Quotes about the night
page 10

“We have shared out, like thieves, the amazing treasures of days and nights.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Star

“Day
Play
We play all day.
Night
Fight
We fight all night.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Hop On Pop

Fight

“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

"Bright Star" (1819)
Context: Bright star! would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores.

Art, Star, Nature

“Soon you give up, don't look for her anymore, either in the town or at night or in the daytime.
Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened.”

Marguerite Duras book The Malady of Death

Source: The Malady of Death

Love, Way

“Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself, "Have I vibrated in tune with the Infinite today, or have I failed?”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

Source: Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers

“As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XXI
Adonais (1821)

“Good days and long nights to ya, sai.”

Stephen King book Wizard and Glass

Variant: Long days and pleasant nights.
Source: Wizard and Glass

“My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn't write
What the night pencilled in”

Leonard Cohen book Book of Longing

Source: Book of Longing

“I thought about the days i had handed over to a bottle.. the nights i can't remember.. the mornings i slept thru.. all the time spent running from myself.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Time

“A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Hope, Sleep, Daughters

“What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light?”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Light, Sun

“Resorting to connecting the dots this morning because it was a long night & he needs to do something really simple to get started again.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Traveling Light: Stories & Drawings for a Quiet Mind

“So what’s on the agenda for tonight? (Danger)
Migraine, futility, possible death. Same as every night, I guess. (Alexion)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Sins of the Night

Death

“The days and nights come apart. I feel them corroding at the seams.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Feeling

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear (2011), Chapter 43, “The Flickering Way” (p. 318)

Wise, Men, Fear, Sea

“Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.”

Mahmoud Darwich (1941–2008) Palestinian writer

Source: Absent Presence

Dreams

“Your name is Lily Whitney. You are the woman I want at my side night and day. I want you to be the mother of my children someday. I want you for my lover. I want you for the person I turn to when the world gets to be too much.”

Christine Feehan book Shadow Game

Source: Shadow Game

Children, World, Lovers, Personality

“I think piracy is a bit like drinking. You want to stay out all night doing it, you pay the price the next day.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Drink, Thinking

“It’s good for you to think of this, son. Ponder. Worry. Stay up nights, frightened for the casualties of your ideology. It will do you good to realize the price of fighting.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: Steelheart

Thinking, Fight

“The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.”

Yasunari Kawabata book Palm-of-the-Hand Stories

Source: Palm-of-the-Hand Stories

Men, Understanding, Light, Joy

“I walked into my own book, seeking peace.
It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.”

Anaïs Nin book House of Incest

Source: House of Incest

Books, Peace, Dreams, Madness

“The moon sets and the eastern sky lightens, the hem of night pulling away, taking stars with it one by one until only two are left.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Star

“And there you have it… if I knew that I could only have a few nights in that man's arms or nothing, I would take those magic nights and use them to keep me warm for the rest of my life.”

Karen Marie Moning book To Tame a Highland Warrior

Source: To Tame a Highland Warrior

Life

“Black as night and as beautiful as forever.”

Stephen King book Everything's Eventual

Source: Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales

Beauty

“Each night I lie and dream about the one
Who kissed me and awakened my desire
I spent a single hour with him alone
And since that hour, my days are layed with fire.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Secret Circle Booklet

Lie, Dreams, Kiss

“The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference.”

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) Belgian writer

Source: Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

Indifference

“Iggy’s spine tightened, his face like ice. When he’d been at the School, they’d tried to surgically enhance his night vision. Now he was blind forever. Oops.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

School

“Rache! Glad you're… Tink loves a duck!" he said, wings clattering. "It stinks of sex in here. God, woman. I leave you alone for one night, and you're humping the ghost." - Jenks to Rachel”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

Love, God, Sex

“It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were okay, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that simply wasn't so”

Gillian Flynn book Dark Places

Source: Dark Places

“What a nice night for an evening.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 40 The Martyr
Context: The longest day must have its close — the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day.

Hope, Good Night, Way

“Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction!

Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family.”

Tom Stoppard Arcadia

Source: Arcadia

Family, Time

“That’s the last time you’re going to kiss me,” I warned when it ended.
He smiled knowingly, and in his eyes, I could see his own memories of that night. “So you say.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Storm Born

Smile, Kiss, Memory, Time

“The Night is young
& full of rest
I can’t describe
the way she’s dress’d
She’ll pander to some strange
requests
Anything that you suggest
Anything to please her guest.”

Jim Morrison book Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison

Source: Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison

Way

“Ranger appeared in the bathroom doorway and I was too relieved to be embarrassed. "I appreciate you coming out in the middle of the night," I said.

Ranger smiled. "I didn't want to miss seeing you chained up naked.”

Janet Evanovich book One for the Money

Source: One for the Money

Smile, Appearance

“For thousands of nights I dreamed of making love to you. No man on earth has ever hated sunrise as I do.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

love, Good Night, Romantic, For Her

“Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Birthday, Age, Hope, Home

“You leave the phone on beside you as you fall asleep. I sit in my bed and listen to your breathing, until I know you are safe, until I know you no longer need me for the night.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

“Do you really have the ability to control all types of undead?" Magnus asked.
"Can you really make a hundred shoes in a single night?" I asked.
Magnus smiled. "Wrong kind of fairie.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bloody Bones

Source: Bloody Bones

Smile, Shoe

“The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand.”

Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director

Source: Selected Poems

Pain, Heart

“Everything is fine and bright. Day must follow every night. My power keeps me safe from harm. The Goddess holds me in her arms.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: Full Circle

“I went for a walk last night and she asked me how long I was going to be gone. I said, 'The whole time.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Time

“Yes, I do enjoy walking at night. The world’s more to my liking then, not so loud, not so fast, not so crowded, and a good deal more mysterious.”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

World

“If this were a movie, I would bust a secret move so fierce the entire place would be razed to the ground. I'd finish with something snappy like "And don't forget my soda, punk" while I strolled off into the night.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

Secret, Forgetting

“Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.”

Stephen King The Tommyknockers

Source: The Tommyknockers

“When I sleep, I dream of you, and when I wake, I long to hold you in my arms. If anything, our time apart has only made me more certain that I want to spend my nights by your side, and my days with your heart.”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Paul Flanner, Chapter 16, p. 188
Source: 2000s, Nights in Rodanthe (2002)

Wedding, Dreams, Sleep, Time

“At night I dream that you and I are two plants
that grew together, roots entwined,
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
since we are made of earth and rain.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: Regalo de un Poeta

Dreams

“His steady gaze held hers. His blue eyes were very dark, uniquely so. She had known people before with blue eyes, but they had always been light blue. Will's were the color of the sky just on the edge of night.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

People, Color, Light

“Save me, Shahara. Save me from the lonely nights that never end. (Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Fire

“Mistress, I have never asked anything of you in my servitude. But now, I beg you this: do not make me keep passing these adolescent sentiments back and forth all night.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Shadow Heir

“Men chase by night those they will not greet by day.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

Men

“Morning would come before we knew it. It always did. But we still had the night, and for now, we were together, so I just closed my eyes and drank it all in.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“Night is not something to endure until dawn. It is an element, like wind or fire. Darkness is its own kingdom; it moves to its own laws, and many living things dwell in it.”

Patricia A. McKillip book Harpist in the Wind

Source: Harpist in the Wind

Law

“The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.”

Roald Dahl The BFG

Source: The BFG

World, Sleep

“One dark night the skeletons that they had carefully hidden in an obscure closet appeared, grabbed them around the throat, and strangled them.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Appearance

“Without me, without me,
Everyday's misery.
But with me - am I wrong?
No night is too long!”

Ruth Rendell (1930–2015) British writer

Source: No Night is Too Long

“On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Star, Spring

“What child unable to sleep on a warm summer night hasn't thought he saw Peter Pan's sailing ship in the sky? I will teach you to see that ship.”

Roberto Cotroneo (1961) Italian journalist and writer

Sleep, Summer

“Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

Money, Soul, Sleep, Help

“Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play a guitar under your window every night and sing at the top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have to marry me to save your reputation.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

God, Singing

“It's cold out there, colder than a ticket taker's smile at the Ivar Theatre on a Saturday night.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Smile

“Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

Men

“There is a dead spot in the night, that coldest, blackest time when the world has forgotten evening and dawn is not yet a promise. A time when it is far too early to arise, but so late that going to bed makes small sense.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

World, Sense, Time, Dead

“Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, "Let Newton be!"”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

and all was light.
Epitaph intended for Sir Isaac Newton.

God, Law, Nature, Light

“He longed for the deep as she longed for the night sky and for white lilies floating on water -- although she still tried to convince herself that love alone could feed her soul.”

Cornelia Funke Reckless

Source: Reckless

Love, Soul, Water

“I believe in whatever gets you throught the night. […] Night is the hardest time to be alive. For me, anyway. It lasts so long, and four A. M. knows all my secrets.”

Poppy Z. Brite (1967) Novelist, short story writer, food writer

Secret, Time

“As a child, I was aware that, at night, infrared vision would reveal monsters hiding in the bedroom closet only if they were warm-blooded. But everybody knows that your average bedroom monster is reptilian and cold-blooded.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson book Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Source: Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries

“Will I get nights of ecstasy?"
"And days. Ecstasy all the time.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Time

“The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Men

“Alexander, my nights, my days, my every thought. You will fall away from me in just a while, won’t you, and I’ll be whole again, and I will go on and feel for someone else, the way everybody does.

But my innocence is gone forever.”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Source: The Bronze Horseman

Way, Feeling

“storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Love, Appearance

“I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire.”

Philippa Gregory book The Other Boleyn Girl

Source: The Other Boleyn Girl

Dreams, Thinking, Sleep, Waiting

“I lost track of day and night too. My time was divided into Dimitri and not-Dimitri. He was my world. When he wasn't there, the moments were agony.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

World, Time

“Aww, did we masturbate through the tears last night?”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

Tear

“Don’t move. I like this ledge of loose diamonds
waiting to be spilled into the night.
Let’s shine awhile without touching.
Sensuality is, after all, a river that is always waiting.”

Tess Gallagher (1943) American writer

Source: Moon Crossing Bridge

Waiting

“Every night death came, slowly, painfully, and every morning Maddox awoke in bed, knowing he'd have to die again later. That was his greatest curse and his eternal punishment.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

Death

“Is this one of those keep-your-friends-close-and-your-enemies-closer things?"
"I though it was keep your friends close so you have someone to drive the car when you sneak over to your enemy's house at night and throw up in his mailbox.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Cars, Housing

“Am I sure? Only as sure as I am that the reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, can ever be the whole truth.”

Arthur Schnitzler book Dream Story

Source: Dream Story

Truth, Reality

“No," said Luis, "You can't date the Lord of the Night Court."
"Well, I'm not, he dumped me."
"You can't get dumped by the lord of the night court."
"Oh, yes, you can. You so completely can.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

“Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep in exile?”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Source: A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

Sleep

“fraught, adj.

Does every “I love you” deserve an “I love you too”? Does every kiss deserve a kiss back? Does every night deserve to be spent on a lover?
If the answer to any of these is “No,” what do we do?”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Love, Lovers, Kiss

“The night swallowed him up like a thieving fox.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

“Clark," she said softly, "I wouldn't change you for the world.
You're sweet the way you are. The things that'll make you fail
I'll love always-- the living in the past, the lazy days and
nights you have, and all your carelessness and generosity.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Ice Palace

Source: The Ice Palace

Love, World, Way, Change

“My dear, I think of you always and at night I build myself a warm nest of things I remember and float in your sweetness till morning.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Thinking

“In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.”

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) Roman Catholic saint

Light, Suffering

“A black cat among roses,
phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon,
the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still.
It is dazed with moonlight,
contented with perfume…”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

Cats

“And when the fog's over and the stars and the moon come out at night it'll be a beautiful sight.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Beauty, Star

“At night, when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Way

“No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Tear

“Yeah and it's over before you know it.
It all goes by so fast.
Yeah, the bad nights last forever,
And the good nights don't ever seem to last”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

The Best of Everything
Lyrics, Southern Accents (1985)

“I hate it when my leg falls asleep. I know that means it's going to be up all night.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Hate

“Of all the crap, crap, crappy nights I've ever had in the whole of my crap life. On a scale of one to 10, we're talking… a minus 6. And it's not like I even have very high standards.”

Sophie Kinsella (1969) British writer

Life

“The sun is nice but it lights things up so much that you can't see very far… The night time is better. It stretches your soul to the stars.”

Fynn (1919–1999) British writer

Source: Mister God, This is Anna

Soul, Star, Light, Time

“In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Source: At Seventy: A Journal

Pain, Food, Past

“If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it's within your reach. And it'll be worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build. It'll be worth it, I promise.”

Steve Wozniak book iWoz

Source: iWoz (2006), p. 300

Love, Thinking

“He would wake for no reason in the middle of the night, and the memory of the self-absorbed love was revealed to him for what it was: a pitfall of happiness that he despised and desired at the same time, but from which it was impossible to escape.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love, Memory, Time, Happiness

“my candle burns at both ends it will not last the night but arh my friends and oh my foes it gives a lovely light”

Roald Dahl book Boy

Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920); said to be a motto Roald Dahl lived by.
Misattributed
Variant: My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light.
Source: Boy: Tales of Childhood

Love, Light

“The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole---
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Collected Poems

Death, Star, Light

“Erotic play discloses a nameless world which is revealed by the nocturnal language of lovers. Such language is not written down. It is whispered into the ear at night in a hoarse voice. At dawn it is forgotten.”

Jean Genet book The Thief's Journal

Source: The Thief's Journal

World, Lovers

Quotes about the night page 10

Quotes about the night
page 10