Insomniac Quotes

A lifelong insomniac, I sleep like one newly dead every night and dream deeply harmonious dreams of swimming along with the current in a clear green river, playing and at home in the water. On the first night, I dreamed that the real name of the house was not Bramasole but Cento Angeli, One Hundred Angels, and that I would discover them one by one. Is it bad luck to change the name of a house, as it is to rename a boat? As a trepid foreigner, I wouldn't. But for me, the house now has a secret name as well as its own name. ~ Frances Mayes

Stein resented the sedative power of religion, or rather the repose available to those blissfully ignorant that the medicament was a fictitious blank. In this exile from peace of mind to which his reason doomed him, he was like an insomniac driven to awaken sleepers from dreams illegitimately won by going around shouting, 'Don't you realize it was a placebo!' Thus it seemed to me that what you were up against in Stein was not logic rampant, but frustrated faith. He could not forgive God for not existing. ~ Peter De Vries

There are words for a woman who walks the streets late at night," she said, with another meaningful look.
"Words like insomniac. ~ Lemony Snicket

When he and Wally stopped laughing, Homer said, 'I've never seen the ocean, you know.'
'Candy, did you hear that?' Wally asked, but Candy had released herself with her brief laughter and she was sound asleep. 'You've never seen the ocean?' Wally asked Homer.
'That's right,' said Homer Wells.
'That's not funny,' said Wally seriously.
'Right,' Homer said.
A little later, Wally said, 'You want to drive for a while?'
'I don't know how to drive,' Homer said.
'Really?' Wally asked. And later still – it was almost midnight – Wally asked, 'Uh, have you ever been with a girl – made love to one, you know?' But Homer Wells had also felt released: he had laughed out loud with his new friends. The young but veteran insomniac had fallen asleep. Would Wally have been surprised to know that Homer hadn't laughed out loud with friends before, either? ~ John Irving

When you're the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands
the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper
if you've promised your dying mother
then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin
the guy who beat the biochemical rap. ~ Wally Lamb

Being an insomniac only slows me down. I try not to write at night, as I'm concerned that this will affect the quality. I might have a Scotch to keep me going, but I like to be as awake and as alert as possible. ~ Elliot Perlman

there's no way I can sleep in any position with so much still unwritten about the glory of basements, where,
with all the promise in crock pot boxes, small animals go to die, piles of laundry hide the machines, rusted tools fall into other rusted tools giving way to unsung sculpture, soiled playing cards and unmatched socks strewn atop a punched-out screen door make a shaggy parquet; and a famished, leggy fluorescent tube barely winks on the entire scene. ~ Kristen Henderson

Dr Urbino recognized their oppressive weight, their ominous silence, their suffocating gases, which on so many insomniac dawns had risen to his bedroom, blending with the fragrance of jasmine from the patio, and which he felt pass by him like a wind out of yesterday that had nothing to do with his life. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear
the fear of sleep.
Briar Rose
was an insomniac ...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence. ~ Anne Sexton

Sometimes, at the least opportune times, the past is an insomniac, alive and well. ~ Courtney Cole

He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I'm just an insomniac struggling for a night where I don't dream of you anymore. ~ Lone Alaskan Gypsy

I am an insomniac. Most of my nights include a moment of wakening. Often I will make my way to the kitchen to make tea and read for awhile. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

Unless it's mad, passionate, extraordinary love, it's a waste of your time. There are too many mediocre things in life. Love shouldn't be one of them. ~ Dreams For An Insomniac

... praise any word that can hold you. Praise all but the vanishing point where we stand now, not quite parted. Already memories fall like blows. But soon they will be treasure, dropped like gold through a miser's fingers as he makes his accounts ... Praise each insomniac hour, kept wide awake by your glow. Sleep would only have robbed more coins from this vandal hoarded store. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I either eat too much or starve myself. Sleep for 14 hours or have insomniac nights. Fall in love very hard or hate passionately. I don't know what grey is. I never did. ~ Anais Nin

