If You Can Sleep Quotes & Sayings

A woman's greatest knack is how well she can hide how much sleep she's been missing. There's a little tally board inside each of us labeled, "Number of days since someone has told me I look tired" that resets itself whenever we make the mistake of looking like we feel. And the alternative? Even if you fulfill obligations, party like you mean it, and somehow get your sleep, your decisions will be too well-informed to be spontaneous. You'll never be susceptible to life. — Gabe Durham

Right now, I am in Fallujah. I am in Darfur. I am on Sixty-third and Park having dinner with Ellen Barkin and Ron Perelman ... Right now, I'm on Lafayette and Astor waiting to hit you up for change so I can get high. I'm taking a walk through the Rose Garden with George Bush. I'm helping Donald Rumsfeld get a good night's sleep ... I was in that cave with Osama, and on that plane with Mohamed Atta ... And what I want you to know is that your work has barely begun. And what I want you to trust is the efficacy of divine love if practiced consciously. And what I need you to believe is that if you hate who I love, you do not know me at all. And make no mistake, "Who I Love" is every last one. I am every last one. People ask of me: Where are you? Where are you? ... Verily I ask of you to ask yourself: Where are you? Where are you? — Stephen Adly Guirgis

If you want to sleep with me, I don't mind. I've never slept with anybody, and I'm very fond of you, so if you want to make love to me, I don't mind at all. But marrying me is a whole different matter. If you marry me, you
take on all my troubles, and they're a lot worse than you can imagine. — Haruki Murakami

You'd better hope and pray That you make it safe back to your own world You'd better hope and pray That you'll wake one day in your own world Because when you sleep at night They don't hear your cries in your own world Only time will tell If you can break the spell back in your own world — Siobhan Fahey

If you can't sleep at night because of your stock market position, then you have gone too far. If this is the case, then sell your position down to the sleeping level. — Jesse Lauriston Livermore

The Prophet once said to his Companions, "Do you want to see a man of Paradise?" A man then passed by, and the Prophet said, "That man is of the people of Paradise." One of Companion of the Prophet wanted to find out what it was about this man that earned him such a commendation from the Messenger of God , so he decided to spend some time with this man and observe him closely. He noticed that this man did not perform the night prayer vigil (tahajjud) or do anything extraordinary. He appeared to be an average man of Medina. The Companion finally told the man what the Prophet had said about him and asked if he did anything special. The man replied, "The only thing that I can think of, other than what everybody else does, is that I make sure that I never sleep with any rancor in my heart towards another." That was his secret. — Hamza Yusuf

Repetition sometimes works in poetry, but rarely in prose. The musical provocateur John Cage once wrote a lecture in which a single page was repeated fourteen times, with the refrain "If anybody is sleep let him go to sleep" (Cage, 1961). Midway through, the artist Jean Reynal stood up and screamed, "John, I dearly love you, but I can't bear another minute. — Gary F. Marcus

Moving on was always the end plan.
New York,he remembered, was a fair distance away.It should be far enough. As for tonight, he was going to have a shot of whiskey in his tea to help smooth out the edges. Then by God, he was going to sleep if he had to bash himself over the head to accpmplish it.
And he wasn't going to give Keeley another thought.
The knock on the door had him cursing under his breath.Though she'd been doing well,his first worry was that the mare with bronchitis had taken a bad turn.He was already reaching for the boots he'd shed when he called out.
"Come in,it's open.Is it Lucy then?"
"No,it's Keeley." One brow lifted, she stood framed in the door. "But if you're expecting Lucy,I can go."
The boots dangled from his fingertips, and those fingertips had gone numb. "Lucy's a horse," he managed to say. "She doesn't often come knocking on my door. — Nora Roberts

I just ... I understand you might want to start dating more seriously, and that means dating someone from town. But if you're going to do that ... " This time he took a long drink of coffee, and the mug was still at his lips when he said, "I like Daniel. He takes care of you."
I blinked. "Oh my God. Did you really just say that? He takes care of me?"
Dad flushed. "I didn't mean it like-"
"Takes care of me? Did I go to sleep and wake up in the nineteenth century?" I looked down at my jeans and T-shirt. "Ack! I can't go to school like this. Where's my corset? My bonnet? — Kelley Armstrong

Listen to me," he said, his voice even and intense, "and listen well, because I'm only going to say this once. I desire you. I burn for you. I can't sleep at night for wanting you. Even when I didn't like you, I lusted for you. It's the most maddening, beguiling, damnable thing, but there it is. And if I hear one more word of nonsense from your lips, I'm going to have to tie you to the bloody bed and have my way with you a hundred different ways, until you finally get it through your silly skull that you are the most beautiful and desirable woman in England, and if everyone else doesn't see that, then they're all bloody fools. — Julia Quinn

