The Day After The Night Before Quotes & Sayings

Brain Juice was a recipe invented by Eve years before, when she had had to stay awake all day to look after Caddy and Indigo and Saffron, and all night to take care of the fragile and impermanent baby Rose. It was Coca-Cola with a great deal of instant coffee stirred into it. It was black and frothy and gritty, and it tasted like a primitive, medieval poison, but it banished sleep like magic. — Hilary McKay

I wash with the can of water I set aside the night before, and eat whatever I put next to it. The washing is not strictly necessary but, again, I have always found it a good way to greet the day. You wash after a period of work, after all, and what else is a night of sleep, if not work, or a journey at least? ("The Things He Said") — Michael Marshall Smith

I do need to find inner tranquillity and get into a "zone" before I switch on the computer to work on a story. Only after this do I enter the story world, where I meet the characters and, together, we work through the day and night. — Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

In the dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day,
eager to be shared.
Black silk, shelter me.
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all. — Denise Levertov

But like my young friend said, this is not the way it seems in the beginning. Before things go bad, it's just a night that sounds like a lot of fun. A day that feels like wasting. A risk that looks like something we can likely handle, a limb that'll probably hold our weight. We don't think getting back home will be a problem when we're finished. After all, we're not going far. Not until we're well down the mountain, much too far to pull ourselves easily back up to the top, we realize we've gotten ourselves into a mess. Instead of three or four good ways to get back on our feet, we now have maybe one - or none - none that don't come without a long, hard process, without a good bit of shame — Priscilla Shirer

Whoever prays twelve rakats during the night and day, a house will be built for him in paradise. Four before dhuhr, and two after, two rakats after maghrib, two rakats after ishaa, and two rakats before fajr prayer. — Muhammad

On one such Wednesday, Charlie introduced me to the game Warcraft 3. It was like no game I had ever played before. It enabled the player to build an army and battle against other players online. After the first round of Warcraft III, going up against John Jo and Charlie, I was captivated. The game was so much fun. I couldn't help but think about it every second for the next two days. When the following Friday arrived, we played it for most of the day and well into the night. — Anonymous

Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room.
But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves. — Louise Penny

No beautiful, I'm not seeing anyone. I've been real focused myself. But I'm not foolish enough to let you get by. Even if I have to go through two over-protective dads," Genesis answered. "So. I've got to get back on the road, but I'll see you next weekend. Friday night eight o'clock sharp. And trust me, I won't be late." Genesis bent and kissed Curtis on his cheek. Curtis blushed terribly in front of everyone. This was so ridiculous, they had absolutely no privacy. Genesis gave him another wink before he released his hand and turned to walk up the stairs. His dads walked over to him and Ruxs handed him his suit jacket. He snatched it out his dad's hand and turned to walk out the front door. "Have fun dads." Curtis could hear Day's laugh after his comment, along with the other men, as he walked angrily up the driveway to their car. His dads had made a circus act out of a very nice moment he'd shared with a really great guy. — A.E. Via

You know those day you sometimes have? The days that seem totally ordinary when you wake up, but by the time you go to sleep that night, your whole life is divided into before that day and after that day? This is one of those days. — G. Willow Wilson

Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. "Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight"; and from there he rose to make the daring request, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory." God was frankly pleased by this display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him. — A.W. Tozer

From time to time, I would gaze up at the stars after a night shift and think that they looked like a glowing desert, and I myself was a poor child abandoned in the desert... I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace. This kind of thinking infused the second half of my life with a conflicted mentality: Sometimes I thought life was precious, and everything was so important; but other times I thought humans were insignificant, and nothing was worthwhile. Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old... — Cixin Liu

Wine is the nectar of the Gods, the spirit of the Earth, and the Devil the day after the night before. — Dr Steven Bottomley

Homeward bound I suddenly noticed before me my own shadow as I had seen the shadow of the other war behind the actual one. During all this time it has never budged from me, that irremovable shadow, it hovers over every thought of mine by day and by night; perhaps its dark outline lies on some pages of this book, too. But, after all, shadows themselves are born of light. And only he who has experienced dawn and dusk, war and peace, ascent and decline, only he has truly lived. — Stefan Zweig

