Dream Nightmare Quotes & Sayings

Sprang on your nerves with all the abruptness of a normal night's dream turning to nightmare. Dog into wolf, light into twilight, emptiness into waiting presence, here were your underage Marine barfing in the street, barmaid with a ship's propeller tattooed on each buttock, one potential berserk studying the best technique for jumping through a plate glass window (when to scream Geronimo? before or after the glass breaks?), a drunken deck ape crying back in the alley because last time the SP's caught him like this they put him in a strait jacket. — Anonymous

Must have been some kind a nightmare."
"Yeah," I answer, my usual calm, vacant voice returning. "Can't wait to wake up. — K.A. Tucker

Last night I had a nightmare. That me and someone I cared a lot about were playing a game in a pool. We'd take turns submerging ourselves under the water while the other person kept time.
At one point it felt like the other person might be drowning, so I jumped in to pull her up. She smiled and laughed and pushed me away. Then she turned blue and died. I could not resuciate her.
I woke up at 3, sweating, in shock and pain. Frightened. But then I realized it was only a dream. But then I realized it was just like real life ...
Sometimes people we care about play risky games and then don't want our help. There is nothing we can do for them, no matter how much we care ... — Jose N. Harris

Surrealism is not a movement. It is a latent state of mind perceivable through the powers of dream and nightmare. — Salvador Dali

For the world is founded and built up on death, and the reality of death is neither to be questioned nor feared. Death is a dark dream, but it is not a nightmare. It is mankind's lack of pity, mankind's fatal propensity for torture, that is the nightmare. — Mary Webb

The dense fog manifests ever-living gravestones, the tunes of decadence, the hearts that were doomed to dance alone. Here lies untouched beauty, a brittle dream, an unseen sea-born nightmare, an isolated acheirous harf, fishbones without flesh, a face without letters, the hypnotic power o Apollonian destruction. Ashes kiss the grapefruit essential oil skin, the soul beats with eaten sons and daughters, soaking wet serpents with cuspid tongues lollop for legendary goddesses. — Laura Gentile

Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream. — Joan Didion

Progress has brought us both unbounded opportunities and unbridled difficulties. Thus, the measure of our civilization will not be that we have done much, but what we have done with that much. I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism. The thought of modern industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream worth dreaming. The thought of industry in the hands of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The choice between the two is upon us. — Theodore Roosevelt

What if you wake up one fine morning only to realize that the life you have been living since the last few days was nothing but a dream of yours?

Would you go back to sleep then?

I wake up each morning only to realize you're not by my side. And if this emptiness is nothing but a nightmare, let me wake up and go back to the time we were together... — Sanhita Baruah

Tomorrow could be just few steps away - a dream, yesterday the fucking nightmare... — Deyth Banger

The summer had been like a dream, some parts of it a nightmare, but overall a good dream. Magic. — Elizabeth Kirke

Didier once told me, in a rambling, midnight dissertation, that a dream is the place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, he said, we call the dream a nightmare. — Gregory David Roberts

I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him. — Viktor E. Frankl

The places that ive been, the things that i have seen - what you have as nightmares, are what i have as dreams. — DMX

In our world of rampant 'individualisation', relationships are mixed blessings. They vacillate between a sweet dream and a nightmare, and there is no telling when one turns into the other. — Zygmunt Bauman

I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream--I see an American nightmare. — Malcolm X

[ ... ] most of the environmental hype [regarding global warming] is really to help bring about Karl Marx's dream (nightmare) of a Communist world. [by reduction, and ultimately elimination of private property rights — Kent Hovind

Some made the long drop from the apartment or the office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well-constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up. — Ernest Hemingway,

In the dream of the planet it is normal for humans to suffer, to live in fear, and to create emotional dramas. The outside dream is not a pleasant dream; it is a dream of violence, a dream of fear, a dream of war, a dream of injustice. The personal dream of humans will vary, but globally it is mostly a nightmare. If we look at human society we see a place so difficult to live in because it is ruled by fear. Throughout the world we see human suffering, anger, revenge, addictions, violence in the street, and tremendous injustice. It may exist at different levels in different countries around the world, but fear is controlling the outside dream. — Miguel Ruiz

