Bedtime Story Quotes & Sayings

For me, any fiction of nobles and swords necessarily has to be a story of corruption, injustice and savagely violent conflict - because any other treatment is going to have all the heft and realistic honesty of a bedtime fairy tale for five year olds. — Richard K. Morgan

The butterfly wallpaper was now gone. It had been replaced by a moody, breathless wallpaper of silver, sprinkled with tiny white dots that looked like stars. It made her feel an odd sense of anticipation, like last night. Grandpa Vance couldn't have come in last night and done this.
Did it really change on its own?
It was beautiful, this wallpaper. It made the room look like living in a cloud. She put her hand against the wall by her dresser. It was soft, like velvet. How could her mother not have told her a room like this existed? She'd never mentioned it. Not even in a bedtime story. — Sarah Addison Allen

So much for modern science and its wonderful discoveries that just about everything can kill you. Life is only a bedtime story before a long, long sleep. — Robert Bloch

You don't let a guy put his hand on your chest, and put his foot on the ball and look into your eyes and tell you a bedtime story. No. sorry. He controlled the ball on his chest, step on it, look, see if someone was in the stands, take a coffee, turn, call his family, no one was answering, left a message, and then thought "Oh, I might cross the ball." He crossed it and they scored. — Thierry Henry

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

As a boy, I remember my father telling me a bedtime story about the day my grandfather was decapitated. — Justin Bienvenue

No baby knows when the nipple is pulled from his mouth for the last time. No child knows when he last calls his mother "Mama." No small boy knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story that will ever be read to him. No boy knows when the water drains from the last bath he will ever take with his brother. No young man knows, as he first feels his greatest pleasure, that he will never again not be sexual. No brinking woman knows, as she sleeps, that it will be four decades before she will again awake infertile. No mother knows she is hearing the word Mama for the last time. No father knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story he will ever read: From that day on, and for many years to come, peace reigned on the island of Ithaca, and the gods looked favorably upon Odysseus, his wife, and his son. — Jonathan Safran Foer

On a perfect day in your perfect little world (and it's always perfect) there is breakfast time, playtime, lunchtime, nap time, snack time, dinnertime, bath time, story time, and bedtime. There is time for everything when you are the timekeeper. — Karen Maezen Miller

The Garretts were my bedtime story, long before I ever thought I'd be part of the story myself. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales. — Paul Auster

Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways. A book, a poem, a song, a bedtime story, a grandmother's suicide, the choreography of a dance, a few frames of film, a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a deadly tumble from a horse, a faded photograph, or a story you tell your daughter. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

For example, there is an old grammarian's saw about how a sentence can end in five prepositions. Daddy trudges upstairs to Junior's bedroom to read him a bedtime story. Junior spots the book, scowls, and asks, Daddy, what did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to out of up for? — Steven Pinker

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

When I was a junior camp counselor and it was my job to tell the campers a bedtime story or devotional, I would tell them a rapture story. — Jerry B. Jenkins

Why do they call them daytime dramas, anyway? Shouldn't they be bedtime dramas? All anyone ever talks about is getting someone into bed! Plus if you're at home watching, you're probably watching in bed. And if you're like me, after an hour or two of watching all those sexy goings-on you forget the silly story entirely and fall asleep. Just like it's bedtime! — Elizabeth Jane Howard

Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn't be human without narrative fiction. — Paul Auster

Lena's real mom, Emily, knew that this was not the truth, but she also knew that Vaclav was not lying.
Vaclav knew that he was telling the truth.
Lena knew that it was a lie, but she loved it and believed it, like a fairy tale, like a song, like a bedtime story, like a magic trick.
She loved Vaclav until it became the truth and so it was. — Haley Tanner

When I was your age - about, ooh, a thousand years ago - I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics. — Mark Gatiss

I can't believe I ever thought reading to her was a chore. I'd sit here some nights, fidgeting, thinking of all the things I needed to do, my voice hoarse, reluctant to read, 'just one more chapter,' wishing I could escape to my glass of wine. What did I have to do that was so important? What could be more important than reading my daughter a bedtime story? — Sanjida Kay

The monsters were never
under my bed.
Because the monsters
were inside my head.


