Sleeping Beauties Quotes

Uncharted territory," I said. "The parts on the maps of our lives that we don't understand. In cartographer's language they call these places sleeping beauties. ~ Christopher Barzak

It makes no difference if you're rich or poor
Or if you're smart or dumb.
A woman's place in this old world
Is under some man's thumb,
And if you're born a woman
You're born to be hurt.
You're born to be stepped on,
Lied to,
Cheated on,
And treated like dirt.
-Sandy Posey, 'Born a Woman'
Lyrics by Martha Sharp ~ Stephen King

As though he was really saying that all desire for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and never be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is, of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's highest happiness. Here and now for the first time he fully appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to talk and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one's needs - good food, cleanliness, and freedom - now ~ Leo Tolstoy

Situations are like that. They take up all the time you used to use for working and eating and sleeping. They soak up your whole life like a black hole in space soaks up the sunlight. And then, where you used to have a life, all you have left is a situation. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

It was said that the Old Folk controlled the power of fire, among other things, but that was in the Long and Long Ago. Before that, the fathers of the Old Folk caught a spark with flint and steel and their own desire to live. It was also said that the world was a great wheel, and everything came round to what it once had been, and so Steven Boughmount knelt in the snow with rocks in his hands, trying to catch a flame. He was having little luck. Just over the low hills, beyond this scrub of forest, the village was warm and sleeping behind its wall.
That's where I should be, Steven thought as he scraped the edge of one rock against the other. Not in bed, not yet, but stretched out in my chair with my feet up, a pipe smoking just right in my hand and Heather curled up beside me. The boys are all asleep, but maybe we'll stay up for a while. Maybe we'll move to the bedroom, maybe not. That's where I should be, not up to my ass in snow trying to light a fire.
"C'mon, bastard," he said, and drug the sharp edge of the rock in his right hand against the flat of the one in his left. A white spark flew, and then died before it could reach the stripped branches and dried moss he had laid out on the frozen ground.
Snow crunched somewhere off to the left of him. Steven heard soft, bare footsteps. They were coming, all right. And they were in a hurry, running toward a village protected by two drunks on either side of a leaning gate. That was why Steven sat in the snow. When ~ Michael Kanuckel

He had become the sky around the sun – alive, but not really there. ~ Carla H. Krueger

Luckily, I was raised by a kind of gypsy family, which is why I always get along better with people who worked in circuses than with kids of other actors. My mom was so carefree with us in a beautiful way. We were used to sleeping anywhere. ~ Lou Doillon

Creepy Hollow?" He snorts. "Like Sleepy Hollow?"
"No, like Creepy Hollow. It has nothing to do with sleeping. ~ Rachel Morgan

Do you know any gay guys?"
"Why? Are you switching teams?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe."
"Yeah, I know some gay guys. And you do, too."
"I know some gay guys?" News to me.
"Jake and Terry."
"They're not gay," I argued.
"Yeah? You better tell them to stop sleeping together, then. ~ Dani Alexander

My advice to women who habitually gravitate toward musicians is that they learn how to play an instrument and start making music themselves. Not only will they see that it's not that hard, but sometimes I think women just want to be the very thing they think they want to sleep with. Because if you're bright enough
no offense, Tawny Kitaen
sleeping with a musician probably won't be enough for you to feel good about yourself. Even if he writes you a song for your birthday. Don't you know that a musician who writes a song for you is like a baker you're dating making you a cake? Aim higher. ~ Julie Klausner

Places We Love

Places we love exist only through us,
Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time,
Places we love we can never leave,
Places we love together, together, together,

And is this room really a room, or an embrace,
And what is beneath the window: a street or years?
And the window is only the imprint left by
The first rain we understood, returning endlessly,

And this wall does not define the room, but perhaps the night
Your son began to move in your sleeping blood,
A son like a butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors,
The night you were frightened by your own light,

And this door leads into any afternoon
Which outlives it, forever peopled
With your casual movements, as you stepped,
Like fire into copper, into my only memory;

When you go, space closes over like water behind you,
Do not look back: there is nothing outside you,
Space is only time visible in a different way,
Places we love we can never leave. ~ Ivan V. Lalić

I was satisfied with haiku until I met you, but now I want a Russian novel,
a 50-page description of you sleeping. ~ Dean Young

He often took me to the studio where the movies were made and I remember it as if it were yesterday. I remember how the sun shone through all the windows. I thought it looked like a fairytale palace. One afternoon your husband appeared and shook my hand. And he told me something I never forgot. He crouched on one knee and whispered to me, "If you ever wanted to know where dreams come from when you're sleeping at night, you just have to look around you, that's where they are made. ~ Brian Selznick

At 1.30 she left the hospital to do some shopping. Both men were sound asleep. Gentle afternoon sunlight flooded the room, and I felt as though I might drift off at any moment perching on my stool. Yellow and white chrysanthemums in a vase on the table by the window reminded people it was autumn. In the air floated the sweet smell of boiled fish left over from lunch. The nurses continued to clip-clop up and down the hall, talking to each other in clear, penetrating voices. They would peep into the room now and then and flash me a smile when they saw that both patients were sleeping. I wished I had something to read, but there were no books or magazines or newspapers in the room, just a calendar on the wall. ~ Haruki Murakami