Jared?" "Hm?" "You're pretty fucking sick, right?" The thermometer said 103 degrees. "Naw. Need sleep." "Good, so you're at death's door, and you can't run away when I tell you something." "What?" "I think we're in love." "Yup. I'm out of here." Not a muscle twitched. "Good. I love you. I'm pissed at you. If you ever do blow again, I will break up with you, but I love you." "Love you too." "No more drugs." "'Kay." "Promise." "Promise. — Amy Lane

All that weeping makes me want to slap her," he complained, "and I can scarce sleep for her sobbing." You would weep as well if you had a son and lost him, Sam almost said. He could not blame Gilly for her grief. Instead, he blamed Jon Snow and wondered when Jon's heart had turned to stone. Once he asked Maester Aemon that very question, when Gilly was down at the canal fetching water for them. "When you raised him up to be the lord commander," the old man answered. — George R R Martin

The entire world is made up of only two things, energy and matter. In elementary physics we learn that neither matter nor energy (the only two realities known to man) can be created nor destroyed. Both matter and energy can be transformed, but neither can be destroyed. Life is energy, if it is anything. If neither energy nor matter can be destroyed, of course life cannot be destroyed. Life, like other forms of energy, may be passed through various processes of transition, or change, but it cannot be destroyed. Death is mere transition. If death is not mere change, or transition, then nothing comes after death except a long, eternal, peaceful sleep, and sleep is nothing to be feared. Thus you may wipe out, forever, the fear of Death. — Napoleon Hill

The rebels are firing all around us, yet for a moment it's so quiet you can hear your own breathing. Not a person but me in the world could deconstruct that sentence. If Meghan could hear her own breathing, it meant she was breathing fast. And since Meghan had a resting heart rate somewhere between coma and sleep because of all that swimming, if she was breathing fast, it meant she was afraid, which meant there was truly something to fear. — Anna Quindlen

If you can put this book down, it means you need more coffee and less sleep. After all, sleep is for the weak which is why I get 8 hours every night and 2 hours during the day and drink de-cafe. — Leviak B. Kelly

You might as well learn that a man who catches fish or shoots game has got to make it fit to eat before he sleeps. Otherwise it's all a waste and a sin to take it if you can't use it. — Robert Ruark

I'm not saying parenting cured my narcissism, but it changed me and continues to change me every day. I am now a teeny tiny bit less of a narcissist. Being a parent is a selfless adventure. The worldview of "Take care of yourself first" is no longer logical to a sane person if your baby wakes up hungry in the middle of the night. You can't be like, "What's that? The baby is starving? Eh, forget her, I've got to get some sleep." For me, parenting was literally a wake-up call from my own simple selfishness. In other words, I'm not quite as horrible as I used to be. — Jim Gaffigan

You bloody want me. You can deny it if that helps you sleep better at night, but you're going to end up in my bed sooner or later. Want it or not. — Lexi Cubbins

Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You've crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time. — Roger Zelazny

What in hell is that?"
She kept going toward the bathroom, refusing to apologize or look down at the pink, delicate, very
short lace nightgown. When she emerged, face washed and clean, Rowan was sitting up, arms crossed
over his bare chest. "You forgot the bottom part."
She merely blew out the candles in the room one by one. His eyes tracked her the entire time.
"There is no bottom part," she said, flinging back the covers on her side. "It's starting to get so hot,
and I hate sweating when I sleep. Plus, you're practically a furnace. So it's either this or I sleep
naked. You can sleep in the bathtub if you have a problem with it. — Sarah J. Maas

When a woman understands the uniqueness of the female brain - how to care for it, how to make the most of its strengths, how to overcome its challenges, how to fall in love with it, and ultimately, how to unleash its full power - there is no stopping her. In her personal development, at work, and in her relationships, she can bring the best of herself to her family, her community, and her planet. By contrast, a woman who is not caring optimally for her brain, who is not giving it the full range of nutrients, exercise, sleep, and emotional support that it needs, is squandering her most valuable resource. If you are not taking good care of your brain, you are at a significantly higher risk of brain fog, memory problems, low energy, distractibility, poor decisions, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. — Daniel G. Amen

I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own - hard for me, at least. — Gene Wolfe

Go to sleep, Crab."
"I don't sleep. I'm a crab. I only lie dormant."
"Why don't you sleep?"
"Because things will kill me if I do. I need to be in a state of constant awareness. Even if you think I'm sleeping, I'm not. I'm saving my energy so that I can fuck you up. Heads up 24/7. — Drew Magary

Slow down, and enjoy that stuff if it's possible. Kathy doesn't care what time I leave, only what time I clock out, and she knows sometimes I sleep here when I'm locked out, or have friends over. Everything's cool as long as I clock out on time."
She swallowed that big bite she'd rammed in, and said, "Okay. Jeez, I'm so hungry, this stuff is good."
Ketchup for your fries, miss? I can recommend it - it's my main source of vitamin C."
She smiled. "Sure. What does Kathy do if you clock out late?"
Well, a couple times I've fallen asleep and done it, and gotten off with a warning. Eventually, though, if I made a habit of it, I'd disappear in the middle of the night, and never be seen again, and the only clues the police would have would be a few orange hairs and some enormous shoe prints. But for a few weeks afterward, all over the country, the Quarter Pounders would taste just a little bit more like Lightsburg, Ohio. — John Barnes

