Little Nightmares Quotes & Sayings

Odd, what a strange thing trust was. A week or so ago, she'd never have trusted Mr. Clark, not for the slightest instant. In that time, little had changed. He was still a blackmailer, still a forger. He was likely even still a liar.
But he'd saved her last night, and now they knew things of each other - things that seemed more important than such details as the name he'd been born with, or the nature of his revenge. He knew she had nightmares about the lock hospital; she knew he'd been in a fire brigade in Strasbourg. — Courtney Milan

Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear. — Stephen King

'A Little Nightmare Music' is the first show we created. It's about all the nightmares that can happen in the span of a concert. When things go wrong - when the lights go out or a cellphone rings - that's when an audience suddenly comes alive, wondering what's going to happen next. Things going wrong often leads to something good. — Richard Hyung-ki Joo

It's always the right time to live the big goals and dreams and to leave behind dwelling on the little nightmares. — Robert J. Braathe

I'm not suggesting that all men are beautiful, vulnerable boys, but we all started out that way. What happened to us? How did we become monsters of feminist nightmares? The answer, of course, is that we underwent a careful and deliberate process of gender training, sometimes brutal, always dehumanizing, cutting away large chunks of ourselves. Little girls went through something similarly crippling. If the gender training was successful, we each ended up being half a person. — Frank Pittman

All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children ... I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out. — Anne Sexton

She upset the kids. She told them a really awful story about a pet she had when she was little." "How bad could a pet story be?" "Well," Clea said, knowing this fell in the "only in our family" category, "it eviscerated her cats and could have killed my mother in her sleep. I'd say that's good for a few nightmares, wouldn't you? — Luanne Rice

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

Life is never the fairy tale they sold us on when we were kids. More often, it's the nightmare we can never wake from. What they don't tell us when we're little is that the trick is to find the one who will be there in the middle of the night to hold us when we're screaming and tell us that it'll be all right. The one who doesn't shirk or run from our nightmares, but who holds us through them and makes sure we never face them alone. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

See them little scales there, how they're closed up tight like window shutters? Underneath 'em are the seeds - flat little things, flimsy as a baby's figernails - with a point at one end. If a fire comes along, the heat is gonna cause those scales to peel back and drop their seeds, while the ground is still scorching hot. Then that tiny seed is gonna burrow in and take root. I was nine years old the summer Freeda and Winnalee Malone rushed across our lives like red-hot flames, peeling back the shutters that sat over our hearts and our minds, setting free our sweetest dreams and our worst nightmares. — Sandra Kring

I was terrified of death by the time I was three or four, actively if not lucidly. I had frequent nightmares about snakes and scary neighbors. By the age of four or five, I was terrified by my thoughts. By the time I was five, the migraines began. I was so sensitive about myself and the world that I cried or shriveled up at the slightest hurt. People always told me, "You've got to get a thicker skin," like now they might say, jovially, "Let go and let God." Believe me, if I could, I would, and in the meantime I feel like stabbing you in the forehead. Teachers wrote on my report cards that I was too sensitive, excessively worried, as if this were an easily correctable condition, as if I were wearing too much of the violet toilet water little girls wore then. — Anne Lamott

"Breathe deeply and concentrate on me. You are safe."
I take a shallow breath, but it chokes me.
"Look at me," Morpheus presses. I focus on his complexion, the color of snowy shadows beneath the eclipse of his wings, and he begins to sing. Not inside my mind, since the iron dome prevents it, but aloud ... a simple, sweet lullaby, carried on his beautiful voice.
"Little blossom so filled with dread, clear the nightmares from your head. Let me wipe away your tears, for in this place you have no fears." — A.G. Howard

There are special nightmares for the daytime sleeper: little nervous dreams tossed into some brief restless moments of unconsciousness and breaking through the surface of the mind to become confused at once with the horror of some waking vision. Such are these awakenings, like an awakening in the grave, when one opens one's eyes, stretched out rigid with clenched hands, waiting for some misery to declare itself; but for a long time it lies to suffocation upon the chest and utters no word. — Iris Murdoch

In recent months, the emotional aspect has become as necessary to me as the physical. It amuses me, this strange quirk of mine. I want my little captive to love me, to care about me. I want to be more than just the monster of her nightmares. — Anna Zaires