In the middle of a long, quiet night I might give my mother a sharp kick. She'll wake, become insomniac, reach for the radio. Cruel sport, I know, but we are both better informed by the morning. ~ Ian McEwan

It was turning out to be an anxious Christmas season. Too many were the early mornings spent sitting at the table, insomniac in the gray dawn, thinking to myself, Eggs would be good. Not for eating but for the viscous wrath of my ovobarrage. It seemed only a matter of time before I was lobbing my edible artillery out the window at the army of malefactors who daily made my life such a buzzing carnival of annoyance. I could almost feel the satisfying, sloshy heft of my weapons as I imagined them leaving my hands and raining down upon my targets: the pair of schnauzers two doors down, with their loathsome, skittish dispositions, barking and yelping all day long; their owner, with her white hair styled like Marlene Dietrich's in Blond Venus, who allows them to pee freely on the garbage that some poor sanitation worker then has to pick up; the leather-clad schmuck immediately next door, a cigar-smoking casual life-ruiner with his mufflerless motorcycle. All would taste my All Natural, Vegetarian Feed, Grade A Extra Large brand of justice! ~ David Rakoff

My name is Sherman J. Alexie Jr., and I am an insomniac. ~ Sherman Alexie

Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide
In me, no lunar power can reverse;
But in your narcoleptic eyes I spied
A sightlessness tonight: or something worse,
A disregard that made me feel unmanned.
Meanwhile, insomniac, I catch my breath
To think I saw my future traced in sand
One afternoon "as still, as carved, as death,"
And pray for an oblivion so deep
It ends in transformation. Only dawn
Can save me, flood this haunted house of sleep
With light, and drown the thoughts that nightly warn:
Another lifetime is the least you'll need, to trace
The guarded secrets of her gravity, her grace. ~ Jonathan Coe

Whoever says sleep equals laziness is probably a bitter insomniac. ~ Joyce Rachelle

Difficulties with concentration are correlated with sleep impairment, especially insomnia, arising from hypervigilance. The insomniac person is always on alert, which increases his or her stress-hormone levels and heart rate, and turns on the sympathetic nervous system. One of the roles of histamine, released in response to stress, is to ensure that you're wide-awake. These processes make relaxation and sleep difficult. ~ Doreen Virtue

I'm an insomniac - the affliction of champions. ~ Emma Chase

And I wonder if any of the road-kill creatures actually wanted to die and threw themselves beneath the speeding wheels. A lethargic swallow who couldn't bear the prospect of flying all the way back to Africa again. An insomniac hedgehog who couldn't stand the thought of lying awake all winter with no one to talk to. ~ Sara Baume

I'm kind of an insomniac and watch TV late at night. ~ Monica Keena

to be a Muslim is to be an insomniac. ~ Haroon Moghul

I caught the smell of a warm woman and I saw the eyes of an insomniac leopard in the darkness ... ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I am an insomniac. ~ Josh Hartnett

O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee, 1710. That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness? ~ William Shakespeare

My attention span is all over the place, and I overthink things. I'm an insomniac. ~ Selena Gomez

Hundreds of our old neighbors, friends, coworkers, and teachers are new insomniacs. They file for dream bankruptcy, appeal for Slumber Corps aid, wait to be approved for a sleep donor. It is a special kind of homelessness, says our mayor, to be evicted from your dreams. I believe our mayor is both genuinely concerned for his insomniac constituency, and also pandering to a powerfully desperate new voting block. ~ Karen Russell

Staring at the blue sky causes insomnia to occur in the human ~ Steven Magee

I wanted to believe that he came because he liked me, because he saw something in me that he didn't see in any of his other options. I wanted to believe mine was the first door he knocked on. I truly did. But I couldn't. I was never the first for anything. I was the kid who got picked last for dodge ball. I would not be the first to be awoken by an insomniac celebrity, even one with whom I had a sort-of history. I could dream all I wanted, but I knew the absurdity of it. ~ Ryan Loveless

