw and very much in the style of film noir I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross that defines what kind of drama it is. ~ Samuel Fuller

He needed to sort this out - needed to get her to just look at him again, so he could try to explain that he hadn't been prepared. Having her touch the tattoo that told the story of what he'd done and how he'd lost Lyria . . . He hadn't been ready for what he felt in that moment. The desire hadn't been what shook him at all. It was just . . . Aelin had driven him insane these past few weeks, and yet he hadn't considered what it would be like to have her look at him with interest. ~ Sarah J. Maas

The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the human - at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience. ~ Thomas Berry

He slowed to a walk. As he approached her he was surprised at just how pretty she was. She looked a little like Maureen O'Hara in those old pirate movies. His writer's mind kicked in and he thought, This woman could break my heart. I could crash and burn on this woman. I could lose this woman, drink heavily, write profound poems, and die in the gutter of turberculosis over this woman.
This was not an unusual reaction for Tommy. He had it often, mostly with girls who worked the drive-through windows at fast-food places. He would drive off with the smell of fries in his car and the bitter taste of unrequited love on his tongue. It was usually good for at least one short story. ~ Christopher Moore

I keep thinking about a tale my nurse used to read to me about a bird whose wings are pinned to the ground. In the end, when he finally frees himself, he flies so high he becomes a star. My nurse said the story was about how we all have something that keeps us down. ~ Shannon Hale

I write 3-4 days a week, 4-5 hours at a time (with lots of breaks). My goal is 2000 words when I sit down to write and usually, I hit that, though it can take anywhere from 3-7 hours to get there. I usually know the basics of where the story is going, but the specifics just sort of come to me as I write. ~ Nicholas Sparks

The moment the earthquake hits, Ted has a premonition: a burning sensation on his feet. Not the pins and needles from sitting cross-legged for too long, but like the restlessness of the soles after standing on the subway for an hour. Like the blood wants to burst from his skin. No blinding vision, no sudden trance - it's not until weeks later that he realizes what the feeling was. But in the future, he won't tell the story this way. ~ Viet Dinh

I decided I would fill the emptiness in me with God and with paint. ~ Kimberly Novosel

Every story has four parts - the beginning, the middle, the almost ending, and the true ending. ~ Stephanie Garber

Life is an endless story of lover and beloved. ~ Debasish Mridha

I care more about making sure the story is correct and the characters are behaving in character than I do about the individual jokes. ~ Michael Schur

Legends of the Silver Stallion had been told for years now, whenever mountain stockmen met round the campfires or on the winding hill tracks. Songs were sung about him to the cattle and both songs and tales had become even stranger since his supposed death when he vanished through the wind and the night over a great cliff. Tales kept cropping up of a ghost horse seen, or imagined, roaming over the mountains at night, of stockmen waking in a hut at midnight, hearing the tremendous stallion's cry which could only be Thowra's ~ Elyne Mitchell

scream until the drug took her. 5 They started arriving after four o'clock in the afternoon. By five, Rachael's disappearance was the lead story on all the local news stations, even in Tucson and Phoenix. When six rolled around, there were more cars parked along No-Water Lane than when the Hasslers had hosted their last Fourth of July barbecue. Come 7:15 P.M., more than forty people had crowded into Will and Rachael's modest adobe home in Ajo, ~ Blake Crouch

Here is an example to help you understand the efficacy of the Rosary. You remember the story of David who vanquished Goliath. What steps did the young Israelite take to overthrow the giant? He struck him in the middle of the forehead with a pebble from his sling. If we regard the Philistine as representing evil and all its powers: heresy, impurity, pride, we can consider the little stones from the sling capable of overthrowing the enemy as symbolizing the Aves of the Rosary. ~ Columba Marmion

But, that's the way dragons work. They convince you that nobody wants to hear your busted-up sob story and that it's best to just shut your mouth, put your big girl pants on, and solve your damn problems yourself. ~ Katherine Wintsch

In many ways, I think I'm a good person for it. I mean, I'm not a musical theater dude. Or rather, I don't watch everything, and love everything, and have every album. The ones that I love - like I've seen The Wizard of Oz a hundred times. West Side Story I love. I love Singing in the Rain, I love White Christmas. I love the Dennis Potter ones like Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven. I love Sondheim. ~ James Ponsoldt

God sent His Prince, Jesus, into rebel territory to conquer evil and free us to be true citizens of the Kingdom again ... That's the essential story we find in the Bible, and it's the essential story at the heart of each of our lives. And that's what all good fantasy stories have at their core, whether or not it's a conscious theme. ~ Sarah Arthur

My movies more often are told through pictures, not words. But in this case, the pictures took second position to the incredible words of Abraham Lincoln and his presence [ ... ] I was less interested in an outpouring of imagery than in letting the most human moment of this story evolve before us. ~ Steven Spielberg

I think of myself as a writer with a sense of humour rather than a comedy writer. Happy to tell a story with lots of jokes in it - I wouldn't know how to do jokes without the story. ~ Steven Moffat

