Sleepless Night Quotes

When your life is all taking, what need to learn courtship? Carcharos's passion for Jassi Belnarak deepened and darkened with every sleepless night, but it did not keep him from understanding that neither beneficence nor meek wistfulness would win her honestly. Power would have to do, after all; and I think that for the only time in that bad life, Carcharos may truly have regretted the necessity of forcing his will on another person. The moment can't have lasted long, but I think further that it may have been the closest Carcharos ever came to knowing love. ~ Peter S. Beagle

My deepest gratitude goes to those we've quoted - men and women who labored long and hard to express in a few words a lifetime of experience; others who rarely wrote but paused in the middle of a busy life or a sleepless night with pen in hand, who wept and found a way to make of their suffering a gift, who laughed and found a way to make us laugh, too. ~ Sy Safransky

Worse, the long, sleepless night in a room stored with mementoes of Alton's life confronted Rusty with the tracks of a ghost. Like a mattress sagging under the weight of an unseen body and a fluffed pillow impressed with the indentation of its head, the room seemed to mold itself around Alton's absence. The shirts that hung over creased pants in the small armoire remembered the boy's shoulders. Toy soldiers, headless and one-legged after a childhood of tabletop battles, did not desert the formation Alton had last ordered. A half-finished model airplane on his desk did not complete itself. As Rusty pitched from side to side in the narrow bed, his eyes fell upon object after object, which each in its own voice seemed to utter Alton's name as a kind of question--a question, he well knew, that would never be answered.
THe chorus of Alton's things, silently protesting their perplexed abandonment, disturbed Rusty's sleep like crickets chirping in the dark. It felt to him as if everything is the room was hardening around Alton's absence And what was a ghost, anyway, he began to understand while lying in a dead man's bed, but a felt absence, a keen unpresence? ~ John Biguenet

Better for you to have one sleepless night on earth than millions in hell. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

No one should judge what I've done with my life, not unless they've been in my shoes every horrible day and every sleepless night. ~ Michael Jackson

I spent another sleepless night in my apartment and in the early hours of the morning I snuck once more into my little kitchen, to prepare a huge torta di ricotta. I needed a cheesecake: it was the only thing that could give me the peace of mind I craved.
Had I been too hasty in offering to give l'Inglese lessons? I asked myself, as I ground green almonds with my pestle. The power of my wrist quickly turned the almonds to powder. If only I could grind my worries away as easily.
I beat the ricotta, egg yolks, honey, sugar, lemon juice, and rind into the almonds. I beat and beat and beat the mixture until a sweat formed on my brow and my body began to glow with warmth. Even then I did not stop beating. I welcomed the exhaustion that began to creep up on me: I could feel the healing power of my cooking.
Really I knew nothing about l'Inglese. Nothing at all. Except that everything about him spelled danger to an inexperienced woman like me. I was afraid of him, yet could not bear the thought of not seeing him again. I was always thinking of him, imagining our next meeting: amusing myself with every possible scenario.
I whisked the egg whites into peaks in a matter of seconds. I reasoned that I had been right to speak out to him when I did. I knew how I would have hated myself if I had let the moment slip by. I knew how wretched and foolish I would have felt at my impotence, and yet this turbulence inside me was almost as bad. Acrobatic butterflies fluttered in ~ Lily Prior

When I think I've made an error, it can cause me a sleepless night. But that only happens rarely. ~ Louis Van Gaal

After a sleepless night the body gets weaker,
It becomes dear and not yours - and nobody's.
Just like a seraph you smile to people
And arrows moan in the slow arteries.
After a sleepless night the arms get weaker
And deeply equal to you are the friend and foe.
Smells like Florence in the frost, and in each
Sudden sound is the whole rainbow.
Tenderly light the lips, and the shadow's golden
Near the sunken eyes. Here the night has sparked
This brilliant likeness - and from the dark night
Only just one thing - the eyes - are growing dark. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

You are worth every heartache I've endured, every sleepless night, every red-rimmed eye. I am fragmented with you and without. I cannot decipher much of anything else. ~ Wennie Hong

Morals and medicine warred within his breast, and medicine won the day- but I dare say morals may give him a sleepless night. ~ Georgette Heyer

And at 3am you sit near the window and wonder if there is magic ... because all you need are some fairies to take your pain away and help you sleep ... you take a book to read ... you take a pen and a paper to write ... you cling on some music that might just make you fall asleep ... yet nothing helps ... another sleepless night and all you want is the dawn to break soon ... ~ Sanhita Baruah