Later, while she was sleeping, she woke to the sound of Ray moving through the house. At first she confused. She thought she was still married to Bill. Then, when she had everythbing straight in her head, shame washed over her because she had denied her first husband when she had told Ray that no man had ever been as good to her as he had. But it was true, wasn't it? She lay in bed, listening to him opening cabinets, and she knew it was impossible to say what was between people, and the longer you were with someone, the harder it was to even come close. All she knew was that once she had been with Bill and now she was with Ray. She had come out of her old life and into a new one, and even if she wished for it, which she didn't-not really, she didn't, not even in her heart of hearts-she couldn't go back.
~Clare ~ Lee Martin

I'll tell you what's better than watching the sunrise ... Sleeping through it. ~ Daniel Tosh

My dearest Lydia
I do not wish to disturb your thoughts with sad tidings, and yet to do otherwise than write to you at this time with an honest heart would give cause for you to reproach me in years to come, years when you will live and breathe the warm air while I rest beneath the turf, and the very thought of such reproach grieves my heavy heart as it prepares to beat its last. For I am fading, and henceforth you will not hear word of this frail shell whom once you graced with friendship, except, perhaps, through another's report or distant memory.
Whether our encounter in this life has brought me more joy than pain is a question that once I asked myself, but now see as a thing of no concern. My love for you is not to be judged by degrees of pleasure. It is not of the world of matter to be placed on the scale or weighed in the balance. Our flesh, the deeds we commit and things we created may be subject to the measure, but not a love like this. Joy and pain are but the distant resonance, while my love for you is the present song; they are but patterns of dust caught on the edge of the morning light, while my love is the blazing sun that illuminates them. My love abides, my love existed before we met, and my love will continue as the centuries roll by when we and our story are shades forgotten. But my love must perforce now return to its cave, to its sleeping state, whence it emerged that morning long ago by the water's edge, when our eyes met and the spirit took ~ Roland Vernon

And as I ran along the shore, crushing sleeping flowers with heedless feet and maddened ever by the fear of unknown things and the lure of the dead faces, I saw that the garden had no end under that moon; for where by day the walls were, there stretched now only new vistas of trees and paths, flowers and shrubs, stone idols and pagodas, and bendings of the yellow-litten stream past grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of marble. And the lips of the dead lotos-faces whispered sadly, and bade me follow, nor did I cease my steps till the stream became a river, and joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds and beaches of gleaming sand the shore of a vast and nameless sea. Upon ~ H.P. Lovecraft

I was hired as a sous-chef at a restaurant on the Upper East Side. The chef liked to drink - some mornings we would find him sleeping. Two weeks after its opening, I became the chef. I was 20 years old, and way over my head. I had to hire the cooks and do the menus. ~ Bobby Flay

He bracketed his waist with his hands and took a deep breath. "The truth is I didn't want to see you or even talk to you until I was me again."
Stunned, she dropped the fork back into her salad bowl. "I'm not sure I'm following," she said cautiously but she knew what he meant. He wanted her to see him when they talked…his face.
He leaned forward, braced his hands on her desk. She inhaled the clean, slightly citrusy scent that was uniquely Joe Hennessey. Her gaze roved his face. Every detail was just as it was before.
Damn she was good.
Elizabeth blinked. Chastised herself for staring. Since he hadn't answered her question he'd obviously paused to take notice of her staring.
She cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. "You're going to have to explain what you mean, Agent Hennessey."
"Don't play games with me, Elizabeth," he warned, those blue eyes glinting with what some might consider intimidation. But she knew him better now. That was his predatory gleam. And she was his prey…he wanted her.
"Really, Hennessey, you should be more specific."
"I love you, Elizabeth. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I miss you. I need to be with you."
I…I…I, was this all about him? Let him sweat for a bit.
She shrugged indifferently. "I've been sleeping fine." She glanced at the food in front of her. "Eating fine as well."
He straightened, threw up his hands. "What do you want me to do? Beg?"
That could work, she mused wickedly. ~ Heather Graham

From books, I winnowed the glue that held together my psyche as it struggled to stay whole. It was from stories and myths that I learned to dream, to imagine a different life, to realize potentials and probabilities other than those of the painful, poverty-mired existence I found myself in as a child. With a book I could hide in a corner, safe from the heavy hand and belt of my stepfather, and for a while not worry about where our next meal would come from, or where we would be sleeping that night, or when my mother would break and have to be sent yet again to the mental institution. Books, for me, we tiny life rafts that I clung to desperately. ~ J. Don Cook

