Sleep And Children Quotes & Sayings

We prefer when you walk around instead of through us. We like to be left in peace while we're eating and performing our courtship rituals. We ask only for the same rights as you: we just want to live our lives, make a place for ourselves, room to shit and room sleep, room to raise our children. Don't poison us just because we make a mess. You make a mess, too. There's enough of everything to go round if we all stick to our fair share.
Leave us be and there'll be no trouble. Be kind to us and we'll return the favour when the time for favours comes. Until then, peace be with you. — Stephen Kelman

Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. — Joan Didion

An adult is one who has lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child, who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated, who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy, and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep. The wise man is a happy child. — Arnaud Desjardins

Final things are for children, because infinity scares children, and it is important that children sleep peacefully at night. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

This is the codicil of motherhood: Like it or not, you acquire a sixth sense when it comes to your children - viscerally feeling their joy, their frustration, and the sharp blow to the heart when someone causes them pain. "Fast." Mariah sighs. "And with my eyes wide open." As Millie opens her arms, Mariah moves into them, drawing close the comfort of childhood with a great rush of relief. She tells her mother of Ian, who was not following her when she thought he was, who was not the person he made himself out to be. She describes the way they would sit on the porch after Faith went to sleep, and how they would sometimes talk and sometimes just let the night settle over their shoulders. She does not tell Millie of Ian's brother, of what Faith might or might not have briefly done for him. She does not tell Millie how it felt to have Ian's body pressed against hers, heat from head to toe, how even during hours — Jodi Picoult

Trying to find the proper care in a civilization where only a small part of the population will ever understand what you are going through is a burden many first responders are saddled with. PTSI, injuries, and politics weigh heavily on the officer, yet we continue to turn a blind eye to them. We have made officers into robotic super heroes that aren't allowed feelings, intellect, or human error. They have been ostracized by society and stripped of their basic human behaviors.

We also have yet to admit there are husbands, wives, children, and parents actively involved in these officers' lives hoping to help them cope with their trauma. Families who do more than make sure they get enough sleep, a hot meal and fresh uniforms in the closet. The faces of the families are yet to be seen. — Karen Rodwill Solomon

They were just clear of the summer colony before the first sleeper turned over and lifted a drowsy head; their cry sounded in the dreams of little children... who lifted their arms to drag down, to cuddle the darling little woolly lambs of sleep. Then the first inhabitant appeared; it was the Burnells' cat Florrie, sitting on the gatepost, far too early as usual, looking for their milk-girl. When she saw the old sheep-dog she sprang up quickly, arched her back, drew in her — Katherine Mansfield

To have output you must have input. It helps to go on a period of creative nourishment, or dolce far niente, clearing the brain. Go to bed with the cat, some flouffy pillows, tea and a book which could not in any sense be called improving. Read for fun for a change: superior Chicklit is good, or children's classics. You are not allowed to try and analyse what the author is doing. After a good sleep, go and do something new, or that you haven't done for a while ... — Lucy Sussex

The silence in the giant redwood forest near my house draws me...At eight in the morning, the great trees stand rooted in a silence so absolute that one's inmost self comes to rest. An aged silence. Some mornings I sleep through two alarms and awaken only after the first buses have arrived. I go anyway. There are hundreds of people in the woods before me. People speaking French, German, Spanish; people marveling to each other and calling to their children in Japanese, Swedish, Russian, and some languages I do not know. And children shrieking in the universal language of childhood. But the silence is always there, unchanged. It is as impervious to these passing sounds as the trees themselves. — Rachel Naomi Remen

...And indeed it did take me a long time for me to find someone I wanted to marry. But I'm so glad I waited. What I know about Pete and me is that the flame will never go out. I do not look up from tossing the salad and think, Oh, God, how the hell did I ever get here? I do not look a the back of his head and think, I don't know you at all. I wake up with my pal, and go to sleep with my lover. He still thrills me, not only sexually but because of the way he regards the life that unfolds around him. I am interested in what he says about me and the children and our respective jobs, but I am also interested in what he says about the Middle East and the migratory patterns of monarchs and the amount of nutmeg that should be grated into the mashed potatoes and the impact that being a thwarted artist had on the life of Hitler. I believe he is a truly honest and awake and kind individual. If we live more than once, I want to find him again. — Elizabeth Berg