Must be nice to be a seagull. You eat, you sleep, you shag, and if you're having a bad day you can shite on everyone from a great height. Doesn't even have to be a bad day, you can do it just for fun. — Stuart MacBride

You learned that if you're tired enough, you can sleep sitting up. That the unendurable is perfectly endurable if you just take it a minute at a time, and when the alternative is no more minutes ever ... — Allison Pearson

When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He's like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone's pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can't sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul. — Donald Miller

When you have a family as big as mine, there are many things that affect my family members, in many different ways. It could be high blood pressure, it could be cholesterol, it could be obesity, it could be sleep deprivation or sleep apnea. An illness is an illness, especially if it affects younger kids. Illnesses affect your family and they impact you because you want to do the best you can to help your family member become more healthy, just as my family members want me to be healthy. — Queen Latifah

I don't seem to require a lot of sleep. I just - if I get four, five good hours, I'm fine. But sleeping is sort of dull. There's a lot of other good stuff that you can do without just lying down and closing your eyes. — Betty White

You never know when you might come home and find Mam sitting by the fire chatting with a woman and a child, strangers. Always a woman and child. Mam finds them wandering the streets and if they ask, Could you spare a few pennies, miss? her heart breaks. She never has money so she invites them home for tea and a bit of fried bread and if it's a bad night she'll let them sleep by the fire on a pile of rags in the corner. The bread she gives them always means less for us and if we complain she says there are always people worse off and we can surely spare a little from what we have. — Frank McCourt

If you're a woman, all they can think about your relationship with a politician is that you're either sleeping with him or advising him about clothes. — Gloria Steinem

My fingers curl through the holes in the wicker, through the wet grass beneath it, trying to hold tight to the sharp blades of the present. Somewhere in my brain a sinkhole is bubbling over, and each bubble contains a scene from a tiny sunken world ... I have never been the prophet of my own past before. It makes me wonder how the healthy dreamers can bear to sleep at all, if sleep means that you have to peer into that sinkhole by yourself ... I had almost forgotten this occipital sorrow, the way you are so alone with the things you see in dreams. — Karen Russell

Turkey's great if you're one of those people who can't sleep on planes because when the tryptophan kicks in, it's no problem. — Mike Pesca

All your life you've been hurt, and it's the things you loved the most that hurt the most when you lost them. Everywhere you turn, even when the eyes that look back at you are just like yours, you know you're the stranger. You can't tell others how you really feel, because you know they'll laugh. And when you sleep, you can feel the hole inside you, because you know that no matter what you do, you'll always be different, and this world hates different. So you close your eyes, and you wonder if it would really be all that bad if you never woke up. Maybe in the next world, you'll find a way to fill the hole. But eventually, you open your eyes, and it's a new day, and you brush yourself off and try to make the best of things before you lie down to sleep and think it all over again. — Aaron Burdett

I hate you for all the years I 'll have to live without you. How can a heart hurt this much and still go on beating? How can I feel this bad without dying from it?
I 've bruised my knees with praying to have you back. None of my prayers have been answered. I tried to send them up to heaven but they 're trapped here on earth, like bobwhites beneath the snow. I try to sleep and it's like I 'm suffocating.
Where have you gone?
Once you said that if I wasn't with you, it wouldn't be heaven.
I can't let go of you. Come back and haunt me. Come back. — Lisa Kleypas

Truth is not something you can appropriate easily and quickly. You certainly cannot sleep or dream yourself to the truth. No, you must be tried, do battle, and suffer if you are to acquire the truth for yourself. It is a sheer illusion to think that in relation to the truth there is an abridgement, a short cut that dispenses with the necessity for struggling for it. — Soren Kierkegaard

I tried to go to sleep with my headphones still on, but then after a while my mom and dad came in, and my mom grabbed Bluie from the shelf and hugged him to her stomach, and my dad sat down in my desk chair, and without crying he said, 'You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can't know, sweetie, because you've never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.'
'Okay,' I said.
'Really,' my dad said. 'I wouldn't bullshit you about this. If you were more trouble than you're worth, we'd just toss you out on the streets.'
'We're not sentimental people,' Mom added, deadpan. 'We'd leave you at an orphanage with a note pinned to your pajamas. — John Green

So how was it?" she asked. "Kissing Curran?"
"I can't let him kiss me again, because if he does, I'll sleep with him."
Andrea blinked. "Well," she said finally, "At least you know where you stand. — Ilona Andrews

