Quotes & Sayings About Nightmares

Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time. — Ransom Riggs

you have
been the
star
of each
every
one of
my
nightmares.

"- you left but you stayed. — Amanda Lovelace

I had nightmares about what Poseidon might turn me into if I were on the verge of death-plankton maybe.
-Percy Jackson — Rick Riordan

I really hate to get old. I don't talk about it much. And sometimes at night I wake up and I have nightmares that I know how old I am. — Sirio Maccioni

For millennia philosophers and saints have tried to reason out a logical scheme for the universe ... until Hilda came along and demonstrated that the universe is not logical but whimsical, its structure depending solely on the dreams and nightmares of non-logical dreamers. — Robert A. Heinlein

Thirty paces, twenty, and you can see the eyes of the men who will try to kill you, and see the spear-blades, and the instinct is to stop, to straighten the shields. We cringe from battle, fear claws at us, time seems to stop, there is silence though a thousand men shout, and at that moment, when terror savages the heart like a trapped beast, you must hurl yourself into the horror.
Because the enemy feels the same.
And you have come to kill him. You are the beast from his nightmares. — Bernard Cornwell

In nightmares, we can't look into our own eyes except by indirection, perhaps because we fear discovering that therein lie the worst monsters plaguing us. — Dean Koontz

Suddenly exhausted, she closes her eyes and slips into nightmares again. Graveyards rising out of the ocean. Her friends' corpses in the light of their burning school. Skeletons ripping open men's chests and crawling inside. She endures it patiently, waiting for the horror film to end and the theater to go dark, those precious few hours of blackout that are her only respite. — Isaac Marion

So long as a canvas is empty its potential is infinite ... The empty canvas can become a gateway into the landscape of nightmares or a vision of sensual bliss. — Ben Okri

Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends. — Nancy Gibbs

What I don't think this man realizes is that he's giving my dreams
and my nightmares
a new name.
Brand. Alec Brand. — M. Leighton

That's not such a bad thing,' he said to me. 'In nightmares we can think the worst. That's what they're for, I guess. — Stephen King

Where were me parents? Where were Becky? I felt so alone, so lost that I could
not see. By that I mean, everything round me were a blur, everything inside me
were a blur of fear and shock. I heard meself crying and moaning, My oh my, my
oh my ... I still have nightmares 'bout that time. I still feel like a sharp piece of
ice has stabbed me heart real deep. I was filled, filled to the brim with utter baffle
and utter loneliness. p. 15 — Louis Nowra

He still had dreams about it. Certainly not nightmares - it could not be worth the energy. But every month or so he woke up from one of those annoying visions where he was back at school (rather absurdly at his current age of eight-and-twenty). It was always of a similar nature. He looked down at his schedule and suddenly realized he'd forgotten to attend Latin class for an entire term. Or arrived for an exam without his trousers. — Julia Quinn

Haven't you offered up some part of your Self to someone (or something), and taken on a "narrative" in return? Haven't we entrusted some part of our personality to some greater System or Order? And if so, has not that System at some stage demanded of us some kind of "insanity"? Is the narrative you now possess really and truly your own? Are your dreams really your own dreams? Might not they be someone else's visions that could sooner or later turn into nightmares? — Haruki Murakami

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

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

Unfortunately, this unexpected, internal condition has often been called "falling in love." This reaction to attraction, which we could also describe as a "chemically induced crush," is actually infatuation. Who among us has not walked into a room, made eye contact with a complete stranger, and felt an instant, unexpected rush of emotion and attraction? Who hasn't had that sudden impulse to look again? Why these moments happen and what exactly triggers them - who knows? But the feelings are definitely a temporary condition. The attraction is neither irresistible nor dependable. You can easily experience infatuation with people who would turn out to be relational nightmares. That's why it is so dangerous — Chip Ingram

My heart beats, echoes into the cold streets where nightmares and darkness begin to meet. — Tyga