Will holding a secret in your heart make it any less true? If you never tell, never speak of it, will it become only a dream, less than a dream, a nightmare half-remembered? Oh, if only the gods would be so good. (Catelyn) — George R R Martin

A cold, calculating nightmare. Sharp as a finely honed blade. 'The Lucid Dreaming' cuts, separating the flesh before you even know you've been injured. It makes you bleed as a reader. — Del Howison

All of this while I left lifted by a strange new medium, a strange element
I now tell you that I was newly buoyant in a brighter life. In the midst of a hymn, God had disappeared. It was like waking from a nightmare in which I'd been paralyzed. Like discovering that gravity itself had been only a bad dream. — Denis Johnson

I awoke you from your sleep because I saw that you were having a nightmare. And now you are cross and say to me: "What are we supposed to do now? Everything is still night!" You ingrates! You should go to sleep again and dream better. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds.
When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. — Alice Walker

The house burned in the fire. Her house. Her prison of lies and of denial. Her American dream turned nightmare."~Unbreakable Heart — Kimberly Kinrade

I had a dream about you last night ... Well I say dream I mean nightmare ... you were a Yankee fan. — Nicole McKay

The other me, who did not mean to drown herself, went under the sea and remained there for a long time. Eventually she surfaced near Japan and people gave her gifts but she had been so long under the sea she did not recognize what they were. She is a sly one. Mostly at night we commune. Night. Harbinger of dream and nightmare and bearer of omens which defy the music of words. In the morning the fear of her going is very real and very alarming. It can make one tremble. Not that she cares. She is the muse. I am the messenger. — Edna O'Brien

I was wrenched awake at the tail-end of a stifled scream. I fought my way up from a deep dark dream. The scream had been mine. — Jane Wilson-Howarth

Some people are motivated by visualizing themselves reaching their dream. Some people are motivated by the nightmare of not reaching it. Do both. — Robert G. Allen

I'm every woman's dream and every man's nightmare. — Ric Flair

Protect your dreams from your nightmare — Munia Khan

When you wake up from a nightmare, the reality comforts you. When you wake up from the best dream ever, reality is a burden, a slap-in-the-face reminder that you could feel this, you could have this, but you don't and you won't. — Karina Halle

For millions, the retirement dream is in reality an economic nightmare. For millions, growing old today means growing poor, being sick, living in substandard housing, and having to scrimp merely to subsist. — Sylvia Porter

The America of Obama's dreams is not the one of self-reliance and entrepreneurship to which he paid phony lip service at the beginning of his speech. It is an America in which the government, rather than the private sector, creates wealth and leads ignorant, helpless people by the nose from cradle to grave, from preschool to the academy, with the caveat that if they succeed too much, they will make themselves enemies of the state and targets for punitive action. Obama's new American dreams is an American nightmare. — David Limbaugh

Lucy was frightened, frightened near to death. Her voice choked, she could not breath, her limbs went numb. "This is not happening", she said to herself as the men forced her down; "it is just a dream, a nightmare". While the men, for their part, drank up her fear, revelled in it, did all they could to hurt her, to menace her, to heighten her terror. "Call your dogs!" they said to her. "Go on, call your dogs! No dogs? Then let us show you dogs! — J.M. Coetzee

Sometimes, in the throes of a nightmare when unseen powers whirl one over the roofs of strange dead cities toward the grinning chasm of Nis, it is a relief and even a delight to shriek wildly and throw oneself voluntarily along with the hideous vortex of dream-doom into whatever bottomless gulf may yawn. — H.P. Lovecraft

She wanted so badly to believe him. She sat on the edge of her bed and closed her eyes. And she realized what had been happening to her over the past weeks. He had been turning - so gradually that she had scarcely noticed the transition - from her nightmare into her dream. Because — Mary Balogh

Love is the greatest of dreams, yet the worst of nightmares. — William Shakespeare

We were happy. I know I ought to be able to tell you about it, yet I cannot, for while a nightmare will stay with you like hunger, when you awake from a happy dream, you have no memory of it. — Erik Christian Haugaard

