Quotes & Sayings About Bedtime Stories

Who was going to raise 12 million children? That was what I suddenly wanted to know....Who was teaching 12 million children how to swim.....Who will tell 12 million bedtime stories....Who will wake in the night in response to 12 million nightmares....Well, as it turns out, no one. Or very few. There aren't enough adults to go around."

There is No Me Without You — Melissa Fay Greene

My dad would tell me bedtime stories, and he used to always leave them open-ended and finish at a crucial point with the words, 'dream on'. Then it was my responsibility to finish the story as I was drifting off to sleep. We would call them dreaming stories. — Hannah Kent

The stories we are told as children do, undoubtedly, mark us for life. They are often stories of dark and terrible things, and we are usually told them just before the lights are turned out and we are left alone; but we love them. We love them when we first hear them, and even when we are grown, and think we have forgotten them entirely, they never lose their power over us. — Neil Bartlett

That evening he plays with the children, cleans the hamster's cage with them, gets them into their pyjamas, and reads to them three times over, once together, then to Jake on his own, then to Naomi. It is at times like these that his life makes sense. How soothing it is, the scent of clean bedlinen and minty toothpaste breath, and his children's eagerness to hear the adventures of imaginary beings, and how touching, to watch the children's eyes grow heavy as they struggle to hang on to the priceless last minutes of their day, and finally fail. — Ian McEwan

We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it. — Frances M. Beal

The spark for 'In Praise of Slowness' came when I began reading to my children. Every parent knows that kids like their bedtime stories read at a gentle, meandering pace. But I used to be too fast to slow down with the Brothers Grimm. I would zoom through the classic fairy tales, skipping lines, paragraphs, whole pages. — Carl Honore

It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky rooms somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to fact the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. — Terry Pratchett

My dad did every single accent under the sun, and he would read bedtime stories. — Lily James

What child didn't wish to know if his bedtime stories were the stuff of fiction or of truth? — V.E Schwab

Steven, my friend who came out to me my senior year, was a huge Madonna fan. So I may know all the words to 'Bedtime Stories,' 'Erotica,' and a few more of her albums - and we may have watched 'Truth or Dare' a thousand times. — Jason Mraz

A glassy calm replaced the storm surrounding their boat.
The distant thunder struck a note, white-hot and remote.
An invisible magnet seemed to steer their course.
The island pulled them in with its dreamy force. — J.Z. Bingham

Didn't you have any sadistic nannies who told you these tales to keep you quiet and well behaved at night? Heavens, what's to become of the Empire if governesses have lost their touch for scaring the wits out of their girls? — Libba Bray

I belong to clever words and bedtime stories
even a good riddle or two
I belong to the sound of music
and dance to my own rhythm
I belong to the sunlight on a chilly autumn day
when the world awaits a new beginning
I belong by the shore under a star-filled sky
with the ocean caressing my feet
I belong everywhere.
And anyway I please. — M.J. Abraham

I had always been proud of my mom. So she'd never back cookies, or sew a Halloween costume, but she could fight monsters. She was tough and smart, and maybe she didn't read bedtime stories, but she had taught me to defend myself against the things that lurked under beds. — Rachel Hawkins

Some boy nuh know dis, dem only come around like tourist. On the beach with a few club sodas. Bedtime stories, and pose like dem name Chuck Norris and don't know the real hardcore. — Damian Marley

She'd begun her story to divert him from his nightmare. Little did she know that what she described created its own nightmares. — Anna Campbell

His whole life he tried to make things better for poor children, but his real calling was being a father. It was a talent with him. As soon as our girls could sit up, he was wheeling them to the library and taking out books to read them bedtime stories. — Anita Diamant

Nobody gets me like paper and pen — Lisa Sharpe

I don't remember my father reading to me, but I remember him telling me bedtime stories. I got to pick what was in them, and then he'd make them up. — Caroline Kennedy

Bedtime stories
Eventide Rhapsodies
Anthologies of Memory
Please enter cautiously and feel free to open what is closed — Erin Morgenstern

Franklin, I was absolutely terrified of having a child. Before I got pregnant, my visions of child rearing- reading stories about cabooses with smiley faces at bedtime, feeding glop into slack mouths- all seemed like pictures of someone else. I dreaded confrontation with what could prove a closed, stony nature, my own selfishness and lack of generosity, the thick tarry powers of my own resentment. However intrigued by a "turn of the page," I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story. And I believe that this terror is precisely what must have snagged me, the way a ledge will tempt one to jump off. The very surmountability of the task, its very unattractiveness , was in the end what attracted me to it. (32) — Lionel Shriver

