Quotes about nightmare
Emma Goldman -
The triumph of the philosophy of Atheism is to free man from the nightmare of gods it means the dissolution of the phantoms of the beyond.
Beth Revis - The Body Electric
And then I realize: this isn’t dirty water falling from the sky.It is—literally—blood.I look up, and a droplet of blood splashes directly into my eye. I curse, rubbing my face, trying to get the blood out, but it’s everywhere, it’s like trying to dry off in the middle of the ocean. Shielding my face as best I can, I stare up into the sky.I am in the center of a cyclone.Giant white clouds swirl like a spiraling galaxy above me, the eye a tiny dark speck. The storm rages, throwing out bloody rain
Jung Chang - Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
At night I locked my bedroom door, because [my father] could not sleep and would insist on talking to me, endlessly, without making sense. But there was a small window over the door which could not be locked. One night I woke up to see him slithering through the tiny aperture and jumping nimbly to the floor. But he paid no attention to me. He aimlessly picked up various pieces of heavy mahogany furniture and let them drop with seemingly little effort. In his insanity he had become superhumanly a
Junot Díaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles. Fukú americanus, or more colloquially, fukú - generally a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and the Doom of the New World. No matter what its name or provenance, it is believed that the arrival of Europeans on H
A.E. Via -
It all happened within the blink of an eye. God locked Day’s arms behind his back and rolled pinning him down to the mattress and baring all his weight down on him. Day’s heart rate skyrocketed at the realization that God wasn’t awake yet.“Cash, it’s me! It’s Leo! Wake up dammit!” he shouted at God and bucked to try to free his hands that were trapped painfully behind him. His large biceps bulged and flexed with everything he had. He needed to be able to put up his guard. If God started to swing
Shannon A. Thompson - November Snow
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I’ll wake up with sweat drenching my chest and think it’s the blood and muck I was covered in that night.
David Weber - Oath of Swords
Hot, bright heat filled him like some ecstatic poison, and Hartan's pony shied in terror as a wordless howl burst from his throat. His dripping ears were flat to his skull, fire crackled in his brown eyes, his huge sword blurred in a whirring figure eight before him, and the brigand running at him gawked in sudden panic. The raider's feet skidded in mud as he tried to brake, but it was far too late. He was face-to-face with the worst nightmare of any Norfressan, a Horse Stealer hradani in the gr
Alfred Hitchcock -
Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.
Claudia Gray - Hourglass
This could be our greatest nightmare. But maybe, intead this would be our only hope of salvation.
Robert Jackson Bennett - City of Stairs
Just because the nightmare you expected comes true, it doesn't make it any less terrifying.
Rebecca McNutt - or The Usurer
Sometimes Geraldine feels like she can drive forever. Maybe that’s partially why she took a job at Milo General Motors. Driving is the best means of escape that the human race has, at least, that’s her opinion. She’s never had the guts to try drugs before, both because her sister was a junkie in the last few months she knew her, and because she’s heard the overdose horror stories, seen 'Requiem for a Dream', smelled the vapours of a meth lab that Julia’s boyfriend built, heard the crunching glas
Kamil Ali - Profound Vers-A-Tales
SHOCK ABSORBERSVeterans scream in their dreams, reliving nightmares so that we can sleep peacefully
M.F. Moonzajer -
I do dream every night but in the morning I regret.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana -
Employment frees man from the nightmare of unemployment, while it chains him to his employer’s dream.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana -
Success is subjective. Your dream bank balance could be someone else’s nightmare.
Erik Christian Haugaard - The Little Fishes
We were happy. I know I ought to be able to tell you about it, yet I cannot, for while a nightmare will stay with you like hunger, when you awake from a happy dream, you have no memory of it.
K.A. Tucker - Ten Tiny Breaths
Must have been some kind a nightmare.”“Yeah,” I answer, my usual calm, vacant voice returning. “Can’t wait to wake up.
M.F. Moonzajer -
Nightmare and dream both are not real, but I do always love my nightmare; because it offers me gratitude while the latter makes me disappointed.
