Night Terror Quotes

Night terrors are in deep sleep, and they're more common in kids, as are nightmares, but what happens in a night terror is like a flash - we think a flash of some image or something happens in the brain. We don't really quite know what. And it usually ends up with the child screaming almost like screaming bloody murder. It's very scary for the parents or whoever else is around. ~ Shelby Harris

There is a loveliness to life that does not fade. Even in the terrors of the night, there is a tendency toward grace that does not fail us. ~ Robert Goolrick

The studio was immense and gloomy, the sole light within it proceeding from a stove, around which the three were seated. Although they were bold, and of the age when men are most jovial, the conversation had taken, in spite of their efforts to the contrary, a reflection from the dull weather without, and their jokes and frivolity were soon exhausted.

In addition to the light which issued from the crannies in the stove, there was another emitted from a bowl of spirits, which was ceaselessly stirred by one of the young men, as he poured from an antique silver ladle some of the flaming spirit into the quaint old glasses from which the students drank. The blue flame of the spirit lighted up in a wild and fantastic manner the surrounding objects in the room, so that the heads of old prophets, of satyrs, or Madonnas, clothed in the same ghastly hue, seemed to move and to dance along the walls like a fantastic procession of the dead; and the vast room, which in the day time sparkled with the creations of genius, seemed now, in its alternate darkness and sulphuric light, to be peopled with its dreams.

Each time also that the silver spoon agitated the liquid, strange shadows traced themselves along the walls, hideous and of fantastic form. Unearthly tints spread also upon the hangings of the studio, from the old bearded prophet of Michael Angelo to those eccentric caricatures which the artist had scrawled upon his walls, and which resembled an army of demons th ~ James Hain Friswell

Every once in a while, the darkness was too much. It had been quite some time since I had woken up in the middle of the night and into an abyss of terror. But here I was ... I couldn't soothe myself ... But if that person had been accessible to me, I wouldn't have been in the state I was in to begin with. [pp. 195-196] ~ Dani Shapiro

Every fear, every night terror, every hour I cried for Liev, every fight with Sebastian is registered as a neat white scar. ~ Emma Forrest

And yet a dream of God--THIS God--is no ordinary dream, nor night terror... It is an apocalyptic vision. As such it makes manifest what good people do not want to see, perhaps cannot see. It manifests above all that there is a tomorrow that no yesterday can dictate. But it does so with the ambiguity that accompanies every call to revolution. "The Reign of God is coming," it says, "and it is coming for you! ~ Craig Keen

Nurses quietly go about their work in a noble profession, uncelebrated soldiers toiling through the days and nights in service to the sick, the injured and the dying. ~ Steve Lopez

Music is what mathematics does on a Saturday night. ~ Aaron Sorkin

We tell each other things that have no relation to the afternoon's events or the coming night but that relate to God, to his absence that is so present, like the breasts of the young girl, so young before the immensity of what is to come. ~ Marguerite Duras

The winter passes and the warm winds of May made me long to wander again. The whistling of a locomotive on a still night had a lure, unexplainable, yet strong, like the light which leads a moth to destruction. ~ Jim Tully

I also remember it was Sunday night because that was the time I felt most depressed and vulnerable. Somehow have a moment to contemplate the miserable, low-paying week that lay ahead was more painful than living it. ~ Adam Carolla

In Madame Bovary, Félicité the maid is always scuttling away from some new abuse at the hands of her self-involved mistress. She seeks sweetness as consolation: "since Madame always left the key in the sideboard, Félicité took a small supply of sugar every night and ate it when she was all alone in her bed, after she had said her prayers." How could sugar still be necessary after prayer? It offers salve to the physical body, immediate comfort, something the flesh can trust while the spirit is being patient. Think of the sadness of two women living in the same house, both hungry for stolen increments of different pleasures - text and lust and sugar - both keeping these pleasures secret because they are ashamed to admit their hungers. ~ Leslie Jamison

Branching paths. The turning of days and seasons and years. Life offered you love sometimes, sorrow often. If you were very fortunate, true friendship. Sometimes war came.
You did what you could to shape your own peace, before you crossed over to the night and left the world behind, as all men did, to be forgotten or remembered, as time or love allowed. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

From Russia I didn't bring out a single happy memory, only sad, tragic ones. The nightmare of pogroms, the brutality of Cossacks charging young Socialists, fear, shrieks of terror ... ~ Golda Meir

When I was doing local weather full time, I would wake up in the morning or stay up all night to make sure the snowflakes started at the time that I said they would. ~ Sam Champion

False gods!" she cried, her blue eyes blazing as she stared at the Red King and the Lords of Outer Night. "Pretenders! Usurpers of truth! Destroyers of faith, of families, of lives, of children! For your crimes against the Mayans, against the peoples of the world, now will you answer! Your time has come! Face judgment Almighty! ~ Jim Butcher

Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise. ~ W. H. Auden

That first night, I didn't have it all. And I still don't have it all but every piece you give me, baby, I like. So now I want it all and I'm gonna fuckin' get it, Trya. You aren't gonna hold back, you aren't gonna retreat, you aren't gonna push me away and I sure as fuck am not gonna let go. ~ Kristen Ashley

He slid into bed, turned off the light ... and groaned as an image of a wise, skinny old crone filled his mind. No, he begged the still night. Sweet Darkness, heed the prayer of one of your sons. Now that she's so close, let her be young enough to want me. Let her be young enough to need me. The night gave him no answer, and the sky was a predawn gray before he finally slept. - Daemon ~ Anne Bishop

Darkness turned to noon. Even with the nose cone of the Learjet pointed away from the blast, the flash blinded everyone inside. Diaz lost control of the aircraft. It pitched over into a screaming, spinning dive, hurtling earthward at over five hundred miles per hour. In the cabin, people slammed into each other in the terror of flashblindness. General Steyn screamed in pain. Hauer half-fell past Burton into the cockpit. "Straighten up!" he screamed. ~ Greg Iles

There are always mystical countries that are a part of one's childhood. Those we remember and visit sometimes when we are asleep and dreaming. They are as lovely at night as they were when we were children. If you ever go back to see them they are not there. But they are as fine in the night as they ever were if you have the luck to dream of them. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Where is the land of Luthany,
Where is the tract of Elenore?
I am bound therefore.

'Pierce thy heart to find the key;
With thee take
Only what none else would keep;
Learn to dream when thou dost wake;
Learn to wake when thou dost sleep.
Learn to water joy with tears,
Learn from fears to vanquish fears;
To hope, for thou dar'st not despair;
Exult, for that thou dar'st not grieve;
Plough thou the rock until it bear;
Know, for thou else couldst not believe;
Lose, that the lost thou may'st receive;
Die, for none other way canst live.

'When earth and heave lay down their veil,
And that apocalypse turns thee pale;
When thy seeing blindeth thee
To what thy fellow-mortals see;
When their sight to thee is sightless;
Their living, death; their light, most lightless;
Search no more--
Pass the gates of Luthany,
Tread the region Elenore!'

Where is the land of Luthany?
And where the region Elenore?
I do faint therefore.

'When to the new eyes of thee
All things by immortal power,
Near or far,
Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star;
When thy song is shield and mirror
To the fair snake curled pain,
Where thou dar'st affront her terror
That on her thou may'st attain
Persean Conquest; seek no more,
O seek no more! ~ Francis Thompson

Skyler was busy looking around the room at all the guys. There seemed to be an overabundance of twinks. What is this? he wondered. Buy one twink get the second one free night? ~ Haley Walsh

As a writer, that moment every few years when I buy a new laptop and find out that all the word processing stuff has slightly changed again (stuff I spend every working day using) is like getting into bed at night and finding some mad robot where you expected your wife to be. ~ John Niven

Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

For to him, and nearly all the educated youth of that epoch, the stars were cruel things; though they glowed in the great dome every night, they were an enormous and ugly secret; they uncovered the nakedness of nature; they were a glimpse of the iron wheels and pulleys behind the scenes. For the young men of that sad time thought that the god always came from the machine. They did not know that in reality the machine only comes from the god. In short, they were all pessimists, and starlight was atrocious to them--atrocious because it was true. All their universe was black with white spots. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Passing One Night in an Old Woman's Hut at the Foot of Mount Five Pines


I lodge under the five pine trees,
Lonely, I feel not quite at ease.
Peasants work hard in autumn old;
Husking rice at night, the maid's cold.
Wilce rice is offered on her knees;
The plate in moonlight seems to freeze.
I'm overwhelmed with gratitude.
Do I deserve the hard-earned food? ~ Li Bai

Traveling at night toward the stars, I thought yet again how very far away they were, and how you could travel your whole lifetime and never reach even the closest one. But even if you knew you couldn't have something, it didn't stop you wanting it. I wondered if Kate was to be my star, and I'd spend my life gazing upon her but never reaching her. ~ Kenneth Oppel

You will get something wrong today, and tomorrow, and every day of your life. So will I, and everybody you know. You don't have a choice about being wrong sometimes: mistakes will be your life-long companion. But you do have a choice about whether to approach your error in terror so you suppress, ignore, and repeat it-or to make it your honest, open ally in trying to get to the truth. ~ Johann Hari

I hope that you will be faced with difficult choices and decisions, trials that won't undo you, but that will drive you toward reflection and understanding. Trust that your fears will sometimes tell you about your desires. You will see that you can survive the terror that comes with growth and change, with vulnerability and risk. ~ Donald Antrim

And me, standing under the splintered night,
catching fractured glimpses into the black behind the black,
hearing the prayers of stars, the angry whispers of the dark summer night.

Its voice cracks,
on your name.

My eyes close,
on your name. ~ Marlen Komar

The fans are especially amazing in Mexico. You look out your window, and there are fans that stay out there all night long. ~ Drake Bell

For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love; the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing; the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. ~ Gregory David Roberts

There was nothing the matter out there. It was in here, with me.