My lascivious blood leaves me no choice but to lust for men. No matter how common I become, how ugly, how old, as long as there is life in my body I will go on wanting men. That's just my fate. Even if men are no longer amazed when they see me, even if they no longer desire me, even if they belittle me, I have to sleep with them. No, I want to sleep with them. It's the retribution for a divinity that no one can sustain forever. I suppose you could say my 'power' was little more than sin. — Natsuo Kirino

I'm always amazed at friends who say they try to read at night in bed but always end up falling asleep. I have the opposite problem. If a book is good I can't go to sleep, and stay up way past my bedtime, hooked on the writing. Is anything better than waking up after a late-night read and diving right back into the plot before you even get out of bed to brush your teeth? — John Waters

I like Daniel. He takes care of you."
I blinked. "Oh my God. Did you really just say that? He takes care of me?"
Dad flushed. "I didn't mean it like-"
"Takes care of me? Did I go to sleep and wake up in the nineteenth century?" I looked down at my jeans and T-shirt. "Ack! I can't go to school like this. Where's my corset? My bonnet?"
Dad sighed as Mom walked in with her empty teacup.
"What did I miss?" She said.
"Dad's trying to marry me off to Daniel." I looked at him.
"You know, if you offer him a new truck for a dowry, he might go for it. — Kelley Armstrong

A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. — Douglas Adams

I feel tired" Jace confessed "If I could sleep a few more hours ... "
"Of course .Of course you can" I sabelle's fingers pushed his hair back out of his eyes .Her tone was firm , absolute, fierce as a mother bear protecting her cub.
Jace's eyes began to close ." And you won't leave me ?"
"No " Alec said " No we won't ever leave you. You know that"
"Never" Isabelle took his hand,the one Alec wasn't holding , and pressed it fiercly "Lightwoods, all together" she whispere. — Cassandra Clare

Rhiss looked narrowly at her, suspicion becoming certainty in his mind as he spoke. "Did you put them to sleep?"
She looked coy. "Now, I ask you, would I do that?"
"In a moment, if it suited your purposes," Rhiss retorted. "I thought as much. What was it? Did you doctor their drinks?"
She looked scandalized. "Rhissan! I'd not do a thing like that, not to friends, at any rate. They were fair worn out, poor lambs, from all that talking and thinking. I... merely encouraged their inclination to sleep. It's a useful ability with hurt animals, you know, and it works just as well on stubborn people. They can have their afternoon nap in peace, we can have our walk, and everyone will be the happier for it."
Rhiss looked at her a moment, her lovely eyes opened wide in innocence, then burst out laughing. "Very well, Mistress Lowri. Lead on. But don't you be trying any of your trickery on me. — D.R. Ranshaw

You are right that a man needs light like he needs bread, but a man needs a little
darkness, too, if only so that he can sleep, and dream. — Ned Beauman

He woke whimpering in the night and the man held him. Shh, he said. Shh. It's okay.
I had a bad dream.
I know.
Should I tell you what it was?
If you want to.
I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers. And we were in that house that we used to live in and it came around the corner but nobody had wound it up and it was really scary.
Okay.
It was a lot scarier in the dream.
I know. Dreams can be really scary.
Why did I have that scary dream?
I dont know. But it's okay now. I'm going to put some wood on the fire. You go to sleep.
The boy didnt answer. Then he said: The winder wasnt turning. — Cormac McCarthy

Over the vistas broke a cold gray light, such as seen in those false dawns that are neither night nor true morning, when the world and all its contents seem but shapes of mist, formed in vain hope and desire ... If you awake from troubled sleep at such a time, you can only sit by the window and think of those that have been lost to you, those that followed your parents into those cold and heartless regions below the grass, silent and dark. Eventually, morning comes and the world resumes its solidity, but another tiny thread of ice has been stitched into your heart forever. — K.W. Jeter

In the days before automobiles, people in horse-drawn wagons used to sleep if they were tired. They didn't worry about getting lost, because the horse knew the way home. Your heart knows the way to your gifts. You can trust it to take you to them. — Barbara Sher

Many people theorize poverty, but so many elements of poverty, individually, for most people who theorize about poverty would be really difficult to even comprehend the individual things. Just take homelessness. If you are homeless, what does it mean not to have a post box where people can contact you; what does it mean not knowing where you're going to sleep at the end of the day; what does it mean not having a place where you can store what little you might possess. So dealing with homelessness in itself is a huge thing for most people who are commentators [on] or benefactors to poverty. — Kumi Naidoo

Papa wants you to marry some decrepit old wigsby?" She gave him a charmingly rueful smile, all tousled golden curls like some angel who had rolled off a cloud in her sleep, he thought, and had fallen to earth with a thud. "Something like that," she said in vague amusement. "I see. Well, surely we can find a solution." He snapped his fingers and gave her a grin. "Shall I ruin you? That should solve your problem. The old wigsby won't want you if you're used goods, and I assure you, I'd be happy to oblige. — Gaelen Foley

