“
What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close to completing and so that's what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they'd really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the paint and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.
”
”
Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go)
“
What if the things that ended –the things that broke and break your heart- what if it was the end of a chapter but the story keeps going? What it life comes back? What if love comes back? What if you would not be who you are and you would now know what you know it not for all those sleepless nights?
I’m starting to believe those things, that the best is yet to be, that life comes back, that the dreams that live inside me are there for a reason, that life is not just a tragedy, not just a story about losing. It is also a story of surprises and grace and redemptions, of conversations and moments that feel like miracles.
”
”
Jamie Tworkowski (If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For)
“
so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the pain and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.
”
”
Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go)
“
You battled monsters. You sweat and cried your way to this one prolific moment where you finally realize that those dark days and sleepless nights were pre-requisites to your becoming.
”
”
Jennifer Elisabeth (Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl)
“
Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings. It stirs gentle men to rage and bids them take up arms. It wakes old grievances and opens forgotten wounds. It is the mother of the sleepless night and the hag-ridden day. And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth’s voice are more destructive by far.
It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others, never lie to yourself.
”
”
Frances Hardinge (Fly by Night)
“
Those who wake at this hour feel a lonely separation from everyone but night birds and ghost crabs, never imagining the legion of kindred souls scattered in the darkness, who stare at ceilings and pace floors and look out windows and covet and worry and mourn.
”
”
Kathy Hepinstall (Blue Asylum)
“
A man who seeks only the light, while shirking his responsibilities, will never find illumination. And one who keep his eyes fixed upon the sun ends up blind..."
"It doesn't matter what others think -because that's what they will think, in any case. So, relax. Let the universe move about. Discover the joy of surprising yourself."
"The master says: “Make use of every blessing that God gave you today. A blessing cannot be saved. There is no bank where we can deposit blessings received, to use them when we see fit. If you do not use them, they will be irretrievably lost. God knows that we are creative artists when it comes to our lives. On one day, he gives us clay for sculpting, on another, brushes and canvas, or a pen. But we can never use clay on our canvas, nor pens in sculpture. Each day has its own miracle. Accept the blessings, work, and create your minor works of art today. Tomorrow you will receive others.”
“You are together because a forest is always stronger than a solitary tree,” the master answered. "The forest conserves humidity, resists the hurricane and helps the soil to be fertile. But what makes a tree strong is its roots. And the roots of a plant cannot help another plant to grow. To be joined together in the same purpose is to allow each person to grow in his own fashion, and that is the path of those who wish to commune with God.”
“If you must cry, cry like a child. You were once a child, and one of the first things you learned in life was to cry, because crying is a part of life. Never forget that you are free, and that to show your emotions is not shameful. Scream, sob loudly, make as much noise as you like. Because that is how children cry, and they know the fastest way to put their hearts at ease. Have you ever noticed how children stop crying? They stop because something distracts them. Something calls them to the next adventure. Children stop crying very quickly. And that's how it will be for you. But only if you can cry as children do.”
“If you are traveling the road of your dreams, be committed to it. Do not leave an open door to be used as an excuse such as, 'Well, this isn't exactly what I wanted. ' Therein are contained the seeds of defeat. “Walk your path. Even if your steps have to be uncertain, even if you know that you could be doing it better. If you accept your possibilities in the present, there is no doubt that you will improve in the future. But if you deny that you have limitations, you will never be rid of them. “Confront your path with courage, and don't be afraid of the criticism of others. And, above all, don't allow yourself to become paralyzed by self-criticism. “God will be with you on your sleepless nights, and will dry your tears with His love. God is for the valiant.”
"Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing."
"There is a moment in every day when it is difficult to see clearly: evening time. Light and darkness blend, and nothing is completely clear nor completely dark."
"But it's not important what we think, or what we do or what we believe in: each of us will die one day. Better to do as the old Yaqui Indians did: regard death as an advisor. Always ask: 'Since I'm going to die, what should I be doing now?'”
"When we follow our dreams, we may give the impression to others that we are miserable and unhappy. But what others think is not important. What is important is the joy in our heart.”
“There is a work of art each of us was destined to create. That is the central point of our life, and -no matter how we try to deceive ourselves -we know how important it is to our happiness. Usually, that work of art is covered by years of fears, guilt and indecision. But, if we decide to remove those things that do not belong, if we have no doubt as to our capability, we are capable of going forward with the mission that is our destiny. That is the only way to live with honor.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (Maktub)
“
I don't think my mum ever understood my love of Doctor Who. Surely her strongest memory would have been me, standing at the top of the stairs, crying about how the "jelly men" were going to get me? Sorry, Mum, for those sleepless nights, but it was with good reason they called it Terror of the Zygons.
”
”
Steve Berry (Behind The Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who)
“
Any drinker knows how the process works: the first day you get drunk is okay, the morning after means a big head but so you can kill that easy with a few more drinks and a meal, but if you pass up the meal and go on to another night's drunk, and wake up to keep the toot going, and continue on to the fourth day, there'll come one day when the drinks wont take effect because you're chemically overloaded and you'll have to sleep it off but cant sleep any more because it was alcohol itself that made you sleep those last five nights, so delirium sets in ― Sleeplessness, sweat, trembling, a groaning feeling of weakness where your arms are numb and useless, nightmares, (nightmares of death)... well, there's more of that up later.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (Big Sur)
“
Tonight - I am alone in the night,
a homeless and sleepless nun!
Tonight I hold all the keys to this
the only capital city
and lack of sleep guides me on my path.
You are so lovely, my dusky Kremlin!
Tonight I put my lips to the breast
of the whole round and warring earth.
Now I feel hair - like fur - standing on end:
the stifling winds blow straight into my soul.
Tonight I feel compassion for everyone,
those who are pitied, along with those who are kissed.
”
”
Marina Tsvetaeva
“
I started to understand, during those sleepless nights replaying the things I’d overheard, that we are all grown from something. That we carry on the seed, and I was a part of her garden.
”
”
Ashley Audrain (The Push)
“
You may be safe, but I am free.' Take advantage of the freedom that comes with your youth. Inhale life, exhale fire, and embrace the late, sleepless nights, because that's when the magic happens- when everyone else is asleep and you're awake thinking about the world as it is, and the world as it would be. Make the most of those moments," I said forcefully. "And in the coming years people will tell you that you're too young to change the world. I'm here to tell you, that's fucking bullshit.
”
”
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
“
Sleepless nights
Spent looking at the ceiling
Searching in those etched patterns
For some sort of adhesive
To glue together the broken pieces
Of a soul crushed
By the weight of the fact that
Life is profoundly sad.
”
”
Justin Wetch (Bending The Universe)
“
In those long and sleepless nights when I’m unable to shake my fears sufficiently, I borrow a biblical epigraph from Dostoyevsky’s The Demons: I see my fears being cast into the bodies of wild boars and hogs, and I watch them rush to a cliff where they fall to their deaths.
”
”
Twyla Tharp (The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life (Learn In and Use It for Life))
“
The sound is gone. There's nothing left but the insomniac throbbing of crickets. Crickets in the garden, the courtyard, the back courtyard. Close, domestic, identifiable. And those out in the country. Between all of them they raise, little by little, a wall that will keep out the thing that lies waiting for the tiniest crack of silence to steal through. The thing that is feared by all those who are sleepless, those who walk through the night, those who are lonely, children. That thing. The voice of the dead.
