Quotes about sleep
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“Even bipolar vampires needed sleep from time to time, and he was well past his recommended safe dosage of stress.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Black Dawn

“Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Love, Women

“How could I be sleeping with this particular man…. Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.”

Margaret Atwood book Lady Oracle

Source: Lady Oracle

Love

“I thought I'd stumbled on Sleeping Beauty and her ugly sister,' said another voice, 'waiting for the kiss of true love to wake them from their slumbers. Forgive me if I didn't oblige.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Kings of Clonmel

Love, Beauty, Forgiveness, Kiss

“Were you watching me sleep? Because I thought we agreed that's creepy.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

“She used to say she could taste sleep and that it was as delicious as a BLT on fresh French bread.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“You'd tell the world what your best friend wore to sleep if you thought it made a good enough story.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: The Hob's Bargain

World

“I just want to sleep with a clear conscience and wake up with the ability to look at myself in the mirror. I also want my life to be my own. Even if it's a shitty goddamn life, it's still mine.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Life

“I worry that Jesus drinks himself to sleep when he hears me talk like this.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Drink

“Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
---"On death”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Complete Poems and Selected Letters

Life, Death, Dreams

“I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But it was not until much later that I was able to get any real sleep. In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Variant: Good communication is just as stimulating as...
Source: Gift from the Sea (1955)

Communication, Coffee

“I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with someone even if they could have. I need to know these people exist.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

People, Understanding

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Life, Soul, Star, Birth

“Sleep is a weapon!”

Robert Ludlum (1927–2001) Novelist

“Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose

Feeling, Time

“And the memories of all we have loved stay and come back to us in the evening of our life. They are not dead but sleep, and it is well to gather a treasure of them.”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Love, Life, Memory, Dead

“Sleep with Seth Mortensen? Good grief. It was the most preposterous thing I'd ever heard. It was appalling. If I absorbed his life force, there was no telling how long it'd be until his next book came out.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Blues

Life, Books

“Because you may think a bed is a peaceful thing, Sir, and to you it may mean rest and comfort and a good night's sleep. But it isn't so for everyone; and there are many dangerous things that may take place in a bed.”

Margaret Atwood book Alias Grace

Source: Alias Grace

Peace, Thinking, Night

“Mothers arms are made of tenderness, And sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

“i suppose i have a really loose interpretation of "work", because i think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. the machinery is always going. even when you sleep”

Andy Warhol book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Variant: I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work,' because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do.
Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 6: Work
Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
Context: I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of "work" because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.

Thinking

“I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require an expenditure of so much strength.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Effort

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Men, Night

“A people that has remained convinced of its greatness and invulnerability, that has chosen to believe such a myth in the face of all the evidence, is a people in the grip of a kind of sleep, or madness.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

People, Madness

“Chiron insisted that we talk about the Labyrinth in the morning which is like 'Hey, your life's in mortal danger. Sleep tight!”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Life

“When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), p. 110

Hate, Health, Happiness

“Take a nap in a fireplace and you'll sleep like a log.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

“Also, I'm sleeping with your mom. Just thought you should know.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Moms

“It was always late at night, when everything and everyone else was quiet, that those voices would rise like ghosts, soft and haunting, filling your mind until sleep finally came.”

Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon

Source: Keeping the Moon

Night

“Weren't we all crazy in our sleep? What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of our neighbor's children?”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Children

“What the feck?” Dani snapped when I answered. “You sleep like the fecking dead up there! I been calling you for five fecking minutes!”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Dead

“I'm so exhausted and yet I feel like I'll never sleep again.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Hidden Away

Feeling

“Successful women don't sleep until noon.”

Barbara Taylor Bradford (1933) British author

Source: Being Elizabeth

Women, Success

“In the final seconds before sleep, I wish I could go back and undo everything, give those little girls another chance.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Girl, Chance

“A woman unsatisfied must have luxuries. But a woman who loves a man would sleep on a board”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Love

“Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

Death

“Jesus, you've got a death wish."
"Right now I have a bathroom-and-sleep-somewhere safe wish, kid.”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

Source: Strange Angels

Death

“If only Simon were here. He could probably bore you to sleep.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“A daughter,' Rowley scooped up the child and held her high. The baby blinked from sleep and crowed with him. 'Any fool can have a son,' he said. 'It takes a man to conceive a daughter.”