With old and young great sorrow is followed by a sleepless night, and with the old great joy is as disturbing; but you, I suppose, finds happiness more natural and its rest is not disturbed by it. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Day and night gifts keep pelting down on us. If we were aware of this, gratefulness would overwhelm us. But we go through life in a daze. A power failure makes us aware of what a gift electricity is; a sprained ankle lets us appreciate walking as a gift, a sleepless night, sleep. How much we are missing in life by noticing gifts only when we are suddenly deprived of them. ~ David Steindl-Rast

A sensual woman is the best escape and emotional cure for a man who's soul is distressed. If women could learn that, they wouldn't even have to spend one sleepless night worrying about the possibility of their men cheating. ~ Lebo Grand

Hail O mighty, fathomless sleep, come on and hug me tight and sweet;
when I whisper those deepest pains, onto your ears mute and keen,
sing for me the sweetest song that would sound the profoundest of life!
Leave me upon your rocking arms, watched by spirits of placid nights!

Goodnight, world, sweet dreams folks, blessed are those who would sleep at peace! ~ Preeth Nambiar

After a sleepless night, the people in the street seem automatons. No one seems to breathe, to walk, Each looks as if he is worked by clockwork: nothing spontaneous; mechanical smiles, spectral gesticulations. Yourself a specter, how would you see others as alive? ~ Emil M. Cioran

Sometimes, it's easier to cry than to hide the tear, And better to fight than to live in fear. Sometimes, it's fine to be clueless of what lies ahead, And ok to spend a sleepless night in bed. Sometimes, it's alright to be foolish, to have said that 'No', And ok to have held on than letting it go. Sometimes, it's not up to one to make the choice, Sometimes, it's just life that rolls the dice… ~ M.K. Aarnik

When tadpole was born, I spent a sleepless night on the maternity ward gazing intently into her inky, newborn eyes, grappling to come to terms with the indisputable fact that this was an actual person looking back at me, not just a version of Mr Frog, or me, or both, in miniature. From the outset she seemed to know what she wanted, and I realised I could have no inkling of the paths she would choose to follow. But if I watch her life unfold carefully enough, perhaps I will see clear signposts pointing to who or what she will become.
Because when I look backwards, ransacking my own past for clues with the clarity that only hindsight can bring, several defining moments do stand out. Moments charged with significance; snapshots of myself which, if I were to join the dots together, lead me unswervingly to where I stand today. ~ Catherine Sanderson

Make your life an inspiring story meant to be read in bed during a sleepless night of despair. ~ Debasish Mridha

She didn't uncover my eyes until we were in her oversized bathroom. I stared at the long counter, covered in all the paraphernalia of a beauty salon, and began to feel my sleepless night. Is this really necessary? I'm going to look plain next to him no matter what. ~ Stephenie Meyer

A word of advice: If you get the choice between the upper and lower bunks in a cell, choose the lower. Prisons do not turn off their lights at night, and I spent a sleepless night, without a mattress, with a five-hundred-watt bulb shining directly into my eyes. ~ William Powell

The audience cares what the movie looks like, not about the sleepless night you had worrying about the thing getting developed. ~ James Gray

All ten years of my trepidations,
Each and every sleepless night,
I placed them all in a quiet word
And I voiced it – in vain, unsure.
You walked off and with order restored,
My soul was empty and pure.

- From "Confusion", Anna Akhmatova, Rosary ~ Anna Akhmatova

Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long. ~ Shirley Jackson

Well finish your story anyway."
Where was I?"
The bubonic plague. The bulldozer was stalled by corpses."
Oh, yes. Anyway, one sleepless night I stayed up with Father while he worked. It was all we could do to find a live patient to treat. In bed after bed after bed we found dead people.
And Father started giggling," Castle continued.
He couldn't stop. He walked out into the night with his flashlight. He was still giggling. He was making the flashlight beam dance over all the dead people stacked outside. He put his hand on my head and do you know what that marvelous man said to me?" asked Castle.
Nope."
'Son,' my father said to me, 'someday this will all be yours. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Each time you spend a sleepless night to finish a project, try to provide an answer to the following questions: Does this project really call for non-negotiable urgency? Is there a way to go about this task without sacrificing your personal life and your relationships with other people, particularly your family? How is the completion of this project going to affect you? Are you merely assuming a task that is supposed to be done by other people? It ~ Tobias Hansen