Death continues to stalk the streets, stealing the souls of our children as they sleep. We're running out of fingers to close their eyes, voices to bless their souls, hands to dig their graves. Poisonous fumes from their unburied bodies contaminate the alleys, and the ghosts of those who have been buried rise nightly. Their tiny forms dance above their tombstones, an agonising reminder that we've failed them. — Joanne Owen

Children bring an awesome responsibility. We are entrusted with the task of shaping the lives of real people, with all their potential to do good or harm. At times, it is highly inconvenient. They disturb our sleep; they interfere with our plans; they stir up dormant and unresolved passions. And yet, as we seek to teach them, they are teaching us. They teach us what sacrifice is all about. The total dependence of a baby upon us, their powerlessness to reciprocate what we do for them, their inability to say thank you, all lead us to become less selfish. We are forced to change, to grow up, to look at the needs of another, to raise our boredom threshold, to develop patience, to deal with our insecurities, to become more whole. We are learning to love. — Nicky Lee

One [event] is the discovery of the anesthetic properties of chloroform [in 1847] by James Simpson of Scotland. Following the reports of [William] Morton's demonstration [1846], he tried ether but, dissatisfied, searched for a substitute and came upon chlorophorm. He was an obstetrician. His use of anesthesia to alleviate the pains of childbirth was violently opposed by the Scottish clergy on the ground that pain was ordained by the scriptural command, "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children", and that it was impious to attempt to avert it by anesthetic agents. And it was Simpson who stilled this opposition by his own famous quotation from scripture; he pointed out that when Eve was born, God cast Adam into deep sleep before performing upon him the notable costalectomy. Anesthesia was thus permissible by scriptural precedent. — Howard Wilcox Haggard

My hair is not the shiniest of bobs
My eyes are not the brightest in the room
My figure will not get me modeling jobs
My smile will not bring young boys to their doom.
But do I cry and mourn my average face?
Or wish that I had boyfriends at the ready?
Do I not sleep because I lose the race,
Or spurn my food because I don't go steady?
My mind is on a more important thing
That lifts my heart and makes my spirit soar
I want to make the souls of people sing
And quiet down the mean and bullying roar.
To help the wounded girls replace the scar
With the right to be exactly who they are. — Nancy Rue

When children are very young, you read them books that are positive to help them go to sleep. But there comes a moment when they begin to understand the difficulties of the world. They know there are problems and the books they read should reflect that, not gloss over them. — Michael Morpurgo

Just then, in that instant, I saw His eyes. I recognised them. They were the eyes of that trembling father in a smoke-filled room on the ninety-third floor of Tower One, dialing his little girls for the last time. Those were the eyes behind that calming voice singing 'Amazing Grace' in a crowded and slippery stairwell, trapped outside a roof door when the ceilings began to cave. The eyes of the people who stayed behind with the handicapped victims waiting for police officers who never made it up the stairs. Those were the eyes of firemen who pushed me to safety, the doctor who cared for me for more than a year free of charge, the therapist who visited my home regularly so that I could sleep a little, the children who loved me, the brother who prayed nonstop, and the pastor who became my friend. Those were the eyes of God. — Leslie Haskin

The more you do it, the more you learn to concentrate, as a child does, incredibly intensively and then you sort of have to relax. I remember the first film I did, the lead actor would in between scenes be reading a newspaper or sleeping and I'd think, 'How can you do that?' — Cate Blanchett

You spend all this time, as a child, coming up with these fantasy stories, and here I am, sleeping in a treehouse, in the middle of Canyon de Chelly, shooting a Western. That's a bit of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. — James Badge Dale

Seeing you sleeping peacefully on your back among your stuffed ducks, bears and basset hounds, would remind me that no matter how good the next day might be, certain moments were gone forever because we could not go backwards in time. — Joan Baez

Thus we see that the lot of the duck hunter is not a happy one. He is the child of frustration, the collector of mishap, the victim of misfortune. He suffers from cold and wet and lack of sleep. He is punished more often than rewarded. Yet he continues. Why? Because one great day
and great days do come, days when the ducks are willing and the gun swings true
repays him many fold for all the others. — Ted Trueblood

When I did get married and then had children, it was Beatles' songs I sang to them at night. As one of the youngest of 24 cousins, I had never held an infant or baby-sat. I didn't know any lullabies, so I sang Sam and Grace to sleep with 'I Will' and 'P.S. I Love You.' — Ann Hood

