Edna O'Brien Quotes

I'm so tired, but I can't sleep. Standing on the edge of something much too deep.

Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can't sleep anyhow.

I just can't sleep tonight knowing that things ain't right.

Evelyn was an insomniac so when they say she died in her sleep, you have to question that.

Who can wrestle against Sleep? - Yet is that giant very gentleness.

Daytime sleep is a cursed slumber from which one wakes in despair.

I've been waiting for sleep to offer up the day with both hands.

Sleep has no place it can call its own.

The poor sleep little.

Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.

My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.

The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.

O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?

I don't like to sleep. I'm missing something when I'm sleeping.

For years now, I've wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do.

Although she was giddy with exhaustion, sleep was a lover who refused to be touched.

I've dreamed a lot, but i'm not a very good sleeper.

He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.

Who sleeps at night? No one is sleeping.
 In the cradle a child is screaming.
 An old man sits over his death, and anyone
 young enough talks to his love, breathes 
into her lips, looks into her eyes.

O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee, 1710. That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Some nights I sleep like a baby. Other nights it's, Oh God, I just came up with a bomb shot.

I can't sleep. There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat

Meanwhile the 3 a.m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.

I can go round the clock without sleep.