Sleeplessness Quotes

“He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Clean Well-Lighted Place

“sleep is such a luxury, which i cant afford.”
― Robin Sikarwar

“Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that’s burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead – And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time...”
― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

“The creak of bed springs suffering under the weight of a restless man is as lonely a sound as I know.”
― Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers

“Dark circles under my eyes sink deeper and deeper into my skull, in contrast to my pale skin there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse.”
― Dee Remy

“A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“It's sad to fall asleep. It separates people. Even when you're sleeping together, you're all alone.”
― J.L. Merrow, Pricks and Pragmatism

“Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion - to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three months.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I feel as though whenever I create something, my Mr. Hyde wakes up in the middle of the night and starts thrashing it. I sometimes love it the next morning, but other times it is an abomination.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“You are the biggest enemy of your own sleep.”
― Pawan Mishra

“She lay down and never stirred. To move hand or foot, or even so much as one finger, would have been an exertion beyond the powers of either volition or motion. She was so tired, so stunned, that she thought she never slept at all; her feverish thoughts passed and repassed the boundary between sleeping and waking, and kept their own miserable identity.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“Something amazing happens when the rest of the world is sleeping. I am glued to my chair. I forget that I ever wanted to do anything but write. The crowded city, the crowded apartment, and the crowded calendar suddenly seem spacious. Three or four hours pass in a moment; I have no idea what time it is, because I never check the clock. If I chose to listen, I could hear the swish of taxis bound for downtown bars or the soft saxophone riffs that drift from a neighbor's window, but nothing gets through. I am suspended in a sensory deprivation tank, and the very lack of sensation is delicious.”
― Anne Fadiman, At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays

“Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep but it's not so bad
I don't worry and I don't weep. In fact I'm glad.
Because I get up off my pillow and I flip on the light.
I get down and get hip in the still of the night I stretch and I yawn and then I breathe real deep And dance myself to sleep.
I hoof around my beddie just a-tappin' my toes
Before I know what's happened I'm a-ready to doze
Got some partners I can count the boogie-woogie sheep
I dance myself to sleep.”
― Jim Henson, It's Not Easy Being Green and Other Things to Consider

“Think what devils chase a man who cannot sleep in his own house.”
― Warren Eyster, The Goblins of Eros

“Sleeplessness kept claiming her nights, and she used books as shields against the onslaught of her abstract terrors.”
― Hernan Diaz, Trust

“Понякога се пробуждах посред нощ, с пресъхнала уста, и преди още да изплувам от съня, нещо ми пошушваше да заспя пак, да се гмурна обратно в топлината, в безсъзнателността като в единствено затишие. Но вече си казвах: „Просто съм жадна, достатъчно е да се изправя, да ида до умивалника, да пия вода и пак да заспя”. Ала щом станех, щом видех в огледалото собствения си образ, смътно осветен от уличната лампа, щом хладката вода започнеше да се стича в гърлото ми, тогава отчаянието ме завладяваше и с истинско усещане за физическа болка си лягах отново, зъзнейки. Просвах се по корем, обхванала глава в ръце, и притисках тяло о кревата, сякаш любовта ми към Люк бе горещо и смъртоносно животинче, което в бунта си бих могла да премажа между кожата си и чаршафите. И битката се разразяваше. Паметта, въображението се превръщаха в жестоки врагове. Лицето на Люк, Кан, какво е било и какво би могло да бъде. И неспир отпорът на тялото ми, което бе сънено, на разума ми, който бе отвратен. Вирвах глава, съставях уравнения:”Аз съм аз, Доминик. Обичам Люк, който не ме обича. Несподелена любов, задължителна мъка. Точка.”
― Françoise Sagan, A Certain Smile

“I close my eyes, but I can’t fall asleep, my body dying for the rest while my mind’s wide awake.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“From a certain age onwards, sleep never came easily to me and, the more problems kept piling up, the less I mingled with Morpheus.”
― LUMI, Eleanora's Sundown

“A few days ago I resumed that 'war-service' - or, more correctly, 'manoeuvre' life, which I discovered years ago to be the most suitable for myself at certain times. Sleeping in bed in the afternoon as long as possible, then walking about for two hours, then staying awake as long as possible. But in this 'long as possible' lies the hitch. 'It isn't possible for long', not in the afternoon, not at night, and yet I'm actually wilted when I get to the office in the morning. And the real prize lies hidden in the depths of the night, in the second, third, fourth hour; but nowadays if I don't go to bed at latest around midnight, night and day and I myself are lost.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“I fell into a state that, if not sleep, was sleep adjacent.”
― Rufi Thorpe, Margo's Got Money Troubles

“If you didn’t know, lack of sleep….. excuse me….. sleep deprived plus other stuff*** can manifest into a psychotic break.”
― Niedria Kenny

“Sleeplessness does the devil’s joinery, son.”
― Max Porter, Lanny

“And when next I feel the dawn’s light,
I open my hand and set the butterfly free,
Knowing she does not appear every night,
When sleep abandons me”
― Natalie Miller, What Lies Beyond: And Other Poetry by Natalie Miller

“When reality hits hard
and battles turn into wars to fight,
What story do you tell yourself
to sleep at night?”
― Ritu Negi, Collywobbles

“Maisie was restless, waking every hour or so, then slipping into a half-sleep before she began to dream again, as if she had fallen through a fissure in consciousness and was aware of herself sleeping.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, A Dangerous Place

“The deep, soft mattress that usually made her feel as if she were a cygnet nestled under its mother's wing now seemed hard and lumpy, as if horse hair had been stitched into pillow ticking and laid across concrete. She turned one way and the other, unable to find any semblance of the comfort that would lead to sleep. ... And Maisie knew, as thoughts contradicted each other, conspiring to exhaust her into sleep, that with one short assignment she could test the water.”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Journey to Munich

“The Sacking of Grief by Stewart Stafford

Thou speaketh of grief as a funeral cowl lashed,
When 'tis a thorny, haunting cuckoo's nest smashed,
I wouldst cast it off, fain if choice be mine,
And not necessity's wickedness stretched supine.

Peace's changeling to restless beds doth creep,
In conjoined prayer to restoreth salvation sleep.
To crawleth awake in dawn's incessant weight,
Can I tame this sleepless lion and walk it straight?

I confesseth sins, but the blemish remains,
Call it regret that stalks these guiltless brains,
Would a surgeon's blade cut me free of it?
And I in luscious orchards, the solaced fruits bit.

O, in slumbering dusk the leonine roar doth cease,
And the pathway home heralds sweet release.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Her eyelids were closed but Fern wasn't asleep. She knew that she slept sometimes, because she passed in and out of dreaming. Daybreak was a comfort.”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“When Cyrus got sober after years of living this way, years after his father passed away, he found his ability to fall asleep naturally had completely atrophied from disuse; his sober insomnia even worse than it had been in his adolescence. Melatonin, meditation, chamomile, Benadryl—nothing could touch his sleeplessness. It was as if his body was obstinately trying to reclaim the waking it had lost while Cyrus was drinking.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!