Well, I hope not everything. Shay has some racy books in her collection." Cam pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. Blaine wanted nothing but to claim those lips and other parts of her. "She does not. And how would you know?" He lifted a brow, calling her bluff. "You borrowed some of them." "Pft. Whatever." She pulled out her Smartphone and opened an app then handed it to Max. "They're not racy. They are bedtime stories for adults." "Exactly. — Lia Davis

The truth is that I used to read J.J. bedtime stories. He came up to me at the FOX commissary about four years ago and he said, "Do you remember what you gave me for my Barmitzvah?" I said no. He said, "You gave me the annotated Sherlock Holmes and my son is reading it now." It was the gift that kept on giving. — Nicholas Meyer

A child's best friend is often the one telling bedtime stories. — Eraldo Banovac

My mother wrote poetry when I was young - I have an early memory of the sound of her typewriter - and my father told me inventive bedtime stories. — Eula Biss

Much of my reading time over the last decade and a half has been spent reading aloud to my children. Those children's bedtime rituals of supper, bath, stories, and sleep have been a staple of my life and some of the best, most special times I can remember. — Louise Brown

It always puzzled him, when he was a child, that a woman who wrote books for a living should be so bad at telling bedtime stories. — J.M. Coetzee

As a parent with young children, I would always find little things that bothered me when I was reading bedtime stories or watching shows or listening to children's music. I couldn't find any stories, games or television shows that were fun and exciting while also being morally instructive and patriotic. — Allen Covert

I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp. — J.K. Rowling

Sacred bleeding fuck, I said, because, I mean its one thing to know your crazy hocus brother sees ghosts, and a whole different thing when you find out they're telling him bedtime stories. — Sarah Monette

Now I lay me down to sleep upon my pillow fluffed up so deep my dreams will take me far away to the land all children play when I wake with that new yawn shortly after the new dawn I'll try to have the best day I can until I return to my dream land — Stanley Victor Paskavich

If I don't say it enough, Jean-Claude, I love you, I love seeing your face across the table while we eat, and watching you root at Cynric's football games, and watching you read bedtime stories to Matthew when he stays with us, and a thousand surprising things, all of it, its you, and I love you."
"You will make me cry."
"A smart friend told me that it's okay to cry, sometimes you're so happy it spills out your eyes. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Toilet paper unrolled and slithered
then wrapped around my tummy.
That paper tried to roll me up
into an Egyptian mummy. — Melinda K. Trotter

My life had become an endless race against the clock. I was always in a hurry, scrambling to save a minute here, a few seconds there. My wake-up call came when I found myself toying with the idea of buying a collection of One-Minute Bedtime Stories Snow White in 60 seconds. Suddenly it hit me: my rushaholism has got so out of hand that I'm even willing to speed up those precious moments with my children at the end of the day. There has to be a better way, I thought, because living in fast forward is not really living at all. That's why I began investigating the possibility of slowing down. — Carl Honore

I have to deal with seven ex-stray dogs, and one ex-stray cat. One dog is nearing nineteen years old. Before I go to teach, he likes for me to tell him bedtime stories. — George Singleton

I told my three sons stories about germs more than fifty years ago as fanciful bedtime tales. — Arthur Kornberg

Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling. — Andrea A. Lunsford

I read you guys your bedtime story, go to bed!" my sister shouted as she put water into the
kettle.
"But Mom," a small voice whined. I smirked, ready for what my sister was about to bestow.
"But nothing, you two bet - -"
I interrupted, unable to control myself. "Get back into bed before the monster tries to bite your
ankles! — Ottilie Weber

My husband is old-fashioned and kind, he does the greatest Sinatra impression, and I'd never have written anything if he hadn't read all those bedtime stories and unloaded the dishwasher while I slaved over chapters. — Allison Pearson

I'm not great at bedtime stories. Bedtime stories are supposed to put the kid to sleep. My kid gets riled up and then my wife has to come in and go, 'All right! Get out of the room.' — Adam Sandler

These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance. — Edwidge Danticat

I'd love to do some bedtime stories for kids or that kind of thing. But with the demands of the shooting schedule and balancing the demands of being a single mother, it's a wonder you can squeeze in anything. — Roma Downey