Diana Norman (1933–2011) British author and journalist

Source: The Serpent's Tale

Fools, Baby, Daughters

“You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea and you always double knot your shoelaces.' I fight back. Then I dive back into my tent before I do something stupid like cry.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Variant: But more words tumble out. 'You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces.'

Then I dive into my tent before I do something stupid like cry.
Source: Mockingjay

Stupidity, Fight, Tea, Cry

“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Books, Art, Soul, Star

“We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

Men, Books, Dreams, Study

“What am I supposed to do with a wool coat? Especially here in Palm Springs?”

“Sleep with it,” he suggested. “Think of me.”

Richelle Mead book The Indigo Spell

Source: The Indigo Spell

Spring, Thinking

“A boy spends his time finding a girl to sleep with. A real man spends his time looking for the one worth waking up to.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Girl, Boy, Time

“What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.”

Theodore Roethke The Waking

The Waking (1953), The Waking
Source: The Collected Poems
Context: This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Learning

“Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Death

“Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Way, Change

“God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

God, Cry

“I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,
absorbing and thinking, eating each day.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Thinking

“Men don’t realize that if we’re sleeping with them on the first date, we’re probably not interested in seeing them again either.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

Men

“When you're unhappy, I guess everything in the world - reading, eating, sleeping - has something buried somewhere inside it that just makes you unhappier.”

Nick Hornby book A Long Way Down

Source: A Long Way Down

World, Reading

“I love you. I love your smile, your snarl, your grin, your face when you're sleeping.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

Love, Smile

“How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

People

“That if you could acquire enough, accomplish enough, you’d never want to own or do another thing. That if you could eat or sleep enough, you’d never need more. That if enough people loved you, you’d stop needing love.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Love, People

“Dogs are here to remind us life really is a simple thing. You eat, sleep, take walks, and pee when you must. That's about all there is. They are quick to forgive trespasses and assume strangers will be kind.”

Jonathan Carroll book The Marriage of Sticks

Source: The Marriage of Sticks

Life, Dogs, Forgiveness

“I fell out of the hammock while I was sleeping. (Arik)
On your head? (Geary)
Apparently. Good thing it’s hard, huh? (Arik)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: The Dream Hunter

“I pull the sleeping bag up to his chin and kiss his forehead, not for the audience, but for me. Because I'm so grateful that he's here, not dead by the stream as I'd thought. So glad I don't have to face Cato alone.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Kiss, Dead

“Now she had to pretend not to love the man she was pretending to love while pretending she wasn't sleeping with him.”

Shannon Stacey (1972) american writer

Source: Yours to Keep

Love

“Is this really true? If we take an average day in the life of the average man we seem to see very little evidence of concern with the sciences and the arts. The average man gets up, goes to work, eats his meals, reads the newspapers, watches television, goes to the cinema, goes to bed, sleeps, wakes up, starts all over again. Unless we happen to be professional scientists, laboratory experiments and formulae have ceased to have any meaning for most of us; unless we happen to be poets or painters or musicians—or teachers of literature, painting, and music—the arts seem to us to be only the concern of schoolchildren. And yet people have said, and people still say, that the great glories of our civilisation are the scientists and artists. Ancient Greece is remembered because of mathematicians like Euclid and Pythagoras, because of poets like Homer and dramatists like Sophocles. In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Life, People, Age, Art

“The money men make from their willingness to work the least desirable hours is not a sign of discrimination against women, but a sign of the willingness of mostly married men to lose sleep to support the family as their wife loses sleep to feed the child. A willingness to do the uncomfortable shifts is one reason married men earn more than twice what never-married men earn. Men's contribution, made at night, need not be lost in the dark.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 69.