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

The Father protects his children, the septons taught, but Davos had led his boys into the fire. Dale would never give his wife the child they had prayed for, and Allard, with his girl in Oldtown and his girl in Kings Landing, and his girl in Braavos, they would all be weeping soon. Matthos would never captain his own ship, as he dreamed. Maric would never have his knighthood.
'How can I live when they are dead? So many brave knights and mighty lords have died, better men than me, and highborn. Crawl inside your cave, Davos. Crawl inside and shrink up small and the ship will go away, and no one will trouble you ever again. Sleep on your stone pillow and let the gulls peck out your eyes while the crabs feast on your flesh. You've feasted on enough of them, you owe them. Hide, smuggler. Hide, and be quiet, and die. — George R R Martin

Dorrigo, the children, her friends, and her wider family - they all existed for her as a way of divining the world. It was a far larger and more wondrous place with them than it was without them. If she hoped for the same love from Dorrigo, and if she was disappointed in her hope, she did not feel its absence as a reason not to love him. The problem was that she did. Her love was without reason and would never yield to reason. Though it longed for requital, her love in the end did not demand it.
But when he was away at night, she would lie awake, unable to sleep. And she would think of him and her and feel the most overwhelming sadness. She may have been a trusting woman but she was very far from a stupid one. She repeated his words and echoed his opinions not because she was without thoughts of her own, but because her nature was one that wished to live through others. Without love, what was the world? Just objects, things, light, darkness. — Richard Flanagan

Many of them [people who escaped religion] recounted both the terror and the relief they felt after leaving religion behind. Terror at realizing there was no longer an imaginary friend; relief that no one was looking over their shoulder any more. Several described the experience as similar to that of a child learning to go to sleep without a favorite teddy bear. Others described it as simply growing up or outgrowing the need for the imaginary friends of childhood. — Darrel Ray

Remember children, once I am gone I will be part of it all
Everything will be me and together be free
The songs of the birds will be my voice in joyous refrain
The caress of the soft summer breeze will be my touch from afar
The sunset in glorious golden red hues, my display of love
The soft murmur of the stream as it lulls you to sleep my lullaby
Close your eyes and open your heart that I may touch you.
There shall I dwell ever close, embracing you with every beat of your heart
Smile and feel the joy I share now with you. — Neil Leckman

No! No!" Falling to his knees, Ebenezer tried to grab the black robe, but he felt nothing. "Please hear me. I'm not the man I was. I will not be that man again. Why show me these things if I'm beyond all hope?" The angel was relentless in his silent demand. Ebenezer sat back on his heels, resigned. "I've watched an innocent man crucified. Innocent children slaughtered. Mothers grieving for their dead sons. I guess nothing you show me now really matters." He took a deep breath and stood next to the slab of stone. He reached over the body and pulled back the shroud. He thought himself prepared, but he wasn't. He felt the blood drain from his face. Ebenezer was ready to see himself on that cold stone, but not the face before him. There, in what seemed peaceful sleep, was the Man whom Ebenezer loved. He fell back as he stared at Jesus. Recovering, he dropped to his knees. He was quiet for a moment, then said, "It should have been me. It should have been me. — Marianne Jordan

I'll tell you what is convenient," he said after a moment. "To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment's notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka - and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most." Anna — Amor Towles

The deepest sleep is meant only for children and perfect fools. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hunger. The summer catch had been poor; there wasn't much food. They ate with care and looked sideways at the old: the old were gluttons, everybody knew it, and what was the good of feeding them? It wouldn't harm them to starve a little.
The hungry dogs howled. The women rinsed the children's bellies with hot water three times a day, so they wouldn't cry so much for food. The old starved silently. ("The North") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

To return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The most striking difference between little ones and grownups is that little ones cannot worry, and they cannot worry because they have no past and no future. They live only in the present moment. Just watch children. If they play, they play and don't even hear us call them and don't notice anything that is going on around them. If they eat, they eat; if they sleep, they sleep. There is a beautiful English word which describes how they do whatever they do, they do it 'whole-heartedly', whereas grownups always are half-hearted. — Maria Augusta Von Trapp

Even before I knew I was gay, I knew I didn't want to have a child. I knew I didn't want to have one. I never want to have to release it from me. Listen, I love babies. I love children. And I melt when I'm around them. I also love my freedom and I love that I can sleep at night. — Ellen DeGeneres