And it was exactly like having flu that time because I wanted it to stop, like you can just pull the plug of a computer out of the wall if it crashes, because I wanted to go to sleep so that I wouldn't have to think because the only thing I could think was how much it hurt because there was no room for anything else in my head, but I couldn't go to sleep and I just had to sit there and there was nothing to do except to wait and hurt. — Mark Haddon

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after - oh, that's love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock my the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down. — Barbara Kingsolver

Hacker with Bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective Station Wagon Buyer: "I know what you say is true ... but ... er ... I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks, we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak! — Neal Stephenson

Have you noticed,' she asked, straightening the counting frames to her liking before closing the cupboard doors and turning toward him, 'that at church when the clergyman is giving his sermon everyone's eyes glaze over and many people even nod off to sleep? But if he suddenly decides to illustrate a point with a little story, everyone perks up and listens. WE were made to tell and listen to stories, Joel, It is how knowledge was passed from person to person and generation to generation before there was the written word, and even afterward, when most people had no access to manuscripts or books and could not read them even if they did. Why do we now feel that storytelling should be confined to fiction and fantasy? Can we enjoy only what has no basis in fact? — Mary Balogh

If you can make a little painting for the ears with a few words, well, I like words: I like cutting them up and finding different ways of saying the same thing. I get into a spell, and it all comes easy. I don't labor over it. I go inside the song. I think you make yourself an antenna for songs, and songs want to be around you. And then they bring other songs along, and then they're all sittin' around, and they're drinking your beer, and they're sleeping on the floor. And they are using the phone. They're rude, thankless little f-ers. — Tom Waits

If you're really hard up, I can introduce you to my grandmother. She's a fan." Adam blinked. "She doesn't typically sleep with pretty young things, but she would make an exception in your case. You might even learn a trick or two. — Ilona Andrews

If something controls you in a way that puzzles you, think of it as a mystery. Mysteries are best approached by closing your eyes and mouth to experience darkness and silence. I find new and healing images in that dark, silent place away from emotions that control me. Do not be afraid to close your eyes and be silent in prayer, meditation, rest or sleep. In those states you may rediscover a new self. Then your life, time and thoughts will become yours again and you can live your unique myth. — Bernie Siegel

Basically, my mother couldn't hold a tune and when I was a baby, a rather tactless baby, I would ask her not to sing ... you can't get to sleep if someone is singing off key nearby. — Vikram Seth

First I'm taking your sexy ass to the shower. After that, I'm taking you to bed and making love to you until you're so exhausted that you can't help but fall asleep. I know how your mind works Miss Cooper, and I know that if I don't wear you out you'll be up all night thinking about what could have happened. You got very little sleep last night, we made love for hours this afternoon and then we threw some unexpected travel and a hell of a lot of emotion onto the menu. You need to be loved hard so that you can get some real sleep. — Ella Fox

If there is any way you can get colder than you do when you sleep in a bedding roll on the ground in a tent in southern Tunisia two hours before dawn, I don't know about it. — A.J. Liebling

I think if you look after yourself on a regular basis, and do the prep beforehand, you don't need to put lots of effort into looking good. It's about finding the right balance - if you have a good diet, drink lots of water, exercise regularly and sleep, you won't look bad on a regular basis. Then you can afford the occasional naughty slip up once in a while, going out and having a delicious glass of wine with friends, having a great laugh and chat then realizing its 2am isn't so bad - you've put in the hard work! — Cat Deeley

Black Cat
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly. — Rainer Maria Rilke

How are you supposed to know what to read next? This is the question that keeps us up at night, so at Day One our mission is to feed an audience of literature-hungry, time-constrained readers like you with a weekly lineup of talented authors, poets, and artists that we believe you will love. And if we can identify some of the next generation of literary stars, and cultivate an appreciation for transformative poetry and fiction, then frankly we will sleep better at night. — Carmen Johnson

I myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always see who comes to call, where everything hanging from the the ceiling and on the walls stays where it is as if by magic, where I sleep nights in a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who I am will sooner or later appear etched by a diamond. — Andre Breton

If there is anything that is likely to put me to sleep," he said, "it would be an English history book. So you can hold hands with a clear conscience." "I'm going with Nurse Burrows." "You can still hold hands." "I've no patience with you," she said patiently and faded backwards into the gloom. — Josephine Tey

Being in a state referred to staring fixedly and without expression at something for extensive periods of time. It can happen when you haven't had enough sleep, or too much sleep, or if you've overeaten, or are distracted, or merely daydreaming. It is not daydreaming, however, because it involves gazing at something. Staring at it. Usually something straight ahead - a shelf on a bookcase, or the centerpiece on the dining room table, or your daughter or child. But in a stare, you are really not looking at this thing you are seeming to stare at, you are not even really noticing it - however, neither are you thinking of something else. You in truth are not doing anything, mentally, but you are doing it fixedly, with what appears to be intent concentration. It is as if one's concentration becomes stuck the way an auto's wheels can be stuck in the snow, turning rapidly without going forward, although it looks like intent concentration. — David Foster Wallace