”
”
Rosario Castellanos (The Book of Lamentations)
“
During those empty, sleepless nights, I thought a lot about The Knife as an idea. A knife was a tool, and acquired meaning from the use we made of it. Language, too, was a knife. I could cut open the world and reveal its meaning, its inner workings, its secrets, its truths. It could cut through from one reality to another. It could call bullshit, open people's eyes, create beauty. Language was my knife. If I had unexpectedly been caught in an unwanted knife fight, maybe this was the knife I could use to fight back.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder)
“
Hail O mighty, fathomless sleep, come on and hug me tight and sweet;
when I whisper those deepest pains, onto your ears mute and keen,
sing for me the sweetest song that would sound the profoundest of life!
Leave me upon your rocking arms, watched by spirits of placid nights!
Goodnight, world, sweet dreams folks, blessed are those who would sleep at peace!
”
”
Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar (The Solitary Shores)
“
In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it. That is what seeing Alex again on Fifth Avenue brought back to me - a youth of fascinated, passionless copulation. There they are, figures in a discoloured blur, young men and not so young, the nice ones with automobiles, the dull ones full of suspicions and stinginess. By asking a thousand questions of many heavy souls, I did not learn much. You receive biographies interesting mainly for their coherence. So many are children who from the day of their birth are growing up to be their parents. Look at the voting records, inherited like flat feet.
”
”
Elizabeth Hardwick (Sleepless Nights)
“
Perhaps what those who meditate today are seeking is a state that our ancestors would have considered their birthright, a nightly occurrence.
”
”
Clark Strand (Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age)
“
We enjoy lovely music, beautiful paintings, a thousand intellectual delicacies, but we have no idea of their cost, to those who invented them, in sleepless nights, tears, spasmodic laughter, rashes, asthmas, epilepsies, and the fear of death, which is worse than all the rest.
”
”
Marcel Proust
“
Until about ten years ago, we admired those who could survive on only four hours of sleep and those stalwarts who worked through the night. They were heroes, people whose fierce devotion and commitment revealed everyone else’s fecklessness and frailty. Then, as sleep science reached the mainstream, we began to change our attitude. That sleepless guy wasn’t a hero. He was a fool. He was likely doing subpar work and maybe hurting the rest of us because of his poor choices. Breaks are now where sleep was then. Skipping lunch was once a badge of honor and taking a nap a mark of shame. No more. The science of timing now affirms what the Old World already understood: We should give ourselves a break.
”
”
Daniel H. Pink (When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing)
“
He knew he was close to completing and so that's what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they'd really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the pain and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.
”
”
Kazuo Ishiguro (Never Let Me Go)
“
How strange it was, I thought, that when the tiny though thousandfold beauties of the Earth disappeared and the immeasurable beauty of outer space rose in the distant quiet splendor of light, man and the greatest number of other creatures were supposed to be asleep! Was it because we were only permitted to catch a fleeting glimpse of those great bodies and then only in the mysterious time of a dream world, those great bodies about which man had only the slightest knowledge but perhaps one day would be permitted to examine more closely? Or was it permitted for the great majority of people to gaze at the starry firmament only in brief, sleepless moments so that the splendor wouldn't become mundane, so that the greatness wouldn't be diminished?
”
”
Adalbert Stifter (Indian Summer)
“
Remembering, in Spanish, means to pass something through the heart again, and now all the years are going through his heart again as he tries to turn away from the ocean. But he hears it and he knows it is out there. Some sleepless nights he goes out. But this night in his sleep he says, "Oh, look at all those beautiful life rafts.
”
”
Linda Hogan (People of the Whale)
“
I passed so many sleepless nights wondering how I could ever escape him. And yet I found the true fetters were the ones of my own creation. Those nights I kept circling the same ancient questions…The questions were powerful magic indeed, for they kept me trapped there, motionless…Until I broke the spell my mind has cast, I could never be free.
”
”
Ava Reid (A Study in Drowning (A Study in Drowning, #1))
“
My deepest gratitude goes to those we’ve quoted — men and women who labored long and hard to express in a few words a lifetime of experience; others who rarely wrote but paused in the middle of a busy life or a sleepless night with pen in hand, who wept and found a way to make of their suffering a gift, who laughed and found a way to make us laugh, too.
”
”
Sy Safransky (Paper Lanterns: More Quotations from the Back Pages of The Sun)
“
Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings. It stirs gentle men to rage and bids them take up arms. It wakes old grievances and opens forgotten wounds. It is the mother of the sleepless night and the hag-ridden day. And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth’s voice are more destructive by far. It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others, never lie to yourself. In my head I built a room, in which I kept the truths I dared not speak. And in this room sometimes I said, the kings will return no more to the Realm. Nobody dares say this, but everyone knows it is the Truth. In this room I said, it is good that the kings’ tyranny is gone forever. Men would hang me for saying so, but their hearts would whisper all the while that I spoke the Truth. And in this room I said that until the ordinary people choose their own leaders they will suffer, and this too is the Truth . . .
”
”
Frances Hardinge (Fly by Night)
“
It seems wrong to call it "business". It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher–and none of us wavered in the belief that "stakes" didn't mean "money". For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for use business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day of the human body isn't our mission as human beings. It's a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living–and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great business do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the life of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is–you're participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you're helping other to live more fully, and if that's business, all right, call me a businessman.
”
”
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike)
“
who gets the rare opportunity of spotting a treasure of memories lying among masses, stepping back to stroke it with a secret smile as your mind wanders back to those sleepless yet ecstatic nights you had spent together?
only............
a book lover.
”
”
Nadun Lokuliyanage
“
Even when he was small there’d been a part of him that thought the temple was a silly boring place, and tried to make him laugh when he was supposed to be listening to sermons. It had grown up with him. It was the Oats that read avidly and always remembered those passages which cast doubt on the literal truth of the Book of Om—and nudged him and said, if this isn’t true, what can you believe?
And the other half of him would say: there must be other kinds of truth.
And he’d reply: other kinds than the kind that is actually true, you mean?
And he’d say: define actually!
And he’d shout: well, actually Omnians would have tortured you to death, not long ago, for even thinking like this. Remember that? Remember how many died for using the brain which, you seem to think, their god gave them? What kind of truth excuses all that pain?
He’d never quite worked out how to put the answer into words. And then the headaches would start, and the sleepless nights. The Church schismed all the time these days, and this was surely the ultimate one, starting a war inside one’s head.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Carpe Jugulum (Discworld, #23; Witches, #6))
“
As one sat in the aeroplane amidst all the noise, smoking and loud talking, most unexpectedly, the sense of immensity and that extraordinary benediction which was felt at il L., that imminent feeling of sacredness, began to take place. The body was nervously tense because of the crowd, noise, etc. but in spite of all this, it was there. The pressure and the strain were intense and there was acute pain at the back of the head. There was only this state and there was no observer. The whole body was wholly in it and the feeling of sacredness was so intense that a groan escaped from the body and passengers were sitting in the next seats. It went on for several hours, late into the night. It was as though one was looking, not with eyes only but with a thousand centuries; it was altogether a strange occurrence. The brain was completely empty, all reaction had stopped; during all those hours, one was not aware of this emptiness but only in writing it is the thing known, but this knowledge is only descriptive and not real. That the brain could empty itself is an odd phenomenon. As the eyes were closed, the body, the brain seemed to plunge into unfathomable depths, into states of incredible sensitivity and beauty. The passenger in the next seat began to ask something and having replied, this intensity was there; there was no continuity but only being. And dawn was coming leisurely and the clear sky was filling with light - As this is being written late in the day, with sleepless fatigue, that sacredness is there. The pressure and the strain too.