Keeping children secure and comfortable at night contributes toward a lifetime of easy sleep for them, an objective worthy of the weariness you may feel now. — Norma Jane Bumgarner

My father had always said there are four things a child needs: plenty of love, nourishing food, regular sleep, and lots of soap and water. After that, what he needs most is some intelligent neglect. — Ivy Baker Priest

Little brats yellin 'Trick or Treat' all through my screen door,
When y'all should be at home sleep,
Instead of at my front porch 15 deep.
The jack o' lantern came in handy ...
I can turn my porch light out like I ain't got no candy.
But ain't that somethin?
You buy a Halloween costume and a pumpkin,
Almost gave your children a heart attack.
It's a tradition, but who the hell started that? — Kam

Mother, when your children are irritable, do not make them more so by scolding and fault-finding, but correct their irritability by good nature and mirthfulness. Irritability comes from errors in food, bad air, too little sleep, a necessity for change of scene and surroundings; from confinement in close rooms, and lack of sunshine. — Herbert Spencer

I dislike the idea of a murderer employing children,' said Holmes darkly. 'It is, I agree, bad for their morals, and interferes with their sleep.' 'And their schooling,' added Holmes sententiously. — Laurie R. King

Weren't we all crazy in our sleep? What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of our neighbor's children? — Jeff Lindsay

Dear five-year-old, What the fuck is wrong with you? Normal children don't have dead imaginary friends. Normal children don't pick open every single one of their chicken pox scabs and then stand naked and bleeding in the darkened doorway to their bedroom until someone walks past and asks what they are doing. Furthermore, normal children don't respond by saying, "I wanted to know what all my blood would look like." Normal children also don't watch their parents sleep from the corner of the room. Mom was really scarred by The Exorcist when she was younger, and she doesn't know how to cope with your increasingly creepy behavior. Please stop. Please, please stop. — Allie Brosh

And I'm sure they all played by the rules, just liked I did. By the way, when I got laid off four and a half years ago, the stock of my company was at an all-time high. Our CEO retired. He was paid $70 million. Maybe now that is only worth $30 million. Or maybe in a few years if he plays by the rules it will be worth $130 million. I'll still be worth nothing. And I won't have a home or my children. You see why I wonder about playing by the rules? Because I always do. As a result, you're standing where I sleep. — Ken Goldstein

Lions should be strong but sweet beasts in a Disney cartoon. But they aren't, so when they act like lions you're angry at them for not being the fantasy animals you imagined. Russian bears don't put on top hats and ride unicycles. Or sleep in bed next to Goldilocks. People force them to do those stupid things in circuses and films and children's books. Sure, some will be more docile or more ferocious than others, but in the end they will always, always be bears. And you should never turn your back on them. You should never even get near them; it's that simple. They're not being dishonest - you are in your perception of them. — Jonathan Carroll

And among the other honours and rewards our young men can win for distinguished service in war and in other activities, will be more frequent opportunities to sleep with a woman; this will give us a pretext for ensuring that most of our children are born of that parent. — Plato

In America we tell our parents to bring their child home and put him or her in a crib; as they get older, children sleep in they own room not in Mom and Dad's room. What are we training them for? It's independence, because that's what being empowered is all about. — Sheena Iyengar

Perhaps it was only that I did not feel any crazier than I had ever felt. I did not notice any missing gray tissue, I did not seem to be thinking any slower or more strangely, and so far I'd had no conversations with invisible buddies that I was aware of. Except in my sleep, of course-and did that really count? Weren't we all crazy in our sleep? What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of the neighbor's children? — Jeff Lindsay

I don't like to talk. every time i go somewhere with a friend they always expect me to talk to them. i like to sit quietly. when i watch a movie or read a poem i don't like to discuss it with anyone. i like to watch movies and then maybe sleep. no talking. occasionally i watch the same movie over and over again until i fall asleep. i prefer watching movies alone. i prefer reading alone. i prefer eating alone. i prefer walking alone. i prefer listening to music alone. i prefer singing alone. i prefer swimming alone. i prefer to eat small children alone. i like it when sean reads me poetry but i just like to listen quietly and not comment afterwards. sometimes i feel this makes him uncomfortable. — Ellen Kennedy

We will stand mighty for peace and freedom and maintain a strong defense against terror and destruction. Our children will sleep free from the threat of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. — William J. Clinton