I love you," I said firmly. "That might change over time, but for right now, you're the first person I think about when I wake up and the last before I go to sleep. When I'm happy, I want to tell you, and when I'm scared or upset, I know you're the only one who can make things right. We may never work as a couple, but we're linked for the rest of eternity. And I don't know about you, but that's too long for me to wonder 'what if. — Kaitlin Bevis

If you said to me, 'Lie down on that concrete floor and fall asleep,' I could do it. I can sleep anywhere at any time of day on any surface. — Kevin McCloud

I don't have any interest in helping you keep your job," I say, shifting my weight onto my heels, suddenly tired and
resigned. "But I promise to do what I can to keep you from being fired over false pretenses. If you get thrown out of here,
it'll be your fault, not mine, and not Mr. Dade's."
"You say that now - "
" - and I'll say it tomorrow." I turn and pull open the door. "Good night, Asha. Go home and get some sleep."
"I'm not tired."
"Then go to the park and pull the wings off butterflies," I say with a sardonic smile. "That seems like the kind of
thing you would enjoy."
She smiles back, shakes her head. "Butterflies are too weak."
"Then shoot a coyote, whatever," I suggest. "But your work day's over. We all need our rest and if I'm going to be a
dictator, I'm going to try to be a benevolent one. — Kyra Davis

Don't make me out to be something worth saving. We both know I'm a waste." His voice was so quiet. "I wish I was better at telling you why you have to stay here. I wish I could put into words the part of my heart that has your name written on it. That part hurts right now. You have to be here. You love life too much. You're so important. I wish I could make you understand this." He tried to smile at her valiant efforts. "I would keep you if I could. You can sleep here, right on this couch. Beckett, I will let you hold this baby when it comes." She touched her stomach. "Does that tell you how much you mean to me? It's the only thing I can come up with." He shrugged. "Mouse would be disappointed. He'd feel like he didn't do his job if you died ... Eve loves you. Wherever she is - in this strip club - is that what you've been wishing for?" Beckett shook his head. "No, right? She loves you. You can't kill someone she loves. You just can't. — Debra Anastasia

Little sleep, no investment portfolio, no family around, no hot water. On an evening a few days after arriving in Cange, I wondered aloud what compensation he got for these various hardships. He told me, "If you're making sacrifices, unless you're automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you're trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don't have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence." He went on, and his voice changed a little. He didn't bristle, but his tone had an edge: "I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can't buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent. Comma." This was for me one of the first of many encounters with Farmer's — Tracy Kidder

If you can't drink a lobbyist's whiskey, take his money, sleep with his women and still vote against him in the morning, you don't belong in politics. — Brian Redman

Goodness gracious! - What's that? It's the clock striking! And here I've been keeping you awake. Oh, madam, you ought to have stopped me... Can I tuck in your feet? I always tuck in my lady's feet, every night, just the same. And she says, "Good night, Ellen. Sleep sound and wake early!" I don't know what I should do if she didn't say that, now. ... — Katherine Mansfield

People seem weak, but they're strong.
They seem strong, but they're weak.
No matter how much you cry, you still have to sleep.
And you even get hungry.
You suddenly realize you're doing the same things you did yesterday.
You say hi to your friends and smile just like you did yesterday.
Life goes on as if nothing ever happened ...
I want to go somewhere ...
Anywhere ...
Somewhere where I can forget everything.
... where I'll forget everything
... and be reborn.
Mars Volume 18 — Fuyumi Soryo

You're supposed to make your child feel like you want them. No matter what. Even if you're tired, or you're stressed, or you have a fucking photo shoot, or you move across the world, or you haven't gotten a full night's sleep. You do whatever you can to make them feel like the only thing you want in the world is to be by their side, even if you can't. — Nic Joseph

When you run in the morning, you gain time. It's like stretching 24 hours into 25. You may need less sleep and get up earlier, but if you can get by that, running early seems to expand the day. — Fred Lebow

Perhaps this is why not one of 800 sexologists attending a conference raised a hand when asked if they would trust a thin rubber sheath to protect them during intercourse with a known HIV-infected person. I don't blame them. They're not crazy, after all. Yet they're perfectly willing to tell your generation that "safe sex" is within reach and you can sleep around with impunity. It is a terrible lie. — James C. Dobson

What is he doing?" she finally whispered.
Bill appeared behind her and flitted around her shoulders. "Looks like he's sleeping."
"But why? I didn't even know angels need to sleep-"
"Need isn't the right word. They can sleep if they feel like it.Daniel always sleeps for days after you die." Bill tossed his head,seeming to recall something unpleasant. "Okay,not always. Most of the time.Must be pretty taxing,to lose the one thing you love. Can you blame him?"
"S-sort of," Luce stammered. "I'm the one who bursts into flames."
"And he's the one who's left alone. The age-old question.Which is worse? — Lauren Kate