We were never short on passion. We couldn't keep our hands off of each other. Adrenaline raced over the fatigue that had settled into my bones after another sleepless night. I could fuck the woman until I was blind, and it wouldn't be enough. She'd promised me a lifetime, and I had every intention of loving her well every day this life would give me. ~ Meredith Wild

And finally there was the sleepless night
when i decided to explore and fight
the foul, the inadmissible abyss,
devoting all my twisted life to this
one task. today i'm sixty-one. waxwings
are berry-pecking. a cicada sings. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Here comes goodbye, here comes the last time
Here comes the start of every sleepless night
The first of every tear Im gonna cry
Here comes the pain, Here comes me wishing things had never changed
And she was right here in my arms tonight, but here comes goodbye ~ Rascal Flatts

If you promote peace and progress for others, I don't think you will have sleepless nights. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

She would love to think he was reluctant to leave her, but she realized he was waiting to make sure she got safely into the house before he drove away. Zane might be the most frustrating man on earth, a paradox she couldn't figure out, but he was the type of guy to make sure a woman was safe before he left her in the dark. Just as he was the type of man who'd chosen the best knife for her to carry to Nigeria. He was also the type to kiss a woman breathless and leave her alone and confused. With a sigh, she turned and made her way to the front door, digging for her key as she went. One sleepless night pondering Zane and this odd day definitely wouldn't be enough to figure out the mystery of the man. But, it would be a start ... ~ Cat Johnson

In other words, our conscious representations are sometimes ordered (or arranged in a pattern) before they have become conscious to us. The 18th-century German mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss gives an example of an experience of such an unconscious order of ideas: He says that he found a certain rule in the theory of numbers "not by painstaking research, but by the Grace of God, so to speak. The riddle solved itself as lightning strikes, and I myself could not tell or show the connection between what I knew before, what I last used to experiment with, and what produced the final success." The French scientist Henri Poincare is even more explicit about this phenomenon; he describes how during a sleepless night he actually watched his mathematical representations colliding in him until some of them "found a more stable connection. One feels as if one could watch one's own unconscious at work, the unconscious activity partially becoming manifest to consciousness without losing its own character. At such moments one has an intuition of the difference between the mechanisms of the two egos. ~ C.G. Jung

Revenge may be exacted a hundred times over in one sleepless night. The impulse, the dreaming intention, is human, normal, and we should forgive ourselves. But the raised hand, the actual violent enactment, is cursed. The maths says so. There'll be no reversion to the status quo ante, no balm, no sweet relief, or none that lasts. Only a second crime. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches a civilisation. It's a reversion to constant, visceral fear. ~ Ian McEwan

Chances are if you find yourself caught up in a political foofaraw at work, or in some family squabble at home, it's because someone else is succeeding in convincing you that his problem is your problem. The non-self-destructor recognizes this and as soon as possible, gives the sleepless night back to the person to whom it belongs. ~ Jason Seiden

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

I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker, no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden, no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats. ~ J. Courtney Sullivan

It was altogether a different story now. Abhilasha started coming out of the cold aloofness which had become her second nature, while for Arvind, it was like 'fiddle found a melody'. He was in love with his life again. With their growing intimacy, came the desire to meet each other. And at last it materialised when they fixed a date for meeting. The long awaited day came. A sleepless night of nervous apprehension, culminated at dawn, as Abhilasha could no longer lie down. While there was much excitement at the prospect of meeting him but the possibility of a probable mismatch between the real Arvind and the virtual one, loomed large on her mind, making her feel nervous. ~ Chitralekha Paul

The people had come to witness a sensational case, to see celebrities, to get material for conversation, to be seen, to kill time. They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known some unforgotten moment-a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger's face seen in a bus-a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wondered why there was so much suffering and ugliness in the world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer was necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer. ~ Ayn Rand

What are you thinking?" he asks.
I know Gage hates it when I cry - he is completely undone by the sight of tears - so I blink hard against the sting. "I'm thinking how thankful I am for everything," I say, "even the bad stuff. Every sleepless night, every second of being lonely, every time the car broke down, every wad of gum on my shoe, every late bill and losing lottery ticket and bruise and broken dish and piece of burnt toast."
His voice is soft. "Why, darlin'?"
"Because it all led me here to you. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night. I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye. ~ Charlotte Bronte