With this pregnancy, unlike my others, I was fully aware of the possibility of blissful, painless, potentially even orgasmic, and fully natural, unmedicalized childbirth from the beginning. After reaching my second trimester, I was relaxing in the bath after my children had gone to sleep, when suddenly I felt a profound connection with the little girl within me. She communicated to me how this birth was going to go. How it was going to feel. In essence, I knew she would pass easily out of my body. — Adrienne Carmack

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, Leads by the hand her little child to bed, Half willing, half reluctant to be led, And leave his broken playthings on the floor. Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted By promises of others in their stead Which, the more splendid, may not please him more; So Nature deals with us, and takes away Our playthings one by one, and by the hand Leads us to rest so gently, that we go Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, Being too full of sleep to understand How far the unknown transcends the what we know. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

So what are you gonna say at my funeral, now that you've killed me? Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children, both living and dead. Rest in peace, my true love, who I took for granted. Most bomb p*ssy who, because of me, sleep evaded. Her god listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks. — Beyonce

I heard the gunshots. I was worried. Guns don't always mean the one holding them won."
Steven hugged her close. "Do you remember what I said to you the day we were married?"
"You said, 'I will always come back to you.'"
"I always will."
Sleep took them then, and whisked them away to their happiest dreams. Heather dreamed of the spring, a Fresh Earth many years away, and she was surrounded by her grown children and grandchildren. Steven dreamed of summer, and beer kept cold in the deeps of Deadbuck Creek, and his wife dancing in the high grass with flowers in her hair. — Michael Kanuckel

The lights flickered, the pain went away, and her mother was holding her, singing 'Sleep sweet sleep'. (The Children of Ankh series) Kim Cormack — Kim Cormack

Christianity indeed has equaled Judaism in the atrocities, and exceeded it in the extent of its desolation. Eleven millions of men, women, and children have been killed in battle, butchered in their sleep, burned to death at public festivals of sacrifice, poisoned, tortured, assassinated, and pillaged in the spirit of the Religion of Peace, and for the glory of the most merciful God. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Call it arrogance or male chauvinism, the male ego just doesn't allow a woman to participate in key issues in family. Men seldom realize that it's the housewife who has the most difficult job in the world: waking up early, preparing breakfast, getting the children ready for school, preparing lunch, cleaning up the mess at home and so much more. Even before they can some rest, the doorbell would ring and the children are back from school. Then, the routine again, and by the end of the day, they were tired. Women in the family are the last to sleep and the first to wake up. Sometimes, even during a crisis in the family or when there is a dispute, it's the lady of the house that stands rock solid to calm things down and face challenges head on. — Jagdish Joghee

All men must sleep, Bran. Even princes."
"When I sleep I turn into a wolf." Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. "Do wolves dream?"
"All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do."
"Do dead men dream?" Bran asked, thinking of his father. In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father's likeness in granite.
"Some say yes, some no," the maester answered. "The dead themselves are silent on the matter."
"Do trees dream?"
"Trees? No ... "
"They do," Bran said with sudden certainty. "They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood."
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain where it chafed his neck. "If you would only spend more time with the other children - "
"I hate the other children," Bran said, meaning the Walders. "I commanded you to send them away. — George R R Martin

It's like parenting. The hardest, most intensive time comes at the very beginning. We still love those babies as they grow into daredevil children, recalcitrant teens, and parents setting eyes on their own babes for the first time. We just get a little more sleep while we do it. — Debora Geary

Moses prayed and the Lord parted the Red Sea. Joshua prayed and the walls of Jericho fell. David prayed and God protected him from Saul. Esther prayed and the lives of the children of Israel were saved. Daniel prayed and the Lord closed the lion's mouths. Jesus prayed in the garden until He was ready to face Calvary. I don't think any of those prayers were "Now I lay me down to sleep". — Clay Wallace

Ian!" she cried, afraid to believe it. "I don't want you to ever regret that you married me."
He smiled, and his fingertips caressed her cheeks. "Regret it? How could I?" You are my passionate
Italian wife. You are the woman who is going to give me children and whose bed I intend to sleep in
every night. You're the reason I'll wake up every morning with a smile on my face. I love you, I will be in
love with you every day of my life, and the only day I'm leaving you is the day they put me in the ground. — Laura Lee Guhrke