Forever after today, she would flex and furl her fingers, precisely as she did right now. She would roll her wrists and crack her neck. She would stretch her jaw and wonder who might next die at her hands. Who might not get away.
And forever after tonight, she would be hungry to outrun the nightmares. She would race and she would fight and she would kill again, just to make sure the ghosts were real.
They were. — Susan Dennard

SF is a controlled way to think and dream about the future. An integration of the mood and attitude of science (the objective universe) with the fears and hopes that spring from the unconscious. Anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out. Nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible. — Gregory Benford

You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other. — Carl Sagan

Each
day brought just another minute of the things they could not leave behind. Jane Barrington sitting on the
train coming back to Leningrad from Moscow, holding on to her son, knowing she had failed him, crying
for Alexander, wanting another drink, and Harold, in his prison cell, crying for Alexander, and Yuri
Stepanov on his stomach in the mud in Finland, crying for Alexander, and Dasha in the truck, on the
Ladoga ice, crying for Alexander, and Tatiana on her knees in the Finland marsh, screaming for
Alexander, and Anthony, alone with his nightmares, crying for his father. — Paullina Simons

Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies ... despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level. — Paul Shepard

Staring into his eyes, I could see they were no longer the color of my nightmares, but more like the color of my dreams. — Magan Vernon

I began to pick through the red rivers
of confusion;

I began to take apart
the deep stitches
of nightmares. — Mary Oliver

I've read and traveled a lot in the Middle East, and I built on eyewitness accounts of horrific executions that would shape a boy's character and beliefs if he watched his father die that way. These are the stuff of which nightmares are made. — Terry Hayes

Music was the one thing I could control. It was the one world that offered me freedom. When I played music, my nightmares ended. My family problems disappeared. I didnt have to search for answers. The answers lay no further than the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled, pencilled scores. Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant and cool. — Quincy Jones

I hated feeling like I was using him for my own pleasure, but I knew he wouldn't let me return the favour ... if this was the only way I could provide comfort to him and chase away his nightmares, then so be it. Selfless, I know. Mother-friggin-Teresa, right here. — Kendall Ryan

A lot of dreams can turn to nightmares ... if you don't really work them. — Dolly Parton

It's boring."
"Oh," I said. I rubbed at my jaw. "You think I should have gone four-color?"
Bob stared at me for a second and said, "I have nightmares about Hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you."
I glowered up at the skull and nodded. "Okay, fine. You think it needs more drama."
"More anything. Drama would do. Or breasts."
I sighed and saw where that line of thought was going. "I am not going to hire a leggy secretary, Bob. Get over it."
"I didn't say anything about legs. But as long as we're on the subject ... — Jim Butcher

I've long considered becoming a writer to be the death of nightmares. For me at least, since I started writing I hadn't had any. Something really terrible or awful happens in a dream and you wake up and think, awesome, and reach for a pen and paper. — Logan Kain

Herlia, goddess of justice, weeping as she passes her first judgement (...) She fell in love with a mortal man, but his passion for her drove him to commit a terrible crime and so she judged him, consigning him to the depths of the earth, chained to a rock, where his flesh is eternally eaten by vermin (...) Indeed, he stole a magic sword and with it slew a god, thinking him a rival for her affections. In fact he was her brother, Ixtus, god of dreams. now, whenever we suffer nightmares it is the shade of the fallen god taking his revenge on mortal kind. — Anthony Ryan

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

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

No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know. — Catherynne M Valente

I have a body too young and a mind full of years. Everything in me has witnessed its own ending. I have lived through nightmares and perished in blissful dreams. What all that's left - eats me from within but still melts me from without, and that is where my humility takes birth. — Akif Kichloo

When Christian Grey has nightmares, he dreams of Frank. — Eddie Slain

The children will need new stories and fairy tales to see them through their nightmares and daydreams, to transfigure their sorrows and fears at not being able to remain children forever. — Keith Donohue

