Nightmare Quotes

“It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“I turned my nightmares into fireflies and caught them in a jar.”
― Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer

“Give them pleasure. The same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.”
― Alfred Hitchcock

“Anything else?” asked Matthias.
“I like singing,” said Alys.
Wylan shook his head frantically, mouthing, No, no, no.
“Shall I sing?” Alys asked hopefully. “Bajan says that I’m good enough to be on the stage.”
“Maybe we save that for later—” suggested Jesper.
Alys’ lower lip began to wobble like a plate about to break.
“Sing,” Matthias blurted, “by all means, sing.”
And then the real nightmare began.
It wasn’t that Alys was so bad, she just never stopped. She sang between bites of food. She sang while she was walking through the graves. She sang from behind a bush when she needed to relieve herself. When she finally dozed off, she hummed in her sleep.
“Maybe this was Van Eck’s plan all along,” Kaz said glumly when they’d assembled outside the tomb again.
“To drive us mad?” said Nina. “It’s working.”
Jesper shut his eyes and groaned. “Diabolical.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“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.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“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.”
― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

“Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“There's no rule that says you have to be a prodigy to be a hero," she insisted. "If people wanted to stand up for themselves or protect their loved ones or do what they believe in their hearts is the right thing to do, then they would do it. If they wanted to be heroic, they would find ways to be heroic, even without supernatural powers.”
― Marissa Meyer, Renegades

“Oh, he did look like a deity – the perfect balance of danger and charm, he was at the same time fascinating and inaccessible, distant because of his demonstrated flawlessness, and possessing such strength of character that he was dismaying and at the same time utterly attractive in an enticing and forbidden way.”
― Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice

“Love is the most beautiful of dreams and the worst of nightmares.”
― Aman Jassal, Rainbow - the shades of love

“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.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Summerset, don't you ever sleep?"

"It's Lieutenant Dallas. She's--"

Roarke dropped his briefcase, grabbed Summerset by the lapels. "Has she been hurt? Where is she?"

"A nightmare. She was screaming." Summerset lost his usual composure and dragged a hand over his hair. "She won't cooperate. I was about to call your doctor. I left her in her private suite."

As Roarke pushed him aside, Summerset grabbed his arm. "Roarke, you should have told me what had been done to her."

Roarke merely shook his head and kept going. "I'll take care of her.”
― J.D. Robb, Immortal in Death

“For the record, while it's very charming that you keep trying to protect me, I would like to remind you that I actually know how to defend myself."
He grimaced. "I know. It's just... instinct."
"Well, stop it."
He held his hands up. "Won't happen again." He hesitated. I mean, unless I'm pretty sure you're about to die, then I'm absolutely going to rescue you, whether you like it or not.”
― Marissa Meyer, Renegades

“The little poets sing of little things:
Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings;
Lovers who kissed and then were made as one,
And modest flowers waving in the sun.

The mighty poets write in blood and tears
And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears.
They reach their mad blind hands into the night,
To plumb abysses dead to human sight;
To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled,
Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world.

MUSINGS

[click on the thumbnail by Jack "King" Kirby]”
― Robert E. Howard

“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?”
― Ralph Ellison

“For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.”
― Stephen King, It

“But for some reason she had left off the metal mask, and though Adrian knew he shouldn't assign it any significance, he couldn't help it.
Without the mask, he still didn't see her as Nightmare. He could only see Nova.
Nova, who had betrayed him a hundred different ways. But still Nova.”
― Marissa Meyer, Supernova

“Better to end this dream before it becomes a nightmare.”
― Rachel Cohn, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“This was a nightmare scenario for any bodyguard: stuck in the middle of a transparent tube, several miles underwater, with a murdering band of fugitives at one end and an enthralled but still highly skilled police officer at the other.”
― Eoin Colfer, The Atlantis Complex

“She wasn't a Renegade.
She was Nightmare.
And she did not like to be seen.”
― Marissa Meyer, Renegades

“War was funny like that: one minute you could try and block it and have the most wonderful thoughts, the next you were back in the nightmare.”
― Mark A. Cooper, The Edelweiss Express

“Now I think I understand how this world can overcome a man.”
― James "The Rev" Sullivan

“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 cousin, who was mate of a merchant ship, having taken a nap on deck on such a night, lying on his back, with his face full in the light of the moon, had wakened, after a dream of an old woman clawing him by the cheek, with his features horribly drawn to one side; and his countenance had never quite recovered its equilibrium.”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

“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.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

“I think I killed a girl who looked like this once.”
― Kendare Blake, Girl of Nightmares

“Każdy sen, ten czarowny i piękny, zbyt długo śniony zamienia się w koszmar. A z takiego budzimy się z krzykiem.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“How dare the embodiment of her worst nightmare come packaged as her hottest fantasy?”
― Karen Marie Moning, The Immortal Highlander

“Awoke from nightmare could be a relief.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“... 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..”
― Thomas Ligotti, Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe

“Знам, че викам насън - запуши си ушите.
Все едно - невъзможно е да прогониш кошмара.
Отдалече се връщам и от страх съм пропита.”
― Камелия Кондова, Не и милост