At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Hard to sit here and be close to you, and not kiss you. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

It takes twenty years of hard work to become an over night success. ~ Joe C. Combs II

The simple life on the farm was everything to me. Nothing was more relaxing after a long plane flight than to reach the winding driveway that led up to my house. The quiet of the night was more soothing than a sleeping pill. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross

The aisles of the Varied Industries building had grown too coagulated, so Marlys led the girl around the building, the girl's legs churning to keep up. They came out directly behind the fire hydrant that they'd planted the night before, separated from it by the dense crowd. Marlys asked a tall man at the back, "Do you see them yet? ~ John Sandford

No, the Boss corrected, I'm not a lawyer. I know some law ... but I'm not a lawyer. That's why I can see what the law is like. It's like a single-bed blanket on a double bed and three folks in the bed and a cold night. There ain't ever enough blanket to cover the case, no matter how much pulling and hauling, and somebody is always going to nigh catch pneumonia. Hell, the law is like the pants you bought last year for a growing boy, but it is always this year and the seams are popped and the shankbone's to the breeze. The law is always too short and too tight for growing humankind. The best you can do is do something and then make up some law to fit and by the time that law gets on the books you would have done something different. ~ Robert Penn Warren

A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the doughnut toss and the march of the headless plush toys. Instead, I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head and called it a night. ~ David Sedaris

I like working late at night and then going into the house and sitting down and watching a movie and then going to sleep. ~ Robert Barry

For instance, if you woke up in the middle of the night and saw a masked woman trying to crawl through your bedroom window, you might call your mother or father to help you push her back out. If you found yourself hopelessly lost in the middle of a strange city, you might ask the police to give you a ride home. And if you were an author locked in an Italian restaurant that was slowly filling up with water, you might call upon your acquaintances in the locksmith, pasta, and sponge business to come and rescue you. ~ Lemony Snicket

I let the night come in and swirl around and bring me lightness and positivity. I let the night suck out the failure and my embarrassment and shame over the same. ~ Kate O'Donnell

For many years I have been a night watchman of the Milky Way galaxy. ~ Bart Bok

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

I'm a bat. All my greatest, creative ideas come at night. So I hardly ever sleep. ~ Jessica White

I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night. ~ Marie Corelli

I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it. ~ Elie Wiesel

Occasionally I looked up towards some vast old apartment with its shutters still open and where amphibious men and women, adapting themselves each evening to living in an element different from their daytime one, swam about slowly in the dense liquid which at nightfall rises incessantly from the wells of lamps and fills the rooms to the brink of their walls of stone and glass, and as they moved about in it, their bodies sent forth unctuous golden ripples. ~ Marcel Proust

Night plans aren't any good in the morning. The way you think at night is no good in the morning. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Kane..." she hesitated. "I lied to you last night."
His green eyes searched her face. "What did you lie about?"
"When I said... when I said I didn't want to kiss you again." Her breath came out in an unsteady puff. "I lied. ~ Elle Kennedy

Out of the unreal shadows of night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off ... p 207 ~ Oscar Wilde

Air buffeted him and he heard the heavy flap of wings. Rake smiled. "Silanah," he said softly, knowing she would hear him. The red dragon slipped between two towers and banked, returning to his position. "I know you sense the Demon Lord's presence, Silanah. You would help me in this. I know, I know." He shook his head. "Return to Moon's Spawn, dear friend. This battle is mine. Yours is done. But know this: if I fail, you may seek to avenge my death." Silanah swept overhead and loosed a thin wail. "Go home," Rake whispered. The red dragon cried again, then swung westward and rose through the night air. ~ Steven Erikson

But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. ~ John Keats

I try to pray everyday or every night to thank my Personal Lord for all that he has given me, all that he is giving me, and all that he will give me. ~ James Hauenstein

Is it time to go?" she asked, propping herself onto her elbow. He tugged up the collar of his coat and slipped his feet into his boots. Then he looked at her with a seriousness that sent a jolt of fear through her. "We can't leave." "Sure we can." She pushed herself up but was immediately overcome by a wave of dizziness. "Even if you were up to leaving, which you're not" - he nodded at her weak attempt at sitting up - "I let the horse go last night. It was her only chance of surviving. Hopefully she made her way back to the stable." "We could walk - " "Not without snowshoes. The snow's too deep and the wind too harsh." She leaned back again, suddenly weary and cold. "Then we're stuck here?" "Until a rescue party comes for us." He pulled on his gloves. "Or until spring. Whichever comes first." He gave a halfhearted grin at his attempt at a joke. ~ Jody Hedlund