I am a very organized person. I get up at 6:15 a.m., the kids get up at 6:45 a.m., and so I get up and get it in. I'm addicted to the high function. To me it's a work thing
if you meditate, you can get so much work done. I always say to people you know how about three nights a year you get a good night sleep? You can have it every day with meditation. — Jerry Seinfeld

The best answer I can give is that poetry is all about the effect it has on a reader, and Robert Frost was very, very good at that. If you're asking whatit MEANS that the line is repeated [and miles to go before I sleep] I'd have to say I don't know. It's stylistic. But the effect is pretty clear. — Haven Kimmel

But with this woman it is as if there is no interior, only a surface across which I hunt back and forth seeking entry. Is this how her torturers felt hunting their secret, whatever they thought it was? For the first time I feel a dry pity for them: how natural a mistake to believe that you can burn or tear or hack your way into the secret body of the other! The girl lies in my bed, but there is no good reason why it should be a bed. I behave in some ways like a lover - I undress her, I bathe her, I stroke her, I sleep beside her - but I might equally well tie her to a chair and beat her, it would be no less intimate. — J.M. Coetzee

"I could use the fresh air. I think that put my brain to sleep."
She pointed at the text as if it was a piece of rotten meat.
"Physics?" I said. "You must need a more advanced text."
"No, it's just boring."
I picked the book up and double checked the title, to make sure I hadn't misidentified the subject.
"Boring?" I said. "How can physics be ... ?"
I looked up to see she'd already left the room. Simon pointed at the text, grinned and faked a yawn.
"Hold on," I said, striding after her. "Physics is not boring. Maybe you just need me to explain it better. Chloe? Chloe!" — Kelley Armstrong

The final awakening is the embracing of the darkness into the light. That means embracing our humanity as well as our divinity. What we go from is being born into our humanity, sleep walking for a long time, until we awaken and start to taste our divinity. And then want to finally get free.
We see as long as we grab at our divinity and push away our humanity we aren't free. If you want to be free, you can't push away anything. You have to embrace it all. It's all God. — Ram Dass

I define "grindin'" as just nonstop work! Nonstop work, nonstop progress. Can't sleep during that grind - I mean, you get a little bit of it, but if you're progressin' at every hour, every second, you are grindin'. — Ace Hood

Go outside. Don't tell anyone and don't bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don't try to get anything out of it, because you won't. Don't try to make use of it, because you can't. And that's the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
There's a whole world out there, right outside your window. You'd be a fool to miss it. — Charlotte Eriksson

Dwayne, can you shoot a gun?" Dwayne rolled his eyes. "Hanky-poo, Dwayne doesn't need a gun. I have crap in my repertoire that will make you lose sleep for the rest of your life." We all digested that nugget silently for a moment and then moved on. If Dwayne wanted us to know exactly what he was capable of, he would have volunteered it. Part of me hoped I would never have to find out, but the other half was dying to know. "Speaking — Robyn Peterman

Why is so much sex needed? Because you are tense, sex becomes a release. Your tensions are released through it - you feel relaxed, you can go to sleep; if you repress it, you remain tense. And if you repress sex - the only release, the only possibility of release - what will happen? You will go mad. Where will you release your tensions then? — Rajneesh

If you're doing anything interesting in the world, you are going to have critics. You can't stop it. Move forward. It's not worth losing any sleep over. — Jeff Bezos

Oh, Jesus," he said, wheezing with the effort it took to control
himself. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "You little
innocent. I'm fluent in French, but it isn't my first language." It
was plain by the mortified expression in those green eyes that she
didn't understand, so he explained. "Baby , if I can still think
clearly enough to speak French, then I'm not totally involved in
what I'm doing. It may sound pretty , but it doesn't mean
any thing. Men are different from women; the more excited we are,
the more like cavemen we sound. I could barely speak English with
you, much less French. As I remember, my vocabulary
deteriorated to a few short, explicit words, 'fuck' being the most
prominent."
To his amazement, she blushed, and he smiled at this further
evidence of her charming prudery. "Go to sleep," he said gently.
"Lindsey didn't even rate a replay. — Linda Howard

Meditation means: remain as relaxed as you are in deep sleep and yet alert. Keep awareness there; let thoughts disappear but awareness has to be retained. And this is not difficult: it is just that we have not tried it, that's all. It is like swimming: if you have not tried it, it looks very difficult; it looks very dangerous too. And you cannot believe how people can swim because you simply drown! But once you have tried a little bit it comes easily; it is very natural. — Rajneesh