I'm interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives. — Anthony Hopkins

A dream is a place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same we call the dream a nightmare. — Gregory David Roberts

Physically, he was my dream and in every other way, my nightmare. — Penelope Ward

Tattoo your name across my heart, so it will remain / not even death could make us part / what kind is it / It could be a sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare / either way I don't want to wake up from you. — Beyonce Knowles

I've not only pursued the American dream, I've achieved it. I suppose we could say the last few years, I've also achieved the American nightmare. — Kenneth Lay

Never give up. If you have a dream - no.matter what that dream is, whether it be to become a great actress ir to open your very own sweet shop- never stop.dreaming it, because if you do, life becomes one long nightmare — Victoria Connelly

Nightmares are like Master Harriot's star glass. They are a trick of the light, one that makes something distant seem closer and larger than it really is." "Oh." Jack considered Matthew's response. "So even if I see a monster in my dreams, it cannot reach me?" Matthew nodded. "But I will tell you a secret. A dream is a nightmare in reverse. If you dream of someone you love, that person will seem closer, even if far away. — Deborah Harkness

I had a nightmare about the Averys' sweet-tempered German shepherd, Ina. In the dream, as I was sitting on the floor in the Averys' living room, the dog walked up to me and began to insult me. She said I was a frivolous, cynical, attention-seeking "fag" whose entire life had been phony. I answered her frivolously and cynically and chucked her under the chin. She grinned at me with malice, as if to make clear that she understood me to the core. Then she sank her teeth into my arm. As I fell over backward, she went for my throat. — Jonathan Franzen

If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival. — N. Katherine Hayles

Time is a dream - or a nightmare - from which there is never any waking. We who travel in Time are dreamers who occasionally share a common experience. — Michael Moorcock

I have a nightmare about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown] killing each other. Not every month, but now and then. I also have a recurring dream about losing. — Alastair Campbell

Life, basically, is a nightmare until you learn to control the dream. — Rebecca Ore

A nightmare is a big dream ... with a bad team. — John C. Maxwell

There's a reason why the story of the ghetto should never come with a photo. The Third World slum is a nightmare that defies beliefs or facts, even the ones staring right at you. A vision of hell that twists and turns on itself and grooves to its own soundtrack. Normal rules do not apply here. Imagination then, dream, fantasy. You visit a ghetto, particularly a ghetto in West Kingston, and it immediately leaves the real to become this sort of grotesque, something out of Dante or the infernal painting of Hieronymus Bosch. It's a rusty red chamber of hell that cannot be described so I will not try to describe it. It cannot be photographed because some parts of West Kingston, such as Rema, are in the grip of such bleak and unremitting repulsiveness that the inherent beauty of the photographic process will lie to you about just how ugly it really is. — Marlon James

No dream without the nightmare. — Blake Crouch

of yourself and of other people. If you wish to attain to lasting happiness you must be ready to hate father, mother, even your own life and to take leave of all your possessions. How? Not by renouncing them or giving them up because what you give up violently you are forever bound to. But rather by seeing them for the nightmare they are; and then, whether you keep them or not, they will have lost their grip over you, their power to hurt you, and you will be out of your dream at last, out of your darkness, your fear, your unhappiness. So spend some time seeing each of the things you cling to for what it really is, a nightmare that causes you excitement and pleasure on the one hand but also worry, insecurity, tension, anxiety, fear, unhappiness on the other. — Anthony De Mello

There is some consolation in the fact that, even though your dreams don't come true, neither do your nightmares. — Richard Armour

A nightmare is the best kind of dream. The only one that brings happiness when it ends. — Joseph R. Lallo

Living someone else's dream is truly a nightmare. None should forfeit their life's aspirations to toil for the goals of another. Unity of purpose is a sentence. Collectivism is a crime; theft of individual worth. — A.E. Samaan

What's wrong? Where's Gavin?" Mabellio grabbed my shoulders as I tried to barge through the door. "He's fine." He paused. "Now."
"Oh my God," I cried. "I want to see him."
Golar spoke in a calm, soothing tone. "You may, but understand he will need time to heal before he can journey anywhere. You both are welcome to stay, along with Oliver, of course, until he is able."
I nodded my head quickly. "Thank you." I started to walk through the doorway but turned back towards Golar and Mabellio. "Do you know how or why he is even here? I am utterly confused. This is my dream. My nightmare. How is he a part of that? — Brynn Myers

