Waking Quotes - Page 20

• I have always disliked the morning, it is too responsible a time, with the daylight demanding that it be 'faced' and (usually when I wake for I wake late) with the sun already up and in charge of the world, with little hope of anyone usurping or challenging its authority. A shot of light in the face of a poor waking human being and another slave limps wounded into the light-occupied territory.

  Janet Frame

  Morning, Light, Challenges

  Janet Frame (1972). “Daughter Buffalo”

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• Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.

  Bram Stoker

  Dream, Fear, Heart

  Bram Stoker (2015). “Classic Horror Collection: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Jekyll and Hyde, & The Island of Dr. Moreau”, p.233, Xist Publishing

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• Still she haunts me, phantomwise, Alice moving under skies Never seen by waking eyes.

  Lewis Carroll

  Moving, Eye, Sky

  Lewis Carroll (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (Illustrated)”, p.1682, Delphi Classics

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• By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Dream, Life Is, Undone

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Orlando: A Biography”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.

  Gregory Maguire

  Sleep, Insomnia, Wake Up

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• I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Wake Up, Feels, Book Of Disquiet

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• I live in New York City. I could never live anywhere else. The events of September 11 forced me to confront the fact that no matter what, I live here and always will. One of my favorite things about New York is that you can pick up the phone and order anything and someone will deliver it to you. Once I lived for a year in another city, and almost every waking hour of my life was spent going to stores, buying things, loading them into the car, bringing them home, unloading them, and carrying them into the house. How anyone gets anything done in these places is a mystery to me.

  Nora Ephron

  New York, Home, Buying Things

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• Those heart-hammering nightmares that start to lose coherence even as you're waking up from them, but that still manage to leave their moldering fingerprints all across your day.

  Mike Carey

  Heart, Wake Up, Coherence

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• One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug.

  Franz Kafka

  Dream, Morning, Bugs

  Franz Kafka (1946). “The Metamorphosis”, p.3, Gottfried & Fritz

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• In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the lips and face and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smile and kept moving. If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door I would have done. But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence.

  Neil Gaiman

  Morning, Moving, Sleep

  "Fragile Things". Book by Neil Gaiman, 2006.

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• Waking up from a dream of violence is much the same as waking up from a dream of love. You must go on living your life.

  Wendell Berry

  Dream, Love You, Live Your Life

  Wendell Berry (2000). “Jayber Crow: A Novel”, Counterpoint LLC

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• At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened?

  Mary Oliver

  Beautiful, Rain, Fall

  Mary Oliver (2013). “New and Selected Poems, Volume One”, p.236, Beacon Press

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• Sometimes, waking early before the others, wandering the rooms wrapped in a blanket or drinking my tea in the empty kitchen, I had that most rare of feelings, the sense that the world, so consistently overwhelming and incomprehensible, in fact has an order, oblique as it may seem, and I a place within it.

  Nicole Krauss

  Drinking, Order, Feelings

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House: A Novel”, p.158, W. W. Norton & Company

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• You liked me." I smiled. "You were smitten with me. You were speechless to behold my beauty. You had never met anyone so fascinating. You thought of me every waking minute. You dreamed about me. You couldn't stand it. You couldn't let such wonderfulness out of your sight. You had to follow me." I turned to Cinnamon. He licked my nose. "Don't give yourself so much credit. It was your rat I was after." She laughed, and the desert sang.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Sight, Giving, Desert

  Jerry Spinelli (2001). “Stargirl”, p.86, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• I do not know what is happening. The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days. But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny. [...] I do not believe that darkness will endure!

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Believe, Heart, Light

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings”, p.941, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

  Moving, Tired, Sleep

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)”, p.1075, Delphi Classics

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• Reading was not an escape for her, any more than it is for me. It was an aspect of direct experience. She distinguished, of course, between the fictional world and the real one, in which she had to prepare dinners and so on. Still, for us, the fictional world was an extension of the real, and in no way a substitute for it, or refuge from it. Any more than sleeping is a substitute for waking." (Jincy Willett)

  Jincy Willett

  Real, Reading, Sleep

  Jincy Willett (2010). “Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather”, p.53, Macmillan

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• What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have........ ....... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. ~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke

  Theodore Roethke

  Summer, Wall, Dark

  Theodore Roethke, “In A Dark Time”

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• Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this.

  William Shakespeare

  Hate, Unrequited Love, Sleep

  William Shakespeare (2008). “Romeo and Juliet”, p.40, Barron's Educational Series

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• Waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.

  Dennis Lehane

  Past, Order, Shuffling

  Dennis Lehane (2010). “Shutter Island”, p.22, Hachette UK

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• Flickering lights anonymous doors my heart escaping in drips i'm still waking up but she's still sleeping this ICU is hotel for the dead

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Heart, Sleep, Light

  Maggie Stiefvater (2014). “Shiver Series (Shiver, Linger, Forever, Sinner)”, p.553, Scholastic Inc.

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• No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Stars, Memories, Flower

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings”, p.916, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking.

  Suzanne Collins

  Morning, I Hate You, Katniss

  Suzanne Collins (2010). “Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3)”, p.156, Scholastic Inc.

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• Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Book, Choices, Library

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• How do you bear it?” Finnick looks at me in disbelief. “I don’t, Katniss! Obviously, I don’t. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there’s no relief in waking.” “The more you can distract yourself the better, ” he says. “First thing tomorrow, we’ll get you your own rope. Until then take mine.

  Suzanne Collins

  Morning, Katniss, Relief

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