Women, Men, Money, Family

“Somewhere far away a bittern cried, a hollow, melancholy sound like a cow shut up in a barn. The cry of that mysterious bird was heard every spring, but no one knew what it was like or where it lived. At the top of the hill by the hospital, in the bushes close to the pond, and in the fields the nightingales were trilling. The cuckoo kept reckoning someone's years and losing count and beginning again. In the pond the frogs called angrily to one another, straining themselves to bursting, and one could even make out the words: "That's what you are! That's what you are!" What a noise there was! It seemed as though all these creatures were singing and shouting so that no one might sleep on that spring night, so that all, even the angry frogs, might appreciate and enjoy every minute: life is given only once.”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 8, pp. 224

Life, Spring, Bird, Singing

“…and you may sleep quietly in your beds.”

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (1841–1920) Royal Navy admiral of the fleet

Speech at The Royal Academy Banquet, 1903, regarding the threat of invasion. p. 83. https://archive.org/stream/cu31924027924509#page/n113/mode/1up The phrase 'Sleep quiet in your beds' appears in Records, p. 85 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924027924509#page/n116/mode/1up and Memories, p. 202. https://archive.org/stream/memoriesbyadmira00fishuoft#page/202/mode/1up The phrase 'So sleep easy in your beds' was used for the title for the sixth episode of the BBC documentary The Great War. Records (1919) https://archive.org/stream/cu31924027924509#page/n0/mode/1up

“The rest of our weekend—sleeping arrangements, hand-done work, hand-prepared food—was simple enough to please Thoreau, who I am convinced was a nice fellow who confused rustic vacations with life.”

Alexei Panshin book Rite of Passage

Source: Rite of Passage (1968), Chapter 11 (p. 157).

Life, Food

“If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant’s reasoning to the grown man’s passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.”

Denis Diderot book Rameau's Nephew

Rameau's Nephew (1762)

Passion, Time

“Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust
That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust,
Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping
In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

In his letter to Vincent Novello, November 8, 1830.

Dead

“Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be ay sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping.”

Walter Scott book The Heart of Midlothian

The Heart of Midlothian (1818), Ch. 8.

Tree

“I do a dance to make the rain come,
Smile to keep the sky from falling down, down, down, down.
Collect the love that I've been given
Build a nest for us to sleep in here
You know it's real.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"All My Stars Aligned"
Marry Me (2007)

Love, Smile, Dance

“…thousands of little children occupy sleeping quarters with parents and boarders whose every act is visible to all. Morality indeed! Society is much like the ostrich with its head in the sand. It will not look at facts and face the responsibility of its own stupidity.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

"Morality and Birth Control", February-March, 1918, pp. 11,14.
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Children, Stupidity, Parent

“When you're interested in somebody, and you think they might be interested in you, you should point out all your beauty problems and defects right away, rather than take a chance they won't notice them... On the other hand, say you have a purely temporary beauty problem—a new pimple, lackluster hair, no-sleep eyes, five extra pounds around the middle. Still, whatever it is, you should point it out... If you don't point out these things they might think that your temporary beauty problem is a permanent beauty problem... If they really do like you for yourself, they'll be willing to use their imagination to think of what you must look like without your temporary beauty problem.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 4: Beauty

Beauty, Imagination, Problem, Thinking

“So she won’t sleep better alone, And he won’t sleep better alone, No they won’t feel better alone. ~ "Sleep Better"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