To all the kids who looked up to me, I'm truly sorry for letting you down but I hope it's helped you learn that one bad decision can turn your dream into a nightmare, there is no excuse for domestic violence and I apologize for the horrible mistake I made. — Ray Rice

It can't all be dreams because a broken dream will kill you as surely as a nightmare will, and with a lot less mercy. At least the nightmares don't smile while they take you down. — Seanan McGuire

The dream didn't leave, people just don't know a nightmare when they right in the middle of one. — Marlon James

What were you dreaming about?"
"You." He twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. "I always dream about you."
"Oh, yeah? Because I thought you were having a nightmare."
He tipped his head back to look at her. "Sometimes I dream you're gone," he said. "I keep wondering when you'll figure out how much better you could do and leave me. — Cassandra Clare

The only way to stop a nightmare is to open your eyes, if perchance you realize you were dreaming — Bangambiki Habyarimana

If I didn't mould my reality then I'd still be in the ghetto where people like me are supposed to stay. You have to dream your way out of the nightmare. — Will.i.am

THE DREAM BECOMES A NIGHTMARE — John Bevere

College is part of the American dream. It shouldn't be part of a financial nightmare for families. — Barbara Mikulski

Maldonado's face was ghastly. 'That' she said, pointing below the bed where the cat lurked, 'and that' - pointing to what lay on the floor - 'prove it was no dream. Do dreams leave marks behind them?' ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") — Cornell Woolrich

I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself? — Wendell Berry

Exactly. There are all sorts of dream interpretations, Freud's being the most notorious, but I have always believed they served a simple eliminatory function, and not much more - that dreams are the psyche's way of taking a good dump every now and then. And that people who don't dream - or don't dream in a way they can often remember when they wake up - are mentally constipated in some way. After all, the only practical compensation for having a nightmare is waking up and realizing it was all just a dream. — Stephen King

Just because you have a nightmare doesn't mean you stop dreaming. — Jill Scott

When we're unaware that we share the power to co-create reality with the universe itself, that power slips away from us, causing our dream to become a nightmare. We begin to feel we're the victims of an unknown and frightening creation that we're unable to influence, and events seem to control and trap us. The only way to end this dreadful reality is to awaken to the fact that it too is a dream - and then recognize our ability to write a better story, one that the universe will work with us to manifest. — Alberto Villoldo

It is when one begins to lose the consciousness of freedom, and when the idea of necessity enters the world at all, when there is any hurry or strain anywhere, a letter to be written or a train to catch, when you have got to work, to make the horses of the dream gallop, or to make the rifles go off, that the dream is declining, and turning into the nightmare, which belongs to the poorest and most vulgar class of dreams. — Karen Blixen

Her worst nightmare and her wettest dream. — Gail McHugh

We both wondered whether these contradictions that one can't avoid if one begins to think of time and space may not really be proofs that the whole of life is a dream, and the moon and stars bits of nightmare. — Arthur Machen

The strictly theoretical and so attractive dream of possible equality had been traded for the worst authoritarian nightmare in history when it was applied to reality, understood, with good reason (more, in this case), as the only criterion of truth. — Leonardo Padura

I'm not the American Nightmare. I am the American Dream! — Donald Freed

My life's dream has been a perpetual nightmare. — Voltaire

You must first realize that you are in a dream. Then you must realize that your current dream is a nightmare. — Frederick Lenz

It's happening: Lou Dobbs' dream come true and Silicon Valley's worst nightmare. We're already seeing the reverse brain drain as smart immigrants take their U.S. educations and experience building companies and creating technology back to their home countries. — Sarah Lacy

Foolish woman, will holding it secret in your heart make it any less true? If
you never tell, never speak of it, will it become only a dream, less than a dream, a nightmare half-remembered? — George R R Martin