I decided I'd better go to work, maybe that would exorcise me. I fled from the room almost as though it were haunted. It was too late to stop off at a breakfast counter now. I didn't want any, anyway. My stomach kept giving little quivers. In the end I didn't go to work, either. I couldn't, I wouldn't have been any good. I telephoned in that I was too ill to come, and it was no idle excuse, even though I was upright on my two legs.

I roamed around the rest of the day in the sunshine. Wherever the sunshine was the brightest, I sought and stayed in that place, and when it moved on I moved with it. I couldn't get it bright enough or strong enough. I avoided the shade, I edged away from it, even the slight shade of an awning or of a tree.

And yet the sunshine didn't warm me. Where others mopped their brows and moved out of it, I stayed - and remained cold inside. And the shade was winning the battle as the hours lengthened. It outlasted the sun. The sun weakened and died; the shade deepened and spread. Night was coming on, the time of dreams, the enemy. ("Nightmare") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Nor does night conceal men's deeds of ill, but whatsoe'er thou dost, think that some God beholds it. ~ Aeschylus

Pigpen and Dust have already told me, multiple times, that lots of brothers are ready and willing to buy me as many beers as I can drink tonight, tomorrow night, forever. ~ Katie McGarry

In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.

All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dínen.
"You cannot enter here," said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. "Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!"
The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.
"Old fool!" he said. "Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!" And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.

And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of war nor of wizardry, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.
And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns, in dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only now that his ears were opened to this sound that came from darkness, that could only come from darkness, that yet bore such sure witness to the glory of the light. And now in his moaning, and so far from any help, he heard it in himself--it rose from his bleeding, his cracked-open heart. It was a sound of rage and weeping which filled the grave, rage and weeping from time set free, but bound now in eternity; rage that had no language, weeping with no voice--which yet spoke now, to John's startled soul, of boundless melancholy, of the bitterest patience, and the longest night; of the deepest water, the strongest chains, the most cruel lash; of humility most wretched, the dungeon most absolute, of love's bed defiled, and birth dishonored, and most bloody, unspeakable, sudden death. Yes, the darkness hummed with murder: the body in the water, the body in the fire, the body on the tree. John looked down the line of these armies of darkness, army upon army, and his soul whispered: Who are these? Who are they? And wondered: Where shall I go? ~ James Baldwin

You're probably going to lose your V that night anyway, so I'll be the last thing you'll be thinking about."
"I wasn't planning on having sex on prom night!" I hiss. My eyes dart over at Lucas, who is looking at me, bug-eyed.
"Lara Jean…you and Kavinsky haven't had sex yet?"
I look to make sure no one's in the hallway listening. "No, but please don't tell anybody. Not that I'm ashamed of it or anything. I just don't want everyone knowing my business."
"I get it, obviously, but wow," he says, still sounding shocked. "That's…wow."
"Why is it so wow?" I ask him, and I can feel my cheeks warming.
"He's so…hot."
I laugh. "That's true. ~ Jenny Han

Rules didn't do that thing with its tongue he liked, and they definitely didn't keep him warm at night. ~ Nulli Para Ora

Horror by definition is the emotion of pure revulsion. Terror of the same standard, is that of fearful anticipation. ~ Dario Argento

I used to be in school, like a good boy. Medieval Literature. Von Eschenbach, Chaucer, Milton... Yes, sir, no, sir. Then I had that... Crisis. You know it? Wake up one morning and everything's all wrong? Wake up one morning and it occurs to you the milk's spoiled and the bread is getting moldy. Wake up and it just hits you. Someday you're gonna die. Maybe like that girl last night died. Face down in an alley with a caved in head. Such a terrible thing and what for? Why life? Why This life? Why This soap? Why these hands? What's it all mean? Deep down you fear nothing. But you still hope something. Either way, you're not really sure. That's my crisis. I don't wanna die. But if I'm gonna die, first I'm gonna live. I'm gonna peel life like fruit, and use it up. I'm gonna light up an' burn. I'll burn and burn until I'm snuffed out. Then I'll just fade away. But until then I'm gonna live! I'm ready. I'm gonna do it. Come what may, one hundred percent. ~ Paul Pope

I had woken into a metal world. The smooth unflawed slopes of snow on the mountain across the valley were iron. The deeper moonshadows had a tinge of steel blue to them. Otherwise, there was no true colour. Everything was greys, black, sharp silver-white. Inclined sheets of ice gleamed like tin. The hailstones lay about like shot, millions of them, grouped up against each rock and clustered in snow hollows. The air smelt of minerals and frost. ~ Robert Macfarlane

I didn't look to the shore much after this first long and memorable glimpse. I looked up at Heaven and her court of mythical creatures fixed forever in the all powerful and inscrutable stars. Ink black was the night beyond them, and they so like jewels that old poetry came back to me, the sound even of hymns sung only by men. ~ Anne Rice