I wouldn't make fun of someone's nightmares until you've slept a night in his pajamas. — Jason Segel

the post-traumatic-stress-disordered often vacillate between phases of symptoms, moving from intrusion - the crying and howling nightmares and other asylum-worthy behaviors - to constriction and back, without predictability or reason. It's one of the many things that undermine their credibility with the outside world: People seem fine for a while, but then they're not fine, or they go from one extreme set of symptoms to an opposite one. — Mac McClelland

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

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

I began waking up slowly into history, from which we do not emerge as from other nightmares. — Martha Cooley

Lester Coggins was a lifelong bachelor who as an adolescent had suffered nightmares of masturbating and looking up to see Mary Magdalene standing in his bedroom doorway. — Stephen King

The day will come when we strike you down," she's saying. "Mark my words. We will haunt your nightmares."

I clench my fists and fling an illusion of pain across her body. "I am the nightmare. — Marie Lu

I'd say I never considered myself a great architect. I'm more of a creative problem solver with good taste and a soft spot for logistical nightmares. — Maria Semple

Turning away, sobbing, I hide behind my hair, the kettle and coffee forgotten. It's too hard to talk about it. I can't talk about it. It's no one's business but mine. The trauma breathes in my blood, it feasts on my life, it gives me cold sweats and nightmares still. — Poppet

I will not let triggers, flashbacks,
nightmares control my emotions.
I will not let those tried
to destroy me win this war.
I have awakened and I will
find peace with myself. — Julie Jewels Smoot

People like that don't need a reason apart from "because I can". They have a nightmare and try to make it happen. — Terry Pratchett

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

She saw an alien bearing down and clasping her to its chest, that long curved head raising, mouth sprouting the silvery, deadly teeth that would smash through her skull and free her at last from her nightmares. — Tim Lebbon

to all those who slept through the nightmare till it ended, you will remember your nightmares and it will be easier to confront them when they come again for you. — Sherif Mekdam

She had shared his sheets, and, in nightmares of remorse, he had shared her body, waking with drastic regret, feeling as soiled and soilsome as the city itself. — Barry Hannah

The chandelier was wearing on its rubber support and the crack at the side of the ceiling hold was getting bigger. "One day that's going to fall on us and spear you through the heart," he said. I turned to kiss him on the shoulder and closed my eyes. — Kate Chisman

I don't lose sleep over what I have done or have nightmares about it. — Dennis Nilsen

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

Capable heart. As has happened countless times, he lost me for months on end and not only never complained, he immersed himself in the story, escorted and supported me, provided me with endless pots of tea and emergency gin and tonics. Sorry for the nightmares. Wendy Holden — Wendy Holden

Rape and war, she explained are among the most common causes of post-traumatic stress disorder, and survivors of sexual assault frequently exhibit many of the same symptoms and behaviors as survivors of combat: flashbacks, insomnia, nightmares, hypervigilance, depression, isolation, suicidal thoughts, outbursts of anger, unrelenting anxiety, and an inability to shake the feeling that the world is spinning out of control. — Jon Krakauer

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 is commonplace to say that silent films are more "dreamlike," but what does that mean? In Nosferatu, it means that the characters are confronted with alarming images and denied the freedom to talk them away. There is no repartee in nightmares. Human speech dissipates the shadows and makes a room seem normal. Those things that live only at night do not need to talk, for their victims are asleep, waiting. — Roger Ebert

If eavesdropping on someone else's nightmares is supposed to make me feel better, I'd rather stay feeling like shit. I don't think telling them about my horror story would do me any good. And besides, I'm not even supposed to have a story to tell. - Nastya Kashnikov — Katja Millay

How's daydreaming affecting nightmares??
Showing the light where is all dark! — Ana Claudia Antunes

The stories themselves aren't what moves him now ... What moves him are the shadowy people behind the stories, the workers weary from their days, gathering at night in front of a comforting bit of fire ... The world then was no less terrifying than it is now, with our nightmares of bombs and disease and technological warfare. Anything held the ability to set of fear ... a nail dropped in a the hay, wolves circling at the edge of the woods ... — Lauren Groff