I feel that I am a citizen of the American dream and that the revolutionary struggle of which I am a part is a struggle against the American nightmare. — Eldridge Cleaver

I saw 'Wild,' and I thought, 'Wow, this is a lot of things, but one of the things is it's a therapist's dream and a climate-change denier's nightmare.' — Michael Keaton

One of the sure signs that we have been co-opted by our culture is that, like frogs in the proverbial kettle, we have grown comfortable with things that should shock us and mobilize us to action. We no longer feel the heat of outrage against things that anger God. We have so embraced the American dream that we can no longer see or feel the world's nightmare of poverty, suffering, and hopelessness. — Richard Stearns

Once we're able to see this world as an illusion and a phantasm, then we can see everything that happens to us as a dream, as something that pretended to exist while we were sleeping. And we will become subtly and profoundly indifferent towards all of life's setbacks and calamities. Those who die turned a corner, which is why we've stopped seeing them; those who suffer pass before us like a nightmare, if we feel, or like an unpleasant daydream, if we think. And even our own suffering won't be more than this nothingness. — Fernando Pessoa

In this funny debut, flashy Filipino fashion designer Boy Hernandez sees his American dream become a nightmare when he's ensnared in a terrorist plot and shipped to Guantanamo. Gilvarry nails the couture scene, but Boy's rough journey from Manolo to Gitmo is no joke. — Andrew Abrahams

No I'm not a dream, I'm your worst nightmare — C.T. Todd

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor and surviving. — Marlon Brando

She's finding it hard to cope - her hopes have been dashed, the future she dreamed about has gone and she's scared about that. There's nothing in its place. She wants you back. She doesn't want to let go of everything it meant to her.
Because the world seems horribly big and empty. Because the future is a very frightening concept when you'd previously planned on sharing it with someone. Because she's a girl, she's a romantic and she fears if she lets go of her dream, she'll live a nightmare. Because she has a hope and she fears if she lets her hope go, who will she be?
The effort, the pain of clinging on is preferable to the wide-open fear of letting go. — Freya North

Under President Obama and Secretary Clinton, they're working hard to change the American dream into the European nightmare. They do celebrate more dependence on the government. — Bobby Jindal

Because, he's Jameson Kane. He's like my worst nightmare and my biggest dream, all rolled in to one. — Stylo Fantome

If you two are starting a detective agency, I want in," said Selene, adjusting her ball cap.

"Well, duh," said Eli, beaming at her.

"And we're going to need a name," Selene said. "Something good and catchy."

"You're right." Eli scratched his chin. "How about the Arkwell Detective Agency. The A.D.A."

Selene wrinkled her nose. "Sounds too much like a chemical or something."

"What about Booker and Associates?"

I rolled my eyes. "It's not all about you, you know?"

Eli grinned. "Says who?"

"I think we should call it Selene Investigations."

"No, Nightmare Investigations."

"Dreamer Investigations."

"The Dream Team."

"How about Magic Eyes? You know, like private eyes, only for magic."

"Corny much? — Mindee Arnett

To those who are trained in science, creationism seems a bad dream, a sudden coming back to life of a nightmare, a renewed march of an Army of the Night risen to challenge free thought and enlightenment. — Isaac Asimov

There are two dreams, daydream and night dream, but your day dreams can make your life nightmare. — Zybejta "Beta" Metani' Marashi

From one small lie her dream had transformed into a hideous nightmare — Emma Calin

'I want your light to chase his darkness [ ... ] The best way to get rid of a nightmare is with a dream come true.' — Tara Lain

I'm your favorite nightmare and your worst dream all in one. I'm everything you shouldn't want. And you're everything I need. — Kenya Wright

Here lay the gateway between worlds, the divide between reality and fantasy. A dream or, depending on who waited, a nightmare. — Danielle L. Jensen

Leila dreamt that her Soul was on fire. It was not a nightmare. Shannon was in the dream. Shannon was telling her to wake up. She woke up, burning as if she had a fever, nearly soaking wet with sweat. Kevin was asleep beside her. — H. Raven Rose

SHOCK ABSORBERS
Veterans scream in their dreams, reliving nightmares so that we can sleep peacefully — Kamil Ali