”
”
J. Krishnamurti (Krishnamurtis Notebook)
“
The houses that trouble me most are the ones with a lamp on all night and people living inside. I don’t look at those lamps and think what a waste of electricity or money they are. It’s another waste I see. For every watt that shines in the darkness, I see restless sleepers drifting further and further from their souls.
”
”
Clark Strand (Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age)
“
In other words, you might say that I still have no understanding of what makes human beings tick. My apprehension on discovering that my concept of happiness seemed to be completely at variance with that of everyone else was so great as to make me toss sleeplessly and groan night after night in my bed. It drove me indeed to the brink of lunacy. I wonder if I have actually been happy. People have told me, really more times than I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in hell. It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I.
”
”
Osamu Dazai (No Longer Human)
“
I forcibly conjured memories of that lush world, but they had become bittersweet. I knew that those smiles would fade, those adventures would end. All days on Mirabilis led to Opera. To look at them was to look back on the path that had led to howling and skittering and sleepless nights. The ache to return to a time long gone was almost worse than fear.
”
”
Becky Chambers (To Be Taught, If Fortunate)
“
I learned that my new lover was hard, but always good. She did not tease. If you pursued her, she would reveal her sweetest secrets and uncover her hidden places. Yes, she would grant those who came to her by car a measured beauty. There were wonderful things to be seen from the road. Her lesser suitors would jump out of their autos, snapping pictures, trying to save memories before having them, and hurry on. But what can be seen from a road is more enticing than revealing – like a shapely woman whose fleshly mystery cannot be hidden by modest garments but is made more alluring. From the roadside her eyes would invite and challenge: “Will you pursue me?” I did. And though my pursuit cost me a lot – pain, humiliation, hunger and sleepless nights – she was good.
”
”
Martin McCorkle (Walk With Me: The Story Of One Man's Life With Muscular Degeneration and His 1,700-Mile Walk Through California)
“
But those moments aboard the maglev had caused more than one sleepless night since coming aboard the Rampion. When she had lain awake and imagined slipping out of her bed. Creeping across the corridor to Wolf’s room. Not saying a word when he opened the door, just pulling herself against him. Curling her hands into his hair. Wrapping herself up in the sort of security that she’d only ever found in his arms. She
”
”
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
“
Hope is prayer’s second cousin, darkly dressed and hovering around the outside edge of the family photograph. If prayer is a plea to the Almighty for a precedented miracle—prayer’s memory is long—hope is a plea to nothing, to everything, to any possible refutation of the facts. It is tethered to the dreadful single-digit percentage, the medical equipment humming, the long sleepless night. Prayer can (or once could) deliver a miracle; hope can only give a body another week, maybe another month. Sometimes the dying can set goals and reach them: just let me see my son get married, my granddaughter turn ten, my family carve into the Thanksgiving turkey. Hope can outlast dress fittings, gift wrapping, and potato mashing, but it can’t deliver anything more. What hope does best is make plans. Sometimes those plans are to desperately avoid the worst.
”
”
Ann Neumann (The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America)
“
If divorce is like death, then is not the perpetration of divorce a kind of murder? That is, are we not risking putting ourselves through the same torment—the same sleepless nights, feelings of persecution and guilt, the regret—as one of those pathetic characters from a Dostoevsky novel? It’s like you’ve just struck your wife with a candelabra and now you’re looking at her lifeless body on the floor, and suddenly she looks pretty.
”
”
Anthony Marais
“
I just haven’t met anyone who… well, whom I’m attracted to, even though part of me longs for those trembling knees, heart-in-my-mouth, butterflies-in-my-belly, sleepless nights. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me. Perhaps I’ve spent too long in the company of my literary romantic heroes, and consequently my ideals and expectations are far too high. But in reality, nobody’s ever made me feel like that.
~Anastasia
”
”
E.L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1))
“
Sleepless nights, infinite random thoughts, Remembering those moments, he had much to say, an urge to talk to someone, to be cared, to be loved, to be understood !! She was gone by now, And he was lost !! There it was, A white paper note, a pen, and the dark clouds forcing him to spill out !! Yes Words did most of talking, the unsaid words took the paper form .. Strange it was, the way Love was lost somewhere in the Library stacks !!
”
”
Douglas Self
“
In those hours when the night is still dark and cold, we see Alokananda waking up to the faint sound of stifled sobs. The sheets besides her are creaseless, sleepless. She gets up silently, her body: blank, a patchwork of frugal impulses. She gathers the warmth of her Pashmina shawl around her, the shawl that she knows still hides threads from a shirt or two of his: remnants of embraces, once feisty and long forgotten.’
('Left from Dhakeshwari')
”
”
Kunal Sen
“
So quiet that house was in the night, so quiet all the other little homes around it were that held the elderly in them and the old alone or still in couples sleeping early, waking, lying awake and thinking about the past. So much past every night in the silence settling over those houses that all looked much the same on a hillside creeping up against the rock and gorse and tipping down to the river where it widened, widened and ended in the sea.
”
”
David Constantine (In Another Country)
“
While you're alive it's shameful to worm your way into
the Calendar of Saints.
Disbelief in yourself is more saintly.
It takes real talent not to dread being terrified
by your own agonizing lack of talent.
Disbelief in yourself is indispensable.
Indispensable to us is the loneliness
of being gripped in the vise,
so that in the darkest night the sky will enter you
and skin your temples with the stars,
so that streetcars will crash into the room,
wheels cutting across your face,
so the dangling rope, terrible and alive,
will float into the room and dance invitingly in the air.
Indispensable is any mangy ghost
in tattered, overplayed stage rags,
and if even the ghosts are capricious,
I swear, they are no more capricious than those who are alive.
Indispensable amidst babbling boredom
are the deadly fear of uttering the right words
and the fear of shaving, because across your cheekbone
graveyard grass already grows.
It is indispensable to be sleeplessly delirious,
to fail, to leap into emptiness.
Probably, only in despair is it possible
to speak all the truth to this age.
It is indispensable, after throwing out dirty drafts,
to explode yourself and crawl before ridicule,
to reassemble your shattered hands
from fingers that rolled under the dresser.
Indispensable is the cowardice to be cruel
and the observation of the small mercies,
when a step toward falsely high goals
makes the trampled stars squeal out.
It's indispensable, with a misfit's hunger,
to gnaw a verb right down to the bone.
Only one who is by nature from the naked poor
is neither naked nor poor before fastidious eternity.
And if from out of the dirt,
you have become a prince,
but without principles,
unprince yourself and consider
how much less dirt there was before,
when you were in the real, pure dirt.
Our self-esteem is such baseness....
The Creator raises to the heights
only those who, even with tiny movements,
tremble with the fear of uncertainty.
Better to cut open your veins with a can opener,
to lie like a wino on a spit-spattered bench in the park,
than to come to that very comfortable belief
in your own special significance.
Blessed is the madcap artist,
who smashes his sculpture with relish-
hungry and cold-but free
from degrading belief in himself.