He didn't mind it in the beginning, this slowness. It left him alone with himself while he fished and listened to the call of the herons, and taught Anthony to row a boat and to play baseball and soccer, while Anthony read to him from his children's books as Alexander held the fishing line. The soul was repairing itself little by little. And it was on Bethel Island, with his mother and father twenty-four hours by his side, watching over him, talking to him, playing with him, that Anthony stopped waking up with nightmares in the middle of the night and settled down to silence inside himself. And it was on Bethel Island that Alexander stopped needing ice cold baths at three in the morning - the hot sudsy dimly lit baths with her soapy hands and soapy body in the late evening sufficing. — Paullina Simons

And as her voice carried in the darkness, he wasn't sure where the borders between her story and his dream were. But he saw no more nightmares; he dreamed of a noble Sky Ghost and his little daughter, which he taught everything she needed to become a better warrior than he was. — Alexandra Engellmann

How many times have I gone back to the border of memory and peered into the darkness beyond? But it is not only memories that hover on the border. There are all sorts of phantasmagoria that inhabit that realm. The nightmares of a lonely child. Fairy tales appropriated by a mind hungry for a story. The fantasies of an imaginative little girl anxious to explain to herself the inexplicable. Whatever story I may have discovered on the frontier of forgetting, I do not pretend to myself that is the truth. — Diane Setterfield

As the message drained away Vimes stared at the opposite wall, in which the door now opened, after a cursory knock, to reveal the steward bearing that which is guaranteed to frighten away all nightmares, to wit, a cup of hot tea.*
* The sound of the gentle rattle of china cup on china saucer drives away all demons, a little-known fact. — Terry Pratchett

We're up to handling a Deveel, Aahz?" I was aware I had asked the question countless times in the last few days, but I still needed reassurance. "Will you relax, kid?" Aahz growled. "I was right about the Imps, wasn't I?" "I suppose so," I admitted hesitantly. I didn't want to tell Aahz, but I wasn't that happy with the Imp incident. It had been a little too close for my peace of mind. Since the meeting, I had been having recurring nightmares involving Imps and crossbows. "Look at it this way, kid. With any luck this Frumple character will be able to restore my powers. — Robert Asprin

While I'd been plagued by nightmares of Jonathan's unrest in the hereafter, it was only now that I'd seen Adair again - and seen him so changed - that I could admit, even to myself, that it was him I daydreamed of, who I longed for, who I ached for, physically. That was how I'd betrayed Luke - in my desire for Adair. It wasn't so uncommon, was it? Living with one man while your mind is on another? Being unable to stop thinking of this other man who, for one reason or another, was not the one sitting beside you. Thinking of the way his eyes lit up when he saw you, of his wicked smile and what it was like when he held you, how you responded to the touch of his hands. In solitary moments, you remembered the little intimacies, the feel of his skin against yours, the way he liked to be touched, the velvet nap of his member, the way he tasted. You thought of him even though you could never be with him. His absence nagged like an itch you could never scratch. — Alma Katsu

Surrealism in painting amounted to little more than the contents of a meagerly stocked dream world: a few witty fantasies, mostly wet dreams and agoraphobic nightmares. — Susan Sontag

You're probably wondering why there's never any good news.
I mean, I've been doing this job a few months now. I've been soaking up the paper every week, same as you, and watching the same newsfeeds as you. I got the same list burned into the front of my head as you. Death. Horror. Bad sex. Living nightmares. Each day a little further down the spiral.
There's never any good news because they know you.
I mean, here's the top of today's column that I discarded: I had a really good time last night down the bar with my assistant and some cheerfully doomed sex fiends of our acquaintance.
No one ever sold newspapers by telling you the truth; life just ain't that bad. — Warren Ellis

It was a time of dark dreams. They washed in like flotsam on the night tide, slipping beneath doorways and window latches, rising through the streets and hills; and the little fishing-town of Scarlock foundered deep. — J.A. Clement

I used to have nightmares when I was a little kid that I woke up prematurely and opened all the Christmas presents. And then I would be so relieved when I woke up and I realized that I hadn't done it. — Claire Danes