We are all individualized expressions of God, of oneness. But we do have personality differences. Everyone who has had more than one child knows that they come in with personalities. The moment they come in - some come in screaming, some sleep through that first night and stay peaceful the rest of their lives - you see the differences. — Wayne Dyer

Oftentimes I felt ridiculous giving my seal of approval to what was in reality such a natural thing to do, sort of like reinventing the wheel and extolling its virtues. Had parents' intuition sunk so low that some strange man had to tell modern women that it was okay to sleep with their babies? — William Sears

Under your shelter all things come and go.
Children are violent and valiant, they run and they shout like the winners of impossible victories, but before long now, even like me, they will be brought into their sleep.
Those who are grown great talk with confidence and are at all times skillful to serve and to protect, but before long now they too, before long, even like me, will be taken in and put to bed.
Soon come those hours when no one wakes. Even the locusts, even the crickets, silent shall be, as frozen brooks
In your break sheltering. [sic] — James Agee

I want my children to be able to meet and play and communicate with many other children on their own, not only when they are driven somewhere. I want them to grow up in an environment that is not just a place where people sleep but where people work.. and where people enjoy themselves. — Moshe Safdie

This is the message of your life and my life - it's that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it: Panta Rhei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children - nothing lasts. To the degree that you avert your gaze from this truth, you build the potential for pain into your life. Everything is this act of embracing the present moment, the felt presence of experience, and then moving on to the next felt moment of experience. It's literally psychological nomadism is what it is. — Terence McKenna

My dear woman, our greatest problem is
that almost everything is a goddamned code. We do not know what is real any more. Every gesture is symbolic. A man cannot shit short of some pundit finding hidden meaning in it. Even having children is a metaphor. Hence, we cannot trust ourselves; and, therefore, we do not trust anybody. No my dear, I do not believe in codes, and even if I did I certainly would not use one in my sleep! (from the play, Sixteen Words For Water) — Billy Marshall Stoneking

Oh! to be a child again. My only treasures, bits of shell and stone and glass. To love nothing but maple sugar. To fear nothing but a big dog. To go to sleep without dreading the morrow. To wake up with a shout. Not to have seen a dead face. Not to dread a living one. To be able to believe. — Fanny Fern

The key to activating maturation is to take care of the attachment needs of the child. To foster independance we must first invite dependance; to promote individuation we must provide a sense of belonging and unity; to help the child separate we must assume the responsibility for keeping the child close. We help a child let go by providing more contact and connection than he himself is seeking. When he asks for a hug, we give him a warmer one than he is giving us. We liberate children not by making them work for our love but by letting them rest in it. We help a child face the separation involved in going to sleep or going to school by satisfying his need for closeness. — Gordon Neufeld

In the stillness of the night I have walked in your streets, and my spirit has entered your houses,
And your heart-beats were in my heart, and your breath was upon my face, and I knew you all.
Aye, I knew your joy and your pain, and in your sleep your dreams were my dreams.
And oftentimes I was among you a lake among the mountains.
I mirrored the summits in you and the bending slopes, and even the passing flocks of your thoughts and your desires.
And to my silence came the laughter of your children in streams, and the longing of your youths in rivers. — Kahlil Gibran

Maybe I am getting too grown to want to sleep with Mama. But like a baby, I still have this smallness to my mind. I don't need her hands to convince me the world I can't see from under my blanket is real. I need her hands to do more than her words. Convince me the world I see outside it- ain't. — Connie Rose Porter

I was a nervous child, I was a bedwetter. I used to sleep with an electric blanket and I was constantly electrocuting myself. — Woody Allen

Snow-quiet, sleep-silent, only the fun-fire faraway songsinging of children; and the room was blue with cold, colder than the cold of fairytales: lie down my heart among the igloo flowers of snow. — Truman Capote

If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Matresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn't need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again. They would never sleep in silver boxes with white velvet sheets, not until they were wrinkled-paper grandmas and ready for the trip. — Laurie Halse Anderson

So someone who is a child usually goes to bed about 8:00 or 9:00 at night, but then when they have a circadian rhythm shift, it shifts later. And this is natural. And they start to go to bed at 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 and they want to sleep later. So we see this a lot in teens. — Shelby Harris

The Return of the Rivers

All the rivers run into the sea;
yet the sea is not full;
unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again.

It is raining today
in the mountains.

It is a warm green rain
with love
in its pockets
for spring is here,
and does not dream
of death.