Did you know that only a tiny minority of viruses cause illness in humans? No one knows how many viruses there are, but their real role, when you get right down to it, is to aid in mutations, to create diversity among life forms. I've read a lot of books on the subject-when you don't need much sleep you have a lot of time to read-and I can tell you that if it weren't for viruses, mankind would never have evolved on this planet. Some viruses get right inside the DNA and change your genetic code, did you know that? And no one can say for sure that HIV, for example, won't one day prove to have been rewriting our genetic code in a way that's essential to our survival as a race. I'm a man who consciously commits murders and scares the hell out of people and makes them reconsider everything, so I'm definitely malignant, yet I think I play a necessary role in this world. — Ryu Murakami

Our part of District 12, nicknamed the Seam, is usually crawling with coal miners heading out to the morning shift at this hour. Men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, many who have long since stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails, the lines of their sunken faces. But today the black cinder streets are empty. Shutters on the squat gray houses are closed. The reaping isn't until two. May as well sleep in. If you can. Our — Suzanne Collins

You need only to have glimpsed it once to know there's a window out of all this black and sleepless night. Then you must use it to hope on. Key to the dream country where all your people are whole again, and the gunboats can't reach you, and the Empire of Hate is rubble. You and your secret dream of freedom are the tidal wave. Keep watch, every night if you have to. As for sleeping, you can sleep when you're dead. — Paul Monette

It could be yesterday
when I was less in love
I think
For I didn't see you in the mirror
behind me
while getting dressed.
The way your hands couldn't stay away
and our bodies always found their ways back to each other
as if they were meant to be together
Close.

But then it was today and I saw you
again
in the mirror
behind me while getting dressed

So I go to sleep tonight
alone
without actually falling asleep because I'm scared of the moment I will wake up
and realise it was just a dream
You're actually gone.

Now all I can do is get through to another tomorrow
hoping that I will be less in love
again
Like yesterday

But not today.
I was never really well with things at all. — Charlotte Eriksson

If one has given oneself utterly, watching the beloved sleep can be a vile experience. Perhaps some of you have known that paralysis, staring down at features closed to your enquiry, locked away from you where you can never, ever go, into the other's mind. As I say, for us who have given ourselves, that is a horror. One knows, in those moments, that one does not exist, except in relation to that face, that personality. Therefore, when that face is closed down, that personality is lost in its own unknowable world, one feels completely without purpose. A planet without a sun, revolving in darkness. — Clive Barker

JAMIE'S SONG 'HEAVEN':

You hold me so tight that I can't breathe,
You make me feel light that I can't sleep.
Float from our bed, fly away,
Soaring like angels through the heavens and seas.

I wish that we hadn't taken so long,
To realise this is where we belong.
This is the life, that you and I
Have been dying for.

If heaven is this,
This place in your arms,
I'm not afraid of dying,
I want to die tonight.
If heaven is this,
Your lips when we kiss,
I'm not afraid of dying,
Let them kill me tonight.

And I know I'll go to heaven,
Because I made you smile.
Yes, I know I'll go to heaven,
Because you loved our life.
But if they banish me to hell,
You will pull me out again.
You belong in heaven,
And I belong with you. — Neha Yazmin

One afternoon while driving back from the beach, Hugh pointed out a McDonald's bag vomiting its contents onto the pavement. "I say that any company whose products are found on the ground automatically has to go out of business," he said. This is how we talk nowadays, as if our pronouncements hold actual weight and can be implemented at our discretion, like we're kings or warlocks. "That means no more McDonald's, no more Coke - none of it."
"That wouldn't affect you any,"I told him. Hugh doesn't drink soda or eat Big Macs. "But what if it was something you needed, like paint? I find buckets of it in the woods all the time."
"Fine," he said. "Get rid of it. I'll make my own."
If anyone could make his own paint, it would be Hugh.
"What about brushes?"
"Please," he said, and he shifted into a higher gear. "I could make those in my sleep. — David Sedaris

...the word "fine". As in "I'm fine", "it's fine", "that looks fine", etc. For a man the word fine has, tops, three or four meanings and that's only because of the fairly recent edition of "Dang, girl! You look fine!" Otherwise "fine" would range somewhere between satisfactory and of superior quality. For a woman the word "fine" has like seventy meanings and depending on voice inflexion can actually mean 'If I'm questioned again I'll stab you in your sleep'. — Aaron Blaylock

There is nothing to fear,' she says to me softly. 'There is never anything to fear. The worst fear is of fear itself, and you can conquer that.'
'How?' I murmur. It feels as if I am talking in my sleep, floating down a stream of sleep. 'How can I conquer the worst fear?'
'You just decide,' she says simply. 'Just decide that you are not going to be a fearful woman and when you come to something that makes you apprehensive, you face it and walk towards it. Remember - anything you fear,you walk slowly and steadily towards it. And smile. — Philippa Gregory

A half-hour before bedtime, I remind myself that I now deserve to prepare myself for a good night's sleep. You can't focus on your work if you're sleep-deprived even if you have a fascinating job. — Marty Nemko