One can't build little white picket fences to keep nightmares out. — Anne Sexton

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures! Often, before I learned, did I wonder whence came the multitudes of pictures that thronged my dreams; for they were pictures the like of which I had never seen in real wake-a-day life. They tormented my childhood, making of my dreams a procession of nightmares and a little later convincing me that I was different from my kind, a creature unnatural and accursed. — Jack London

I am both numb and oversensitive, overwhelmed by the need, the raw and desperate need of the girls I am listening to and trying to help. I'm overdosing on the trauma of others, while still barely healing from my own.
I cry for hour at home and have fitful nights of little sleep. My nightmares resurface as my own pain is repeated to me, magnified a thousand times. It feels insurmountable. How can you save everyone? How can you rescue them? How do you get over your pain? How do you ever feel normal? — Rachel Lloyd

Incidentally, you're not a baby because you have nightmares, Natty. Something terrible happened to you when you were little, and that's why you have them. It isn't your fault."
"You never have them," she pointed out.
"No, I go around pouring spaghetti sauce over boys' heads," I said.
Natty laughed. "Good night, brave Anya. — Gabrielle Zevin

When he stepped into the shower, the hit water scalded him. He let it run over his face, burning his eyelids. He put up with the pain, his jaw clenched and his muscles taut, suppressing the urge to howl with loneliness in the suffocating steam. For four years, one month, and twelve days, Nikon always got into the shower with him after they made love and soaped his back slowly, interminably. And often she put her arms around him, like a little girl in the rain. One day I'll leave without ever really knowing you. You'll remember my big, dark eyes. The reproachful silences. The moans of anxiety as I slept. The nightmares you couldn't save me from. You'll remember all this when I'm gone. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough ... But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life: I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today. — Stephenie Meyer

My dates are nightmares! If she were awake, alive, not on parole and truly single that would start. Place, time and what we do matters little if I'm out with the right woman. — Vantile Whitfield

The little girl's face was from Will's vilest nightmares. Cavernous mouth, distended chin, bastardized nose. The enormous, bulging eyes glared at Will, demanded he see the truth, commanded him to acknowledge his sin. — Kevin Wallis

To Eden with me you will not leave
To live in a cottage of crazy, crooked eaves.
In your own happy home you take care these nights;
When you let your little cat in, please turn on the lights!
Something scurries behind and finds a cozy place to stare,
Something sent to you from paradise, with serpents to spare:
Tongues flowering; they leap out laughing, lapping. Dissapear — Thomas Ligotti

The ones that rip my heart from my chest are the little ones. The children, with tangled hair and dirty clothes, covering their own ugly secrets. And all they ask of me is shelter, food to warm their hollowness, a bed free of nightmares.
They look at me, and through me. And it's hard to tell who's more haunted
them or me. — Ellen Hopkins

Stop strokin' that gun, Kyle," Gator said. "You're makin' me nervous. I'm thinkin' you're about to make love to the damn thing."
"She is purty," Kyle said, giving the gun one last caress, his eye watching the truck ahead. "Slow down a little, and let them get ahead of us, Gator."
"What if they put up a roadblock?" Jonas asked.
Ryland opened one eye. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Can the chatter and let me sleep. We've got swimming to do and I'm getting too old for this shit."
"Do they have sharks off this coast?" Jonas asked.
Sam snickered. "You and those sharks, Jonas."
"I have nightmares, man," Jonas protested.
"I'll feed you to a damn shark if you don't let me sleep," Ryland drawled.
Kadan and Nico exchanged amused glances.
Ryland opened both eyes. "I heard that. I'm not that old. — Christine Feehan

I've a pocket full of dreams to sell," said Teddy, whimsically, ... "What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? A dream of success
a dream of adventure
a dream of the sea
a dream of the woodland
any kind of a dream you want at reasonable prices, including one or two unique little nightmares. What will you give me for a dream? — Lucy Maud Montgomery

I think most of us can remember from our own childhood, just in the Disney cartoons, things that frightened us profoundly. For me it was Bambi, the scene when the forest was on fire. That was something I had nightmares about. I can't imagine being a little kid of eight and seeing Night Of The Living Dead with living corpses eating the flesh of living people. — Stephen King