I fear no monsters,
for no monsters I see.
Because all this time
the monster has been me. — Nikita Gill

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

No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way ... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story - amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific. — Henry Gee

I really love to read bedtime story for my kids before they fall asleep.
Making them so excited and inspired, it's truly my favorite quality time. — Toba Beta

The great thing about small children is they're portable, so we take them everywhere, but when it comes to 2015, Zachary's going to school, and I want to be there to drop him off and pick him up. I don't want to just be the father who reads them a bedtime story. — Elton John

It's all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There's an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away surfaces, when you see into it, what's left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story. — Don DeLillo

the rasp of the respirator's filter were about as comforting as Darth Vader reading a bedtime story, — Andy McNab

What frightens you?
What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged?
Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire?
Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside? — Libba Bray

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

That life can be a rich place, comprised of the highbrow and the lowdown, the casual and the ambitious, private reading and public sharing. As a parent in that landscape, you'll need to be sometimes traveling companion, sometimes guides, sometimes off in your own part of the forest. A relationship between readers is complicated and cannot be reduced to such "strategies" as mandatory reading aloud, a commendable family activity whose pleasure has been codified into virtue, transforming the nightly bedtime story into a harbinger of everybody's favorite thing: homework. — Roger Sutton

There's not a lot I can fix for her anymore. Band-Aid and bedtime story days are almost over. This, I can fix with a simple Welcome. — Sarah Addison Allen

I walked in on my folks doing it doggy style less than four hours ago."
"Waitress!" Jonas screamed, clicking his fingers madly. "Bring two!" then, more quietly,"You want a neck massage? A bedtime story? A bullet in the ear? — MaryJanice Davidson

The inherent non-linearity of the digital allows for more input from others, including the subject and reader as collaborators. The top-down, bedtime-style story is of limited use. A non-linear narrative that allows for increased complexity and depth, and encourages both subject and reader to have greater involvement, will eventually emerge more fully from the digital environment. This, in a sense, is the more profound democratization of media. — Fred Ritchin

Maybe Leland would appear there by chance in the morning his chin freshly shaved against his stiff new collar and upon seeing his love in such duress would spring into action. Maybe he would even carry her out like a princess in a bedtime story. — Anna Godbersen

Why does everything want to eat children?!"
Neferre smiled. "Because you taste like candy. Stinky socks would mask your delicious scent from the aziza. We must get you stinky socks. So they do not eat you."
"That's not much of a bedtime story! You really haven't done this before! — Ash Gray

Reading is almost always subversive. From the time you read the next night's fairy tale under the covers by flashlight when you have already had your bedtime story from Daddy and are supposed to be asleep to the time you are an adult reading junk, hoping no one catches you at it, reading is private; that's the most seductive thing about it. It's you and the book. — Phyllis Rose

If you can fix my website by midnight, I will bake you more cookies than even Cookie Monster can imagine, and read you a bedtime story that is guaranteed to bring you sweet dreams." *some exclusions apply — Sandy Klein Bernstein

I like this job - most days I have a chance to make breakfast and take the kids to school or to read 'em a bedtime story. It's almost like a normal life. — Mark Harmon

Be my bedtime story and the thoughts that won't let me fall asleep. Be the conversation that I always have in my head at 3 AM and that beautiful voice that never lets me sleep. — Akshay Vasu

Angels do not whisper in our ears. Predestination is a fairy tale, a bedtime story for adults scared of meaningless death. — Paul Doiron

To be a mother is to live in fear. Fear of death, of sickness, of loss, of accidents, of strangers, of the Black Man, or simply those small everyday things that somehow manage to hurt us most: the look of impatience, the angry word, the missed bedtime story, the forgotten kiss, the terrible moment when a mother ceases to be the center of her daughter's world and becomes — Joanne Harris

Do we get a bedtime story?" Otto asked cheekily. "Oh yes, of course. I think we'll have one of my favorites; it's called 'The Little Boy and the Tranquilizer Gun." Raven smiled in a rather unsettling way. — Mark Walden

Forgive me, Old One." Vaughn stifled a yawn. "Is there a point to this bedtime story?"
Rhys picked up the fork from Vaughn's plate and drove it into his brother's thigh. "There. I've made four points for him. — Hailey Edwards

Settle yourself down for an apocryphal bedtime story. A programmer's parable, if you will ... . — Anonymous

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

If you're really tired, I could put you to sleep," he said. "Tell you a bedtime story."
She looked at him. "Are you serious?"
"I'm always serious — Cassandra Clare

Shall I tell you a bedtime story? — Steven King

Since I am from Spain, once the morning has gone, I like to take a nap while falling asleep to black and white movies. It feels less lonely. There is a comfort in hearing their voices, like when you're a child and your mother tells you a story before bedtime. — Jordi Molla

Angels, angels, always near, protecting you, my special dear! — Alexis York Lumbard

Normal' is a bedtime story-a fable-that humans tell themselves to feel better when faced with overwhelming evidence that most of what's happening around them is not 'normal' at all. — Deborah Harkness