. . . communicate their desires. My book club is discussing a novel this month on this very subject. Fifty Shades of Grey. Would you like to borrow my copy, Matthew?" I take a long drink of water. "No, I'm already familiar with it, thanks." The fact that my dear, sweet mother is familiar with it, however, will definitely be giving me nightmares. — Emma Chase

Some people wouldn't see a traitor when they looked at me. Some people would see a survivor. Call me anything you like - I sleep fine at night. But you will look at me when you say it. Or I'll get so far in your face you'll be seeing me with your eyes closed. You'll be seeing me in your nightmares. I'll scorch myself on the backs of your eyelids. Get off my back and stay off it. I'm not the woman I used to be. If you want a war with me, you'll get one. Just try me. Give me an excuse to go play in that dark place inside my head. — Karen Marie Moning

I do have the odd dream where I'm on stage and I've completely forgotten what I'm meant to be performing - so they are more nightmares than dreams. — Kate Bush

They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too. — Oscar Wilde

How long has it been since I entered this blackness? Has it been days, months, or years? I'm stuck here with my mind, my thoughts, my memories, and my nightmares. — Shari J. Ryan

One dream, will suffice a thousand nightmares. — Anthony Liccione

The shadows of woman and child lie heavily athwart our own fears and nightmares and the two become translated, in the empty, indifferent place, from the local to the monumental. They are nobodies and thus become everybody. — Simon Schama

At night we sort the energy that by day we sense. — Initially NO

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. 'Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won't? How do I know there's anything there except what I'm conscious of?' — Noam Chomsky

Sei: The Kudzu snacks were so good I had two and a half bowls but seeing you eat 16 and a half bowls was disgusting. I sriously considered killing you.
Okita: You're horrible! Besides then I'd bleed Kudzu snacks!
Sei: NOO! STOP!!! I CAN SEE IT!! I'LL HAVE NIGHTMARES!! — Taeko Watanabe

His fingers gouged into my leg harder. "My sister was in that cafeteria," he said. "She saw her friends die, thanks to you and that puke boyfriend of yours. She still has nightmares about it. He got what he deserved, but you got a free pass. That ain't right. You should've died that day, Sister Death. Everyone wishes you would have. Look around. Where is Jessica, if she wants you here so bad? Even the friends you came here with don't want to be with you."
"Let go of me," I said again, pulling on his fingers. But he only pinched tighter.
"Your boyfriend isn't the only one who can get his hands on a gun," he said. Slowly he eased himself up to standing again. He reached into the waistband of his jeans and pulled out something small and dark. He pointed it at me, and when the moonlight hit it, I gasped and pressed myself against the barn wall. — Jennifer Brown

I do have nightmares. So what? I wouldn't trade places with any of the f**kers I killed. Am I afraid of Hell? No. I've been. It's worse than advertised but not as bad as imagined. ~ Brandon Hull — Jayden Hunter

In other nightmares, in his everyday reality, Victor watched his father take a drink of vodka on a completely empty stomach. Victor could hear that near-poison fall, then hit, flesh and blood, nerve and vein. Maybe it was like lightning tearing an old tree into halves. Maybe it was like a wall of water, a reservation tsunami, crashing onto a small beach. Maybe it was like Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Maybe it was like all that. Maybe. But after he drank, Victor's father would breathe in deep and close his eyes, stretch, and straighten his neck and back. During those long drinks, Victor's father wasn't shaped like a question mark. He looked more like an exclamation point. — Sherman Alexie

The bullet will go through his skull, splashing warm blood and brain fluid all over. And from then on you'll have recurring nightmares of vivid colors and dead faces ... with their eyes popping out and leaking bits of brain. Are you sure you want to do this? — Minari Endou