America was sleeping when I crept into the hospital wing that night. She was cleaner, but her face still seemed worried, even at rest.
"Hey, Mer," I whispered, rounding her bed. She didn't stir. I didn't dare sit, not even with the excuse of checking on the girl I rescued. I stood in the freshly pressed uniform I would only wear for the few minutes it took to deliver this message.
I reached out to touch her, but then pulled back. I looked into her sleeping face and spoke.
"I - I came to tell you I'm sorry. About today, I mean," I sucked in a deep breath. "I should have run for you. I should have protected you. I didn't, and you could have died."
Her lips pursed and unpursed as she dreamed.
"Honestly, I'm sorry for a lot more than that," I admitted. "I'm sorry I got mad in the tree house. I'm sorry I ever said to send in that stupid form. It's just that I have this idea..." I swallowed. " I have this idea that maybe you were the only one I could made everything right for.
" I couldn't save my dad. I couldn't protect Jemmy. I can barely keep my family afloat, and I just thought that maybe I could give you a shot at a life that would be better than the one that I would have been able to give you. And I convinced myself that was the right way to love you."
I watched her, wishing I had the nerve to confess this while she could argue back with me and tell me how wrong I'd been.
" I don't know if I can undo it, Mer. I don't know if we'll ever ~ Kiera Cass

I thought she was sleeping until I heard her call out from across the room, "Will you bring me a glass of water?" I did. Then in her always-sleepy tone and drawl she said, "Do you remember when you were a little boy and you would ask your mama to bring you a glass of water?" Yeah. "You know how half the time you weren't even thirsty. You just wanted that hand that was attached to that glass that was attached to that person you just wanted to stay there until you fell asleep." She took the glass of water that I brought her and just sat it down full on the table next to her. Wow, I thought. What am I gonna do with love like this. ~ Dito Montiel

When you were sleeping on the sofa I put my ear to your ear and listened to the echo of your dreams. That is the ocean I want to dive in, merge with the bright fish, plankton and pirate ships. I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like you and ask them the questions I would ask you. Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smoke rising from a chimney? Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing? I don't wish I was in your arms, I just wish I was peddling a bicycle toward your arms. ~ Jeffrey McDaniel

I draw in my sleep (dream of drawing) a lot. I don't think I have ever drawn anything in real life while I was sleeping, though. I do keep a pad near my bed, just in case. ~ Jason Polan

If I thought there was some reason to be concerned about them, I wouldn't be sleeping in this house tonight. (When asked about continued presence of Soviet nuclear submarines along US coastlines) ~ Ronald Reagan

Sleeping with a guy isn't the same thing as opening your heart to him. ~ Paige Tyler

In the rest of the story, Sleeping Beauty and the prince marry and have children. An ogress demands that the children and princess be cooked and served to her, though they are saved. Disney's animated films also left out that part, agreeing with Huguette's editing. ~ Bill Dedman

Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

But what actually matters are the hundreds of small things that the powerful do - or don't do - to establish their legitimacy, like sleeping in the bed of an innocent man you just shot accidentally and scattering your belongings around his house. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Beauty in a woman is a treasure rare

Which we are never weary of admiring;

But a sweet temper is a gift more fair

And better worth the youthful maid's desiring.

That was the boon bestowed on Cinderella

By her wise godmother - her truest glory.

The rest was "nought but leather and prunella."

Such is the moral of this little story -

Beauties that charm become you more than dress,

And win a heart with far greater facility.

In short, in all things to ensure success,

The real Fairy Gift is amiability!

Talent, courage, wit, and worth

Are rare gifts to own on Earth;

But if you want to thrive at court -

So, at least, the wise report -

You will find you need some others,

Such as godfathers or mothers. ~ Charles Perrault

In the United States economic system you can lose big or you can win big. If you lose you wind up wearing a Hefty bag and sleeping in a doorway. If you win you can have sex with Catherine Zeta Jones when you're seventy-five. ~ Richard Jeni

This is not the way these tales end," Calliope said firmly.
"This is not the way that things end when they get to be tales," Amatus said, "but since ours is not yet told, we cannot count on it. There were a hundred dead princes on the thorns outside Sleeping Beauty's castle, and I'm sure many of them were splendid fellows. ~ John Barnes

LAST NIGHT IN THE CITY
Written in the style of Andrew Fusek Peters…… by Charlotte Eden Aged 9. My granddaughter

Last night I saw the city boasting.
Fat and ugly office blocks gloated
over poor and empty parking lots,
and conceited takeaways mocked
the fish and chip shops

Last night I saw the city sleeping.
The sun, as hot as an oven, began
to rest its brightness,
and the moon awoke from
his deep slumber.

Last night I saw the city breathing.
Airports inhaled the landing planes,
while cars wheezed in the
Cold, frosty night.

Last night I saw the city crying.
The gleaming stars poured from
the night sky, and landed
in a cracked, glass puddle.

Last night I saw the city chuckling.
Owls laughed at the bats' jokes,
while hedgehogs made fun of the
hibernating squirrels.

Last night I saw the city performing.
The thin trees danced in the puffing wind,
and the stars put on a show
in the moonlight.

Charlotte Eden
June 2016. Copyright ~ Ann Perry

And Mamma was still asleep. I called it the sleeping sickness because coma is the ugliest word in the entire universe. If I could, I'd erase it from the dictionary, but Old Webster would probably hunt me down. ~ Kimberley Griffiths Little