”
”
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
“
So be encouraged. The agony you are experiencing is normal. The loneliness you feel is to be expected. The sleepless nights when you stare up at the ceiling and think, “What have I gotten myself into?” are part of the process. All of those experiences will ultimately lead you to the conclusion, “God, if you don’t come through, I’m sunk!” And that is exactly where he wants you to be—and stay. For this reason, men and women of vision are men and women of faith. And through their faith, God is honored.
”
”
Andy Stanley (Visioneering: Your Guide for Discovering and Maintaining Personal Vision)
“
Yet the very smell of food made her stomach oddly unsettled and she set down the bowl of porridge without taking a spoonful.
That infuriated Dragon,still watching from the stable. As though the circumstances were not bad enough,a night without sleep had left him even more on edge. It was all he could do not to stomp out into the yard and demand she swallow every bite.
After which he would take her in his arms, kiss her lingeringly, beseech her to tell him he could not possibly be wrong to trust her,and generally make a slobbering fool of himself to rival those great dolts Grani and Sleipnir.
No,that he would not do. He would instead have a word with the men on the watchtowers, telling them to keep an eye on his wife and leaving them to make of that what they would while he went off to the river, there to immerse himself in blessedly cold water and cast off the shadows of sleeplessness.
When he returned, freshly garbed but not having taken time to shave, he found the day unfolding much as usual. People were coming and going about their daily tasks,now that the barn was rebuilt, apparently determined to ignore the fact that the lady of their manor was tied to a punishment post. Not Magda,though. That stalwart passed him with as close to a glare as she would ever come and bustled out to ask Rycca advice about something or other. The sheer ludicrousness of that struck Dragon and he was chuckling when Magda passed by again,which earned him another stern frown.
That was the height of levity for the day.Hours passed and nothing happened. Magda came and went,clucking over Rycca's failure to eat and glaring more at Dragon every time she saw him. Several of the other women began to do the same. He took that as an indication that those who had gotten to know Rycca best held her blameless. His venture into Byzantine intrigue of the previous day rankled all the more. He tried not to think about it.
The day dragged on. With the stronghold as busy as ever, Dragon told himself no one would be so foolish as to approach Rycca with intent to do her harm. Yet he found excuse after excuse to be in the yard himself.
”
”
Josie Litton (Come Back to Me (Viking & Saxon, #3))
“
Sunday Morning
V
She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
VI
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
VII
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.
VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings
”
”
Wallace Stevens
“
[Nero] castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. This Sporus, decked out with the finery of the empresses and riding in a litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece, and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly kissing him from time to time. That he even desired illicit relations with his own mother, and was kept from it by her enemies, who feared that such a help might give the reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notorious, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan who was said to look very like Agrippina. Even before that, so they say, whenever he rode in a litter with his mother, he had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by the stains on his clothing.
He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling almost every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he had sated his mad lust, was dispatched by his freedman Doryphorus; for he was even married to this man in the same way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being deflowered.
He made a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called the House of Passage, but when it was burned shortly after its completion and rebuilt, the Golden House. Its size and splendour will be sufficiently indicated by the following details. Its vestibule was large enough to contain a colossal statue of the emperor a hundred and twenty feet high; and it was so extensive that it had a triple colonnade a mile long. There was a pond too, like a sea, surrounded with buildings to represent cities, besides tracts of country, varied by tilled fields, vineyards, pastures and woods, with great numbers of wild and domestic animals. In the rest of the house all parts were overlaid with gold and adorned with gems and mother-of‑pearl. There were dining-rooms with fretted ceils of ivory, whose panels could turn and shower down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the guests with perfumes. The main banquet hall was circular and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens.
His mother offended him by too strict surveillance and criticism of his words and acts. At last terrified by her violence and threats, he determined to have her life, and after thrice attempting it by poison and finding that she had made herself immune by antidotes, he tampered with the ceiling of her bedroom, contriving a mechanical device for loosening its panels and dropping them upon her while she slept. When this leaked out through some of those connected with the plot, he devised a collapsible boat, to destroy her by shipwreck or by the falling in of its cabin. ...[He] offered her his contrivance, escorting her to it in high spirits and even kissing her breasts as they parted. The rest of the night he passed sleepless in intense anxiety, awaiting the outcome of his design. On learning that everything had gone wrong and that she had escaped by swimming, driven to desperation he secretly had a dagger thrown down beside her freedman Lucius Agermus, when he joyfully brought word that she was safe and sound, and then ordered that the freedman be seized and bound, on the charge of being hired to kill the emperor; that his mother be put to death, and the pretence made that she had escaped the consequences of her detected guilt by suicide.
”
”
Suetonius (The Twelve Caesars)
“
It seems wrong to call it “business.” It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher—and none of us wavered in the belief that “stakes” didn’t mean “money.” For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living—and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me.
”
”
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog)
“
Nothing you've been through has been wasted. I know at times you feel you've wasted time, moments, and years over what you can't regain again — a job, a marriage, a relationship, your health, the sacrifices, your time and service, and giving up something you love for God, that broke your heart. You sit back and wonder, "Will I ever be happy again? Was everything I've been through worth the pain, the tears, the sleepless nights, the embarrassment." The Lord is saying, "It's just preparation." Where you are now is no accident.
What has happened to you didn't take God by surprise. He already initiated a plan of escape before you were formed; mistakes, setbacks, disappointments, things outside your control.. The plan was already made! I don't know your story but only you and God know your story. He took you from bad company, He took you from suicide, He took you when you were at your lowest, He took you when nobody wanted you, He took you when your money was low, Why? Because He saw potential in you!
As God as my witness it gets lonely at times. Life can be fearful when you don't know what to expect. When you feel everything has been stripped away...When you feel there's no hope... When you wonder how much longer do I have to wait. Who wants to feel rejection or disappointments.. But it's in those moments when we experience the faithfulness of God!
I want to encourage whoever I'm speaking to, to hold on! Before Joseph became Prime Minister of Egypt he was in prison for years because of his brothers. He wasn't expecting that... In other words what God has for you is something bigger than you've imagined. It's so much greater and better than what you had at first. It's something you never thought about or even prayed for because nothing you've been through has been wasted. Your situation is going change suddenly because all it did was reposition you for a blessing. God is getting ready to move! You're frustrated because you're on the verge. You're restless because you're on the verge. Your moment is coming sooner than you think!
”
”
Susan Samaroo
“
Sleepless City
(Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne)"
Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
Lunar creatures sniff and circle the dwellings.
Live iguanas will come to bite the men who don’t dream,
and the brokenhearted fugitive will meet on street corners
an incredible crocodile resting beneath the tender protest of the stars.
Out in the world, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
There is a corpse in the farthest graveyard
complaining for three years
because of an arid landscape in his knee;
and a boy who was buried this morning cried so much
they had to call the dogs to quiet him.
Life is no dream. Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!
We fall down stairs and eat the humid earth,
or we climb to the snow’s edge with the choir of dead dahlias.
But there is no oblivion, no dream:
raw flesh. Kisses tie mouths
in a tangle of new veins
and those in pain will bear it with no respite
and those who are frightened by death will carry it on their shoulders.
One day
horses will live in the taverns
and furious ants
will attack the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cattle.
Another day
we’ll witness the resurrection of dead butterflies,
and still walking in a landscape of gray sponges and silent ships,
we’ll see our ring shine and rose spill from our tongues.
Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!
Those still marked by claws and cloudburst,
that boy who cries because he doesn’t know bridges exist,
or that corpse that has nothing more than its head and one shoe—
they all must be led to the wall where iguanas and serpents wait,
where the bear’s teeth wait,
where the mummified hand of a child waits
and the camel’s fur bristles with a violent blue chill.
Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
But if someone closes his eyes,
whip him, my children, whip him!
Let there be a panorama of open eyes
and bitter inflamed wounds.
Out in the world, no one sleeps. No one. No one.
I’ve said it before.
No one sleeps.
But at night, if someone has too much moss on his temples,
open the trap doors so he can see in moonlight
the fake goblets, the venom, and the skull of the theaters.
”
”
Federico García Lorca (Poet in New York (English and Spanish Edition))
“
Mirrors
I have been horrified before all mirrors
not just before the impenetrable glass,
the end and the beginning of that space,
inhabited by nothing but reflections,
but faced with specular water, mirroring
the other blue within its bottomless sky,
incised at times by the illusory flight
of inverted birds, or troubled by a ripple,
or face to face with the unspeaking surface
of ghostly ebony whose very hardness
reflects, as if within a dream, the whiteness
of spectral marble or a spectral rose.
Now, after so many troubling years
of wandering beneath the wavering moon,
I ask myself what accident of fortune
handed to me this terror of all mirrors–
mirrors of metal and the shrouded mirror
of sheer mahogany which in the twilight
of its uncertain red softens the face
that watches and in turn is watched by it.
I look on them as infinite, elemental
fulfillers of a very ancient pact
to multiply the world, as in the act
of generation, sleepless and dangerous.
They extenuate this vain and dubious world
within the web of their own vertigo.
Sometimes at evening they are clouded over
by someone's breath, someone who is not dead.
The glass is watching us. And if a mirror
hangs somewhere on the four walls of my room,
I am not alone. There's an other, a reflection
which in the dawn enacts its own dumb show.
Everything happens, nothing is remembered
in those dimensioned cabinets of glass
in which, like rabbits in fantastic stories,
we read the lines of text from right to left.
Claudius, king for an evening, king in a dream,
did not know he was a dream until the day
on which an actor mimed his felony
with silent artifice, in a tableau.
Strange, that there are dreams, that there are mirrors.
Strange that the ordinary, worn-out ways
of every day encompass the imagined
and endless universe woven by reflections.
God (I've begun to think) implants a promise
in all that insubstantial architecture
that makes light out of the impervious surface
of glass, and makes the shadow out of dreams.
God has created nights well-populated
with dreams, crowded with mirror images,
so that man may feel that he is nothing more
than vain reflection. That's what frightens us.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges
“
I raised two daughters,” Ronica pointed out gently. “I know how painful victory can be sometimes.”
“Not over me,” Keffria said dully. There was self-loathing in her tone as she added, “I don’t think I ever gave you and Father a sleepless night. I was a model child, never challenging anything you told me, keeping all the rules, and earning the rewards of such virtue. Or so I thought.”
“You were my easy daughter,” Ronica conceded. “Perhaps because of that, I under-valued you. Over-looked you.” She shook her head to herself. “But in those days, Althea worried me so that I seldom had a moment to think of what was going right…”
Keffria exhaled sharply. “And you didn’t know the half of what she was doing! As her sister, I… but in all the years, it hasn’t changed. She still worries us, both of us. When she was a little girl, her willfulness and naughtiness always made her Papa’s favorite. And now that he has gone, she has disappeared, and so managed to capture your heart as well, simply by being absent.”
“Keffria!” Ronica rebuked her for the heartless words. Her sister was missing, and all she could be was jealous of Ronica worrying about her? But after a moment, Ronica asked hesitantly, “You truly feel that I give no thoughts to you, simply because Althea is gone?”
“You scarcely speak to me,” Keffria pointed out. “When I muddled the ledger books for what I had inherited, you simply took them back from me and did them yourself. You run the household as if I was not there. When Cerwin showed up on the doorstep today, you charged directly into battle, only sending Rache to tell me about it as an afterthought. Mother, were I to disappear as Althea has, I think the household would only run more smoothly. You are so capable of managing it all.” She paused and her voice was almost choked as she added, “You leave no room for me to matter.” She hastily lifted her mug and took a long sip of coffee. She stared deep into the fireplace.
Ronica found herself wordless. She drank from her own mug. She knew she was making excuses when she said, “But I was always just waiting for you to take things over from me.”
“And always so busy holding the reins that you had no time to teach me how. ‘Here, give me that, it’s easier if I just do it myself.’ How many times have you said that to me? Do you know how stupid and helpless it always made me feel?” The anger in her voice was very old.
”
”
Robin Hobb (Ship of Magic (Liveship Traders, #1))
“
You have to find a mantra and live it fully. The one I’d adopt right now if I were you is something I found on the inside of a friend’s journal last year: ‘You may be safe, but I am free.’ Take advantage of the freedom that comes with your youth. Inhale life, exhale fire, and embrace the late, sleepless nights, because that’s when the magic happens—when everyone else is asleep and you’re awake thinking about the world as it is, and the world as it could be. Make the most of those moments,” I said forcefully. “And in the coming years people will tell you that you’re too young to change the world. I’m here to tell you, that’s fucking bullshit.
”
”
Adam Braun (The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change)
“
parents might have had more of a clue what was happening if they had shown interest in something other than her academic achievement and her extracurricular activities. Ask your daughter questions like, “What do you like to do for fun?” If a girl answers that question, as Emily did, by saying that she doesn’t have time for fun, that’s a red flag. Ask your daughter, “What three words describe you?” If those words include “hyper” or “anxious” or “wired” or “sleepless” or something similar, dig deeper. Try to understand the source of your daughter’s anxiety. Is she worried about something she thinks the other girls are saying about her? Is she worried about her grades? Is she worried about her weight? You need to know what keeps your daughter awake at night. Be a good listener. Don’t be in a hurry to make recommendations. Just nod and keep your mouth shut until your daughter has had her say. As Levine observes, “When we listen to our friends it is usually with the purpose of understanding their dilemmas, of helping them clarify how they feel, and of letting them know that we care. We listen long enough to know what it feels like to be in their shoes. Too often with our children, we rush in and offer suggestions, propose alternatives, or solve problems.”18
”
”
Leonard Sax (Girls on the Edge: The Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls-Sexual Identity, the Cyberbubble, Obsessions, Envi)
“
started to understand, during those sleepless nights replaying the things I’d overheard, that we are all grown from something. That we carry on the seed, and I was a part of her garden.
”
”
Ashley Audrain (The Push)
“
God has absolute wisdom and power in all situations, including those that can give anyone sleepless nights. And when we put in our best efforts and then put our trust in God, the stage is set for Him to showcase His Grace, as only He can.
”
”
Tunde Salami
“
Kopiaō (labor) means to work to the point of exhaustion. People sometimes tell me that I work too hard. But compared to Paul, I am not working hard enough. It saddens me to hear of pastors or seminary students who are looking for an easy pastorate. When I was a young pastor, a lady (who did not know I was a pastor) advised me to go into the ministry. When I asked her why, she replied that ministers did not have to do anything and could make lots of money. No one would get that idea by observing Paul. Concerning those who denigrated his ministry, he wrote: Are they servants of Christ? (I speak as if insane) I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure upon me of concern for all the churches. (2 Cor. 11:23-28) No one can successfully serve Jesus Christ without working hard. Lazy pastors, Christian leaders, or laymen will never fulfill the ministry the Lord has called them to. Striving is from agōnizomai, which refers to competing in an athletic event. Our English word agonize is derived from it. Success in serving the Lord, like success in sports, demands maximum effort. Lest anyone misunderstand him, Paul says that he strives according to His power, which mightily works within me. All his toil and hard labor would have been useless apart from God’s power in his life.