Jean Lorrain - Monsieur De Phocas
March 1898What a strange dream I had last night! I wandered in the warm streets of a port, in the low quarter of some Barcelona or Marseille. The streets were noisome, with their freshly-heaped piles of ordure outside the doors, in the blue shadows of their high roofs. They all led down towards the sea. The gold-spangled sea, seeming as if it had been polished by the sun, could be seen at the end of each thoroughfare, bristling with yard-arms and luminous masts. The implacable blue of the sky sh
Jane Wilson-Howarth - Snowfed Waters
I was wrenched awake at the tail-end of a stifled scream. I fought my way up from a deep dark dream. The scream had been mine.
Patti Roberts - The Angels Are Here
Whatever. I know that when a monster is chasing you. You take your high-heeled shoes off. I’ve learned that … And you never, ever dangle your legs over the edge of the bed at night … And clowns, well, you get rid of them right away; they are just way too freaky. If the monster doesn’t get you, the clown sure will.
Cornell Woolrich - The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
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")
Steven Herrick - A Place Like This
I'm not sure if my dream is a dream, or a nightmare.
Isaac Bashevis Singer - American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now
But my gloom did not lessen. I knew that I'd had a bad dream, and I stood in the dark trying to recollect it. The second I closed my eyes, I was with the dead. They did things words cannot express. They spoke madness. ("Hanka")
Danny Castillones Sillada -
Sometimes I wish I had not woken up from a beautiful dream, and continued dreaming within sleep upon sleep until I become a dream itself. Because sometimes waking up is more frightening than a nightmare.
Anna B. Doe - Lost & Found
I’m not sure if I managed to respond or not; maybe it was all just in my head, a dream, like all others, in which he sneaks into my head when I don’t have any power to hold him at arm’s length.But William was right about one thing.I did have sweet dreams, or maybe it was just a beautiful nightmare.
Emory R. Frie - Neverland
Just a boy, Just a child,In a place where no one grows up;Young bodies with old minds,Dream and nightmare reign side by side,In a place where no one grows up;A time when darkness shrouded the sun,Vengeance birthed from sea and blood,Many had fallen in the war never won,In a place where no one grows up;When the boy’s heart grieved he became more of a man,When the pirate’s heart hardened with the loss of his hand,One dreadful night everything changed and feuds began,Now the ghosts from their mista
J.R. Rim -
Nightmares appear many times before your dream.
Deyth Banger -
Tomorrow could be just few steps away - a dream, yesterday the fucking nightmare...
Hanns Heinz Ewers - Nachtmahr: Strange Tales
Wednesday. March 16 Isn't it strange that it hasn't occurred to me to put my relationship with Clarimonda on a more serious basis than these endless games. Last night, I thought about this...I can, of course, put on my hat and coat, walk down two flights of stairs, take five steps across the street and mount two flights to her door which is marked with a small sign that says "Clarimonda." Clarimonda what? I don't know. Something. Then I can knock and...Up to this point I imagine everything very
Chloé Danielo -
Some dreams shouldn't be remembered.
Farshad Asl -
Vision with action and commitment can change the world, but without action it's just a dream, and without commitment it's a nightmare.
Robin Stevenson - The World Without Us
Would've been useful when I was about eight," I said. "I used to have wicked nightmares." I did, too: stupid dreams about being chased by Elmo. A psycho Elmo with eyes like that Chucky doll. I'd wake up screaming and Vicky would come running in and ask what the nightmare was about. I never told her. I was too embarrassed.
John Katzenbach -
... A nightmare is something you awaken from, Peter," she had said. "But thoughts and ideas that remain after its terrors have disappeared are something considerably worse.
Steve V. Cypert -
There's not one good thought in that place. There's nothing but waste and want. I can feel his selfish cravings and an abyss of secrets I hope to never know.
David Weber - Oath of Swords
The splendor of that moment, its transcendent glory and aliveness, haunted him. He could thrust it aside by day, but it poisoned his dreams by night, calling to him and pleading with him to unlock the chains he'd bound about it.
Habeeb Akande -
A dream business that doesn't make money is a living nightmare.
Christopher Pike - Whisper of Death
I sit alone in a dead world. The wind blows hot and dry, and the dust gathers like particles of memory waiting to be swept away. I pray for forgetfulness, yet my memory remains strong, as does the outstretched arm of the oppressive air. It seems as if the wind has been there since the beginning of the nightmare. Sometimes loud and harsh, a thousand sharp needles scratching at my reddened skin. Sometimes a whisper, a curious sigh in the black of night, of words more frightening than pain. I know
Kendare Blake - Girl of Nightmares
I think I killed a girl who looked like this once.