Let me tell you a little story. You may have heard it before.
It's a story about a butcher named Barry.
Once upon a time, in central city, there was a butcher named Barry. Barry loved to chop up meat more than anything in the world. But one day, when Barry got tired of just chopping up cows and pigs ...
... He found something NEW to chop up
PEOPLE. And so, he went out night after night in search of fresh meat.
Eventually, Barry was caught, but not before he had slaughtered 23 victims!!! For terrorizing the poor people of central city, Barry was sent straight to the gallows ... And everyone else lived happily ever after! — Hiromu Arakawa

Every morning, even in the bitterest winter, she stood before the chapel door until it opened at four and remained there until after the last Mass. Out from her Caughnawaga cabin at dawn and straight-way to chapel to adore the Blessed Sacrament, hear every Mass; back again during the day to hear instruction, and at night for a last prayer or Benediction. — Kateri Tekakwitha

But doesn't every precious era feel like fiction once it's gone? After a while, certain vestigial sayings are all that remain. Decades after the invention of the automobile, for instance, we continue to warn each other not to 'put the cart before the horse'. So, too, we do still have 'day'dreams and 'night'mares, and the early-morning clock hours are still known colloquially (if increasing mysteriously) as 'the crack of dawn'. Similarly, even as they grew apart, my parents never stopped calling each other 'sweetheart'. — Karen Thompson Walker

You used to own the night and put it to good use, during that sweet spot after your father could no longer tell you when to go to sleep and before you shared an apartment with someone else. Is togetherness killing your productivity? When's the last time you stayed up until 4:00 a.m. testing the boundaries of your consciousness and Googling serial killers? But then you remember how hard it was, that moment between wakefulness and sleep. How the moment of settling down was almost physically painful, your mind pulling away from your body like a balloon being sucked into the atmosphere. He settles that. He tells you that your day was rich enough and now it is time to wind down. He helps you sleep. People need sleep. — Lena Dunham

There are two industry secrets to surviving a long day on camera on the red carpet: First, no drinking the night before - ever. You can celebrate after with some bubbly. Second is make sure to use shoe insoles. I don't care if you are a guy or a girl, dress shoes are painful. Worth it, but painful. — Ross Mathews

From time to time. You do not count your steps any more. For the simple reason they number each day the same. Average day in day out the same. The way being always the same. You keep count of the days and every tenth night multiply. And add. Your father's shade is not with you any more. It fell out long ago. You do not feel your footfalls any more. Unhearing unseeing you go your way. Day after day. The same way. As if there were no other any more. For you there is no other any more. You used never to halt except to make your reckoning. So as to plod from nought anew. This need removed as we have seen there is none in theory to halt any more. Save perhaps a moment at the outermost point. To gather yourself together for the return. And yet you do. As never before. — Samuel Beckett

Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me. — Haruki Murakami

Only because I'm not a morning person. (Joe)
And you're not a night person either. Face it, babe. You've only got two good minutes a day. The minute before noon and the minute right after. (Tee) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

And certain things around us will change, become easier or harder, one thing or the other, but nothing will ever really be any different. I believe that. We have made our decisions, our lives have been set in motion, and they will go on and on until they stop. But if that is true, then what? I mean, what if you believe that, but you keep it covered up, until one day something happens that should change something, but then you see nothing is going to change after all. What then? Meanwhile, the people around you continue to talk and act as if you were the same person as yesterday, or last night, or five minutes before, but you are really undergoing a crisis, your heart feels damaged ... — Raymond Carver

The wave of pure outrage blindsided me. I shouldn't be here, I thought. This is utterly fucked up. I should have been sitting in a garden down the road, barefoot with a drink in my hand, swapping the day's work stories with Peter and Jamie. I had never thought about this before, and it almost knocked me over: all the things we should have had. We should have stayed up all night together studying and stressing out before exams, Peter and I should have argued over who got to bring Jamie to our first dance and slagged her about how she looked in her dress. We should have come weaving home together, singing and laughing and inconsiderate, after drunken college nights. We could have shared a flat, taken off Interrailing around Europe, gone arm-in-arm through dodgy fashion phases and low-rent gigs and high-drama love affairs. Two of us might have been married by now, given the other one a godchild. I had been robbed blind. — Tana French

And I knew too well the loneliness that clamps around one's heart when loved ones have passed on before. To have that companionship, the comfort of someone being at home for you for years, and then suddenly not to have it anymore - well, every day can seem darker after that, and the vise clutches tighter in your chest every night you spend in a lonely bed. Unless you find someone to spend some time with (and that time is sunlight, golden minutes when you forget you're alone), that vise will eventually crush your heart. — Kevin Hearne