”
”
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Colossians and Philemon MacArthur New Testament Commentary (MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series Book 22))
“
What do you want of me?—was the question that kept beating in her mind as a clue. What do you want of me?—she kept crying soundlessly, at dinner tables, in drawing rooms, on sleepless nights—crying it to Jim and those who seemed to share his secret, to Balph Eubank, to Dr. Simon Pritchett—what do you want of me? She did not ask it aloud; she knew that they would not answer. What do you want of me?—she asked, feeling as if she were running, but no way were open to escape. What do you want of me?—she asked, looking at the whole long torture of her marriage that had not lasted the full span of one year.
”
”
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
“
doing all those things a mother does for her child. And I love her, and I know she does it because she loves me, but I want to scream at her, because how is it possible to love someone so unconditionally? How can she look at me and smile and be so happy that I’m here, that I exist, when she has every reason in the world to be angry for the trouble I’ve caused? All the sleepless nights she endured, all the stress and worry…
”
”
J.M. Darhower (Ghosted)
“
Finding your own strength and courage is what really matters." I manage a small smile. "I wish I had your confidence. You make everything sound so easy." She chuckles. "Trust me, it's not always easy. I've had my share of sleepless nights and moments of doubt, but I've learned to embrace those moments as part of my growth process, and you will, too.
”
”
Rachel Hanna (The Baking Games)
“
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”
”
Geneva
“
I’m tired,” I said. My voice shook as I tried to restrain my tears. “I’m tired of all of it. The running, the paranoia, being scared all the time, and the sleepless nights. I want a normal life. Is that too much to ask?”
“No, it’s not. More than anyone, I believe you deserve it. The friends, the family—the house with a white picket fence, if you want it—you should have all of it.”
I shook my head. “I am not talking about those things. I just want to live without fear, love without consequence, and not be blamed for the actions of my past in my future. I want to experience being me.
”
”
Loni Flowers (Witness to my Heart)
“
Success is not a distant dream,it is a reality for those who sweat to achieve it,enjoy sleepless nights, take calculative steps through the day,and with self introspection keeps it humble with a smile.Then success gets loud with the achiever's mouth shut,while the world celebrates one's victory.
”
”
Henrietta Newton Martin
“
There had been more to the letter, but those had been the most pertinent parts. She resented that they felt they could order her around after all that had happened, and using her grandmother as an excuse was pretty low. It was why she had been able to toss the letter aside without giving it much thought beyond a few sleepless nights. This last letter was different. Cash and Rusty Bradford were men of their word and she had no doubt if she didn’t at the very least send a reply of some sort, they would follow through with their threat.
”
”
Viola Rivard (Taming the Alpha: Over 20 Alpha Male Tales)
“
Why don’t we consider moving in together? While we head for this event?” She gulped. “What?” she asked weakly. “Let’s clear the debt, get Kid Crawford out of the picture, I’ll take on your upkeep rather than Vanni and Paul shouldering your food and board, and we’ll evolve into…” He cleared his throat. “We don’t have to explain anything. People will just say, ‘Dr. Michaels likes that nice pregnant girl.’ We’ll share a house. I’ll be your roommate. You’ll have your own room. But there will be late nights you’re worried about some belly pain or later, night crying from the babies. You don’t want to do that to Vanni and Paul and—” “I was just going to go home to Seattle. To my mom and dad’s.” “They have room for me?” he asked, lifting his fork and arching that brow. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, slamming down her fork. “You can’t mean to say you plan to just follow me and demand to live with the babies!” “Well, no,” he said. “That would be obsessive. But Jesus, Ab, I don’t want to miss out on anything. Do you know how much babies change from two to six weeks? It just kills me to think you’d take them that far away from me. I mean, they are—” “I know,” she said, frustrated. “Yours.” “Yeah, sweetheart. And they’re also yours. And I swear to God, I will never try to take them away from you. That would be cruel.” He had just aimed an arrow at her sense of justice. The shock of realization must have shown on her face, but he took another bite, had another drink of his beer, smiled. “Live together?” “Here’s how it’ll go if you stay with Vanni and Paul. Toward the end, when you’re sleepless, you’ll be up at night. You’ll be tired during the day, but there will be a toddler around, making noise and crying. And you’ll have all those late pregnancy complaints, worries. Then you’ll have a small guest room stuffed to the ceiling with paraphernalia. Then babies—and grandmothers as additional guests? Newborns, sometimes, cry for hours. They could have Vanni and Paul up all night, walking the floor with you. Nah, that wouldn’t be good. And besides, it’s not Paul’s job to help, it’s mine.” “Where do you suggest we live? Here?” “Here isn’t bad,” he said with a shrug. “But Mel and Jack offered us their cabin. It’s a nice cabin—two bedrooms and a loft, ten minutes from town. Ideally, we should hurry and look around for a place that can accommodate a man, a woman, two newborns, two grandmothers and… We don’t have to make room for the lawyers, do we?” “Very funny,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Abby, we have things to work out every single day. We have to buy cribs, car seats, swings, layette items, lots of stuff—it’s going to take more than one trip to the mall. We have to let the families know there will be babies coming—it’s only fair. We should have dinner together every day, just so we can communicate, catch up. If there’s anything you need or anything you’re worried about, I want to be close so I can help. If you think I’m going to molest you while you’re huge with my babies—” “You know, I’m getting sick of that word, huge.
”
”
Robyn Carr (Paradise Valley)
“
The servants were evil,” he said, recalling the tale the way the whiskey priest they sent to Creedmoor told it, sitting with Mr. Persichetti at the nurses’ station late into the night, those watery blue eyes forever bloodshot and sleepless. “They told the crazy chieftain that he should marry his beautiful daughter instead. Which he tried to do.” (“If you get my meaning,” the priest had said.) “But Dymphna ran off to Belgium.” He saw her grimace and purse her lips, her face seemed to swell with color. “Her crazy father followed her,” he said, tightening his own grip on her hand. “I guess he cut off her head.
”
”
Alice McDermott (After This)
“
Insomnia is one of the spiralled forms of anxiety. In the bottomless room, the walls pulsate. They move away and they come closer. They shed their molecules in a shower. A black cloud fills the black air. I breathe in the atoms of the walls. I become those atoms. As the night is pulverized, it grinds me up. I am kneaded into the material from which black holes are made, I dissolve in the antimatter of the underside of the world.