You're like a dream I never want to wake up from, but I; I'm insomniac! ~ Ahmed Mostafa

Choices are like connecting highways. They all take you to the same place. Some just take longer to get there. ~ Ione Skye

For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history. ~ Derek Walcott

Insomniac is an impassioned work-an inspired amalgam of academic and first-hand research, memoir, analysis, and the kind of obsessive brooding we associate with the insomniac state. Much here is fascinating, and much is upsetting; here is a cri de coeur from a lifetime insomniac that is sure to appeal to the vast army of fellow insomniacs the world over. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

As I lay like a corpse
in this dreamy
insomniac dimension,
I spit quotes
out of thin air
and pluck strands
from my red hair. ~ Melody Lee

I stumbled into this format for 'Last Call with Carson Daly' that I really like, inspired by cable and Dave Attell's 'Insomniac.' I love being out on the street. ~ Carson Daly

Because of my experience in Desert Storm I have permanent Insomnia but don't get me wrong I love sleep I can never get enough of it. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

The sound is gone. There's nothing left but the insomniac throbbing of crickets. Crickets in the garden, the courtyard, the back courtyard. Close, domestic, identifiable. And those out in the country. Between all of them they raise, little by little, a wall that will keep out the thing that lies waiting for the tiniest crack of silence to steal through. The thing that is feared by all those who are sleepless, those who walk through the night, those who are lonely, children. That thing. The voice of the dead. ~ Rosario Castellanos

Anything less than mad, passionate, extraordinary love is a waste of time. There are too many mediocre things in life to deal with and love shouldn't be one of them. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

I have met guys who work the overnight shift at 7-11, selling Slurpees and Camels to insomniacs who have more introspection than a lot of people in the mainstream media. ~ Bernard Goldberg

My work has to do with a defense against fervor. People are always in a rush. To do what? To do nothing! There is a kind of fervor that is completely meaningless. This drawing is a call for meditation ... I am an insomniac, so for me the state of being asleep is paradise. It is a paradise I can never reach. But I still try to conquer the insomnia, and to a large extent I have done it; it is conquerable. My drawings are a kind of rocking or stroking and an attempt at finding peace. Peaceful rhythm. Like rocking a baby to sleep. ~ Louise Bourgeois

You're an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to discover their beauty, you tell yourself. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

With reference to the younger generation ... "If the experience of their exhausted, insomniac, dispirited elders makes them decide they'd prefer not to go straight from the classroom to the cubicle to the coffin, it doesn't mean they're lazy. It means they're sane." ~ Anna Quindlen

Only by recalling a dream is an insomniac sure he's slept. ~ Mo Yan

I'm a bit of an insomniac. I'm always thinking. I've got a lot of ideas for lyrics and shows. I have a notepad by the side of the bed and voice recorders around the house. ~ Kid Rock

I'm an insomniac, my mind works the night shift. ~ Pete Wentz

Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?"
"I give."
"You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog. ~ David Foster Wallace

The hollows around her eyes were darkly glamorous, her mouth sullen: she had the beauty of an insomniac. ~ Jardine Libaire

Boy needs to get a good night's sleep. Otherwise, he'll be lucky to get accepted at SUNY-So Far Upstate You Might As Well Be In Canada, eh? ~ Rachel Cohn

We have often had this particular exchange about climate and landscape and why we both feel so lonely here uprooted. It was what each of us had wanted of course.Besides wanting to experience a place we hated, we wanted to be insomniacs and loners, losers and drop-outs. To know the sky was the only location of meaning and joy left to us. ~ Fanny Howe

I don't sleep much. It takes me a long time to fall asleep. I'm a bit of an insomniac but, when I fall asleep, I don't ever want to wake up. ~ Enrique Iglesias

