Nightmare Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes I think this is all a horrible nightmare and I'm going to wake up and she's gonna laugh at me. It's like I didn't know her and the thing that makes me the angriest is I can't confront her about it all, and then I feel like a bastard for feeling that way. — Maddie Wade

Now I think I understand how this world can overcome a man. — James Sullivan

"Who Remembers the Armenians?"

I remember them
and I ride the nightmare bus with them
each night
and my coffee, this morning
I'm drinking it with them

You, murderer -
Who remembers you? — Najwan Darwish

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

I am the nightmare. — Marie Lu

When you know about something it stops being a nightmare. When you know how to fight something, it stops being so threatening. — Andrzej Sapkowski

Michael staggered to his feet and turned to face his worst nightmare. Baal stood before him, a smirk on his face. He wore his signature grey, pinstripe, three-piece suit, and casually twisted his pinky ring on his long and slender well-manicured finger. As it rotated Michael caught a glimpse of the rubies in the skull's eye sockets. His black hair was slicked back, the sight of his false appearance made Michael sick to his stomach. — Wendy Owens

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

So many people who wanted no part of all this. That's what's new. There used to be the option of opting out. But now that's over. Completion is the end. We're closing the circle around everyone - it's a totalitarian nightmare. — Dave Eggers

The nightmare of living was begun. — Ray Bradbury

Is it ... can we ... is it safe?"
Tub checked the lot but he seemed unconcerned.
"Coach Lawrence nabbed him for practice. We live to fight another day, soldier."
"No ... I mean, the thing ... is it ... ?"
Tub frowned.
"The thing. Hmmm. Can you be more specific?
I clutched at the bumper and raised myself to unsteady feet. I patted the truck bed, taking solace in the cake of dust. It was real; I was not caught in a nightmare. I smeared the dust with my fingers and smelled it.
"If you lick that, we're no longer friends," Tub said. — Guillermo Del Toro

[Pascal] was the first and perhaps is still the most effective voice to be raised in warning of the consequences of the enthronement of the human ego in contradistinction to the cross, symbolizing the ego's immolation. How beautiful it all seemed at the time of the Enlightenment, that man triumphant would bring to pass that earthly paradise whose groves of academe would ensure the realization forever of peace, plenty, and beatitude in practice. But what a nightmare of wars, famines, and folly was to result therefrom. — Malcolm Muggeridge

I can conceive of no nightmare so terrifying as establishing communication with a so-called superior (or, if you wish, advanced) technology in outer space. — George Wald

One name always stands out when it comes to actors taking on the monsters of our nightmares - Robert Englund. In the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' series, Englund kept us awake as night with a striped shirt and his special glove. — Rob Manuel

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it? A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beautiful day. How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do. Take a little ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody. — James Tate

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

[ ... ] 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

The hours spent forming a written work can make one obsessive, distracted, compulsive, and neurotic even, especially when it comes to those rare, precious occasions of streaming pure inspiration. To have a muse moment interrupted - to watch her scuttle back into hiding with unshared insight remaining on the tip of her tongue - is a wicked irritation. When a writer's eyes glaze over, when she stares off at nothing or appears to be memorizing the lines on a blank page, when she falls asleep at the desk ... tiptoe softly. For a writer's greatest desire is to receive inspiration; her greatest nightmare, to have tossed to the wind what could've been captured in words. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The end of shows are a nightmare for everybody because there is so much pressure to satisfy everyone, which of course you can't do. — Scott Bakula

The question of identity is a question involving the most profound panic - a terror as primary as the nightmare of the mortal fall. — James Baldwin

You think I don't know how stories get written- how this story will be written?" Rhys put his hands on his chest, his face more open, more anguished than I'd seen it. "I am the dark lord, who stole away the bride of spring. I am a demon, and a nightmare, and I will meet a bad end. He is the golden prince- the hero who will get to keep you as his reward for not dying of stupidity and arrogance. — Sarah J. Maas

Hardly had they rested when the waves carried them out again, like a nightmare that repeats itself over and over through the night, and over and over again through the years. Back and forth they went and he feared that her strength could not hold. He had no confidence, not in himself, nor in her. He felt like a helpless child, and Diane seemed helpless too, their long struggle getting them nowhere, only repeating itself--contraction, release, contraction again. — William Kotzwinkle

You're gonna have to go through hell, worse than any nightmare you've ever dreamed. But when it's over, I know you'll be the one standing. You know what you have to do. DO IT! — Tony Burton