Ljupka Cvetanova - The New Land
Good morning, nightmare!
James S.A. Corey - Gods of Risk
You’re a tough guy, but I’m a nightmare wrapped in the apocalypse.
Richelle E. Goodrich - The Return of a Queen
He reached out for her hand and she grabbed onto his. “Eena, when you’re ready to talk about it, I’ll be here. That’s what best friends are for.” She let the tears fall. He’d never know they were for him. He’d think they were because of Derian. They held hands silently throughout the night, Ian unaware that this was by far her most tortured nightmare ever. Paradise so close, and yet completely unattainable.
Erin Kellison - Scrape
There is no reason for any of this if we don't survive." Vince reached out and ran a hand through her long hair. "Ah, love. That's where you're wrong. As long as we do what we're meant to do, it doesn't really matter if we survive or not.
Simona Panova - Nightmarish Sacrifice
I lie more convincingly than I tell the truth.
Beth Revis - The Body Electric
It was to apologize, and apologizing means he remembers what happened, and that means being trapped in a nightmare that’s already come true.
Thomas Ligotti - Songs of a Dead Dreamer
Life is a nightmare that leaves its mark upon you in order to prove that it is, in fact, real.
Cass van Krah -
When life is a horror....Don't look like a ghost!
J. Sheridan Le Fanu - Carmilla
Mademoiselle De Lafontaine – in right of her father, who was a German, assumed to be psychological, metaphysical and something of a mystic – now declared that when the moon shone with a light so intense it was well known that it indicated a special spiritual activity. The effect of the full moon in such a state of brilliancy was manifold. It acted on dreams, it acted on lunacy, it acted on nervous people; it had marvelous physical influences connected with life. Mademoiselle related that here co
Jeff Rice - The Night Stalker
That done, I sank into an uneasy sleep wherein I dreamed of an assembly line of pale, bloodless girls walking down an endless dark street and moaning softly for help. Somewhere, toward the edge of my inner vision, a shadowy figure pursued them with long, beckoning arms.Goddamn booze!Somewhere in the midst of this ghoulish girl parade Cairncross materialized and hung a garland of garlic around my neck, glaring at me with his good eye and intoning, 'Go and sin no more.' Vincenzo appeared at Cairnc
Cheryl R. Cowtan - Girl Desecrated
I was crying for the little girl I had been, who had withstood terrifying nightmares of death and blood and war and maiming. And when I had tried to share those horrors, the shock on my friends' faces had told me I was not normal, and I should keep my dreams to myself.
Kate Chisman - Creep
In the dark behind the glare of the television, like a mannequin behind it, I could see a silhouette and it wasn’t moving. It was maybe six foot high with its shoulders hunched and I blinked to make sure it was real. The TV fuzzed grey and white and black and I had a lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow away. “Rory” I whispered. Clawing out gently beneath the duvet cover, reaching for his hand. But I couldn’t find it. And he didn’t answer.
Evangeline Walton - Witch House
It was so awful! And he kept on looking at me and I knew I must get out of bed or he'd come and touch me. I did, too, but when I got out I wasn't me-I was a little white bunny. And he started out of the room and I had to go with him for fear he'd touch me. It felt so horrid, going out with him and looking back at mother there asleep."We went into the main part of the house, and one of the big front doors was open, and we went out through it. And then he gave a big jump, and so did I, and it took
Evy Michaels -
PuppeteerJust because you tell me I'm beautifulAnd that I'm worth your whileYou expect me to feel like the luckiest girl in the worldSo I should lower my head, talk less, smile more, be more polite, bend to your will, kiss your feet?I will snap those stringsStrap on my six inch heelsI will be thunder and lightning and fire and every nightmare you are afraid ofI will be everything you can't handleWhen you wake up choking on your kool-aid of lies, you will not forget the fierce untamable tempestuo
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
Jack Kerouac -
All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.