Feeling

“Lying down to sleep on the earthen riverbank, I thought, Vrindavan is attracting my heart like no other place. What is happening to me? Please reveal Your divine will. With this prayer, I drifted off to sleep.
Before dawn, I awoke to the ringing of temple bells, signaling that it was time to begin my journey to Hardwar. But my body lay there like a corpse. Gasping in pain, I couldn’t move. A blazing fever consumed me from within, and under the spell of unbearable nausea, my stomach churned. Like a hostage, I lay on that riverbank. As the sun rose, celebrating a new day, I felt my life force sinking. Death that morning would have been a welcome relief. Hours passed.
At noon, I still lay there. This fever will surely kill me, I thought.
Just when I felt it couldn’t get any worse, I saw in the overcast sky something that chilled my heart. Vultures circled above, their keen sights focused on me. It seemed the fever was cooking me for their lunch, and they were just waiting until I was well done. They hovered lower and lower. One swooped to the ground, a huge black and white bird with a long, curving neck and sloping beak. It stared, sizing up my condition, then jabbed its pointed beak into my ribcage. My body recoiled, my mind screamed, and my eyes stared back at my assailant, seeking pity. The vulture flapped its gigantic wings and rejoined its fellow predators circling above. On the damp soil, I gazed up at the birds as they soared in impatient circles. Suddenly, my vision blurred and I momentarily blacked out. When I came to, I felt I was burning alive from inside out. Perspiring, trembling, and gagging, I gave up all hope.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. A local farmer herding his cows noticed me and took pity. Pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, he looked skyward toward the vultures and, understanding my predicament, lifted me onto a bullock cart. As we jostled along the muddy paths, the vultures followed overhead. The farmer entrusted me to a charitable hospital where the attendants placed me in the free ward. Eight beds lined each side of the room. The impoverished and sadhu patients alike occupied all sixteen beds. For hours, I lay unattended in a bed near the entrance. Finally that evening the doctor came and, after performing a series of tests, concluded that I was suffering from severe typhoid fever and dehydration. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You will likely die, but we will try to save your life.””

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

Republished on The Journey Home website.
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life, Death, Pain, Hope

“Now the creed to which I subscribe is like a battle cry, engraved on my heart - the Credo of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Before, in those former times, I could say, "I shall sleep in the dust: and if thou seek me in the morning, I shall not be" (Job 7:21). Now I can say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God. Whom I myself shall see and my eyes shall behold, and not another: this my hope is laid up in my bosom" (Job 19:25-27).”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

From Union Square to Rome (1938), p. 145

God, Hope, Time, Heart

“Let us learn wisdom from this illustrious example. We have passed the Red Sea of slaughter; our garments are yet wet with its crimson spray. We have crossed the fearful wilderness of war, and have led our four hundred thousand heroes to sleep beside the dead enemies of the Republic. We have heard the voice of God amid the thunders of battle commanding us to wash our hands of iniquity, to 'proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.' When we spurned his counsels we were defeated, and the gulfs of ruin yawned before us. When we obeyed his voice, he gave us victory. And now at last we have reached the confines of the wilderness. Before us is the land of promise, the land of hope, the land of peace, filled with possibilities of greatness and glory too vast for the grasp of the imagination. Are we worthy to enter it? On what condition may it be ours to enjoy and transmit to our children's children? Let us pause and make deliberate and solemn preparation. Let us, as representatives of the people, whose servants we are, bear in advance the sacred ark of republican liberty, with its tables of the law inscribed with the 'irreversible guaranties' of liberty. Let us here build a monument on which shall be written not only the curses of the law against treason, disloyalty, and oppression, but also an everlasting covenant of peace and blessing with loyalty, liberty, and obedience; and all the people will say, Amen.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

Wisdom, God, War, Children

“I couldn't get to sleep at night without saying the Lord's Prayer because, when I was young, I felt I was touched by the hand of Jesus, and hated myself for challenging it.”

Bruce Parry (1969) British documentarian

As quoted in "Bruce Parry: 'My job doesn't allow me a private life" by Cassandra Jardine in The Telegraph (19 September 1007) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2007/09/19/nosplit/fttribe119.xml

Hate, Night

“I have long believed that it is only right and appropriate that before one sleeps with someone, one should be able – if called upon to do so – to make them a proper omelet in the morning. Surely that kind of civility and selflessness would be both good manners and good for the world.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Medium Raw (2010)

World

“When I was a small child and adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always beamed and said, ‘A vegetarian’. And that’s exactly what I became. Despite growing up with parents who lived on meals of meat and two veg, eating animals never made sense to me. … I grew up surrounded by dogs and cats and couldn’t understand why we protected these animals, played with them, encouraged them to sleep in our beds, and called them ‘pets’ while labelling other equally interesting, cuddly, and sentient animals ‘dinner’.”

Sadie Frost (1965) English actress and producer

“Sadie Frost opens up about how vegetarianism changed her life”, in Marie Claire (19 May 2017) http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/life/food-drink/sadie-frost-vegetarian-507329#RikeLQmB184kEcJP.99.

Dogs, Cats, Understanding, Parent