Every isolated passion, is, in isolation, insane; sanity may be defined as synthesis of insanities. Every dominant passion generates a dominant fear, the fear of its non-fulfillment. Every dominant fear generates a nightmare, sometimes in form of explicit and conscious fanaticism, sometimes in paralyzing timidity, sometimes in an unconscious or subconscious terror which finds expression only in dreams. The man who wishes to preserve sanity in a dangerous world should summon in his own mind a parliament of fears, in which each in turn is voted absurd by all the others. — Bertrand Russell

I had a nightmare about being on a cruise ship and the ship going down. It was an arduous process of the ship going down and we knew it was going down. There was everyone I know and love on the ship. — Jared Padalecki

People say the beach is the great equaliser
Who are they kidding?
Sit at Bondi and watch the boys flex
And the girls walk bolt upright
It looks like a nightmare episode of Baywatch.
The true equaliser is the mountain cold
And stacks of cold flung together
Maybe then we'd listen to what each other is saying
Instead of checking out the best bods.
And as I wrap another layer
Around my Size 10
I think of Jack's favourite saying:
"today's tan is tomorrow's cancer"
I walk outside
And whistle at the wind. — Steven Herrick

I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing
I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn't really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project
it's an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing. — Slavoj Zizek

Whenever we wake up from a horrible nightmare, we don't immediately scream out of happiness.It takes a while to feel so safe and so good. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Every man has at least one nightmare he'd like to keep to himself. — Amber Silvia

When did it all begin? he thought. When did I go under? A dark, vaguely familiar Aztec lake. The nightmare. How do I get away? How do I take control? And the questions kept coming: Was getting away what he really wanted? Did he really want to leave it all behind? And he also thought: the pain doesn't matter anymore. And also: maybe it all began with my mother's death. And also: the pain doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't get any worse, as long as it isn't unbearable. And also: fuck, it hurts, fuck, it hurts. Pay it no mind, pay it no mind. And all around him, ghosts. — Roberto Bolano

Being a mother of two little girls, it was an absolute nightmare for me to teach them about sexual abuse. — Deepa Kumar

I pressed my fingers to my temples. "This is a nightmare. I'm going to wake up in a few minutes, the lock on my front door won't be broken, there will have been no knight, and Tink will still be a foot tall playing with troll dolls." "Oh, I'll still play with them," Tink replied.I squeezed my eyes shut. "If it makes you feel better, I can return to your Tink-approved size, — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The past has given us much too many bad answers for us not to see that the mistakes were in the questions themselves. There is no need to choose between the fetishism of spontaneity and the organization control; between the "come one, come all" of activist networks and the discipline of hierarchy; between acting desperately now and waiting desperately for later; between bracketing that which is to be lived and experimented in the name of paradise that seems more and more like a hell the longer it is put off and flogging the dead horse of how planting carrots is enough to leave this nightmare. — The Invisible Committee

I couldn't have come up with a better metaphor for my life and my internal conflict. It amazes me how quickly we can manifest our fears; not only had I created my 'I'm never satisfied, I'll drive her away' nightmare. — Kenny Loggins

Man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage. — Morris West

What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare. And it is desperately unfair to the boy. He cannot live his parents' life over again for them. He cannot make up for their own lacks, their own unfulfillments. He cannot carry their torch
only his own. — Sydney J. Harris

The Bachelor meets Nightmare on Elm Street, — Siobhan Davis

I planted some jokes in my wedding. Like, the organizers asked me to select music. So when I approached wife at the ceremony, they played the second movement from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony, which is usually known as the "portrait of Stalin." And then when we embraced, the music that they played was Schubert's "Death and the Maiden." I enjoyed this in a childish way! But marriage was all a nightmare and so on and so on. — Slavoj Zizek

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was white as leprosy,
The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death. — Guy Sajer

I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real. — Sarah Dessen

For the one that loved, the nightmare, it was simple. It never had been, but was all in their mind. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

The consciousness of the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. — Karl Marx

When you see a heron eating an innocent rabbit, what comes to your mind? Do you say 'What a great order God has created?' or you say 'What a devilish horror is going on here!' Question your beliefs! If the strong eats the weak, there is absolutely nothing divine in here, but there is only injustice and nightmare! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

When I was young I used to have this nightmare about dying. I used to lie awake at night screaming. All my schoolfriends went to heaven or hell, and I was sent to Southend. — Douglas Adams

The Mad Affliction's arm shot out of the cage, grasping for me. I jumped back. His long, ragged talons swiped the air in front of me.

"Free me!" the Mad Affliction cried. He grasped for Bethany, but she backed away, too. "Free me and know the living nightmare that is unending madness!"