Thalia had gotten herself turned into a pine tree when she was twelve. Me ... Well, I was doing
my best not to follow her example. I had nightmares about what Poseidon might turn me into
if I were ever on the verge of death
plankton, maybe. Or a floating patch of kelp. — Rick Riordan

Die in my nightmares; I will live in yours. — Aniket More

*** You know that place in between nightmares and dreams? The place where tomorrows never come and yesterdays don't hurt anymore? The place where your heart beats in sync with mine? The place where time doesn't exist, and it's easy to breathe? I want to live there with you. — Brittainy C. Cherry

Madness is when all your nightmares have come true and you just don't care anymore. — Simon R. Green

This is the place of nightmares in so many ways, but there's nightmares on the outside, too, and one day, when you're not even looking for it, you'll find something perfect in here, and you'll feel whole. Hold onto that. — Ashley Newell

I grew up on the old EC comic books before the Comics Code in North American and with all sort of good-natured fun. I never had nightmares I think because all of the old horror stuff that I was exposed to was well meaning in a certain sense. — George A. Romero

Horror, for me, has to involve some sort of fantasy. Horror is something that is in your dreams or your nightmares. — Cassandra Peterson

Reality is a magic lady, sometimes very mysterious. To me she is very passionate. She is real not only when she is awake, walking down the streets, but also at night when she is dreaming or when she is having nightmares. When I am writing, I am always paying tribute to her - to that lady called Reality. — Eduardo Galeano

The fear, momentarily paused, returned with full force, and in this frantic, baffled state I ran to him, and leapt into his arms.
He seemed surprised at first but soon was squeezing back.
"It's all right," he soothed. "No one's hurt. You're okay."
His words sliced through me, and for the first time since he'd taken me from school, I knew the truth about us: I could not be okay if he was not okay. Pain, nightmares, fighting- all of it aside- he was a part of me. — Kristen Simmons

When it is winter and we must walk in the blizzard snow do not our fingers and toes whisper death And when winter is at last over ... can we not hear our bellies whisper death to us In the dark don't we know And when we are paralyzed by nightmares We know what you are. With our first cries we rail against you. We see you in every drop of blood in every tear. — Martine Leavitt

On writing...
"It's a walk into the darkest corners of my imagination where my nightmares fester until something living and breathing escapes onto the screen of my laptop." JET — J.E. Taylor

We get all the bad dreams, ese," she
said, stroking my wet cheek with the palm of her hand. "We got to leave some for somebody else. — Janet Fitch

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

I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger. — Neil Gaiman

I was a dreamer born into the Court of Nightmares," Mor said. "So I got out. — Sarah J. Maas

Dreams so often become nightmares. Family can so easily become foes. And people are always more stupid than you give them credit for. — Mike A. Lancaster

The day you marry your dreams is the day you divorce your nightmares. — Matshona Dhliwayo

I'm not laughing, and I'm not running. I wont lie either. You're a chilling sight to behold. I've had nightmares of monsters prettier than you." She stepped closer and raised her other hand to thread her fingers through his hair. This time he didn't flinch away. "But you're still you under all this flux nonsense. Only a fool of a woman would run from such an extraordinary man, and I am no fool, Ballard de Sauveterre. — Grace Draven

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

Diversion is pernicious to depressives. Our lives are like waking dreams
correction, nightmares
where monsters chase us, never breaking off pursuit in order to rest or to eat or to look for easier prey. Diversion prevents us from confronting those monsters. If we never confront them, we have no hope of ever defeating them. Diversion does NOT work. — Northern Adams

In my life I've been very lucky to travel around the world and see students and teachers in nearly two dozen countries - but the most awe-inspiring experience I've ever had was two years after 9/11 when I had the chance to attend a conference in Manhattan and personally meet many of the heroic teachers who persevered under conditions that in our worst nightmares we could never have imagined. In my opinion there's not been nearly enough written about those teachers, and I hope that changes soon. — Tucker Elliot

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