A three-year-old with insomnia is very similar to a heroin addict going through withdrawal. There is nothing that calms them. They can't focus. You can't tell them enough stories. They don't understand why they are still awake four hours past their bedtime. This is commonly understood by all parents of three-year-olds and has inspired great works of literature, such as Go the F-ck to Sleep. — Jim Gaffigan

Fairy tales are much more than silly bedtime stories," the teacher continued. "The solution to almost every problem imaginable can be found in the outcome of a fairy tale. Fairy tales are life lessons disguised with colorful characters and situations. "'The — Chris Colfer

A beverage of leisure is a serious business," Shane Bowermaster was known to declare. "There can be no product of pleasure without the inverse on the end of the producer. — Jeff Phillips

I remembered how, as a boy, I would stew over all the things Mama wouldn't do, things other mothers did. Hold my hand when we walked. Sit me up on her lap, read bedtime stories, kiss my face good night. Those things were true enough. But, all those years, I'd been blind to a greater truth, which lay unacknowledged and unappreciated, buried deep beneath my grievances. It was this: that my mother would never leave me. — Khaled Hosseini

It was only as part of the civilizing process that storytelling developed within the aristocratic and bourgeois homes, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through governesses and nannies, and later in the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries through mothers, who told bedtime stories. — Jack D. Zipes

Dads. Do you not realize that your child needs to feel your skin on his? Do you not realize the incredible and powerful bond that skin on skin contact with your daughter will give you? Do you not understand the permanent mental connections that are made when you stroke your son's bare back or rub your daughter's bare tummy while you tell bedtime stories? And if any idiot says anything about that being inappropriate, you're gonna get kicked in the face, first by me, and then by every other good dad out there. Touching your child is your duty as a father. — Dan Pearce

was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things. Around — Terry Pratchett

But it does mean that she almost never witnesses lovers' quarrels, bedtime stories, classroom arguments, supper-table gossip, or bitter tears privately shed. She only knows that aspect of our lives that we represent as digital information. — Orson Scott Card

Go to your happy place. Go to the house, the one with the red door and the white picket fence. Go back to where nighttime meant kisses and hugs, bedtime stories and cuddles with Buster. Go to where sunrises were promises instead of just false hope. Go to where love still lives. — J.M. Darhower

for undying love and affection. The kind of love that bonds souls. The kind of love that's so deep two become one. To be someone's beloved. As a child I had my father, who adored and worshipped me - I was his perfect little daughter. He held me when I was sad, kissed my knee when I fell and got hurt, and read me bedtime stories. I was — Corinne Michaels

Stories are like islands, go out exploring and you're bound to get lost fantastically. — M. Robert Randolph

In the aftermath of an athletic humiliation on an unprecedented scale - a loss to a tortoise in a footrace so staggering that, his tormenters teased, it would not only live on in the record books, but would transcend sport itself, and be taught to children around the world in textbooks and bedtime stories for centuries; that hundreds of years from now, children who had never heard of a "tortoise" would learn that it was basically a fancy type of turtle from hearing about this very race - the hare retreated, understandably, into a substantial period of depression and self-doubt. — B.J. Novak

Either way, the thought of entire lives lost - family celebrations, Christmases and birthdays, love affairs and bedtime stories, weddings and high school graduations - because of a misfire or unexplained chaos inside a person's brain, made her chest constrict. It wasn't fair. — Ellen Marie Wiseman

Trolls have existed on this planet for as long as humans. This is what I was told and what I translated to Tub. The first mention of them in recorded history is from ninth-century Norway, when the nefarious creatures began showing up in song, verse, and bedtime stories to keep misbehaving children in line. According to Norse folklore, trolls are one of the Dark Beings, the purest embodiments of evil, and they scurried from between the toes of Ymir, the mythic six-headed Frost Giant whose murdered body became the universe in which we live; his bones became the mountains, his teeth boulders, and so forth. — Guillermo Del Toro

I decided I don't want to go for the top job now. I could be working for another 25 years and I'd like to be reading bedtime stories to my children for another two or three years. — Yvette Cooper

Bedtime stories were definitely a big part of my life because I was just so excited my father was talking to me. — Adam Sandler

I did start reading quite young but I was always read to by my parents, who are both actors. Bedtime stories from when I was about two/three to when I was about 15. In fact they didn't stop until I eventually kind of kicked them out of my bedroom. — Samuel West

Matt was the antidote to fear and trepidation. It was as if he'd become so acquainted with death that he could sit in its lap and ask it to tell him bedtime stories. — Gary Ponzo