”
”
Marie Darrieussecq (Sleepless)
“
Children of Perdition
And the prophet,
Saw, from the Holy Mount,
And the gates of the Citadel,
Were opened to all and to none,
And the Chosen One, sleepless, Remained,
In tears, among the Trees,
Watching the fire and the wails,
Consume the Citadel,
The next day, a brief drizzle,
Washed the dust from the faces of the burned ones,
For the sun had descended to the earth,
He said that,
In that land, there would be no peace,
Until peace became the land,
And the children fought, for,
Their sacred blood was struggle,
And their sacred struggle was their blood,
But they were not the King’s favorites,
The tree was planted,
Far from the Brook, and withered,
Far from the Western Gate,
And the children of the Sands of time,
Homeless and in thousands,
Threw themselves into the wide River,
And they were saved,
The others, dancing with swords,
Threw themselves against the tree,
And shattered it,
Its branches were torn off and scattered,
And torn off and scattered again,
For they were not satisfied with eating,
And they were condemned to walk endlessly,
And again, they were made to walk,
For, on a hot moonless night,
In the middle of the year,
The hosts of the East,
Will fall upon the King's wife,
And there, only the Adênia will flourish,
And those who were made to walk,
Will walk,
And will be scourged,
Until they accept the return of the banished one,
And until they respect the words,
Of the one who went to the Mount,
For the Son of the King will return.
”
”
Geverson Ampolini
“
Those of us prone to sleeplessness can always tell. We can read the great curve of the night as it arcs toward day. We’ve lived every minute of every dark hour in excruciating detail.
”
”
Andy Marino (The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess)
“
I started to understand, during those sleepless nights replaying the things I’d overheard, that we are all grown from something. That we carry on the seed, and I was a part of her garden. 1964 Cecilia couldn’t sleep without her doll, Beth-Anne, even at the age of seven.
”
”
Ashley Audrain (The Push)
“
You like to read?" Reading was one of David's favorite things to do. So much more enjoyable than talking or exchanging pleasantries with strangers.
"Yes, do you?" she asked, a hopeful look on her face.
"Indeed, I do....I regretted that I could only fit one book in my rucksack on the Continent."
.."Oh, do tell me, what was it?"
"In English you would call it The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of Lamancha, but I had the Spanish version."
"..Don Quixote. A comedy is it not?'
..."Marianne gave it to me. She said I would need something silly to cheer me on the battlefield. But I read it so many times, I must say my opinion of the book changed, more than once."
"How so?", she asked...
"At first I thought it was a comedy, then I came to regard it as a tragic novel, because Quixote was considered mad and treated like a lunatic. But in the end I found it life-changing."
.."How so?"
"The book save my life, in more ways than one. Reading it kept me sane all those long, sleepless nights in the cold...."
"How else did it save your life?" Lady Annabelle asked...
.."It quite literally saved me from death. When the French captured me and a small group of my men, they began executing the officers. Only when they got to me, they rifled through my rucksack and when they saw the book, they realized I could speak Spanish. That was of use to them so they kept me alive as an interpreter.
”
”
Valerie Bowman (Earl Lessons (The Footmen's Club, #5))
“
I can tell it’s much later without looking at my phone. Those of us prone to sleeplessness can always tell. We can read the great curve of the night as it arcs toward day. We’ve lived every minute of every dark hour in excruciating detail. Back when substances rocketed me into the dawn, the small hours—three, four, five in the morning—were purely of a piece with the night. As long as it was still dark, it was still the night before. But now these hours belong to some other slippery, enigmatic zone, not quite night and not quite day. It’s proven to be when regret hits me the hardest, and when I know with dismal certainty that it’s just a matter of time before I fuck up all over again. I envy normal people—people like Matt, lightly snoring at my side—who skip blissfully past these hours every night as if they do not exist.
”
”
Andy Marino (The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess)
“
The book you’re holding in your hands was many books before it was this one. Nested inside this version are the others: the version I began deep inside my sadness, thumbed into my phone in bed on sleepless nights; the one I scribbled out with sparks in my hair. You’ll see pieces of those books inside this one. Why? Because I’m trying to get to the truth, and I can’t get there except by looking at the whole, even the parts I don’t want to see. Maybe especially those parts. I’ve had to move into—and through—the darkness to find the beauty. Spoiler alert: It’s there. The beauty’s there.
”
”
Maggie Smith (You Could Make This Place Beautiful)
“
It seems wrong to call it "business." It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner. business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher — and none of us wavered in the belief that "stakes'' didn't mean "money." For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn't our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living- and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is — you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you're helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me.
”
”
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike)
“
I used to lie for hours staring into the dark of the sleeping house, feeling the loneliness that only the sleepless know when the queer feeling comes that it is the sleeping who are alive and those awake are disembodied ghosts.
”
”
Leonard Everett Fisher (The Night Country)
“
my unheard-of caprice to take a five hours’ anchor watch on myself. I heard the other raise his voice incredulously—“What? The Captain himself?” Then a few more murmurs, a door closed, then another. A few moments later I went on deck. My strangeness, which had made me sleepless, had prompted that unconventional arrangement, as if I had expected in those solitary hours of the night to get on terms with the ship of which I knew nothing, manned by men of whom I knew very little more.
”
”
Elsinore Books (Classic Short Stories: The Complete Collection: All 100 Masterpieces)
“
It is this social ethos that Mysore has been able to maintain, even as the rat race rushes on unabated elsewhere. It is a city that has not yet opened its eyes to avarice, urbane sophistication and the materialistic way of life. You cannot help but get transported into the past when you are in Mysore, because history for the average Mysorean is not dead, found in the cold storage of text books giving sleepless nights to many a student, but a more vibrant and enlivening aspect of their daily lives that makes them shoot at least cursory glances at all those forts, palaces, statues of their erstwhile rulers and remind themselves of the legacy they inherit. The kingdom may be long gone, but it still lives among the people, their attitudes, their daily discussions, musings and reminiscences.
”
”
Vikram Sampath (Splendours of Royal Mysore)
“
all those sleepless nights, wondering if my father had unlocked some dark science that made him a monster. And it all came down to me. I was to blame for all the rumors, the scandal, even Montgomery’s years spent as a slave on a madman’s island.
”
”
Megan Shepherd (The Madman's Daughter (The Madman's Daughter, #1))
“
We may say the same about inventors that we have said of scientists. Who does not know what sufferings nearly all great inventions that have come to light have cost? Sleepless nights, families deprived of bread, want of tools and materials for experiments, is the history of nearly all those who have enriched industry with inventions which are the truly legitimate pride of our civilization. But what are we to do to alter conditions that everybody is convinced are bad? Patents have been tried, and we know with what results. The inventor sells his patent for a few shillings, and the man who has only lent the capital pockets the often enormous profits resulting from the invention. Besides, patents isolate the inventor. They compel him to keep secret his researches which therefore end in failure; whereas the simplest suggestion, coming from a brain less absorbed in the fundamental idea, sometimes suffices to fertilize the invention and make it practical. Like all State control, patents hamper the progress of industry. Thought being incapable of being patented, patents are a crying injustice in theory, and in practice they result in one of the great obstacles to the rapid development of invention.
”
”
Pyotr Kropotkin (The Conquest of Bread: The Founding Book of Anarchism)
“
The Brook"
Murmuring of the brook in late
summer darkness, after moonset,
as I lay sleepless on the porch cot.
A music extraordinarily variable.
Each passage of water against its stone
sounding a different pitch and rhythm.
It was an uncivilized music in the
foothills of the mountains, continuing
long beyond the endurance of a human
singer, almost beyond the endurance
of a human listener, syllables
of unknown meaning, notes on an
unknown scale. A few fat yellow
stars above the northern horizon.
Without art, the song was perfectly
artistic. The unmeaning music
and the unknowing listener were one
in the loneliness of those distant
late summer nights in Vermont.
Truly the music meant nothing,
no intimation, which was why
I liked it so much, my brook
murmuring all night in the darkness,
and I meant nothing, and I liked that too.
”
”
Hayden Carruth (Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey)
“
Strategically placed spotlights illuminated the garden, and when she moved in front of one I could see the outline of her body through her filmy nightgown. She was curvy and woman-like, but her aura exuded innocence.
In the past twenty-two days I had convinced myself that I was wrong, that it was curiosity or my quest for a story that fanned those sparks that had been dead in me for so long. But now, here, I knew it was a primal attraction I hadn't felt since Willa- the sleepless nights with her, the sleepless nights without her.
”
”
Alex Brunkhorst (The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine)
“
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In addition, NBA2K18 also offers traveling to different places and play in different courts. While changing location will surely entail loading in the game, NBA2K18 loading is quick. Given of course that you have a decent and stable internet connection. Gameplay is also a little bit different because now you can play any position you want, may it be Forward, Center, etc. Of course, depending on your player as well. Also, be sure to download the MyNBA2K18 app from iOS or Android store and login with the same account you use for NBA 2K18 for you to earn VC. You can use the app to start scanning your face, which will then be uploaded into your account to be used for your own character. Remember to complete the warm up challenges to start your NBA journey.
NBA2K18 also offers League Pack Boxes which are available for purchase using VC (Virtual Currency). Another thing is that you can also unlock levels with your VC from Rookie to Pro to All Star to Superstar and then of course, Legend. Spend dollars acquire VC points which will then let you to upgrade attributes, unlock items and avail different packages.
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Now if you want or maybe in dire need of VCs and upgrade your gameplay, you may want to try our NBA 2K18 Locker Codes Generator for free. In case that you didn’t know, locker codes can unlock items, VCs and a lot more. The generated locker codes are highly suitable for these devices: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, XBOX ONE and XBOX360. Again, this is for free and you can generate fresh, new, and unlimited locker codes. Note that we have also added security features in the NBA 2K18 Locker Codes Generator that will help ensure that it always stay as secure, safe from any viruses and untraceable from any game banns.
”
”
NBA2K18
“
Outside, the chat of mockingbirds, sleepless beneath the bright moonlight, tugged her back into a childhood memory, another full moon night such as this one, when she had complained to her mother about the filching habit that had earned the birds their name. “Why they gotta steal the other birds’ songs anyway? Why don’t they sing their own song instead?” Her mama had pinched her cheek, forcing her to smile. “They ain’t stealing nothing, baby,” she had said, winking at May. “They just trying to imagine what it’s like to be one of those other birds. Of course they may get the melody wrong in places, but it’s love that make them try in the first place. They just trying to see things through others’ eyes. Be a lot better world if people did that, too. Now you leave those poor mockingbirds be.
”
”
J.D. Horn (Jilo (Witching Savannah, #4))
“
There was always trouble, and he always rose from the resulting miasma looking a lovable scamp: lovable, anyway, to that gratifyingly large sector of the populace to whom he'd always be a figure of fun: breathing a bit of the old jolly into politics, and where's the harm in that, eh? As for those who hated him, they were never going to change their minds, and since he was in a better position to fuck them up than they were him, they didn't give him sleepless nights.
”
”
Mick Herron (Real Tigers)
“
In the night, in the utter silence of the nights among those little houses where old people live, she felt him leave the bed and in the pitch-black reach his dressing gown and leave the room. She let him go. How it troubled her, all this. Not much to ask, peace of mind at nights and a bit of ordinary cheerfulness in the day, some conversation, something to laugh about and doing nobody any harm. And not all this. A slit of light came on under the bedroom door.
”
”
David Constantine (In Another Country)
“
It seems wrong to call it “business.” It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher.
”
”
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike)
“
Those sleepless nights can be hard at first, but they are an investment that yields better returns, including dreams that are made manifest.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (Exploring the Explosive Power of Big Dreams)
“
I could make peace with the idea that one of those currents happened to catch my corner of the world, but a brush with the improbable Defendant had amplified something about my everyday terrain that was proving harder to accept, which was that guys like Roger did not arrive into our lives on the curve of some unfavorable wind. They were already rooted and ubiquitous. Some nights I lay in bed sleepless and full of apathy, realizing that the Defendant could have gone anywhere in the country, done this to any other group of women, and the Defense could likely raise reasonable doubt by pointing the finger at the Roger who already resided among them. Rogers were everywhere—reasonable doubt scapegoats waiting in the wings for a case like this.
”
”
Jessica Knoll (Bright Young Women)
“
Go above and beyond to spark a ray of hope. Hold on some more. Those sleepless nights will eventually pay off, if you keep track of your dreams and broaden your horizons.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (Exploring the Explosive Power of Big Dreams)
“
I would never want to bypass those sleepless nights and anxiety because of this fact: that the stars had not changed, the river had not changed, the marsh had not changed. As in, the world around me was always there and waiting to be seen again when I was ready, and when I was ready, it looked only beautiful.
”
”
Ben Shattuck (Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau)
“
All of those decades spent here, all of the sleepless nights searching for any kind of meaning to my existence—it was so that I could find you.
”
”
Bree Grenwich (Duskbound)
“
Last year, I found myself in a financial crisis and urgently needed $20,000 to cover an unexpected expense. As a crypto enthusiast, I turned to peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms, hoping to secure a low-interest loan using cryptocurrency as collateral. Website info: h t t p s :// adware recovery specialist. com
After hours of searching, I came across a sleek, professional-looking platform that offered “instant Ethereum (ETH) loans” at rates significantly lower than those of traditional banks. The site featured a polished interface, glowing testimonials, and bold claims of “secure, decentralized transactions.” Pressed for time and reassured by the platform’s appearance, I made a critical mistake: I jumped in without doing proper research.
The process seemed simple enough. I applied for a $20,000 loan, deposited 150 ETH (worth roughly $30,000 at the time) as collateral, and received approval within hours. The loaned Ethereum was transferred to my wallet, and for the first few days, everything seemed legitimate.
Then disaster struck. Email info: Adware recovery specialist @ auctioneer. net
The platform vanished overnight. The website went offline, customer support emails bounced, and their social media accounts were deleted. It quickly became clear that I had fallen victim to a sophisticated exit scam. Not only had I lost my 150 ETH, but I was now left with a $20,000 liability and no way to recover the funds. Telegram info: h t t p s:// t. me / adware recovery specialist1
Devastated and desperate, I spent sleepless nights searching for a solution, combing through crypto forums and online communities. That’s when I came across ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST, a cybersecurity firm with expertise in blockchain forensics and crypto asset recovery.
Skeptical but out of options, I submitted a case. To my surprise, their team responded immediately. They requested transaction hashes, wallet addresses, and screenshots of all my interactions with the fraudulent platform. Using advanced tracing tools, they tracked the movement of my stolen Ethereum across multiple wallets. They also collaborated with international law enforcement and partnered crypto exchanges to freeze the assets.
A few days later, I received unbelievable news — ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST had recovered 100% of my stolen Ethereum.
This experience was a harsh wake-up call about the risks in the crypto space and the importance of due diligence. Thanks to the expertise and swift action of ADWARE RECOVERY SPECIALIST, I was able to recover my funds and avoid financial ruin.
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