Anthony watched him, dumbfounded, and then turned to Lucy. "What have you done with Zack's brain?"
Lucy stood to follow Zack. "What brain? I don't think he has one. I think he's just one giant exposed nerve ending. I swear sometimes at night, I can hear his neurons snapping like popcorn. ~ Jennifer Crusie

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. ~ William Shakespeare

Nowadays, when kids decide they like an artist, they'll absorb everything that artist has ever done in a single night. ~ Judd Apatow

Is writing the gift of curling up, of curling up with reality? One would so love to curl up, of course, but what happens to me then? What happens to those, who don't really know reality at all? It's so very dishevelled. No comb, that could smooth it down. The writers run through it and despairingly gather together their hair into a style, which promptly haunts them at night. Something's wrong with the way one looks. The beautifully piled up hair can be chased out of its home of dreams again, but can anyway no longer be tamed. Or hangs limp once more, a veil before a face, no sooner than it could finally be subdued. Or stands involuntarily on end in horror at what is constantly happening. It simply won't be tidied up. It doesn't want to. ~ Elfriede Jelinek

My stepfather, John O'Hara, was the goodest man there was. He was not a man of many words, but of carefully chosen ones. He was the one parent who didn't try to fix me. One night I sat on his lap in his chair by the woodstove, sobbing. He just held me quietly and then asked only, "What does it feel like?" It was the first time I was prompted to articulate it. I thought about it, then said, "I feel homesick." That still feels like the most accurate description - I felt homesick, but I was home. ~ Sarah Silverman

Ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly - or ever - gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe ~ Brian Greene

What pudor pejorocracy affronts
how awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot
what breeds where dirtiness is law
what crawls
below ~ Charles Olson

My evening really begins when I take a long, hot bath. I light a candle, and I turn on the news and try to catch up. It's when I can breathe from the day to the night, and that means a lot to me. ~ Vera Wang

When you have Chick Night to look forward to, it can be your light at the end of a long and trying month. It can help you maintain your balance, keep your perspective, and hold on to your sanity during times when you're actually afraid to wonder what else could go wrong. ~ Colleen Kleven

I don't know much about contemporary music. I do have an iPod but I listen to a lot of old blues. I listen to John Lee Hooker and Elmore James. I have been listening to them for years. I was obsessed with Van Morrison for years. I went to see him recently where he performed Astral Weeks. I just spent the entire night crying, but I was really obsessed with Van Morrison. ~ Robert Pattinson

There are 160,000 of our men and women in Iraq that wonder whether there is going to be a hand grenade or a missile lobbed into where they are sleeping at night. Those are people who make a real sacrifice. ~ Mitt Romney

Possessed by the power of the gorgeous night, she seemed at one and the same moment annihilated and glorified. ~ George MacDonald

Then, as Mag worried the crock into her basket, trying not to squash goats' eyes and violets, the young man reached across the counter and seized her hand. She gazed at him in wonder. He had thick, moist fingers, and she needed her hand to shift the eyes.
'Mag,' he said huskily. His heavy, earnest face was sheened with sweat and the bluish shadow of his first beard. 'How can you not see how we belong to one another? We've grown up together, like night and day. You are moon to my sun, you are silver to my aspiring gold - You would complete me -'
'Wait,' she pleaded. 'The crock is on the violets.'
'Marry me. Together we would become the marvel we seek, the transmutation of time into eternity -'
She snorted inelegantly, and felt something peculiar flowing through her bones, an unaccustomed panic, a desperate urgency she barely knew words for. He thought he recognized her as human. 'You are mistaken,' she said coldly. 'And from what I've seen of both alchemy and marriage, all the marvels lie in the expectation. ~ Patricia A. McKillip

By a route obscure and lonely Haunted by ill angels only, Where an eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule
From a wild, weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE, out of TIME. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

As far as I'm concerned, story is everything. It is why we get up in the morning and how we choose who to take to bed at night. Story is the thread that weaves together the very fabric of reality. ~ J.K. Norry

Nothing helps you sleep at night so much as being absolutely certain that you're right, and everyone else is evil. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton