Quotes about nightmare (298 quotes, page 3)

“[I]f you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason-responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to [participate]. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith as a way of getting to the truth, and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function that I do take seriously). But you must not expect me to go along with your defense of faith as a path to truth if at any point you appeal to the very dispensation you are supposedly trying to justify. Before you appeal to faith when reason has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side. You are sightseeing with a loved one in a foreign land, and your loved one is brutally murdered in front of your eyes. At the trial it turns out that in this land friends of the accused may be called as witnesses for the defense, testifying about their faith in his innocence. You watch the parade of his moist-eyed friends, obviously sincere, proudly proclaiming their undying faith in the innocence of the man you saw commit the terrible deed. The judge listens intently and respectfully, obviously more moved by this outpouring than by all the evidence presented by the prosecution. Is this not a nightmare? Would you be willing to live in such a land? Or would you be willing to be operated on by a surgeon you tells you that whenever a little voice in him tells him to disregard his medical training, he listens to the little voice? I know it passes in polite company to let people have it both ways, and under most circumstances I wholeheartedly cooperate with this benign agreement. But we're seriously trying to get at the truth here, and if you think that this common but unspoken understanding about faith is anything better than socially useful obfuscation to avoid mutual embarrassment and loss of face, you have either seen much more deeply into the issue that any philosopher ever has (for none has ever come up with a good defense of this) or you are kidding yourself.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Love , People , Truth , Faith

“[Danny] laughed once and said, 'That man is such an ignoramus, Father.' I was angry. 'Look into his soul,' I said. 'Stand inside his soul and see the world through his eyes. You will know the pain he feels because of his ignorance, and you will not laugh.' He was bewildered and hurt. The nightmares he began to have…. But he learned to find answers for himself. He suffered and learned to listen to the suffering of others. In the silence between us, he began to hear the world crying.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

Reb Saunders to Reuven Malter when talking about when Daniel was younger (p. 286)
The Chosen (1967)

Pain , World , Feeling , Soul

“On Thursday, March 14th, panic was added to chaos. London gold dealers, in describing the day´s action, used the un-British words "stampede", "catastrophe", and "nightmare."”

John Brooks (writer) (1920–1993) American writer

Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

“[T]his film offers a nightmare image: the "Black Rebels," an outlaw motorcycle gang — a leather-jacketed pack who resemble storm troopers — terrorize a town. Their emblem is a death's head and crossed pistons and rods, and Marlon Brando, in his magnetic, soft-eyed youth, is their moody leader. The picture seemed to be frightened of its subject — the young nihilists who say "no" to American blandness and conformity — and reduced it as quickly as possible to the trivial meaninglessness of misunderstood boy meets understanding girl (Mary Murphy), but the audience savored the possibilities, and this clumsy, naive film was banned and argued about in so many countries that it developed a near-legendary status.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"The Wild One," p. 838.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)

Death , Youth , Girl , Boy

“The slave-owner is at times visited with a nightmare. He finds that his free will, in spite of its freedom, is thwarted, not by a superior will but by things-in-themselves – by inferior wills, accidents, mistakes, and his own ignorance. Yet he is still unable to conceive his will except as being thwarted like that of his slave’s by another will, and since he the master is so thwarted, might not even the world’s master and his – God Himself – be thwarted in his volition by some grand over-riding will, by Will-in-Itself? This is the slaveowning conception of Moira, or Fate, a comparatively late development reaching its noblest expression in Greek tragedy. This Fate, in spite of its closeness to bourgeois determinism, betrays its slave-owning parentage by the fact that it is always visualised as a consciously forseeing Will, and always as thwarting, not determining human wills as well as events, but interfering with human wills by means of events.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Further Studies in a Dying Culture (1949), Chapter IV: Consciousness: A Study in Bourgeois Psychology

God , Fate , World , Freedom

“Between us, if I'm offered a job at Fox News, I'll take it. Instantly. I will send my children to go to America after highschool, I will pay for them to go, to exchange the Arab nightmare for the American dream.”

Samir Khader Iraqi journalist

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0391024/quotes

Children , Dreams

“All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Pomes All Sizes (1992)

Men

“There has been a glaring, unfortunate, display of incompetent strategic leadership within our national leaders. As a Japanese proverb says, 'Action without vision is a nightmare.' There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight.”

Ricardo Sanchez (1953) United States Army Lieutenant General

Reporters and editors luncheon address (2007)

Question

“History has a way of reducing individuals to flat, two-dimensional portraits. It is the enemy of subjectivity, which is why Stephen Dedalus called it "a nightmare from which I am trying to awake". If we think of Kierkegaard, of Nietzsche, of Hölderlin, we see them standing alone, outside of history. They are spotlighted by their intensity, and the background is all darkness. They intersect history, but are not a part of it. There is something anti-history about such men; they are not subject to time, accident and death, but their intensity is a protest against it. I have elsewhere called such men "Outsiders" because they attempt to stand outside history. which defines humanity on terms of limitation, not of possibility.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs (1964), p. 13-14

Death , Men , Way , History

“It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks — an existence of soft and eternal peace.
Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.”

Stephen Crane book The Red Badge of Courage

Source: The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Ch. 24

Pain , War , Youth , World

“In general, the nightmare quality of Marx's thought gives it, in this bedevilled age, an air of greater reality than the gentle complacency of the orthodox academics. Yet he, at the same time, is more encouraging than they, for he releases hope as well as terror from Pandora's box, while they preach only the gloomy doctrine that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

Joan Robinson book An Essay on Marxian Economics

Source: An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966), Chapter I, Introduction, p. 4-5

Age , World , Hope , Reality

“Basically there’s a gulf between truth and untruth, I don’t want to be too mathematical about it, because I’m not very good at maths. But it’s a divide between, I dunno, a film and a cartoon. I’ve just become this cartoon character. I try not to follow it, but when you see pictures of yourself that have been photo-shopped to show you doing something you didn’t…. that’s wrong. It’s my worst nightmare – and being misquoted, too, especially as I’m so precious about words.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

Speaking out on the media's caricature of him
People

Truth , Photo , Mathematics

“By shutting out the outside world, drugs place one not only in confrontation with the dreaming self, but also ones nightmares.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

World , Dreams

“What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one's own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer-bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out—not to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in "natural" accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, automobiles make a pyramid heap of over 50 thousand a year in the U. S. alone, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet for about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer. But the sun distracts our attention, always baking the blood dry, making things grow over it, and with its warmth giving the hope that comes with the organism's comfort and expansiveness.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

"Psychology and Religion: What Is the Heroic Individual?", pp. 282–283
The Denial of Death (1973)

Hope , Nature , Tear , Bee

“Actually, the specter of the Russo-German alliance is already the nightmare of every European government, however much they protest their belief in the inevitability of a Russo-German war. And what is only a nightmare today may be reality tomorrow. The two regimes will have to come together because they are similar ideologically and socially. That the European Left has not dared to admit this is understandable. By conceding that Soviet Russia is as fascist a state as Germany, they would have conceded that socialism must fail and would have abandoned themselves.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 244

War , Understanding , Reality

“The world is not our imagination but our nightmare, full of inconceivable surprises.”

Imre Kertész book Kaddish for an Unborn Child

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

World , Imagination

“I have heard so much about the perils ahead that I have had nightmares for several nights, in which I lived through all the horrors of war... The militia are quartered in the studio, hence there is no way of using it. I do not read the newspapers much any more; one a day is enough for me. The Prussian atrocities upset me, and I want to retain my composure... Would you believe that I am accustomed to the sound of the canon [of the Prussians]? It seems to me that I am now absolutely inured to war and capable of enduring everything.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

In a letter, Late Sept. 1870 to her sister Edma, from besieged Paris by the Germans; as cited in Impressionist quartet, ed. Jeffrey Meyers; publishers, Harcourt, 2005, p. 107
1860 - 1870

War , Way , Reading , Night

“For the first [his very first time in Paris], I went to a little hotel, where I spent the night in a sort of nightmare, in which I saw my home, full of melancholy, with my mother, grandmother, and sister spinning in the evening, weeping and thinking of me, praying that I should escape the perdition of Paris. Then the evil demon drove me on before wonderful pictures, which seemed so beautiful, so brilliant, that it appeared to me they took fire and vanished in a heavenly cloud... Finally, without knowing how, I found myself [during one of his his first days in Paris] on the Pont Neuf, from which I saw a magnificent building which I thought must be the Louvre, from the descriptions I had heard of it. I went to it, and mounted the great stairway with a beating heart. At last one great object of my life was attained. I had imagined correctly what I should see. It seemed to me that I was in a world of friends [the paintings of the old masters], in a family where all that I beheld was the reality of my dreams.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Source: Jean-Francois Millet – Peasant and Painter, 1881, p. 46-49

Life , World , Family , Beauty

“Hal: Bury her naked? My own mum? It's a Freudian nightmare.
Dennis: I won't disagree.
Hal: Aren't we committing some kind of unforgivable sin?
Dennis: Only if you're a Catholic.
Hal: I am a Catholic. I can't undress her. She's a relative. I can go to Hell for it.
Dennis: I'll undress her then. I don't believe in Hell.
Hal: That's typical of your upbringing, baby. Every luxury was lavished on you - atheism, breast-feeding, circumcision. I had to make my own way.”

Joe Orton (1933–1967) English playwright and author

Loot (1965), Act I

Way , Hell , Baby

“C-10 is such a nightmare, because we’re going to have a ton of amendments,” she says. “And I can’t present them unless I’m physically there.”

Elizabeth May (1954) Canadian politician

The Walrus interview (2012)

“[Robert Lowell] is a poet of both Will and Imagination, but his Will is always seizing his Imagination by the shoulders and saying to it in a grating voice: “Don’t sit there fooling around; get to work!” — and his poor Imagination gets tense all over and begins to revolve determinedly and familiarly, like a squirrel in a squirrel-cage. Goethe talked about the half-somnambulistic state of the poet; but Mr. Lowell too often is either having a nightmare or else is wide awake gritting his teeth and working away at All The Things He Does Best. Cocteau said to poets: Learn what you can do and then don’t do it; and this is so—we do it enough without trying. As a poet Mr. Lowell sometimes doesn’t have enough trust in God and tries to do everything himself: he proposes and disposes — and this helps to give a certain monotony to his work.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Three Books”, p. 236
Poetry and the Age (1953)

God , Fools , Imagination , Learning

“Well, I'll tell you a story but you won't listen
It's about a nightmare steeped in tradition
It's the story of a coked-up pansy
Who spends his nights in flights of fancy

Met two fellas over gin and mixers
They talked for a while, he soon got the picture
One was a souped up Soho mincer
And the other was a pikey with a knowledge of scripture”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"La Belle et la Bete"
Lyrics and poetry

Knowledge , Night

“His greatest fear, or nightmare, is not to be thought hip or cool, and if to avoid that terrible fate it means that he has to glamorize evil--well, so be it.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy (2006)

Fate , Fear , Evil

“In the summer of 1864, pessimists warned that the North could not win the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln faced opposition for the Republican-party nomination, and even if he won it, he was considered likely to lose the November election to Union general George McClellan. General Grant’s Army of the Potomac was being bled white in Virginia in vain attempts to dislodge Robert E. Lee’s defenders from their entrenchments around the Confederate capital of Richmond. Gruesome encounters such as the Battle of Cold Harbor and the Battle of the Wilderness had given the depressed Northern public nightmares. Then, suddenly, fantasy became reality. The maverick General William Tecumseh Sherman unexpectedly took Atlanta on September 2, 1864. Euphoria swept the North. McClellan’s sure-thing candidacy crashed. The mercurial Sherman then headed off with his huge army on the famous “March to the Sea” through Georgia. He next plowed through the Carolinas to the rear of Lee’s army in Virginia. In less than nine months the entire Confederate cause collapsed. The supposedly endless Civil War ended with a sudden and absolute Union victory that no one had foreseen.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, The American Art of Renewal (2018)

War , Reality , Victory , Summer

“The last best hope on earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie "answers" questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Ollie" (1987) [Ollie = Oliver North ]
1980s, At Home (1988)

Hope , Question , Perfection

“The constant fear of slave rebellion made life in the South a nightmare, especially in regions where conspiracies were of frequent occurrence. The extermination of white civilization in Santo Domingo was followed in the nineteenth century by several other bloody outbursts in the West Indies, which never failed to cause ominous forebodings in America.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The Making of America (1986)

Life , Fear

“Yeah, congratulations. Way to go, Punk, way to go. Congratulations on your big win. You need to enjoy them while you can. You see, you can smirk if you want to, but I see straight through you. When I look at you, I see a fraud. And I'm not talking about the fact that you call yourself the best in the world, I'm talking about you as a person. Because I did a little research this week, Punk, and I found something, a little deep, dirty, dark secret about you. You've been straight edge ever since you came to the WWE, but you've never explained the reasons why. I wanna tell all of these wannabes why you're straight edge. I wanna tell them that you're straight edge because your father is an alcoholic.
Yeah, that's right. Your father was an alcoholic who let you down every step of the way when you were growing up, and it terrifies you. You don't want to end up like him. But it's inevitable that you will, because alcohol is in your blood, it's in your genes, it's part of who you are, and that tortures you. I know you've built this facade, this wall that you're a sarcastic antihero with not a care in the world, but I think I've found something that you care about. I've found something that gives you nightmares, something that terrifies you.
And isn't it ironic that the very alcohol that you crave is the same thing that ruined your childhood? Oh, the nightmares you must have about your father; I almost feel bad for you, Punk. Is that the reason why you have all those tattoos? Was the pain of wanting to drink so bad that you needed the pain of a tattoo needle to take it out of your mind? Was that your only solace?
It doesn't matter if it is, Punk, because you are going to drink eventually, and I'm the one who is going to make you drink. At WrestleMania XXVIII, I'm going to take away your title, I'm gonna take away your claims of being the best in the world, I'm gonna take away your bravado, and I'm gonna leave you a broken man. You're gonna hit bottom, Punk, and when you do, you're going to embrace your destiny, and you're gonna take a drink. And it's gonna taste so good that you're gonna wanna take another one, and another one, and another one. After April 1st, I'm gonna be recognized for who I am—the undisputed best in the world and the new WWE Champion. And you're gonna be recognized for who you are, who your father was—a pathetic damn drunk!”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

March 12, 2012 - WWE Raw

Pain , Alcohol , Secret , World

“The current rampages of territorial-emotional pugnacity sweeping this planet are not just another civilization failing … They are the birth-pangs of a cosmic Prometheus rising out of the long nightmare of domesticated primate history.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Prometheus Rising

Source: Prometheus Rising (1983), Ch. 5 : Dickens & Joyce : The Two-Circuit Dialectic, p. 90

History , Birth

“I think it’s a total nightmare and disaster, and I’m ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting it (the U. S. war in Iraq). It’s something I’ll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who’s smarter than I am, and I shouldn’t have done that. No. I want things to work out, but I’m enraged by it, actually.”

Tucker Carlson (1969) American political commentator

New York Observer, 12 May 2004
Expressing his regret for initially supporting the Iraq War
Source: https://observer.com/2004/05/newly-dovish-tucker-carlson-goes-publickimmel-writer-ribs-times/

War , Support , Thinking

“I think drugs are like strawberries. That was something I was very much a part of, but at the same time there's that incredible nightmare paranoia... it drives human beings crazy. It frightened me to see it around me... I had everything that could be moves stolen by speed freaks. Things began to disappear. The Queen Bee Speedfreaks and Amphetamine Annie had found out where my apartment was. All my jewelry was stolen and all my expensive clothes. Dior, Balenciaga... just tons of originals. By the way, have you heard anything about my furs? Everybody's wearing them.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Tapes for the movie Ciao! Manhattan
Edie : American Girl (1982)

Way , Thinking , Bee , Time

“We parted before I went to Abu Dhabi, which I found an Arabian Nightmare, the final disillusionment. For me this book remains a memorial to a vanished past, a tribute to a once magnificent people.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Preface to the 1984 edition
Arabian Sands (1959)

People , Books , Memory , Past

“Beyond that void is a place
Where figments from bad dreams are banished
Childhood nightmares all come seeking
And adult logic nearly vanished”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics, Chaos

Dreams , Childhood

“I don’t know if there are any other examples in history of an actress that got to play a teenager, the mid-20s version of the character and then the mid-30s version of the character. Now when I look back on it, it’s the role of a lifetime. Nancy and I, especially in New Nightmare, often get conflated into being the same type of person and Wes must have seen something in me that was the good type of girl Nancy was. Very self sufficient, strong and loyal to her friends. She’s a genius in some ways and has a spunky “won’t give up” spirit. As a teen auditioning for him, he must have seen something that he liked which was very flattering.”

Heather Langenkamp (1964) actress

Heather Langenkamp On Playing Nancy Through The Years http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3274986/interview-heather-langenkamp-on-playing-nancy-through-the-years/ (January 27, 2014)

Way , History , Girl , Strong

“When you have sweated, toiled, had mad dreams, hopeless nightmares, you find yourself in London's streets, cold and dank in the night air. Think — what have I got for Ireland? Something which she has wanted these past seven hundred years. Will anyone be satisfied at the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this; early this morning I signed my death warrant. I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous — a bullet may just as well have done the job five years ago.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

Liam, Cathal (2006). Blood on the Shamrock: A Novel of Ireland's Continued Struggle for Freedom 1921-1924. St. Padraic Press, p. 194.

Death , Dreams , Thinking , Time

“You don't need to do nation building in Israel, we're already built. You don't need to export democracy to Israel, we've already got it. You don't need to send American troops to Israel, we defend ourselves… Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East, Israel is what is right about the Middle East… The tyranny in Tehran brutalizes its own people. It supports attacks against American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. It subjugates Lebanon and Gaza. It sponsors terror worldwide… A nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world. I want you to understand what this means. They could put the bomb anywhere. They could put it on a missile. It could be on a container ship in a port, or in a suitcase on a subway… Now the threat to my country cannot be overstated. Those who dismiss it are sticking their heads in the sand. Less than seven decades after six million Jews were murdered, Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people, while calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Leaders who spew such venom, should be banned from every respectable forum on the planet. But there is something that makes the outrage even greater: The lack of outrage. In much of the international community, the calls for our destruction are met with utter silence. It is even worse because there are many who rush to condemn Israel for defending itself against Iran's terror proxies… When we say never again, we mean never again! Israel always reserves the right to defend itself… In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace… No distortion of history can deny the four thousand year old bond, between the Jewish people and the Jewish land… Peace cannot be imposed. It must be negotiated. But it can only be negotiated with partners committed to peace.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Address to joint meeting of the U.S. Congress http://www.c-span.org/video/?299666-1/israeli-prime-minister-netanyahu-address-joint-meeting-congress (24 May 2011).
2010s, 2011, Address to joint meeting of the U.S. Congress (May 2011)

God , People , World , Peace

“Waking among the dead, one wondered if one was still alive. And yet real despair only seized us later. Afterwards. As we emerged from the nightmare and began to search for meaning.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

Search , Despair , Dead

“The more communities break down and poverty expands, the more anxious and frightened people will retreat into self-delusion. Those who speak the truth—whether about climate change or our system of inverted totalitarianism—will be branded as seditious and unpatriotic. They will be hated for destroying the illusion. This, as Gabler noted, is the danger of a society dominated by entertainment. Such a society, he wrote, “… took dead aim at the intellectuals’ most cherished values. That theme was the triumph of the senses over the mind, of emotion over reason, of chaos over order, or the id over the superego. … Entertainment was Plato’s worst nightmare. It deposed the rational and enthroned the sensational and in so doing deposed the intellectual minority and enthroned the unrefined majority.””

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Illusion of Freedom" (2015)

Hate , People , Truth , Communication

“Showed me pictures in the gallery
Showed me novels on the shelf
Put my hands across the table
Gave me knowledge of myself.
Showed me visions, showed me nightmares
Gave me dreams that never end
Showed me light out of the tunnel
When there was darkness all around instead.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Tore Down a la Rimbaud.
Song lyrics, A Sense of Wonder (1985)

Dreams , Knowledge , Light

“"You couldn't have a beastie, a snake-thing, on an island this size," Ralph explained kindly. "You only get them in big countries, like Africa, or India."
Murmur; and the grave nodding of heads.
"He says the beastie came in the dark."
"Then he couldn't see it!"
Laughter and cheers.
"Did you hear that? Says he saw the thing in the dark—"
"He still says he saw the beastie. It came and went away again an' came back and wanted to eat him."
"He was dreaming."
Laughing, Ralph looked for confirmation round the ring of faces. The older boys agreed; but here and there among the little ones was the doubt that required more than rational assurance.
"He must have had a nightmare. Stumbling about among all those creepers."
More grave nodding. They knew about nightmares.
"He says he saw the beastie, the snake-thing, and will it come back tonight?"
"But there isn't a beastie!"
"He says in the morning it turned into them things like ropes in the trees and hung in the branches. He says will it come back again tonight?"
"But there isn't a beastie!"
There was no laughter at all now and more grave watching. Ralph pushed both hands through his hair and looked at the little boy in mixed amusement and exasperation.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 2: Fire on the Mountain

Dreams , Boy , Laughter , Tree

“I shut my eyes and clenched my hands behind me and saw, in lightning flashes, myself doing ferocious things, like pushing him down an endless flight of stairs, or dropping him without warning into a bottomless well, or stringing him up to a stout beam and leaving him to dangle, or — or other things of the sort; no guns, no knives, no baseball bats, nothing to cause outright bloodshed, just silent, grim, sudden murder by hand was my intention. All this was far beyond my bodily powers of course, and I like to believe beyond my criminal powers too. For I woke when we struck the searing hot light of the August morning as if I had come out of a nightmare, horrified at my own thoughts and feeling as if I had got some incurable wound to my very humanity — as indeed I had. However inflicted, a wound there was, with painful scar tissue, left upon my living self by that appalling event. My conscience stirs as if, in my impulse to do violence to my enemy, I had assisted at his crime.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)

Pain , Feeling , Light

“We belong to the Society of Friends, a community of love, a family of persons. In so far as we are not just another “denomination,” we know also that the salvation of our age is in our keeping; that is, that it lies in the divine-human society which is "rooted and grounded in love." This is the unity which alone can make one world out of "one world", and not one nightmare, one hell, one burned-out cinder. We know also and in a way we respond to the fact that we have a mission, we are "called to be saints".”

A. J. Muste (1885–1967) Christian pacifist and civil rights activist

Saints for This Age (1962).

Love , Age , World , Family

“As for 'story' I never yet did enjoy a novel or play in which someone didn't tell me afterward that there was something wrong with the story, so that's going to be no drawback as far as I'm concerned. "Good Lord, why am I so bored"—"I know; it must be the plot developing harmoniously." So I often reply to myself, and there rises before me my special nightmare—that of the writer as craftsman, natty and deft.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 104, to Forrest Reid, 19 June 1912
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“At heart, the issues raised in a work of fantasy are those we face in real life. In whatever guise—our own daily nightmares of war, intolerance, inhumanity; or the struggles of an Assistant Pig-Keeper against the Lord of Death—the problems are agonizingly familiar. And an openness to compassion, love and mercy, is as essential to us here and now as it is to any inhabitant of an imaginary kingdom.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Newbery Award acceptance speech (1969)

Love , Life , Death , War

“You may choose, if you wish, to parrot the line that Watergate was a "long national nightmare," but some of us found it rather exhilarating to see a criminal President successfully investigated and exposed and discredited. And we do not think it in the least bit nightmarish that the Constitution says that such a man is not above the law. Ford's ignominious pardon of this felonious thug meant, first, that only the lesser fry had to go to jail. It meant, second, that we still do not even know why the burglars were originally sent into the offices of the Democratic National Committee. In this respect, the famous pardon is not unlike the Warren Commission: another establishment exercise in damage control and pseudo-reassurance (of which Ford was also a member) that actually raised more questions than it answered. The fact is that serious trials and fearless investigations often are the cause of great division, and rightly so.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2006-12-29
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2006/12/our_short_national_nightmare.html
Our Short National Nightmare
Slate
1091-2339
referencing a quote by Gerald Ford
2000s, 2006

Law , Exercises , Question , Thinking

“Learning the long lines and delivering them in one take was a nightmare, but Rameshji helped me as also the fact that I have a good memory. It is only when you become successful that you realize how everything contributes to your success.”

Hema Malini (1948) Indian actress, dancer and politician

On her delivery of long dialogue In the film Sholay, page 1978
MOTHER MAIDEN MISTRESS

Learning , Memory , Success , Help

“They shaved my head and took layers of skin from my scalp. To heal the wounds, I was in a hyperbaric chamber for 90 minutes twice daily for four days. It’s claustrophobic. One of my first nights home, I watched ‘Iron Man’ with friends. In the scene where Robert Downey Jr. comes out of the cave with a blowtorch, my whole body cringed. That night, I had a nightmare someone spilled fuel on me and was trying to light me on fire. I woke up and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is going to happen forever?”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

DJ AM talks about plane crash http://www.celebritysmackblog.com/2008/10/16/dj-am-opens-up-about-the-plane-crash-that-nearly-took-his-life/ People Magazine. October 2008.

God , Home , Light , Night

“Will I lose my dignity? Will someone care? Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?”

Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright

Rent (1996)

“Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.”

Octavio Paz book The Labyrinth of Solitude

The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950)

Thinking

“When I was a small child, for some reason—and I don’t know if this was from cartoons or movies or what—I was very frightened of skeletons. I also was very afraid of the dark. I used to have incredibly terrible nightmares. I was afraid of everything as a child. Now look what I’m doing.”

Rich Koz (1952) American actor and comedian

Rich Koz http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2017/Rich-Koz/ (October 27, 2017)

“Consciousness is nature's nightmare.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Tears and Saints (1937)

Nature

“The essence of nightmare lies less in the simple experience of horrors than in the unpreventable fruition of horrors foreknown.”

Michael Shea book Nifft the Lean

Part 3, Chapter 17 (p. 208)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“Behold, the atheists' nightmare. Now if you study a well-made banana, you'll find, on the far side, there are three ridges. On the close side, two ridges. If you get your hand ready to grip a banana, you'll find on the far side there are three grooves, on the close side, two grooves. The banana and the hand are perfectly made, one for the other. You'll find the maker of the banana, Almighty God, has made it with a non-slip surface. It has outward indicators of inward contents — green: too early; yellow: just right; black: too late. Now if you go to the top of the banana, you'll find, as with the soda can makers have placed a tab at the top, so God has placed a tab at the top. When you pull the tab, the contents don't squirt in your face. You'll find a wrapper which is biodegradable, has perforations. Notice how gracefully it sits over the human hand. Notice it has a point at the top for ease of entry. It's just the right shape for the human mouth. It's chewy, easy to digest and its even curved toward the face to make the whole process so much easier. Seriously, Kirk, the whole of creation testifies to the genius of God's creation.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God , Study

“I chose to dream and act on my dreams, following the example that my father taught. To live with this dream may be crazy, it may be foolish, but to live without it would be a nightmare.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

1980s, A Dream Deferred (1989)

Dreams

“Grandpa, like most of the fun-loving gang who built the Plants, just wanted to die or have his brain turn to oatmeal before it becomes too apparent exactly what a nightmare he and his buddies have saddled their descendants with.”

Douglas Coupland book Shampoo Planet

Shampoo Planet (1992)

Love

“My books must be an absolute nightmare to translate. I wouldn't do it. I had a couple of them in Japanese some years ago and my wife met a Japanese woman who said that she had read the books. And she asked her what the translations were like. This woman said they were the worst translation she had ever read in her life. She said she didn't recognise the books when she finally read them in English.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: Using words to paint pictures of "magical" Prague (2006)

Life , Books , Reading

“There’s real fear of aging in this country, which I don’t share. It seems to be an American nightmare, especially for women. There’s nothing worse than a woman trying to look like she did when she was 32 when she is 58. It’s like, “Have some dignity, guys—just go with it!””

Tracey Ullman (1959) English-born actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author and businesswoman

Quoted in 2009 in The Many States of Tracey Ullman https://tracey-archives.tumblr.com/post/119868522838/the-many-funny-states-of-tracey-ullman

Women , Age , Fear , Guy

“[T]he PDP, on whose platform he stands, represents the most harrowing of this nation’s nightmares over and beyond even the horrors of the Abacha regime. If he wishes to be considered on his own merit, now is time for him, as well as others similarly enmeshed, to exercise the moral courage that goes with his repudiation of that party, a dissociation from its past, and a pledge to reverse its menacing future. We shall find him an alternative platform on which to stand, and then have him present his credentials along those of other candidates engaged in forging a credible opposition alliance.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Sahara Reporters http://www.saharareporters.com/news-page/crimes-buhari-wole-soyinka

Exercises , Courage , Time , Past

“We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality.”

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) Russian philosopher

Source: Political Testament (1949), p. 80
Context: We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality. If war should come, it will do so on account of our delusions, for which our hag-ridden conscience attempts to find moral excuses. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from flying asunder.

Reality , Sense

“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.
Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, First Presidential address (1974)
Context: My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.
Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy.
As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.

Men , People , Law

“It's interesting to me how we defang our nightmares -- by mocking them, but also by wearing their skins.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

in Freakangels.com http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=3526&page=2#Item_14
Context: (On Timothy McVeigh references) In terms of DOKTOR SLEEPLESS (I don't remember much of TRANSMET), it's just a nod to how quickly we assimilate our monsters. How many years was it between Charlie Manson being the terror of California and Charlie Manson being an image on joke t-shirts? I have a shirt somewhere with a pic of his face and, underneath it, the words CHARLIE DON'T SURF. Hitler's a cartoon figure now. Eminem dressed up as bin Laden within a couple of years of 9/11. It's interesting to me how we defang our nightmares -- by mocking them, but also by wearing their skins.

“The uneasy marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an increasingly surreal world.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"Introduction" to Diary of a Genius (1974) by Salvador Dalí
Context: The uneasy marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an increasingly surreal world. More and more, we see that the events of our own times make sense in terms of surrealism rather than any other view — whether the grim facts of the death-camps, Hiroshima and Viet Nam, or our far more ambiguous unease at organ transplant surgery and the extra-uterine foetus, the confusions of the media landscape with its emphasis on the glossy, lurid and bizarre, its hunger for the irrational and sensational. The art of Salvador Dalí, an extreme metaphor at a time when only the extreme will do, constitutes a body of prophecy about ourselves unequaled in accuracy since Freud's "Civilization And Its Discontents". Voyeurism, self-disgust, the infantile basis of our fears and longings, and our need to pursue our own psychopathologies as a game — these diseases of the psyche Dali has diagnosed with dismaying accuracy. His paintings not only anticipate the psychic crisis which produced our glaucous paradise, but document the uncertain pleasures of living within it. The great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century — sex and paranoia — preside over his life, as over ours.

Marriage , World , Birth

“Novim's Nightmare”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Numbers (1974)

“Drugs steal away so much. They take and take, until finally every time a drug goes into a child, something else is forced out — like love and hope and trust and confidence. Drugs take away the dream from every child's heart and replace it with a nightmare, and it's time we in America stand up and replace those dreams.”

Nancy Reagan (1921–2016) actress and first lady of the United States

Just Say No (1986)
Context: Drugs steal away so much. They take and take, until finally every time a drug goes into a child, something else is forced out — like love and hope and trust and confidence. Drugs take away the dream from every child's heart and replace it with a nightmare, and it's time we in America stand up and replace those dreams. Each of us has to put our principles and consciences on the line, whether in social settings or in the workplace, to set forth solid standards and stick to them. There's no moral middle ground. Indifference is not an option. We want you to help us create an outspoken intolerance for drug use. For the sake of our children, I implore each of you to be unyielding and inflexible in your opposition to drugs.

Love , Dreams , Hope , Confidence

“This is a nightmare, which will pass away with the morning. For the resources of nature and men's devices are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid.”

John Maynard Keynes book Essays in Persuasion

Referring to economics and the Great Depression
Essays in Persuasion (1931), The Great Slump of 1930 (1930)
Context: This is a nightmare, which will pass away with the morning. For the resources of nature and men's devices are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. We are as capable as before of affording for everyone a high standard of life … and will soon learn to afford a standard higher still. We were not previously deceived. But to-day we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand. The result is that our possibilities of wealth may run to waste for a time — perhaps for a long time.

Life , Men , Nature , Problem

“We weren't happy. It was a nightmare, breaking the rules and all that.”

Charlotte Rampling (1946) British actress

Everyone seemed to be having fun, but they were so taking many drugs they wouldn't know it anyway.
"Charlotte Rampling: In from the cold", in The Independent (25 March 2005) http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/charlotte-rampling-in-from-the-cold-529788.html.

Happiness

“My dear countrymen and women, sisters and brothers, this supreme responsibility has been entrusted to me after the sad passing of my illustrious father, in one of the darkest periods in our history, at the very time when our national and spiritual principles, our historical and cultural values, our civilization, are threatened from within; at the very time when anarchy, economic collapse, and the decline of our international prestige have given rise to the violation of our territorial integrity, which we condemn.
I am well aware that none of you, whose national pride and patriotic spirit are inborn, that none of you who are deeply attached to your national identity, your faith, the sacred principles of true Islam, your historical values, and your cultural heritage, has wanted such a disaster to come about. That is why, understanding your suffering and sensing your unshed tears, I join your pain. I know that, like me, you can see the calm dawn of a new day rising through this darkness. I know that deep in your souls and hearts you have the firm conviction that, as in the past, our history, which is several thousands of years old, will repeat itself and the nightmare will end. Light will follow darkness. Strengthened by our bitter experiences, we will all join together in a great national effort, the reconstruction of our country. With the help of the right reforms and the active participation of all, we will realize our ideals.
We will rebuild a new Iran, where equality, liberty, and justice prevail. Inspired by the true faith of Islam founded on spirituality, love, and mercy, we will make Iran a proud and prosperous country, having the place it deserves in the concert of nations.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

Kibbeh Palace, Cairo, Oct. 31, 1980, as quoted in Farah Pahlavi (2004) An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah, p. 434.
Speeches, 1980

Love , Women , Pain , Sadness

“I am myself a man of peace to the depths of my soul. Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me; but if I were convinced that any nation had made up its mind to dominate the world by fear of its force, I should feel that it must be resisted. Under such a domination, life for people who believe in liberty would not be worth living: but war is a fearful thing, and we must be very clear, before we embark on it, that it is really the great issues that are at stake.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (27 September 1938), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 372
Prime Minister

Life , Soul , Peace , War

“If inflation priced us out of world markets we should be back in the old nightmare of unemployment. What folly to risk throwing away all that we have gained. ... Our first duty at a time when there is more money about than goods to spend it on is to keep down Government expenditure. ... The second duty of the Government is to frame policies which encourage saving and discourage spending. ... in the long run there is only one answer to the 64,000 dollar question—to increase production. That is the answer. That is where the real hope lies.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

Speech at Bedford (20 July 1957), quoted in "More production 'the only answer' to inflation", The Times (22 July 1957), p. 4
Prime Minister

Money , Time , Question , Hope

“When we were sitting in this courtroom, during the jury selection proves, i listened to Judge Thompson tell you about the amerikan system of justice. He talked about the presumption of innocence; he talked about equality and justice. His words were like a beautiful dream in a beautiful world. But i have been awaiting trial for two and one half years. And justice, in my eyesight has not been the amerikan dream. It has been the amerikan nightmare. There was a time when I wanted to believe that there was justice in this country. But reality crashed through and shattered all my day dreams. While awaiting trial i have earned a Ph. D. in justice, or rather, the lack of it.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: In Her Own Words, p. 166

Time , Justice , Country , Beauty

“Five years ago, even the most audacious visionary would not have dared predict the slashing do-or-de desperation and the sizzling up-tempo beat which has exploded into our politics, into our daily conversation, and into our nightmares and dreams.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

"Rallying Round the Flag"
1960s, Soul on Ice (1968)

Dreams

“With the exception of Yugoslavia, in numerous European countries—in the name of socialism—usurping bureaucracies that are cut off from the people (bureaucracies from which it is now proven that nothing can be expected) have achieved the pitiable wonder of transforming into a nightmare what humanity has for so long cherished as a dream: socialism.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Letter to Maurice Thorez resigning from the French Communist Party, October 24, 1956

Dreams , People , Country

“It is wonderful that certain people and circles still believe I have the aspiration to become Chancellor and receive nightmares from this thought. How often I have declared that I would have to be a fool if I wanted to strive for this really unenviable position! I have already achieved some time ago everything a soldier can achieve, I hold a post that involves little work and no agitation or anger, and I know the position of a Chancellor under Kaiser Wilhelm II only too well that I would have to be mad to desire it.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary c. December 1901

Time , Anger , People , Fools

“Existence, for all organismic life, is a constant struggle to feed-a struggle to incorporate whatever other organisms they can fit into their mouths and press down their gullets without choking. Seen in these stark terms, life on this planet is a gory spectacle, a science-fiction nightmare in which digestive tracts fitted with teeth at one end are tearing away at whatever flesh they can reach, and at the other end are piling up the fuming waste excrement as they move along in search of more flesh.”

Ernest Becker (1924–1974) American anthropologist

"The Human Condition: Between Appetite and Ingenuity", p. 1
Escape from Evil (1975)

Science , Life , Tear , Search

“My sophomore year, we were in Tallahassee and I ran a reverse very early in the game, and I remember being nailed by Jack Youngblood. I remember watching the ball being pitched to me and thinking, when the ball was about halfway, that it was kind of race to see whether he was going to get to the ball first or me. He was foaming at the mouth. I still have nightmares from the hit he gave me.”

Jack Youngblood (1950) American football player, defensive end, Pro Football Hall of Fame, College Football Hall of Fame

Florida State WR Barry Smith, The Tampa Tribune 2007-11-24

Game , Thinking

“I still have dreams. Politics without dreams - it would be a nightmare.”

Donald Tusk (1957) Polish politician, current President of the European Council

Brexit: 'Dreamer' Tusk says UK may yet stay in the EU https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40362594 BBC News (22 June 2017)
2011, 2017

Dreams

“The time has come for Liberalism to resume the leadership of progress—to lead away the masses from the chimeras of Karl Marx and the nightmares of Lenin, and to carry on the great task to which Gladstone and Bright devoted their noble lives.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Later life
Source: Speech in Queen's Hall, Langham Place (14 October 1924) opening the Liberal Party's election campaign, quoted in The Times (15 October 1924), p. 10

Time

“However, since I manifest their worst nightmare (systematical and organized executions of multiculturalist traitors), they will probably just give me the full propaganda rape package and propagate the following accusations: pedophile, engaged in incest activities, homosexual, psycho, ADHD, thief, non-educated, inbred, maniac, insane, monster etc. I will be labeled as the biggest (Nazi-)monster ever witnessed since WW2.”

Anders Behring Breivik (1979) Norwegian mass murderer

Manifesto 22 July 2011

Education

“But it was a real nightmare when Walter threatened to kill me and our two daughters if we told anyone.”

Walter Keane (1915–2000) American plagiarist

Margaret Keane, Cited in "The lady behind those Keane-eyed kids"

Daughters

“A player from Man City showed half of his ass for two seconds and it was a big nightmare. But this is a real nightmare.”

José Mourinho (1963) Portuguese association football player and manager

Comparing Petr Cech's nasty injury with Joey Barton's bottom-baring antics.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/7004282.stm
Chelsea FC

“We're not prophets. We're not here to inform the rich people of the world on how to make more money, or to inform governments on how to direct themselves. We are here to allow you to dream your dreams and make them happen, and have your nightmares a little in advance so you can prevent them from happening.”

Greg Bear (1951) American writer best known for science fiction

On science fiction writers, Guest of Honor speech at the Millennium Philcon 59th World Science Fiction Convention (2001), from Women in Deep Time (2002), ed. ibooks

Money , Dreams , People , World

“History teaches us that civilizations flourish, die and disappear. Sometimes they died swiftly, sometimes in a slow lingering death. And sometimes, as with Rome and others, echoes of that civilization find new life ain later cultures. To lose the conscious memory of an entire civilization is especially tragic and dangerous, because each civilization, no matter how grand or flawed, is a laboratory of human ideas and ideals, of dreams and nightmares. We can learn from all of them.”

Michael Hamilton Morgan (1951) American writer

Lost History, p. 1

History , Dreams , Learning , Memory

“[T]he Skeksis will always be horribly memorable. I'm pretty sure the scene where the Chamberlain is attacked and defrocked by his sneering brothers gave me nightmares as a youngster.”

Simon Spurrier (1981) British comic writer

Interview with Syfy Wire

“Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.”

Paddy Ashdown (1941–2018) British politician and diplomat

As quoted in "Farewell, Sarajevo" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/02/warcrimes.politics (1 November 2005), The Guardian

Sense , Anger

“What we’d depicted and its implications stayed in the minds of every actor and crew member for a long time. I’m sure there were some nightmares. There are some things so far outside our experience or comprehension that they are unthinkable. Nuclear war is one.”

Mick Jackson (director) (1943) film director

How we made the nuclear apocalypse TV drama Threads

War , Time

“What I really remember is that people camped out everywhere, and the fact everybody expected it might turn into a big nightmare with all sorts of hassles because back in those days everybody was smoking pot and taking acid.”

Johnny Rivers (1942) American musician

Johnny Rivers Quotes - Johnny Rivers Quotations, Famous Sayings - FamousFix - Page 2. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.famousfix.com/topic/johnny-rivers/quotes?pageno=2.

People

“Now I am going to wash myself. Please do not embrace me as I have not washed yet. And you? Even were I to anoint myself with fragrant oils from Byzantium, you would not embrace me—not unless forced to by magnetism. But there are forces in Nature! Today you will dream that you are embracing me! You have to pay for the nightmare you caused me last night!”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Translation 2: I'm going to wash myself, don't kiss me yet, while I haven't washed myself yet. – You? even when I would rub myself with Byzantine oil, you wouldn't kiss me, unless I'd force you with magnetic powers. There's a certain power in nature. Today you will dream you are kissing me. Payback time for the bad dream you caused me last night.
Translation 1: Walker, Alan (2018). Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times https://books.google.com/books?id=6ThIDwAAQBAJ. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374714376, pp. 109 https://books.google.com/books?id=6ThIDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT109– 110 https://books.google.com/books?id=6ThIDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT110.
da Fonseca-Wollheim, Corinna (19 November 2018). "An Ingenious Frédéric Chopin" https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/books/review/fyderyk-chopin-alan-walker-frederic-chopin-biography.html in The New York Times.
Oltermann, Philip and Walker, Shaun (25 November 2020). "Chopin's interest in men airbrushed from history, programme claims: Journalist says he has found overt homoeroticism in Polish composer’s letters" https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/25/chopins-interest-in-men-airbrushed-from-history-programme-claims in The Guardian.
Picheta, Rob (29 November 2020). "Was Chopin gay? The awkward question in one of the EU's worst countries for LGBTQ rights" https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/29/europe/chopin-sexuality-poland-lgbtq-debate-scli-intl/index.html at CNN.
Chilton, Louis (30 November 2020). "Frédéric Chopin’s same-sex love letters covered up by biographers and archivists, claims new programme: Swiss radio documentary explored evidence of the great composer’s attraction to men" https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/chopin-frederic-composer-gay-letters-b1761548.html in The Independent.
From Chopin's Polish letters
Original: (pl) Idę się umywać, nie całuj mię teraz, bom się jeszcze nie umył. Ty? chociażbym się olejkami wysmarował bizantyjskimi, nie pocałowałbyś, gdybym ja Ciebie magnetycznym sposobem do tego nie przymusił. Jest jakaś siła w naturze. Dziś Ci się śnić będzie, że mnie całujesz. Muszę Ci oddać za szkaradny sen, jakiś mi dziś w nocy sprowadził.
Source: Polish: To Tytus Woyciechowski in Poturzyn (1830-09-04) https://chopin.nifc.pl/en/chopin/list/675_to-tytus-woyciechowski-in-poturzyn at Fryderyk Chopin Institute website.

Dreams , Night , Nature

“But I want very much to be accepted as a good actor, and I have to admit this. Just before the first screenings of The Color Purple, I had some doubts about my name. Steven had told me the billing would read, "And Introducing Whoopi Goldberg as Celie." I had nightmares that when it appeared, a little ripple of laughter would run through the audience and it would grow and grow until it became a horrendous roar of guffaws. Well, I forced myself to go to a screening, and when my name appeared, all I could think was, "Oh, my, how elegant that looks!"”

Whoopi Goldberg (1955) American actress

And no one laughed at all."
As quoted in "Hoopla of Movie Stardom Catches Up With Whoopi" by Philip Wuntch, Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel (January 3, 1986), p. 6S.

Reading , Thinking , Appearance , Color

“We have avoided the post-colonial nightmares of many a former British subject. Though that may arguably be because we were a nation, and not a randomly drawn jurisdiction without regard to ethnic loyalties or geographical sense, as were so many of the “countries” that emerged from Empire. We pride ourselves, not without cause, with only one Civil War since the foundation of the State and none within the 26 county area since the enactment of said Constitution. All’s well that ends well? Except that history is a process not a destination, and “well” or not it certainly hasn’t ended. And the foundational legal document of the State grows more convoluted with each amendment and increasingly difficult to define, even in the ordinary sense of a degree of certainty.”

Justin Barrett (1971) Irish activist

A New Constitution for a Real Republic https://nationalparty.ie/new-year-message-2020/ (July 27, 2018)

History , Country , War , Sense

“My nightmares are almost always about war - wandering the streets, searching for something that's lost forever. But it's possible for me to will myself to have pleasant dreams. For me, the most wonder fragrance in the world is new film. You open the canister for the first time and breathe deeply. That night, the same wonderful fragrance fills your dreams. It's grand.”

Ishirō Honda (1911–1993) Japanese film director

Honda, interviewed by James Bailey, Tokyo Journal, April 1991

Time , Night , Search , World

“It's been proven that people will take information from a female voice, but they will only take a warning from a male voice. Now that's its own American gender nightmare that we don't have time to get into.”

John Mulaney (1982) American actor and comedian

John Mulaney Stand-Up Monologue - SNL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mSGwndFMp8, 03 March 2019

Time , People

“Real people scare. Then, if they're smart, they're the worst nightmare for anyone using a script to get around.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Le persone vere spaventano. Poi, se sono anche intelligenti, sono il peggior incubo di chi usa un copione per andare in giro.
Source: prevale.net

People