Birds happen music
like clocks ticking heaves
in a land
where children love spiders,
and let them sleep
in their hair.

A slow rain sizzles
on the river
like a pan
full of frying flowers,
and with each drop
of rain
the ocean
begins again. — Richard Brautigan

Our first night in the house, my wife and I were lying in bed. I was thanking God for my blessings. Thanking God for not having to pull aside a dining room curain to have my children near - that they were right down the hall, asleep in their Superman underwear, their little chests rising and falling to the pulse of their dreams.
I thought how some blessings are fickle guests. Just when we think they're here to stay, they pack their bags and move. When we're in the midst of blessing, we think it's our due - that blessing lasts forever. Next thing you know we're sitting helpless beside a hospital bed. All we're left with is a name on a wall, a toy in a desk, and memories that haunt our sleep.
Sometimes we come to gratitute too late. It's only after blessing has passed on that we realize what we had.
- chapter 2 — Philip Gulley

The whirlwind of life
It was true. Sometimes life was like that, a wonderful whirlwind that fills us with joy, like a ride on a merry-go-round when we are children. A whirlwind of love and drunkenness when you sleep in someones arms, in a tiny bed, getting up for breakfast at midday because you've spent the morning making love. But sometimes a whirlwind destroys things, like a violent typhoon that tries to drag us down, when we have been caught by the storm, when we realize that we have to face the tempest alone. And we are afraid. — Guillaume Musso

Sleep, Silence's child, sweet father of soft rest, Prince whose approach peace to all mortals brings Indifferent host to shepherds and kings Sole comforter to minds with grief oppressed. — William Drummond

I wish children could grow according to their natural pace: sleep when sleepy, wake up when rested, eat when hungry, cry when upset, play and explore without being unnecessarily interrupted; in other words, be allowed to grow and blossom as each was meant to. — Magda Gerber

They will tell you that the Americans who sleep in the streets and beg for food got there because they're all lazy or weak of spirit. That the inner-city children who are trapped in dilapidated schools can't learn and won't learn and so we should just give up on them entirely. That the innocent people being slaughtered and expelled from their homes half a world away are somebody else's problem to take care of. — Barack Obama

Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. — Ray Bradbury

Only In Sleep
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child? — Sara Teasdale

But I feel very sorry for the poor children, all the same," said the man. The two children had also not been able to sleep for hunger, and had heard what their step-mother had said to their father. Grethel wept bitter tears, and said to Hansel, "Now all is over with us." "Be quiet, Grethel," said — Jacob Grimm

He famously defended fairy stories against those who said they told children that there were monsters; children already know that there are monsters, he said, and fairy stories teach them that monsters can be killed. We now know that the monsters may not simply have scales and sleep under a mountain. They may be in our own heads. — Terry Pratchett

The truth is, we never know for sure about ourselves. Who we'll sleep with if given the opportunity, who we'll betray in the right circumstance, whose faith and love we will reward with our own. Only after we've done a thing do we know what we'll do ... Which is why we have spouses and children and parents and colleagues and friends, because someone has to know us better than we know ourselves. — Richard Russo

From sunrise to sunset, from one day to the next, till our black hair turns white, we eat, we sleep, we bear children and we watch them grow. We watch them get married and in turn bear children of their own. How time flies, we say to ourselves. Then one day, we look down at our feet and we're surprised. Roots have sprouted in the ground of our daily living. — Suchen Christine Lim

When I have children that go home and mom and dad are not home because they're working, they're trying to get food on the table, and they come home to an empty house and they go to sleep in an empty house, there is no way that child can compete against a child from the west side of Los Angeles who both parents went to Stanford. Well, good for them, God love them. That's not an equal playing field. — Rafe Esquith

Later that night, feeling restless, I get out of bed, creep into Linus's room, and watch him sleeping in his crib. He's lying on his back, wearing blue feety pajamas, one arm up over his head. I listen to his deep-sleep exhales. Even years past those fragile newborn months, it still gives my maternal ears relief and peace to hear the sounds of my children breathing when they're asleep. His orange nukie is in his mouth, the silky edge of his favorite blanket is touching his cheek, and Bunny is lying limp across his chest. He's surrounded by every kind of baby security paraphernalia imaginable, and yet none of it protected him from what could have happened today. — Lisa Genova