There is no question that the male metaphors heavily outnumber the feminine ones, but the latter are sufficiently numerous and well drawn that their consistent neglect and trivialization in the theological and homiletic tradition can only be attributed to androcentric myopia and patriarchal self-interest. Men have controlled both theology and ministry, and the story of God they have told is the one which they wanted to hear as well as the one which kept them in power. ~ Sandra M Schneiders

This, not incidentally, is another perfect setting for deindividuation: on one side, the functionary behind a wall of security glass following a script laid out with the intention that it should be applied no matter what the specific human story may be, told to remain emotionally disinvested as far as possible so as to avoid preferential treatment of one person over another - and needing to follow that advice to avoid being swamped by empathy for fellow human beings in distress. The functionary becomes a mixture of Zimbardo's prison guards and the experimenter himself, under siege from without while at the same time following an inflexible rubric set down by those higher up the hierarchical chain, people whose job description makes them responsible, but who in turn see themselves as serving the general public as a non-specific entity and believe or have been told that only strict adherence to a system can produce impartial fairness. Fairness is supposed to be vested in the code: no human can or should make the system fairer by exercising judgement. In other words, the whole thing creates a collective responsibility culminating in a blameless loop. Everyone assumes that it's not their place to take direct personal responsibility for what happens; that level of vested individual power is part of the previous almost feudal version of responsibility. The deindividuation is actually to a certain extent the desired outcome, though its negative consequences are not. ~ Nick Harkaway

Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read. ~ Jane Yolen

Director Park always talked to me about her in a very innocent way, that the story was of her coming of age and her sexual awakening and her going from girl to woman and that she had the same desires and hopes as other young people in terms of being very infatuated, which comes in the form of her uncle, which is very unconventional. ~ Mia Wasikowska

If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash. ~ Catherine Hardwicke

It appears now to be universally admitted that, before the exile, the Israelites had no belief in rewards and punishments after death, nor in anything similar to the Christian heaven and hell; but our story proves that it would be an error to suppose that they did not believe in the continuance of individual existence after death by a ghostly simulacrum of life. Nay, I think it would be very hard to produce conclusive evidence that they disbelieved in immortality; for I am not aware that there is anything to show that they thought the existence of the souls of the dead in Sheol ever came to an end. But they do not seem to have conceived that the condition of the souls in Sheol was in any way affected by their conduct in life. If there was immortality, there was no state of retribution in their theology. Samuel expects Saul and his sons to come to him in Sheol. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

If you think a story can be like a kind of cement, the sloppy kind that you put between bricks, the kind that looks like cake frosting before it dries hard, then maybe I thought it would be possible to use what Toby had to hold Finn together, to keep him here with me a little bit longer. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

On a sleepy morning that I keep waking up to pull my necktie tight
And when I pass through my classroom door
I can start walking with my chest puffed out just a little
The wind blows through such ordinary days

I realized I heard it
I realized I felt it
Now in my chest that started to tremble
I realized it was coming already
I saw off
The millions of stars that were disappearing
I waved my hand
Saying, "Good for you"

I look down at the corner of the hallway in middle of cleaning
I think it's a strange thing
Even though the time inside of me has stopped
It feels like I'm living through different days
Dust falls and accumulates like snow

I realized you're waiting
I realized you're calling
Now in this time that started to tremble
I realized I found it
My lost memories recalled
My story
Of eternity
It's ending

I started running before I knew it
My hand was being pulled along by you
Yesterday was far away, tomorrow was right ahead
That natural fact made my heart dance

I realized I heard it
I realized I felt it
Now in my chest that started to tremble
I realized it was coming already
A new sun overcame thousands of mornings

I realized you're waiting
I realized you're calling
My soul is trembling
I realized I found it
I saw off
The day that's able to disappe ~ Lia

In the Ottoman Empire,' she began, 'the camel traders have stopping places along their trade routes called caravanserai. Sometimes they are hundreds of miles apart, over desert or mountain range, but they travel safe in the knowledge that there will be a place where they can shelter and find succour at the end of their journey. Even if they have never been that way before, they are sure that there will be such a place; that sooner or later, they will find a caravanserai.' Annibale sat forward, interested. ' How do they know?' 'They do not know. They have faith. 'He sat back again. 'I think Annibale did too. That is why my mother named me so.' She could see that it cost him to talk of her. 'She liked the story. She said no one could know what lay beyond today, but you had to hope, and be brave, and trust that all would be well. ~ Marina Fiorato

There are a lot of laughs in this movie, but it's not just about the laughs. It's really about the story, about a guy who finds his soul and realizes what's truly important. ~ Peter Farrelly

I think that whenever a book is not a challenge, I'm telling the wrong story. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

This is not a romance. Romances are filled with valiant men and simpering damsels in distress. Romances have heroes worthy of the title. They slay dragons and climb towers to rescue beautiful princesses they immediately marry and impregnate. Romances end with a happily ever after. This is not a romance. This is a love story. ~ C.J. Roberts