"You're not doing yourself any favors," I told him. — Nicholas Kaufmann

Life was radical right after I met the monster.
Later, life became harder, complicated.
Ultimately, a living hell, like swimming against a riptide,
Walking the wrong direction in the fast lane of the freeway,
Waking from sweetest dreams to find yourself in the middle of a nightmare. — Ellen Hopkins

Half-man, half-beast, all nightmare. The shapeshifter warrior form. — Ilona Andrews

Who the hell are you?" Hazel asked. I grinned. "Your worst fucking nightmare. — Jennifer Estep

Don't Cry for this biatch, don't cry for this moron. She isn't your type, she doesn't like you and she won't like you she is just a person which is hypocrite and she get's envy when she see your life - How wonderful is it, how is full with loads stuff and then she looks her life. Full of horror, full of days of nightmare, full of days of angry people shouting each other...
It's not in the blame, it's in the cases, the place where the two persons live!

Don't get angry that he have left you, maybe you will find something better than him, it's a fact you give something for something. Everywhere is like this, don't listen this outside biatches which say "The World isn't a business, it's not you must..." Fucking bullshit, you must do this, somebody saves your life you must go and save and his, that's the rules, that's the law of the attraction, that's how it works, liked or not... — Deyth Banger

The worst nightmare in the world is a radical Islamic regime with a weapon of mass destruction. — Lindsey Graham

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

In the new American ghetto, the nightmare engine is bubble economics, a kind of high-tech casino scam that kills neighborhoods just like dope does, only the product is credit, not crack or heroin. It concentrates the money of the population in just a few hands with brutal efficiency, just like narco-business, and just as in narco-business the product itself, debt, steadily demoralizes the customer to the point where he's unable to prevent himself from being continually dominated. — Matt Taibbi

The machinery joining the vats was a nightmare jumble of pipes and flanges. Since you couldn't really hire a professional plumber to set up your deathtraps, some clever techie on Angus Caine's payroll must have done it himself with whatever parts he had on hand. — Craig Schaefer

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

If the inner world is inundated with peace, then the nightmare of world war cannot even come into being. — Sri Chinmoy

My biggest nightmare is I'm driving home and get sick and go to hospital. I say: 'Please help me.' And the people say: 'Hey, you look like ... ' And I'm dying while they're wondering whether I'm Barbra Streisand. — Barbra Streisand

When Qhuinn came back around, for a minute, he thought he had returned to the beginning of the nightmare, that fantasy of Blay sitting across a hospital room in a chair presenting itself once again. "Oh, thank God." "What?" Qhuinn mumbled. Blay jumped up and rushed over even though he had one arm in a sling and was limping like someone had dropped a toolbox on his foot. Qhuinn was about to ask if the male was okay when those beautiful lips were on his and that familiar bonding scent was in his nose - and oh, fuck, this was so much better than that fantasy - — J.R. Ward

We woke as if from a nightmare only to find that the ugly are still not beautiful and the dull still do not sparkle. — Jennifer Donnelly

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

I do remember reading the script of 'The Nightmare Fair' and looking forward to doing it. — Colin Baker

It's been one nightmare after another, Christina thought. Pretty soon I won't be able to keep track of them all. — Caroline B. Cooney

Look guys, I am your worst nightmare. I'm a woman with a badge, a gun, and PMS. Are you really sure you want to piss me off any more tonight? — K.V. McMillan

The idea of ever again being caught unarmed and vulnerable was her worst nightmare. — Nalini Singh

The best way to walk into a nightmare is with a smile. — Kaza Kingsley

One problem became immediately obvious: they could not make choices. Shopping was a nightmare, since everything had the same value to them, whether it was expensive or cheap, garish or sophisticated. — Anonymous

I looked at Tarbox and saw he was a dangerous and ugly man. It was as if he had been born in someone's nightmare, then kicked his way out of their head. — Paul Watkins

I'm a quiet person's nightmare - the only time I shut up is when I'm reading, because I'm a book geek. — Jodie Whittaker

I did Wall Street, and then everything that happened with An Education took me up until March. I didn't want to work during that because there was just so much stuff. I didn't realize you had to go to so many parties. It was a nightmare! I had to go to all these parties! The glamour! — Carey Mulligan

Me just being myself in public or on TV is the biggest nightmare in the world. — Jennifer Saunders

The scene had been a nightmare, one of those insane nightmares where the most normal objects become infinitely menacing. — Philippa Gregory

The thing about nightmares was that you couldn't prepare for them. They sneaked up on you when you were most vulnerable. — Sylvia Day

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

I look down past the stars to a terrifying darkness. I seem to recognize the place, but it's impossible. "Accident," I whisper. I will fall. I seem to desire the fall, and though I fight it with all my will I know in advance I can't win. Standing baffled, quaking with fear, three feet from the edge of a nightmare cliff, I find myself, incredibly, moving towards it. I look down, down, into bottomless blackness, feeling the dark power moving in me like an ocean current, some monster inside me, deep sea wonder, dread night monarch astir in his cave, moving me slowly to my voluntary tumble into death. — John Gardner