The truth is that when one is still a child-or even if one is grown up- and has been well fed, and has slept long and softly and warm; when one has gone to sleep in the midst of a fairy story, and has wakened to find it real, one cannot be unhappy or even look as if one were; and one could not, if one tried, keep a glow of joy out of one's eyes. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day ... was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep. — Charles Bukowski

Come then, come with us, out into the night. Come now, America the lovesick, America the timid, the blessed, the educated, come stalk the dark backroads and stand outside the bright houses, calm as murderers in the yard, quiet as deer. Come, you slumberers, you lumps, arise from your legion of sleep and fly. Come, all you dreamers, all you zombies, all you monsters. What are you doing anyway, paying the bills, washing the dishes, waiting for the doorbell? Come on, take your keys, leave the bowl of candy on the porch, put on the suffocating mask of someone else and breathe. Be someone you don't love so much, for once. Listen: like the children, we only have one night. — Stewart O'Nan

I can't tell you what to do. No one can. But as the mother of two children, I can tell you what most moms will: that mothering is absurdly hard and profoundly sweet. Like the best thing you ever did. Like if you think you want to have a baby, you probably should.
I say this in spite of the fact that children are giant endless suck machines. They don't give a whit if you need to sleep or eat or pee or get your work done or go out to a party naked and oiled up in a homemade Alice B. Toklas mask. They take everything. They will bring you the furthest edge of your personality and abso-fucking-lutely to your knees.
They will also give you everything back. Not just all they take, but many of the things you lost before they came along as well. — Cheryl Strayed

The American Heart Association reports: There are numerous benefits of daily physical activity: reduces the risk of heart disease by improving blood circulation throughout the body; keeps weight under control; improves blood cholesterol levels; prevents and reduces high blood pressure; prevents bone loss; boosts energy levels; helps manage stress; releases tension; improves the ability to fall asleep quickly and sleep well; improves self-image; counters anxiety and depression and increases enthusiasm and optimism; increases muscle strength; gives greater capacity for other physical activities; provides a way to share an activity with family and friends; establishes good heart-healthy habits in children and counters the conditions — Michael Todd Wilson

Not stories told by wolf or man to frighten children, of Wolfbane and of werewolves, of grasht and goblins and of silly vampires, fables to frighten cowards with the threat of evil and of sin. But the power that lives beyond those stories, and makes them strong indeed, that lives in nightmares and in sleep. That is ribbed into the very fabric of conscious being. The power of love and hate. — David Clement-Davies

Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter. With an average life expectancy of 78.2 years in the US (subtracting eight hours a day for sleep), I have around 250,00 conscious hours remaining to me in which I could be smiling or scowling, rejoicing in my life, in this race, in this story, or moaning and complaining about my troubles. I can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breaths, to my wife and my children and my neighbors, or I can grasp after the vapor and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live. And, like Adam, I will still die in the end. — N.D. Wilson

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

Nurse's Song
WHEN the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.
No, no, let us play, for it is yet day,
And we cannot go to sleep;
Besides, in the sky the little birds fly,
And the hills are all cover'd with sheep.
Well, well, go and play till the light fades away,
And then go home to bed.'
The little ones leaped and shouted and laugh'd
And all the hills echoed. — William Blake

We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep - it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. — Michael Cunningham

In the end the boy had died one evening in his mother's arms, his limbs burning with fever, but then there was the funeral to pay for, and the other children who were born soon enough, and the newer, bigger house, and the good schools and tutors, and the fine shoes and the television, and the countless other ways he tried to console his wife and to keep her from crying in her sleep, and so when the doctor offered to pay him twice as much as he earned at the grammar school, he accepted. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Whenever I hear about a child needing something, I ask myself, 'Is it what he needs or what he wants?' It isn't always easy to distinguish between the two. A child has many real needs which can and should be satisfied. His wants are a bottomless pit. He wants, for example, to sleep with his parents. He needs to be in his own bed. At Christmas he wants every toy advertised on television. He needs only one or two. — Haim Ginott

Sheltering the women and the children played some part; Troy was sure of that. The women and children of Silo One had been gifted with a long sleep while the men stayed and took shifts. It removed the passion from the plans, forestalled the chance that the men might fight among themselves. — Hugh Howey

Ask any parent what we want for our children, and invariably we say 'a better life.' To that end, we give our time, our sleep, our money, and our dreams, much as our parents did before us. We all want a better life for our children. But what we want for them ceases to matter if we leave them an unlivable world. — Leonor Varela