I was a very special child. I did stand-up comedy. I did it all. My family didn't understand. 'Aren't you tired?' I'm like, 'No.' I'm like an insomniac, I hardly sleep, I'm always on the move. ~ Alessandra Torresani

Reading is the occupation of the insomniac par excellence. ~ Alberto Manguel

In the American Grain"
"Ninth grade, and bicycling the Jersey highways:
I am a writer. I was half-wasp already,
I changed my shirt and trousers twice a day.
My poems came back ... often rejected, though never
forgotten in New York, this Jewish state
with insomniac minorities.
I am sick of the enlightenment:
what Wall Street prints, the mafia distributes;
when talent starves in a garret, they buy the garret.
Bill Williams made less than Band-Aids on his writing,
he could never write the King's English of The New Yorker.
I am not William Carlos Williams. He
knew the germ on every flower, and saw
the snake is a petty, rather pathetic creature. ~ Robert Lowell

Loving my Poet as I do, though, I try hard to understand what a poet is. The first clue lies in the fact that my Poet - every poet - is an insomniac. My own reads or wanders about our apartment for the best part of most nights. She told me she often feels she would give up every poem she's ever written for one good night's sleep. ~ Naeem Murr

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

We talk of the callousness of the young. 'Children can be so cruel,' we say. But only those who are concerned with others can be cruel. Children are both careless and carefree in their connections with others. For one nine-year-old to think passingly about the non-swimming agonies of another would be ridiculous.

There were contemporaries of mine at prep school who laboured and tortured themselves over their absolute failure to understand the rudiments of sentence structure: the nominative and accusative in Latin and Greek, the concept of an indirect object, the ablative absolute and the sequence of tenses – these things kept them awake at night. There were others who tossed in insomniac misery because of their fatness, freckledness or squintedness. I don't remember, I don't remember because I didn't care. Only my own agony mattered. ~ Stephen Fry

Evelyn was an insomniac so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that. ~ Garrison Keillor

Riley pulled on his jeans and she almost moaned. Focus, Mercy.

"I'll check," he said, zipping up those damn jeans as she slid on her own. "But we might get lucky with an insomniac."

When he turned, she saw the marks on his back were almost healed. Fast, even for a changeling. Which meant Riley was more powerful than she'd guessed, more than he let on.

There was nothing flashy about him. Just
- "What the - " His hands were on her waist and his mouth on hers before she could do more than gasp. Lightning. Bright. Sizzling. Perfect. This time she did moan, wrapping her arms around him and luxuriating in his strength, in the sheer speed with which he'd come at her. With both of them only wearing jeans, her breasts were pressed against the exquisite roughness of the hairs on his chest. She rubbed against him, giving in to the leopard's innate sensuality.

He tore away his lips but they remained less than a millimeter apart. "This is your fault."

"Hell, no." She sucked on his neck, biting him a little too hard for emphasis. "You jumped my bones." Tugging back her head with a hand fisted in her hair, he glared down at her.

"You were all but licking me the way you were looking."

"Looking's not the same as touching." Her mouth watered at the idea of licking him. They'd been in too much of a rush last night. Even the second and third time. As if they'd both been hungry so long, they'd needed to gorg ~ Nalini Singh

Later, when his desires had been satisfied, he slept in an odorous whorehouse, snoring lustily next to an insomniac tart, and dreamed. He could dream in seven languages: Italian, Spanic, Arabic, Persian, Russian, English and Portughese. He had picked up languages the way most sailors picked up diseases; languages were his gonorrhea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague,his plague. As soon as he fell asleep half the world started babbling in his brain, telling wondrous travelers' tales. In this half-discovered world every day brought news of fresh enchantments. The visionary, revelatory dream-poetry of the quotidian had not yet been crushed by blinkered, prosy fact. Himself a teller of tales, he had been driven out of his door by stories of wonder, and by one in particular, a story which could make his fortune or else cost him his life. ~ Salman Rushdie

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