Bernard Capes - The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror
And, as the storm of water thrashed the very pinnacles that toppled into mist, he had seen the ribs of cliff laid bare and bleeding—as it were the laceration of a living land that he looked on. Then, ‘Corne et tonnerre!’ he had seemed to cry to himself, ‘the very world is torn by some inhuman power, and flows to the sea in rivers of purple!’ and he heard the bells of the ocean receding innumerably, choke at their moorings, muffled and congested with the floating scum of carnage that no wind migh
Deyth Banger -
Do you feel it?Do you taste it??...That's going to be awesome nightmare!
G.K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
Then the man smiled, and his smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the right cheek and down in the left.There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. Many people have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it is even attractive. But in all Syme's circumstances, with the dark dawn and the deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, there was something unnerving in it. There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of
Ralph Ellison -
So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget me; they keep filing away at my lethargy, my complacency. Why should I be the one to dream this nightmare?
Jean Lorrain - Monsieur De Phocas
At this point, the sequence of my memories is disrupted.I sank into a chaos of brief, incoherent and bizarre hallucinations, in which the grotesque and the horrible kept close company. Prostrate, as if I were being garrotted by invisible cords, I floundered in anguish and dread, oppressively ridden by the most unbridled nightmares. A whole series of monsters and avatars swarmed in the shadows, coming to life amid draughts of sulphur and phosphorus like an animated fresco painted on the moving wa
Evangeline Walton - Witch House
He asked, looking at her dark-rimmed eyes, "You do not sleep?"She shivered. "No. I do not want to sleep any more. I sleep too much already. It is so cold, where Quincy sends me in my sleep. Deep into the house, farther in, not into the house we see. It is as if that house were a face, and when you see a face you can't see the brain or the thoughts of the person behind it. And it is so strange - the house inside the house."********"How is it strange - this that you call the house inside the house
Christina Dodd - Because I'm Watching
I'm sorry about the screaming. I thought you were him.
Rebecca McNutt - Mandy and Alecto: The Collected Smog City Book Series
Dreams are just lies that we tell ourselves while we're asleep.
Simona Panova - Nightmarish Sacrifice
I can be anything – and nothing, and everything at the same time. It all depends on the role I am in.
Deyth Banger -
Rape, cockroaches... are still a real nightmare.
Gerald Morris - The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf
I have this recurring nightmare where I'm lost in a strange forest, and my only hope is your sense of direction. Enough to give a fellow the sweats, it is.
Lauren Oliver - Before I Fall
In my dream I know I am falling. But there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the sensation of cold and darkness everywhere. I am so scared I could scream. But when I open my mouth, nothing happens. And I wonder if you fall forever and never touch down, is it really still falling? I think I will fall forever.
Curtis Tyrone Jones -
Rare indeed is the seed who can bury its nightmares & still stem & blossom into its wildest dreams.
Catherine Jane Fisher - I am Catherine Jane: The True Story of One Woman's Quest for Justice
Please God, when I open my eyes, make this nightmare disappear.
Simona Panova - Nightmarish Sacrifice
My ghost is the only soul who ever comes to cry on my grave... Only the skies cried sincerely on my funeral.
Nutan Bajracharya -
Nightmare completed, another humiliating defeat. 10 goals in 2 game. It will take time to come out from such humiliating defeat for Brazilian fans. But I think when you like something, when you fall to someone, when you are in love, you like them whatever happens, even they give tears to you time to time because you liked it from your heart.
Marie Lu - Prodigy
Maybe his nightmare had been about me.
Mark Lawrence - Prince of Fools
It’s often said that cowards make the best torturers. Cowards have good imaginations, imaginations that torment them with all the worst stuff of nightmare, all the horrors that could befall them. This provides an excellent arsenal when it comes to inflicting misery on others. And their final qualification is that they understand the fears of their victim better than the victim does himself.
Richelle E. Goodrich -
WRITER'S NIGHTMARE""I felt a grip on my arm that shook my body, forcefully pulling me toward a tunnel of darkness. The threat of consciousness stole my steady breath. For a moment I believed myself to be under siege; ripped from the sky in mid flight, my wings useless against the monstrous claws shredding my reality. I struggled to remain, to be left alone, aloft. Reaching with wings that through the power of imagination were suddenly feathered arms, I grabbed at the air. My hands clutched a
Michael Bassey Johnson -
Nightmares are not dreams. A good dream does not leave the dreamer in darkness, confusion and terror. Start having dreams, not nightmares!