My earliest memories of horror are 'Friday the 13th Part 2,' John Carpenter's 'The Thing,' 'Halloween,' 'An American Werewolf in London,' and 'A Nightmare On Elm Street' ... and 'Hatchet' is so obviously inspired by those films that I may as well have made it in 1984. — Adam Green

Become my friend and you embrace a nightmare. — Juliet Marillier

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

My boobs are, like, huge, my whole life, buying a bra was a nightmare. What I used to do when I moved to L.A., I found places like Frederick's of Hollywood that make bras for [strippers]. — Sofia Vergara

The immersive ugliness of the built environment in the USA is entropy made visible. It indicates not simple carelessness but a vivid drive toward destruction, decay and death: the stage-set of a literal "death trip," of a society determined to commit suicide. Far from being a mere matter of aesthetics, suburbia represents a compound economic catastrophe, ecological debacle, political nightmare, and spiritual crisis - for a nation of people conditioned to spend their lives in places not worth caring about. — James Howard Kunstler

The traditions of the dead generations weigh like a nightmare upon the living. — Karl Marx

Relationship. R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P means this: Really exciting love affair turns into overwhelming nightmare. Sobriety hangs in peril. — Gary Busey

On the contrary, anyone speaking or writing about concentration camps is still regarded as suspect; and if the speaker has resolutely returned to the world of the living, he himself is often assailed by doubts with regard to his own truthfulness, as though he had mistaken a nightmare for reality. — Hannah Arendt

The "Vasco da Gama's era" ends in a nightmare in which men-Westerners and non-Westerners alike-are bewildered by this confusion and the old fancy of the apprenti sorcier becomes tragically actual. — Carlo M. Cipolla

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

For a while they stood there, like men on the edge of a sleep where nightmare lurks, holding it off, though they know that they can only come to morning through the shadows. — J.R.R. Tolkien

He reached out for her hand and she grabbed onto his.
"Eena, when you're ready to talk about it, I'll be here. That's what best friends are for."
She let the tears fall. He'd never know they were for him. He'd think they were because of Derian. They held hands silently throughout the night, Ian unaware that this was by far her most tortured nightmare ever. Paradise so close, and yet completely unattainable. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Horror films are the ones that pay the bills, and historically, they have shown that they are good investments. They helped Universal survive with that initial splash of horror films in the 1930s and '40s. And horror films kept New Line alive with the 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' series. — Christopher Young

I really love New York, but I have to say, the humidity during the summer is a nightmare for a cartoonist. Not only am I sweating in my studio, my bristol board is curling up, the drafting tape is peeling off the board, my Rapidograph pens bleed the minute I put them to paper ... it's a disaster. — Adrian Tomine

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

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

God is universal," spluttered the priest.
The imam nodded strong approval. "There is only one God."
"And with their one god Muslims are always causing troubles and provoking riots. The proof of how bad Islam is, is how uncivilized Muslims are,: pronounced the pandit.
"Says the slave-driver of the cast system," huffed the imam. "Hindus enslave people and worship dressed-up dolls."
"They are golden calf lovers. They kneel before the cows," the priest chimed in.
"While Christians kneel before a white man! They are flunkies of a foreign god. They are nightmare of all nonwhite people. — Yann Martel

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

It's not difficult to take care of a child; it's difficult to do anything else while taking care of a child. Trying to clean up the kitchen after you've had a baby is a nightmare because you have to wait for the baby to be asleep, you're exhausted, and you really don't want to clean up the kitchen now. — Julianne Moore

Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words. — Grant Morrison

To exclude anything that appears in your universe is not love. Love joins with everything. It doesn't exclude the monster. It doesn't avoid the nightmare - it looks forward to it. — Byron Katie

The Sword. Her name is Nightmare."
A small shiver ran down Vall's back, in the exact line where the blade now was. It was not a shiver of fear, but of understanding.
"And a nightmare, she shall be. — Holden R. Johnson

Just because the nightmare you expected comes true, it doesn't make it any less terrifying. — Robert Jackson Bennett

The meat industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars lying to the public about their product. But no amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat. The facts are absolutely clear: Eating meat is bad for human health, catastrophic for the environment, and a living nightmare for animals — Chrissie Hynde

Only Puerto Rican girl on the earth who wouldn't give up the ass for any reason. I can't, she said. I can't make any mistakes ... Paloma was convinced that if she made any mistakes in the next two years, any mistakes at all, she would be stuck in that family of hers forever. That was her nightmare. Imagine if I don't get in anywhere, she said. You'd still have me, you tried to reassure her, but Paloma looked at you like the apocalypse would be preferable. — Junot Diaz