Time flowed for Bela in the opposite direction. The day after yesterday, she sometimes said. Pronounced slightly differently, Bela's name, the name of a flower, was itself the word for a span of time, a portion of the day. Shakal bela meant morning; bikel bela, afternoon. Ratrir bela was night. Bela's yesterday was a receptacle for anything her mind stored. Any experience or impression that had come before. Her memory was brief, its contents limited. Lacking chronology, randomly rearranged. — Jhumpa Lahiri

On the second night here, the Koreans played and the streets had to be closed down to traffic for half a day before the game. In a remarkable coincidence, everyone came to town wearing the same type of red T-shirt. The Koreans gathered like a huge blob of ketchup and went mad in a quiet, Dufferlike way. You haven't seen crowds until you've seen Korean crowds. They gathered. They cheered in unison. They clapped and exuberated.
Then they tidied up after themselves and went home.
If you ever have to have half-a-million people in your house for a function, make sure they are Koreans. — Tom Humphries

Endings are abstruse, mystic and unreal. They are but depleted beginnings purposed to be substituted with newer ones.A transition of outlook and time, similar to our differing moods before and after slumber. Before the act we witness an exhaustion, a sulkiness but on gaining consciousness, we're rejuvenated and good humored. The wakefulness is the new beginning whereas the tension the disturbance we perceive each night is the weariness of the beginnings, of each day. So there never really is an end, all that there are are beginnings.Beginnings which are promising, which offer hope, which have a new leash on life, which neither denounce nor belittle rather soothe and console by reconstructing the broken pieces of yesterday, mending them and reinforcing them with courage and beauty like never before. — Chirag Tulsiani

The sun is not ridiculous, quite the contrary. On everything I like, on the rust of the construction girders, on the rotten boards of the fence, a miserly, uncertain light falls, like the look you give, after a sleepless night, on decisions made with enthusiasm the day before, on pages you have written in one spurt without crossing out a word. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before. — Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

And on 25 January of each year and for many days before it and after it there is not an hour in the day or night when a Burns Supper is not taking place somewhere on this earth. — Len G. Murray

After much effort to live up to a glorious standard there came fatigue, wan hope, and boredom. I experienced extreme boredom. I saw others experiencing it too, many denying, by the way, that any such thing existed. And finally I decided that I would make boredom my subject matter. That I'd study it. That I'd become the world's leading authority on it. March, that was a red-letter day for humanity. What a field! What a domain! Titanic! Promethean! I trembled before it. I was inspired. I couldn't sleep. Ideas came in the night and I wrote them down, volumes of them. Strange that no one had gone after this systematically.
Oh, melancholy, yes, but not modern boredom. — Saul Bellow

One night, after hours, you are alone and running your hands under the hot water when the voice asks if you aren't through with your ablutions yet. You do not know the word but write it down to look it up the next day. You learn its definition on page 3 of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: "The washing of one's body or part of it (as in a religious rite)." You are certain you have never heard this word before as you were raised without any religion and have never set foot inside any church or temple, and you return the dictionary to the shelf and vow never to play this game of counting your wounds again. — Patrick DeWitt

Fourteen weeks before the Mendes fight I tore 80 per cent of my ACL [anterior cruciate ligament]. That is the main ligament for stability. Every day in that training camp when I was working my way back, I was saying "real champions fight through any adversity". That is why I am a real champion and he is not. Look at my eye [he had seven stitches put in an old wound after an injury in training the night before we met]. Fighters fight on. Aldo got scared, he went running and I worry he will run again. — Conor McGregor

Whereas our young in years see with a dim, blurred vision; they are filled with fear and fright. The thought which haunts them day and night is - will this world be snuffed out before we have had a chance to enjoy it? And there is no one who dares to tell them that even if the world were snuffed out tomorrow, or the day after, it would not really matter - since the life they crave to enjoy is imperishable. Nor does any one tell them that the destruction of this planet, or its preservation and everlasting glory, hinges on their own thoughts, their own deeds. — Henry Miller

A bride, before a "Good-night" could be said,
Should vanish from her clothes into her bed,
As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied.
But now she's laid; what though she be?
Yet there are more delays, for where is he?
He comes and passeth through sphere after sphere;
First her sheets, then her arms, then anywhere.
Let not this day, then, but this night be thine;
Thy day was but the eve to this, O Valentine. — John Donne