Shaun David Hutchinson - The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley
It begins when he’s still a man in a suit, doing the kinds of boring things that men in suits do. The things that no one writes about because they know that boys don’t really have nightmares about clowns or three-eyed tentacled beasts that rise from deep within volcanoes. When boys wake up screaming in the night, it’s because they know that, one day, they’ll have to grow into men who wear suits and spend their days doing boring things that cause them to rot from within, so their skin withers and
Sherif Mekdam - The Trinity's Dream
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.
Margaret Atwood - Morning in the Burned House
In the daylight we knowwhat’s gone is gone,but at night it’s different.Nothing gets finished,not dying, not mourning;
Margaret Atwood - Morning in the Burned House
from under the ground, from under the waters,they clutch at us, they clutch at us,we won’t let go.
Laini Taylor - Strange the Dreamer
I turned my nightmares into fireflies and caught them in a jar.
Lisa Tuttle - Best New Horror 16
In the jumbled, fragmented memories I carry from my childhood there are probably nearly as many dreams as images from waking life. I thought of one which might have been my earliest remembered nightmare. I was probably about four years old - I don't think I'd started school yet - when I woke up screaming. The image I retained of the dream, the thing which had frightened me so, was an ugly, clown-like doll made of soft red and cream-coloured rubber. When you squeezed it, bulbous eyes popped out o
Rachel Cohn - Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
Better to end this dream before it becomes a nightmare.
Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front
And in the night you realize, when you wake out of a dream, overcome and captivated by the enchantment of visions that crowd in on each other, just how fragile a handhold, how tenuous a boundary separates us from darkness - we are little flames, inadequately sheltered by thin walls from the tempest of dissolution and insensibility in which we flicker and are often all but extinguished. Then the muted sounds of battle surrounds us, and we creep into ourselves and stare wide-eyed into the night.
Sarah Dessen - Just Listen
I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real.
Walter de la Mare - Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural
Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture - the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls - as of a perfect hive of abhorrent memories.That high cupboard in the corner, from which certain bodiless shapes had been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering out of his dreams; the crab-patterned paper that came alive as you stared; the window cold with mena
Anna Kavan - Asylum Piece
In a polished surface of metal I happen to notice my reflected face; it wears a pale, beaten lonely look, eyes looking out at nothing with an expression of fear, frightened and lonely in a nightmare world. Something, I don’t know what, makes me think of my childhood; I remember myself as a schoolchild sitting at a hard wooden desk, and then as a little girl with thick, fair, wind-tossed hair, feeding the swans in a park. And it seems both strange and sad to me that all those childish years were
Thomas Ligotti - Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
... the logic of supernatural horror [is] a logic founded on fear, a logic whose sole principle states: "Existence equals nightmare." Unless life is a dream, nothing makes sense. For as a reality, it is a rank failure..
Dragos Bratasanu - Ph.D.
When you think and act opposite to love, you find yourself powerless and life becomes a frightening nightmare.
Aman Jassal - Rainbow - the shades of love
Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares.
Karen Marie Moning - The Immortal Highlander
How dare the embodiment of her worst nightmare come packaged as her hottest fantasy?
Anthony Liccione -
The paint is drying, and time is dying. The pain is crying, lying on my back, trying to get back the time, to brushstrokes too fast, wet went dry and love went dull; now I live in a portrait I never painted.
James Sullivan -
Now I think I understand how this world can overcome a man.
Akshay Vasu -
Nobody cared for her until the time she touched everyone like a breeze, but the day she turned into a storm and swept everything on her way out, the world stood still. She was a nightmare none had ever across.
Anthony T. Hincks -
A.I. might be straight out of science fiction, but it's going to turn into man's worst nightmare.
Anthony T. Hincks -
We dream because that's what life is.Anything else and it would be a nightmare.
Ned Vizzini - It's Kind of a Funny Story
It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare, you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.""And what is that nightmare, Craig?""Life.
Criss Jami -
...And maybe one day you will wake up as an infant in a completely different universe, and your entire life thus far was just one big dream.
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
It was like waking from a nightmare to a worse nightmare.
Kami Garcia - Beautiful Redemption
Life without Ethan was something worse than a nightmare.It was real.So real that I refused to believe it.